Breggin Fails in Court

Remember folks, Peter Breggin is on our (ISEPP’S) side; so, when Peter fails, we fail. Or do we? How did we/he fail this time?

Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs Michelle Carter. Guilty of manslaughter

Michelle was found guilty of encouraging, coaxing, pushing her despondent boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to kill himself. Peter noted that in June of 2014, Michelle was actually encouraging Conrad to get psychological help, not kill himself. In fact she volunteered to go with him to work on her own problem, an eating disorder. She was then started on Celexa by her doc (she had been taking Prozac for years). By July 2014, a month into her new antidepressant treatment, Peter noted she had become -- transformed if you will -- apathetic, prone to bouts of mania, nightmares in which the devil told her to kill herself. In addition, according to the “Psychiatric Times,” September 2017, p. 13, Peter also testified:

[Carter] was enmeshed in a delusional system…really…a delusion where she’s thinking that it’s a good thing to help him die…[She] was unable to form intent because she was so grandiose that what she was doing was not to harm -- even though she was encouraging his suicide, her absolute intent was to help Conrad.

Well, the judge would have none of it. (Michelle chose not to have a jury trial.) When Michelle encouraged him to poison himself with carbon monoxide, there was no indication of an attempt to “help.”

This case bothers me. Although I am in Peter’s corner, railing against toxic substances poisoning the minds of vulnerable kids, I probably would have made the same judgment as Judge Lawrence Moniz. “The drug made me (her, him) do it!” is a slippery slope, particularly if you are of an existential bent as am I. We existentialists believe in personal responsibility. Note: Of all the drugs on the market, the drug causing the most violence is, you guessed it, alcohol. And alcoholic intoxication is not a defense in a court of law. 

So many culprits in this case

Yes, I know alcohol intoxication is quite different from taking a drug prescribed by an “expert.” When we drink alcohol, it is on our own recognizance.

But, isn’t it peculiar that pregnant women are warned that alcohol might be injurious to the health of the fetus but there is no black box warning indicating that alcohol might impair judgment, remove social inhibitions, lead to violent actions towards others or oneself?

What interests me is: WAS MICHELE EVER WARNED that Celexa could impair her moral judgment? How did the prescriber counsel her? Was she told that apathy was a possible effect? Most of all, the question is still open – where does personal responsibility end and professional responsibility begin? It is here that I am sympathetic to Judge Moniz’s decision. He is called upon to pass judgment on the person, not the system. There are so many culprits in this case: the careless prescribing physician; the corrupt pharmaceutical industry; distortions promulgated by the profession of psychiatry; the negligent families of each of these kids; society, with its futile dependence on pseudo-technical solutions to psychologic/spiritual problems. Michelle and Conrad were the end point of myriad influences. Conrad is dead. Michelle will do some jail time. Maybe she’s wiser. Are we?

Let’s clarify something. It is a mistake to think that patients always follow doctor’s orders. There are very persuasive accounts in the literature that the opposite is true, particularly when it comes to antidepressants.

Some examples:

1. From Sawada, N et al. Persistence and compliance to antidepressant treatment in patients with depression: A chart review. BMC Psychiatry 2009:38. “In this retrospective chart review, 6-month adherence to antidepressants was examined in 367 outpatients with a major depressive disorder (ICD-10)… Only 161 patients (44.3%) [!] continued antidepressant treatment for 6 months.”
2. From Warden D et al. Identifying risk for attrition during treatment for depression. Psychother Psychosom 2009:78:372-379. “The attrition rates in the first 12 weeks of treatment can be as high as 65% [!] in naturalistic setting (2,3,4) and 36% in clinical trials [5] and as many as 15% of the patients never begin a prescribed antidepressant [6].”
3. From SansoneR.A. et al. in “Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience,” 2012. P41-46, “…approximately 50% of psychiatric patents and 50% of primary care patients prematurely discontinue antidepressant therapy…”

My sympathy goes out to Michelle and to Conrad’s family. I can’t explain why Michelle did not toss the drug down the drain, not wanting the effects that may have contributed to Conrad’s death. Often one’s desire to escape psychological pain has dire consequences. Is that what happened to Michelle Carter? “Die Conrad, I don’t want to feel your pain any more.”