by Chuck Ruby, PhD, ISEPP Executive Director

With another year's conference come and gone, my thoughts about it, and ISEPP in general, have swirled about me like the wake of a familiar and powerful ship passing by. I thought I'd pen these swirling thoughts, just to help me capture them more clearly for myself but also for the benefit of others. I would be grateful to hear your thoughts too.

ISEPP was created many years ago with the primary purpose of offering a haven to those of us who disagree with and rebel against the orthodoxy of the bio-medical-pathology model of human suffering and all the harmful consequences of such a model. We are professionals who recognize non-medical, safe, and respectful ways to help people in the throes of despair and confusion. We are also the consuming public who seek help, merely demanding that we be treated with basic dignity and not viewed as defective annoyances to be silenced or taken away and secluded out of sight. 

This was the 25th time we've convened for camaraderie, expression, and reassurance that each of us is not alone in our difficult struggle with mainstream psychiatry and the clinical versions of psychology, social work, counseling, and yes, even sometimes coaching. Each time, we hear from phenomenal speakers, telling us about the continuing harm of the orthodox model. Each time, we hear how baseless that model is - how the emperor wears no clothes. Each time, we hear about how this model is an ideology, not a science. Each time, we hear about alternative ways to help our fellow humans who face, as we all do, the inevitable challenges of living a human life. Each time we hear the message that human suffering is not a sickness, abnormality, defect, deficiency, or dysfunction. It is an expression of meaningful living.

During this most recent conference, we once again shared our criticisms of this failed, yet still entrenched, model:

David Healy, MD, FRCPsych, addressed the so-called gold-standard randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as a problem in plain sight, suggesting that their results are scientifically illiterate. They tell us something about the average effects of a treatment and this may be useful for regulators called on to license a drug. But no person seeking our help is average.

Arnold Cantú, LCSW, presented his comprehensive critique of the DSM and his ideas about a replacement framework, borrowing from the field of social work, and accompanied by examples of how the field can move away from the biomedical model. He proposed the development of an alternative non-medicalized, psychosocial, and codified descriptive problem-based taxonomy as an alternative.

David Walker, PhD, shared some of the ways Native Americans continue to survive and thrive in the face of innumerable adversities and oppression. He presented the “Twelve Virtues of Níix Ttáwaxt” (neek TAUwaukT, "good growth to maturity") as a means of support for the wellbeing of Native American youth as well as for all people regardless of background.

Lynn Cunningham introduced the film Medicating Normal. After viewing it, three of the "stars" of the film, David Cohen, PhD, Mary Neal Vieten, PhD, ABPP, and Angie Peacock, MSW, CPC, discussed their experiences making the film and their views on the present-day system's continued reliance on chemical means as the first line of offense to subdue normal emotional distress.

Angie Peacock, MSW, CPC, later presented her experiences as a patient in this system, eventually abandoning it, along with its psychiatric drugs. She described the challenges of doing so, including self-doubt and judgments from others. She encourages people who choose to follow in her footsteps, to redefine their relationships with the “experts” and re-conceptualize their life experiences that have been labeled "symptoms."

The conference culminated with a captivating discussion between Joe Tarantolo, MD and David Cohen, PhD, a long-time psychiatrist and long-time social work academic, respectively. They tried to delineate how, in the current era of "evidence-based psychotherapy" and "behavioral health," the two disciplines approach a variety of topics related to diagnoses, psychotherapy, and the very nature of human suffering.

Yet, despite the value of these conference presentations, as well as our long history of other powerful and uplifting experiences during our annual gathering, the orthodoxy is still firmly in place, calling the shots about people's rights to self-determination. Under the guise of healthcare, that orthodoxy dictates morally-derived standards of appropriate ways to act, feel, and think. Moreover, when we step outside the boundaries of those vague moral norms, we are at risk of losing our very essence of self and freedom by being subjected to long-term and coercive chemical (and less so, electrical and surgical) abuses, and involuntary confinement away from the very support systems so vital for restoration. Both of these reactions by the orthodoxy do nothing but exacerbate the problem by forcing further escape from the realities in our worlds - seeing escape as the answer, rather than engagement with our worlds despite the pain. Escaping merely serves to further distance us from possible solutions that would eventually reap a sense of meaning and contentment.

What are we to do? We have run the gamut from Congressional contact, peer-reviewed research and writings, consumer-driven demands for rights, one-on-one contact with other professionals and potential consumers, and both mainstream and social media attempts to share our critique with the rest of the world. But is it working? We try to stay connected to other like-minded organizations, and have considered the possibility of coalescing into one large consortium that can speak against these insults with a louder and more powerful voice against mainstream psychiatry. But are these organizations able, or willing, to put away parochial interests for the benefit of this strategy of a unified voice? Or, are we so diverse in our organizing principles that finding solidarity is nearly impossible.

As we get ready for ISEPP's 26th Annual Conference (tentatively set for Virginia Beach in the fall of 2024), I want to reflect on where we've been and how we can (and if we can) adjust ISEPP to have a greater impact on the current state of the clinical industries. I think such an organizational refinement that is based on historical experiences is needed for any group, if that group wants to retain, and even extend, its significance.

Chuck Ruby, Ph.D., is a psychologist who has been in private practice for the past 25 years, after a 20-year career with the U.S. Air Force. You can read more about him at his personal website. He is the author of Smoke and Mirrors: How You Are Being Fooled About Mental Illness - An Insider's Warning to Consumers. Dr. Ruby is the past Chairperson of the Board for ISEPP and has been the Executive Director since 2015.

A new Report on Improving Mental Health Outcomes, a collaboration of scholars, activists, and survivors (James Gottstein, Esq, Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD, David Cohen, PhD, Chuck Ruby, PhD, and Faith Myers) argues that the mental health system's standard interventions (especially overreliance on drugs and incarceration into psychiatric facilities) are harmful, counter-productive, and forced on unwilling patients. These standard interventions turn upside down known facts about what helps people in distress while they violate principles of international law. The authors argue that People (relationships), Place (safe places to live), and Purpose (meaningful activities), alongside hope, all within a voluntary system of services, should be made broadly available via public and private programs. The authors describe over a dozen currently available approaches embodying these principles, which they suggest would both dramatically improve treatment outcomes and reduce treatment harms.

by Niall McLaren, MBBS, FRANZCP

Over the weekend, I forced myself to watch the final lectures in the "ADHD Masterclass" series issued by the college of psychiatrists in October 2022. Anything I could say now would probably be actionable so I'll think about it for a while. Since then, and much more interesting, I watched the launch of the joint WHO and UN Human Rights Commission guidelines on human rights and mental health legislation. Yes, it's dry and out there but... it's so important. This is the definitive statement from the most authoritative agencies in the world on how mental health acts are to be shaped and written. Speakers, who included the Director-General of the WHO and the HR Commissioner, saw three areas that needed urgent attention:

1. The world-wide reliance on detention and involuntary treatment in institutions rather than voluntary, community-based preventive care;



2. Closely associated, the dominance of the so-called "biomedical model" which debases the human experience; and



3. The failure to allow people with mental disorders be involved in decision-making.



Until these matters are rectified, nothing will change. Institutions will continue to gobble up the bulk of the mental health budget despite deteriorating mental health statistics; more and more people will become dependent on (i.e. addicted to) psychiatric drugs for life, with all their dire complications; and ever-growing legions of people around the world will be converted into shuffling queues of drug-addled, disempowered numbers. And we can be sure that any changes to the status quo will provoke a mighty shriek of outrage from psychiatrists, who will (correctly) feel they are losing their autonomy (read: power to do what they like to whom they like with no fear of recrimination; see New Zealand's shameful Lake Alice scandal).

The guidelines are over 200 pages and arrived late last night so I haven't done more than flick through them, but I want to focus on point 2 above, the "biomedical model." I put this in quotes because, ten years ago this month, my paper Psychiatry as Ideology,¹ showed that no psychiatrist, psychologist, philosopher or neuroscientist had ever written anything that would amount to an explanation of mental disorder as a biological disturbance of brain function, i.e. a "biomedical" model. Despite billions of dollars spent on basic biological research in psychiatry, it is also true that nobody has written anything of interest since that could remotely fill that gap.² I have challenged a number of influential psychiatrists to produce their so-called model but, after that challenge, there is a deathly silence, broken only by the sound of the lids slamming shut on their rabbit holes. There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this "omission":

Modern psychiatry is driven, not by a scientific model of mental disorder as a biological disturbance of brain function, but by an ideology which dictates that mentally-disturbed people are less than human and can be treated as such.

How did this come about? Why does the UN even need to produce guidelines saying "The mentally-troubled have rights, too"? By coincidence, I have just submitted a paper for publication that addresses exactly that point. It follows on from a discussion on the philosophical doctrine of positivism. As a reminder, positivism is the foundation of western science as it exists today. While the underlying notions had been bumping around for several hundred years, the doctrine burst on the scene nearly a century ago as "the scientific conception of the world"³.

Its goal was to eliminate all the airy-fairy stuff from science, to strip it down to its essentials by starting with just the evidence that could be positively confirmed - in brief, "If we can't see it and measure it, it doesn't exist." Any facts used to build a science had to be in the here and now, real observations of something tangible that could be checked and confirmed, even by people who didn't want to believe it. The new conception of science was that it had to be independent of anything we humans would like to believe about ourselves and the universe. Thus, they resolved the conflict between different religions by rejecting them all as "unprovable metaphysics." Trouble is, metaphysics is the branch of philosophy which deals with ultimate questions, such as the nature of being, the concept of mind or of causation, and so on, so we can't escape it. People who say "I make no metaphysical assumptions" are, in fact, making a very big one.

As it happened, when the positivist manifesto was proclaimed in 1929, medicine was already a long way down the objectivist path. Physicians were aware that the microscope and the pathology laboratory were revealing far more than the Bible or other religious texts ever would, so they didn't need much urging to join the movement. But, and this is a very big but, if unobservables can't form the basis of a science, and the mind is in principle unobservable, how can we talk about disturbances of the mind without lurching into "unprovable metaphysics"? For biology and general medicine, the problem was quickly solved by the psychological field known as behaviorism.

This started with a bang in 1913 when an American psychologist, John B. Watson, declared that all talk of the mind was strangling psychology by leading into unprovable arguments.⁴ Therefore, he declared, we will expel the mind from the science of psychology. Instead of "metaphysical musing" (aka "armchair philosophy"), observable behaviour will become the necessary and sufficient evidence to explain human activity ('necessary' means we can't explain humans without it, and 'sufficient' says that we need nothing more).

Without knowing very much about it, Watson proposed that the principle of conditioning, discovered by the Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavlov, would be the building block for a new scientific psychology. Equipped with the concept of the conditioned reflex, behaviorist psychologists were ready to explain everything. Ever since, generations of students have been taught about conditioning and reinforcement and so on, with just one small problem: there's no truth in any of it.

Ivan Pavlov was not a psychologist, he was a physiologist and he didn't think much of psychologists. In the second last paper published in his long life time,⁵ he described them as little more than a bunch of amateurs. Second, he didn't describe a process of conditioning, he described a technique for studying physiological actions, such as salivation in the dog. As a process, conditioning doesn't exist; the whole thing is a myth but it sounded very impressive so people were able to string it out for the next 75 years. Finally, it doesn't explain anything. To say that somebody has been "conditioned" to do something says no more than "That person does just that." Pavlov himself knew all this: "I reject point blank and have a strong dislike for any theory which claims a complete inclusion of all that makes up our subjective world" (p. 122). That is, he did not believe the doctrine of behaviorism could explain human mental life. But he died soon after and his prescient paper was completely ignored by the very people who were so keen to talk about "Pavlovian conditioning."

Meantime, on a planet far far away, psychiatrists were happily messing with people's brains and minds. Messing with brains, as in shocking them with various chemicals and electricity, or cutting them as in "leucotomy/lobotomy" (see PBS American Experience: The Lobotomist); messing with minds as in "You've got a bad case of penis envy, my good woman." Now if psychiatry wanted to join the happy scientific throng (read: get all the benefits), it had to abandon any notion that it could meaningfully talk about the mind, so out it went. Human mentality joined religion in the waste paper bin out the back. In the new psychiatry, when a person says "I feel so sad and hopeless, I may as well be dead," he's actually talking in metaphor. It's the same as saying "The sun's going down." No, the sun isn't going anywhere, that's just an impression that our science shows to be false.

Same with emotions: when a person says "I'm anxious," all she's doing is indicating in her quaint human way that her neurotransmitters are playing up. As a good positivist, the psychiatrist recognises this and, without letting his emotions or her prejudices get in the way, prescribes treatment to fix those pesky imbalanced chemicals. What the patient says is not to be taken at face value, it doesn't invite an emotional response as it is simply an indicator of the true state of affairs beneath the surface. The patient, of course, can't possibly know about but the keen-eyed and sharp-witted psychiatrist does: "Yes dear, of course you're sad, that's the nature of your illness, so here's your tablets, come back in a month next please." To put it differently, psychiatry removed any and all spiritual element from mental disorder. And that will provoke another howl of outrage, so we'll pause to consider it.

The concept of humans as spiritual creatures goes back forever: recent findings in South Africa indicate that a small hominin called Homo naledi, which was separate from our lineage, was ritually burying its dead 300,000 years ago. Maybe the little creatures had some religious sense, maybe they didn't, but humans do, centred around the notion of a spirit or soul, something above and beyond the "mere meat" of the body and brain. Now this is where it gets a bit murky because practically every human who has ever lived thinks of spirits or souls as having magical properties, such as immortality, or being able to act on the world without being part of it. Science can't deal with magical properties so this is precisely what positivism is designed to eradicate. For naive positivists, such as the Vienna Circle in 1929 or psychiatrists in 2023, mental = spiritual = magical = nonsense.

From that flows the idea that mentally-troubled people don't need to be taken at face value. For example, if they talk about their feelings, they're talking nonsense, especially when they're saying "I feel you people aren't listening. I don't want to be in your stinking hospital, I don't want your drugs and shock treatment. I want my clothes back and I want somebody who knows how to listen. I want to be treated with respect." And this is exactly what the UN is saying: the field of mental disorder has been coopted for purposes that suit the state and the psychiatric industry, not for purposes that suit the sufferers. Therefore this needs to be rectified. Now, not in the nebulous future. And, with their guidelines, they show just how it is to be done, except psychiatry isn't listening.

The institution of psychiatry is continuing along its old path of medicalising normality, of reducing psychosocial factors to tokens, of paying lip-service to the concepts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and so on. We see this in the three lectures sponsored by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists which aim to put 5% of children on dangerous and addictive drugs without any understanding of what has happened to those children. 80% of people started on ADHD drugs as teenagers and young adults choose to stop them within five years. Doesn't that say something? Psychiatry claims to be "evidence-based." Isn't that evidence of something? Yes, it is evidence of selectively filtering the evidence to get rid of all the material that doesn't confirm your position. Similarly, where is the evidence that locking innocent people up in the very long term and drugging them insensible is better than other forms of management, or even no management at all? There is no evidence, that's why the UN says it's time to stop and reconsider.

My paper argues that we can write a science of mental disorder which gives full credit to the idea of humans as mentally-capable beings (I use the word spirituality but with no supernatural connotations). It is not meaningless to claim that mental symptoms can and do arise purely as the result of psychological and social pressures in a perfectly healthy brain. We need to reintegrate the concept of humans as mental/spiritual beings into psychiatry, as the first step to implementing a human-centred, rights-based approach to mental disorder.

While psychiatrists can wave the positivist manifesto (which none of them have read) at their critics, then we're in for a long, hard slog to change things. We may as well start now.

¹ McLaren N (2013). Psychiatry as Ideology. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry 15: 7-18.
doi: 10.1891/1559-4343.15.1.7
²McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge.
³Hahn H, Neurath O, Carnap R (1929). The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle. Ernst Mach Society, University of Vienna.
⁴Watson JB. Psychology as the behaviourist views it. Psychological Review, 1913; 20:158-177.
⁵Pavlov IP (1932). The reply of a physiologist to psychologists. Psychological Review, 39:91-127.

Niall (Jock) McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist who recently retired after 50 years of practice. He has extensive experience in military, forensic and remote area psychiatry, all at the rough and unglamorous end of psychiatry. As a specialist, he went back to university to study philosophy and has published a number of monographs on the application of the philosophy of science to mental disorder, most recently brought together as the biocognitive model for psychiatry. This is based in the concept of natural dualism, and provides a working model for mental disorder as a primary psychological matter, with no reason to suspect brain pathology. He lives in the rural outskirts of Brisbane with his family and keeps busy growing trees.

by Randy Cima, PhD

Business has never been better, thanks for asking. As long as the public — you and I — continue to demand newer and better quick-fix chemicals, we act as a sales force for this huge industry. The peddling of psychiatric chemicals, like all businesses, is subject to market pressure. Right now, there is continuing pressure to create more and more chemicals for more and more of our discomforts. Our demand is met, happily, by Big Pharma’s supply.

Here’s an example. ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) has been increasing five to six percent a year for the past few decades. Currently, there are more than six million children nationwide diagnosed with this brain disorder¹. That means — like no other country on earth — one of every ten American children between the ages of 3 and 17 can be prescribed “speed” (central nervous system stimulants) to “treat” their ADHD.

And there’s this. In their unending quest to expand their customer base, about two decades ago psychiatry and their Big Pharma cohorts started funding studies to convince us this fake condition was somehow infecting adults too. Like the well-oiled machine it is, it has worked stupendously well. From MedMD, July 13, 2022:

It’s estimated that adult ADHD affects more than 8 million adults (or up to 5% of Americans). Many of them don’t even know it. Several studies suggest less than 20% of adults with ADHD are aware that they have it. And only about a fourth of those who do know are getting treatment for it.²

That’s a total of 14 million people with this preposterous diagnosis. And, as if not already enough, Big Pharma and knowledgeable professionals routinely caution us at every turn, to make sure we understand, and to make sure we let our family, friends, and neighbors know, there’s likely many, many, many others who are “un-diagnosed,” and “unreported.” So please, dear customer, keep spreading the word.

Your psychiatrist can choose from 61 different chemicals for ADHD — with more on the horizon. There are 78 chemicals for depression, and there are 15 kinds of depression. Antipsychotics? 26. There are 12 chemicals to treat autism, the most maligned of all children (see A Story About Autism: here). Anxiety disorder of some sort? There are 188 chemicals in 9 different “topics” to help you if you are too anxious. Anxiety relief, as you can tell, is a big seller.³

Market Size
Let’s take a quick picture of the growth of this industry in the past 70 years.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is psychiatry’s book of fictitious diseases.⁴ In 1952, there were 106 diseases. In 1968, the second edition of DSM was published, and there were 182. The third edition, published in 1980, named 265, and then revised in 1987 to 292. In 1994, the fourth edition of the DSM increased the number of psychiatric diseases to 410 diseases.⁵

The DSM 5 was released in 2013. It was designed to replace its 20-year-old, very dated predecessor. Since its release 10 years ago — and even before its release — DSM 5 had been roundly criticized by nearly everyone, including psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, the NIH (National Institutes of Health), and the British Psychological Society (who do not use it), to name a few. They have good reasons to criticize this scientific debacle. (You can read more about this here.) The newest edition, DSM 5TR, has expanded the number of diseases even more.

Every professional I’ve known in the past 45 years uses the DSM as a billing device, nothing else. It has no therapeutic value. It doesn’t provide any treatment suggestions and it doesn’t provide any clues to etiology — a fancy word for the pseudo-causes of these pseudo-diseases. The DSM only provides a name and number to the mental health professional, or agency, so they can bill their insurance provider. Once a diagnosis is chosen, no professional I’ve known ever refers to the DSM again. There’s no reason to do so.

However, as a billing device, it is essential. Everyone uses it. By everyone I mean local, state, and federal governments, big business, non-profits, academia, all mental health providers, all hospitals, all schools — everyone. Without a diagnosis from the DSM, treatment cannot be funded by private or public insurance providers. So, as you can see, it pays to be in the book.

How do you get in the book?
Very briefly. After completing rigorous scientific requirements, a Big Pharma company presents a new disease for consideration to the carefully selected, 28-member DSM Task Force of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Then, the 28 members vote. Majority wins. If you win, a new disease is born, and is now eligible to be funded by insurance companies, including Medicare. If you’re not successful this year, fear not. You can submit again next year

Given the huge financial advantages for having one of your disorders selected to be in the book, there’s a lot of controversy about this process, not the least of which is this:

The financial association of DSM-5 panel members with industry continues to be a concern for financial conflict of interest. Of the DSM-5 task force members, 69% report having ties to the pharmaceutical industry, an increase from the 57% of DSM-IV task force members.⁶

Who are the winners?
Academia and Big Pharma are the winners, and it’s very competitive. Universities and massive corporations stand in line to reap the rewards. If you can get an unwanted behavior proclaimed a disease by the disease proclaimers, then doctors, universities and corporations will be enriched because, well, we all stand in another line, so we can give them fistfuls of money for their products.

You should also know this. Big Pharma’s most important customer is the psychiatrist, not you. Psychiatrists are the ones who push their products to us. While these companies aim their endless advertisements to entice you, it’s the psychiatrist who grants permission. Big Pharma “field reps” are forever enticing doctors to try their latest concoction, or to provide them with evidence their old concoctions are even effective with other false disorders. The math is easy. More diagnoses, more prescriptions. Big Pharma and the medical profession work in tandem towards a mutually beneficial end.

Where Are We Going?
I trust you know by now, psychiatry in America is a vibrant commodity. That makes you a consumer. By the time you finish this book, you will be much more adept at asking questions about those chemicals your psychiatrist is prescribing for you or your child, and you will be much more able to measure the psychiatrist’s answers. By the way, you can purchase these chemicals — where else — at the local chemical store. As you already know, chemicals can be very, very expensive, especially those requiring a note from a medic.

You can, of course, purchase the same chemicals from a variety of illegal sources, and they are everywhere. They will be able to provide you with one or more of the 10 or so illegal chemicals you can’t buy over the counter, with or without a note from your doctor. You may be surprised to learn the chemicals found at your drugstore and the chemicals found at your corner connection are exactly the same. Exactly. Others are so similar chemically only a chemist could tell you the difference. The effects on a human being are identical. And please recall, it’s the chemical’s physiological effects we are interested in, whether legal or illegal.

¹https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html

²https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/adult-adhd-facts-statistics#:~:text=ADHD%20is%20among%20the%20most,aware%20that%20they%20have%20it.

³See Drugs.com: https://www.drugs.com

⁴Or: disorders, deficiencies, delays, disabilities, derangements, disturbances, dysfunctions.

⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders#Early_versions_(20th_century)

⁶https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Financial_Conflicts_of_Interest_and_Perverse_Dependencies

Randy Cima, Ph.D., is a psychologist by training. He was the Executive Director for several mental health agencies for children. He is avid opponent of psychotropic chemicals for children, and his efforts have successfully reduced and even eliminated chemicals in his work in helping them with a variety of problems. He also teaches, writes, and lectures on these matters.

Don't delay. Register for the 25th Annual ISEPP Conference (Virtual) October 28-29, 2023. We have a stellar lineup.

by Niall McLaren, MBBS, FRANZCP

At the end of this past May, the American Psychiatric Association (APA, not to be confused with their competition, the American Psychological Association, also APA) held their annual jamboree in San Francisco. The theme was Innovate, Collaborate, Motivate: Charting the Future of Mental Health. This is huge, something over 12,000 attendees and lots more demonstrating on the pavement outside who weren't allowed in. There were over 600 presentations of a dozen different types, all on the same topic (no criticism, of course): Mental Disorder is Brain Disorder.

It's also Big Business, costing members over US$1,100, but it is much bigger business for the drug companies. They could get a 23-page prospectus outlining the mouth-watering business opportunities of having an advertising stand in the convention centre . Starting with a 10'x10' booth, about 9 square meters, costs ranged from US$3,700 for the four days, to about US$18,000. Who pays this sort of money? Everybody: drug companies, device manufacturers (ECT etc), book publishers, IT companies, recruiting agencies, hospital and insurance companies, universities, the military ... There's money in psychiatry, that's for sure.

And for those of us too disadvantaged or churlish to attend, there were daily briefings direct to your email box from Psychiatric Times and others, all breathlessly announcing yet another stirring advance in the War on Mental Disorder. For example, anorexia and bulimia have now been targeted by the people who make "neuromodulatory" devices, magnetic field generators for transcranial and what is called deep brain stimulation. These machines aren't cheap, they start at about US$40,000 and quickly go up but the real expense is running them (staff, facilities, etc), which is why TCMS is so expensive.

The article mentioned a number of papers over the past few years where these machines had been used, but the studies were generally poor quality with small numbers and indifferent results. Compounding it, there was no agreement over which deep parts of the brain should be stimulated, although all researchers were sure that they were on the right track. Nonetheless, the author was optimistic that more research would be helpful. There was, of course, no discussion of why eating disorders should be regarded as brain disorders needing physical treatment of the brain, and not primary psychological problems for which talking is the correct approach. Mainstream psychiatry, which the APA conference represents, doesn't believe in mental causes of mental disorder, it's all physical, meaning lots of physical treatment and no time wasted on idle chat. That's why all the drug and device manufacturers and etc. flock to the APA annual conference: "There's money in them thar ills." (Sorry, bad joke).

Just to prove that there's nothing new under the sun, we have been treated to the latest, er, considered treatment for ADHD. Diet. This is true. Fifty years after the Feingold Diet was quietly smothered and buried by the manufacturers of stimulant drugs, we learn that diet is back:

There has been increasing interest in the role that diet and supplements play in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, from patients and researchers alike.

For those too young to remember the 1970s, the Fiengold Diet was developed by a Dr Feingold from California, a paediatric allergist who decided that what is now called ADHD represents an allergy to chemicals in the diet (unsurprisingly, that's what allergists do). The chemicals he chose were the group of salicylates, natural and artificial. Salicylic acid, universally known as aspirin, was originally discovered in the bark of willow trees (Latin name: Salix) but similar chemicals are widespread in nature. Dr Feingold, who graduated in 1924, decided that these were the offending agents and devised a diet that would eliminate them. He published a couple of books on the subject, including the best-selling The Feingold Diet for Hyperactive Children (1973), and immediately achieved near-superstar status among his devoted fan base. He died in 1982, just as the results were coming: the diet had no scientific basis and the results were woeful.

Unfortunately, Dr F. had based all his ideas on what was the original research on natural salicylates, from the late 19th century. All the figures were wrong, which meant his diet was little better than a random elimination diet. It was also difficult to follow as it put a lot of work on mothers preparing special meals at home and lunches for school but, most important, it was boring and the kids didn't keep to it. Finally, well-funded research (sponsored mainly by drug companies) soon found it was essentially useless but you couldn't tell the mothers. No way. Back when our children were still having birthday parties, each round of invitations would result in a dozen messages saying we had to make sure their little darlings didn't go near the red cordial, chocolate ice cream, little red saveloys (for some reason, they're called Cheerios here) and so on. As though we could stop them. But we had plenty of land and a pool so the kids could run screaming through the bush and jump in and out of the pool all afternoon, then sleep on the way home in the car, meaning the parents were happy and thought we'd done wonders.

But as I said, diets are back, which is generally an indicator that there is growing awareness the magic drugs aren't doing what they're supposed to do. This time, the prime offender isn't salicylates, it's... wait for it ... the Western diet of hamburgers, chips and fizzy drinks. Researchers have noted that as the diet of highly processed food, with high levels of salt, sugar and fat, spreads around the world, so the incidence of obesity in children rises, and in adults, along with diabetes, high blood pressure, bowel cancer, heart disease. And arthritis. Mustn't forget the relentless increase in arthritis of hips, knees and low back in the 150kg bodies designed for 70kg.

The researchers considered all sorts of possibilities, including what is known as the gut biome, meaning the trillions of bacteria that normally live in the large bowel. With a diet high in fibre and complex natural sugars, and low in animal protein and fat diet, i.e. the diet of hunter-gatherers, the large bowel has a stable population of fairly harmless bugs who mostly behave themselves and contribute to digestion. However, with the high fat/sugar/salt, low physical activity diet that is gradually taking over, the bowel flora changes dramatically. The nice bugs get shoved aside and nasties take over, leading to all sorts of odd chemicals flowing into the body. These include inflammatory chemicals such as cytokines, hence psychiatry's interest in whether mental disorder is due to these chemicals affecting the brain (there's no evidence for it yet but that doesn't stop anybody).

They also looked at some more way-out causes, including heavy metal intoxication (aka poisoning). These include chromium, lead, mercury, arsenic, nickel, manganese and selenium, all of which are found in the air, dust and water of mining and industrial cities. Entire generations of children have been exposed to these elements, even though they have long been known to be toxic to developing brains, lead in particular. Once absorbed, heavy metals stay in the body long term and many are concentrated in nervous tissues. Chronic low-grade lead poisoning in children, often starting during pregnancy and breast-feeding, results in measurable loss of IQ, as well as behaviour disturbances which, with a bit of massage, can meet the criteria for ADHD. Higher levels of lead poisoning, of course, are even more serious with mental impairment and coordination problems, up to coma, convulsions and death, so it's very serious.

However, it's rarely a problem of the wealthy as heavy metal poisoning is largely a problem of poor and minority children whose parents have to live and work near mines and refineries. The city of Flint, a post-industrial wasteland in Michigan, had a large scale experiment a few years ago when the city decided to save money by using water from the Flint River rather than from dams inland. The river is acid, so it dissolved the lead in the ancient water pipes that they'd never quite got around to replacing (Flint is poor and black), which meant the water was dangerous. However, in order to prevent public panic, the city authorities kindly suppressed the news. In Australia, refineries in Mt Isa (Qld) and Whyalla (SA) have been spewing tons of these chemicals into the air for decades. When the risks were finally made public, mothers were given helpful advice from health departments:

Don't wear shoes inside. Wash outdoor toys often. Don't hang washing out if there's a northwesterly blowing. In fact, try not to be outside at all if there's a northwesterly. Don't vacuum while your children are in the room. Don't drink rainwater. Or cook with it. Especially don't use it to make baby's formula. Don't let toddlers put their hands in their mouths or play on the grass.

These people were serious. Trouble is, the diagnosis of ADHD is not made so much in poor or disadvantaged children (unless they're in state care) as in middle to upper socioeconomic groups, so that doesn't work. Yes, heavy metal poisoning is a major public health issue in many parts of the world; no, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the "epidemic" of ADHD in Western countries; no, that news will not deter the brigades of concerned parents who will demand their little darlings be tested, at huge public expense, for heavy metals; and yes, the researchers end their little paper with a call for more research (read: more money):
... more research is required in order to better understand the efficacy and underlying mechanisms of dietary strategies for ADHD.

So while they're chasing the effects of bowel bugs on brains, have they given any thought to the possibility that so-called ADHD may have something to do with parenting? With the school environment? With family pathology producing just plain unhappy kids? Of course not, what a silly suggestion, everybody knows it's biological. Anyway, there's no money in that.
For children, their diet just is a parenting matter. Yes, there are pressures affecting what poorer parents can give their children but the fact that advertisers can spend taxpayer-subsidised millions on boosting the latest McRooster burger with cola and chips has to be taken into account. Also there are massive subsidies in the US for farmers to grow corn, which is then converted to vast quantities of corn syrup which has to be sold to cover the costs of the subsidies. Corn syrup is very high in sugar (about 780gm per litre, meaning the sticky goo is an astounding 78% pure sugar). It goes into everything. If you buy any ready-made food of any sort in the US, it's dripping with corn syrup. That is the sort of food the poor buy just because it keeps the kids quiet, especially in cold weather.

McDonalds used to give plastic toys with what they called their "Happy Meal": why didn't they hand out free medicine measures and other useful things? That's not their job, they reply: "Our job is to satisfy our shareholders." Sure, and the community and government pick up the bits (for tax purposes, McDonalds Australia is domiciled overseas and pays itself hundreds of millions a year in "royalties," thereby reducing its tax bill; the rest are just as bad).

So back to the APA annual gabfest. The entire orientation is directed at finding a biological "cause" for mental troubles, when common sense says the quality of life must have something to do with it. And that's modern psychiatry: as I have said (many times, in fact), modern psychiatry does not have a science of mental disorder. Instead, it is an ideology of mental disorder, a cluster of beliefs or a false or unproven narrative put about by the controlling elite for the purpose of safeguarding their interests. Because if they relax for one minute and allow that, yes, life experiences (including being detained and treated against one's will) may have something to do with mental disorder, then hordes of psychologists, social workers and other pond life will swarm in and the power elite will lose control of what they see as their industry.

The ADHD industry is more or less emblematic of everything that is wrong with psychiatry. If you can think of something that psychiatrists have got wrong or are doing wrong, it'll be in there. That's not a very flattering assessment of modern psychiatry; if somebody can prove me wrong, we'll publish it.

Niall (Jock) McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist who recently retired after 50 years of practice. He has extensive experience in military, forensic and remote area psychiatry, all at the rough and unglamorous end of psychiatry. As a specialist, he went back to university to study philosophy and has published a number of monographs on the application of the philosophy of science to mental disorder, most recently brought together as the biocognitive model for psychiatry. This is based in the concept of natural dualism, and provides a working model for mental disorder as a primary psychological matter, with no reason to suspect brain pathology. He lives in the rural outskirts of Brisbane with his family and keeps busy growing trees.

The third paper from the benzodiazepine experience survey was released recently, reporting some of the long-term symptoms and life effects attributed by respondents to benzodiazepines. It also proposes a name for these enduring symptoms that many have experienced: benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction (BIND).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Benzodiazepine use associated with brain injury, job loss, and suicide

PORTLAND, Oregon, June 29, 2023 (eReleases) –

Benzodiazepine use and discontinuation is associated with nervous system injury and negative life effects that continue after discontinuation, according to an article published 06/29/2023 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

by Randy Cima, Ph.D.

Briefly
Psychiatry sells us four kinds of chemicals for our psychiatric disorders. Three chemicals really, though they have been experimenting for decades to find a use for the fourth, to no avail, so far.¹ Each of the four has distinguishable, physiological effects on all earthlings, healthy or otherwise.

The four kinds of chemicals, and their effects, are: (1) Tranquilizers (downers), (2) Stimulants (uppers), (3) Analgesics (anesthetics/pain relief), and (4) Hallucinogens (consciousness altering), each with their own story.

This story is about psychiatry’s misuse of the first of these — tranquilizers — or what is commonly known as “downers.”

Downers
The first man-made tranquilizer, Chlorpromazine (CPZ), became available to the public in 1954. It was popular among professionals due to its ease of use and versatility — they used it for everything — and it was a huge financial boon to Big Pharma. By the mid-1960’s fifty million people around the planet had used CPZ. The formula was in place. (See Zombie Theory Part 3.²)

Since then, psychiatric science has simply reimagined the many ways they can produce, develop, and market similar tranquilizers. They have also used a variety of different names for these same chemicals during the past 70 years, including SSRI’s, benzodiazepines, antidepressants, anti-psychotics, anxiolytics, and many, many more. Regardless of terminology, they are all tranquilizers, and represent one of several kinds of central nervous system depressants.

In varying degrees, tranquilizers slow down our breathing, our heartbeat, and in general, our physical activity, including brain activity. Within a short period of time after ingesting a tranquilizer of some kind, you can feel your muscles relax and tensions lessen. Your life-stressors seem less impactful, and there’s even a sense of euphoria for a short period of time. You feel a little better than you did, for a while. And that, dear reader, is the dirty little secret no one talks about. This is how they “work,” and why they really don’t work at all.

Another thought or two
I think about half of adults (I’m guessing) who take these “meds” understand the particular tranquilizer they’re taking is just that: a tranquilizer. Because of the pressures of life, they seek tranquility. They like the calming effects of the pill, at least in the beginning. If someone takes Prozac as a way to find some tranquility for six months to help get over a divorce or another life stressor, and if in this way it works for them, that’s okay with me. It is a tranquilizer, not medicine. Some people consume alcohol to lower their stress and anxiety. Others exercise or meditate. There are a variety of ways to ease stressful, ongoing life situations.

Some take a tranquilizer — or two — when necessary. If, as the stress decreases, and use of the tranquilizer decreases too, then it’s no-harm-no foul as far as I’m concerned. Please be cautious. There are physical risks for using a tranquilizer too often, or for too long. They are toxic, they can become habitual, and they do not “treat a brain disease.” They provide us tranquility for stress and anxiety in our lives. With or without these cautions, as an adult, it’s your business.

However, for the other half (more or less), this is about life and death. They are desperate. They are not seeking tranquility. They are thinking about ending their life if they don’t feel better soon. A doctor — and society in general — convinces them they have a disease that is causing their deep depression and can only be helped with one, or more, of the many, many tranquilizers — downers — from which doctors have to choose.

With this introduction, and with these thoughts in mind, please consider the following story.

Insidious and Cruel
Imagine you’re a 30 something young man or woman, and you’ve been fighting a deep sadness for a few years. Life has dealt you a few blows. You have reason to be depressed. As a result, you’ve been isolating yourself for some time. You feel you’re a burden to the few friends and family members you still see. There’s no joy in your life. You have no energy, and no need for energy. Days are becoming more and more burdensome. Your thoughts and feelings are as dark as your mood. You try to exercise and mingle, like you’ve been advised, but you just don’t feel like it. You don’t want to be around anyone.

You started therapy a year ago. It helped for a while. You like your therapist and you confide in him. He knows you’ve had thoughts of ending your life, among other things. You were optimistic when you started. But now, it’s been a year, and you feel worse. Your therapist is frustrated too. You know he cares about you. He reminds you he suggested you see a psychiatrist six months earlier, but you declined. Maybe he’s right. Maybe there is something biological going on, you concede. After all, that’s what everyone has been telling you for a very long time. Your friends and family love you, and they all want you to get some medical help.

You’re desperate enough now. You haven’t really told anyone just how bad you feel, and how often you think about ending your life. You now prefer isolation. You’re depressed all the time, from the moment you get up in the morning until you go to bed, only to face another restless night. You’re still young, but you look old and you feel old. The future will only provide more of the same. So, with the prayers and support of family and friends, you’re finally willing to go to a doctor to address this long held, sinking feeling. You must put a stop to your overwhelming despair, and an end to those thoughts of self-harm. More and more often, in your most private thoughts, suicide is becoming a better option. You make an appointment.

You meet your psychiatrist. She already knows about you. You were referred by your therapist. You thought you were going to have a conversation about your life. Instead, it’s an interview. Within 20 minutes — maybe 30 — she tells you you’re clinically depressed, maybe bi-polar. She takes some time explaining, as best she could, how this medication will help treat the brain disease that is causing your depression. She gives you a prescription to treat your symptoms — she already told you there’s no cure for the brain disease you have. She gives you Zoloft, or Prozac, or Xanax, or another SSRI or benzodiazepine. In short, she tells you to ingest a particular dose of a particular tranquilizer.

You go home to follow doctor’s orders. You’re at least relieved to know you have something that can be treated — finally. Nothing has changed in your life, of course, but you take your first tranquilizer in the morning, and again in the evening. You’re trying to be optimistic.

It’s been two weeks, and you don’t feel any better. You were expecting something in the first week. The doctor warned you that you could feel worse before you feel better — it’s common she said — and she was right. You feel worse. You’re even more lethargic, less energetic, and your mood is worse too, and so are your thoughts and feelings. You call the office like the doctor told you, and you report the side effects of the tranquilizer. The office tells you it’s normal.

In the meantime, life happens, and other life stressors occur. You’re getting overwhelmed again. Perhaps you waited too long to see a psychiatrist. Perhaps your disease is that hard to manage. This time, a few weeks later, you go to the office. The doctor changes the dose to see if that works. If that doesn’t help, she told you, she may try another tranquilizer in a few months. You can’t wait a few months.

On your own, desperately, you double the dose of your tranquilizer. Nothing. You’re not even frightened anymore. You’re numb. You’ve taken more than you should, and it just makes you feel more depressed, more lethargic, more alone. You’ve confirmed, in your own mind, what you thought was true anyway. Therapy didn’t help and the doctor’s medicine has made it worse. There is no help coming. You’re destined to more misery, and you know you’re a constant worry to those who love you. Everyone will be better off, eventually, you reason. With a deep sorrow, and with a sense of peace, you make, given the circumstances, a principled, private decision. You end your story.

I think this is insidious and cruel. Do you?

¹ The use of hallucinogens has been the subject of many experimental studies for many decades, with little to no results. Yet, the pursuit continues. Here’s the latest study from Johns Hopkins Medicine: Psychedelics Research and Psilocybin Therapy–https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/research/psychedelics-research.html

² Zombie Theory Part 3: https://medium.com/@randycima/the-zombie-theory-part-3-3573b3920cc5

Randy Cima, Ph.D., is a psychologist by training. He was the Executive Director for several mental health agencies for children. He is avid opponent of psychotropic chemicals for children, and his efforts have successfully reduced and even eliminated chemicals in his work in helping them with a variety of problems. He also teaches, writes, and lectures on these matters.

by Professor Bob Johnson

IGNORANCE OF THE MIND, is no excuse. It’s all too easy to get lost in too many mental machinations – how the mind works, where it comes from, what makes it tick. These are questions we’ll never fully know the answer to. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. The way through is to grasp those bits we can understand and make the most of them – it’s what every doctor and every healthcare worker in the world does, all day long. They don’t know ALL the answers – nobody does – but given enough thought, care, and experience, they, and we, can make a significant difference. And when it comes to psychiatric drugs, we all need to take careful note, and then do something about it, urgently, because otherwise it will continue to get even worse than it is at present. 

A PILL FOR EVERY ILL, sounds wonderful – but every pill has side-effects, some very toxic indeed. So we need to take far more care. We love the idea that we can pop a pill and all our troubles will be over – alcohol has been our favourite social ‘tranquiliser’, our go-to sedative, for millennia. Even today, people grab a gin and tonic, at the slightest stress. BUT what if your very own doctor prescribed a G & T, three times a day – what would you think of that? Because it happens. And it happens all too often – watch. 

I was once invited to travel to North Wales to give a talk to GP trainees on how they could do better. I told them that too many doctors’ prescriptions amounted to taking alcohol three times a day – it went down well with the ‘students’, but the organisers were horrified, so they didn’t invite me back. That’s the trouble – doctors, and I am one – don’t like to hear of their mistakes, especially when they didn’t know they were doing them. But that doesn’t stop the damage. And the sooner we all wake up, and tell the medical profession to take a good long hard look at itself, the better. And if the doctors don’t do it themselves, we’ll need to raise such a rumpus, they can’t ignore it. 

Now when you're dealing with problems of the mind, before you get mired in a whole lot of mud, it’s best to stick to hard, well known and obvious medical facts. This is the key to unpicking the notion that mental problems are beyond explanation. Some are, and some aren’t. Best to stick to the ones we can understand.

So let’s begin with alcohol. This has been around for yonks. It eases social frictions, and affords some sort of (temporary) peace-of-mind – but it comes with an obvious cost, indeed a number of them. Everyone knows that alcohol carries serious medical risks. Not everyone listens, but the facts are indisputable. This indisputability is unusual when discussing mental troubles, but it’s perfectly true. 

More people know more about the ‘side-effects’ of alcohol than of any other drug you care to name. And alcohol is a drug – it impacts on your mind, whoever you are. So the thing to look out for is – do doctors recommend it? Could they be prescribing ‘alcohol-substitutes’? Because if they are – they, and we, need to wake up fast, and make doing so illegal. 

IN SUM, alcohol is well known to produce four major problems. They are (1) addiction, (2) anti-social behaviour, (3) brain damage, and (4) the DTs. 

Now bear in mind that, though we are discussing alcohol, the fact is that nearly all the other drugs which work on the mind, do so in a surprisingly similar way. This happens to be one of the simpler aspects of the human mind. Chemicals which impact on it, via the brain, almost invariably follow identical pathways, remarkably closely. The way the brain copes with alcohol, is exactly the same way it does for far too many ‘psychiatric’ drugs. Benzos especially. 

Take the four ‘risks’ alcohol poses, in turn. Bear in mind that the crucial difference between prescribed drugs and alcohol is that the decision to take alcohol, or not, is entirely OURS. Taking alcohol can never come with the authority of the medical profession, because they and we, all know better. A doctor who prescribed habit-forming drugs, including alcohol, would face serious medical reprimands – and rightly so. 

Starting with (1) addiction. Again this can get complicated very quickly, so keeping things as simple as possible, let’s just say that addiction happens when it seems like you can’t do without something. It could be any number of things, but alcohol is well known to induce this implacable ‘longing’. ‘Where’s my next drink?’ becomes the overriding question for far too many alcoholics. When alcohol becomes more important than anything else – then you know you're addicted. Bear in mind that if a prescribed drug ever became this important, then something has gone seriously wrong medically. To be rendered unable to face life without your ‘medical fix’, is a disaster for both doctor and patient alike. And again, sadly enough, it happens. 

(2) Anti-social behaviour – this hardly needs emphasising. ‘Drunk and disorderly’ is too well known to be doubted. The technical term is ‘disinhibition’. The person afflicted loses all social sense. Violence is commonplace. Many lives, especially of those you live with, can be seriously scarred. What if this were to happen, not because you chose to become drunk – but because you followed orthodox medical advice, like any ordinary citizen should be able to, and battered those you love ‘by mistake’, or under the influence. Again doctors should bear full responsibility, and be prepared to pay extensive compensation – if this ever happened because of a drug, a psychiatric drug, they had recommended and prescribed. Again, this does happen, and it’s time notice was taken of it, such that it became illegal. 

(3) Brain damage – in the Paris metro, they used to put up glass cages with cirrhotic livers in them, to warn passengers that alcohol pickles the liver. Of course we use alcohol in the kitchen for precisely the same reason – it alters the chemicals involved, and the items thus pickled last longer. So why is it a surprise that this drug has a similar impact on our very own brain tissue? It does. It can be proved to. And so, worse for all of us, do too many psychiatric drugs. For many years now, it has been well known from brainscan work, that some psychiatric drugs actually shrink brain tissue¹ – your brain gets smaller when you take these pernicious, but prescribed, drugs – wow. Indeed a study of Swedish conscripts² showed that those who had been prescribed so-called ‘anti-psychotics’ as teenagers developed dementia sooner than those who weren’t. The records followed them for ~37 years. Doctors making dementia worse? How can this be tolerated? Dementia is increasing all the time – some see it as our next, and worst, ‘epidemic’. Here’s a known causative factor that’s been ignored for far too long. Time for concerted action – now. 

Finally, (4) the DTs. Pink elephants are traditionally what drunkards see when their supply is cut off. Known as the DTs, short for Delirium Tremens, or ‘shaking deliriums’, it is closely similar to ‘going cold turkey’. The brain has got used to a certain level of chemical assault, and it reacts, badly, when the supply stops. I join an emailing list of some 350 psychiatrists from around the world, and they give heart-rending accounts of how difficult some people find coming off, not alcohol, but doctor-prescribed pills. Some of these drugs have a chemical action which seems to seek out the weakest spot. Coming off them requires extraordinary care and skill. Play it wrong, or too quickly – and the symptoms that afflict you are vastly worse than the original disease. This is doctors making matters worse – a whole bunch of symptoms come into being, when you actually try and stop swallowing the very tablets that the doctor has advised you to take. Never stop psychiatric drugs abruptly. What a dreadful thing to have to say. But it’s today’s medical fact of life. And it will continue until we get the medical profession to wake up to what it is doing. Alcohol three times a day might even give you fewer side-effects than this. 

BUT WHAT IF THESE HARMFUL DRUGS DON’T HELP? Study their effects over 20 years, and you find they don’t. Look at the graph below³. The red are those duly taking their prescribed medication – those not, are in the green. You end up far worse, if you do what the doctor says – wow, indeed.

IN CONCLUSION – Am I the only one trying to whistle-blow here? Indeed not. The Myth Of The Chemical Cure is a book published in 2007, fully 16 years ago, by Dr Joanna MonCrieff, a well established university lecturer in psychiatry. She concludes (last page) – ‘It helps to lift the veil of medical jargon, exposing our ‘miracle cures’ as psychoactive chemicals, which distort normal brain function by producing a state of intoxication’. Here the overlap between psychiatrists’ drugs and alcohol comes home to roost. How long do we have to wait? The whole issue has been competently discussed by the celebrated science journalist, Robert Whitaker – his 2015 book says it all: Psychiatry Under the Influence: Institutional Corruption, Social Injury, and Prescriptions for Reform⁴. This was written in conjunction with the Harvard Center for Ethics. It has had zero impact on established psychiatry. You begin to wonder what will. What we’re talking about here is the tip of a toxic ice-berg. The ‘Benzo- Disease’ is widespread – and getting worse – time for action, time for laws, time we shifted this medical incubus. And if not us, who?

¹ Moncrieff, J. (2007). The myth of the chemical cure: A critique of psychiatric drug treatment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

² Nordström, P., Nordström, A., Eriksson, M., Wahlund, L., & Gustafson, Y. (2013). Risk factors in late adolescence for young-onset dementia in men, a nationwide cohort study. JAMA Intern. Med., 173(17), 1612-1618. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.9079.

³ Harrow, M., Jobe, T. H., & Faull, R. N. (2014). Does Treatment of Schizophrenia with Antipsychotic Medications Eliminate or Reduce Psychosis? A 20-Year Multi-Follow-Up Study. Psychological Medicine, 1-10.

⁴ Whitaker, R., & Cosgrove, L. (Contributor). (2015). Psychiatry under the influence: Institutional corruption, social injury, and prescriptions for reform. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dr. Bob Johnson is a consultant psychiatrist, currently on the UK GMC specialty register, with a special interest and expertise in the long term effects of trauma, and how to remedy them. He initially trained in the Therapeutic Community Approach, followed by two years in a New York State hospital. For 20 years, he was a Family Doctor in Tameside, Lancashire, UK, exploring family structures and uncovering the dire impact trauma has on cognition. Then, as a prison psychiatrist in Parkhurst Prison, UK, from 1991 to 1996. He worked with 50 murderers, entailing up to 2000 hours of unaccompanied consultations, with some 700 hours videotaped, working out with them why they killed. He is currently publishing a series of philosophy papers, clarifying the philosophical basis for this, with particular reference to psychiatric reform, social stability, and planetary health. His book, Friendless Childhoods Explain War, is coming out in July 2023 by Waterside Press UK.

ISEPP announces its Spring 2023 webinar. Join us in the discussion!

Violence and Psychiatric Drugs:
Hope or Horror?

April 28, 2023
3-5pm Eastern
2-4pm Central
1-3pm Mountain
12-2pm Pacific

Webinar recording available $20

(No CEU credit for the recording)