[DEE RE-POSTS] THE FUTURE OF ANTI-PSYCHIATRY ACTIVISM (PART 1)

Mark Twain once said “Truth is mighty and will prevail. There’s nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.” The continued existence of psychiatry is an example of how right Mark Twain was.

The Wikipedia article titled “Anti-psychiatry” (accessed October 11, 2012, since modified) said “Anti-psychiatry is a configuration of groups and theoretical constructs that emerged in the 1960s…” Actually, antipsychiatry efforts date from at least 1774 with the publication of Samuel Bruck­shaw’s book One more proof of the iniquitous abuse of private madhouses. In 1838, John Thomas Perceval published his auto­bio­graphical book about his experience of being placed against his will in an insane asylum 1831 through 1832 in England, which he calls a “system of downright oppression” (“A Lunatic’s Protest” in The Age of Madness, edited by Thomas Szasz, Anchor Books 1973, p. 29 at 32). In the 1860s Mrs. Elizabeth Packard was involuntarily committed to an insane asylum by her husband and later was successful in persuading Illinois state legislators to provide all persons with a right to a public hearing to determine the appropriateness of involuntary commitment to such an asylum, and today Illinois is one of the states where there is a right to trial by jury in civil commitment for supposed mental illness. In 1887 Nellie Bly published her exposé (see The Myth of Psychiatric Diagnosis).

The antipsychiatry movement got a boost in 1961 when psychiatry professor Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., published his book The Myth of Mental Illness questioning the central concept in psychi­atry. In the half-century since Dr. Szasz has written many other books and many articles debunking the concept of mental illness and condemning the use of this concept to violate human rights. Among his books I have read are The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), Law, Liberty and Psychiatry (1963), The Manufacture of Madness (1970), Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man (1970), The Second Sin (1973), Schizophrenia—The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry (1976, republished in 1988), Psychiatric Slavery (1977), Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry (2003), Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (2008), Antipsychiatry—Quackery Squared (2009), and Suicide Prohibition—The Shame of Medicine (2011).

In 1979 psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D., began a long career debunking claims of benefit of any of psychiatry’s biological “therapies” in a series of books and articles. I’ve read ten (10) of Dr. Breggin’s books: Electroshock—It’s Brain Disabling Effects (1979), Psychiatric Drugs—Hazards to the Brain (1983), Toxic Psychiatry (1991), Talking Back to Prozac (1994), Your Drug May Be Your Problem (1999), Reclaiming Our Children (2000), The Antidepressant Fact Book (2001), The Heart of Being Helpful (2006), Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition (2008), and Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal (2012).

In 1969, psychiatrist Ron Leifer, M.D., published his book In the Name of Mental Heath: The Social Functions of Psychiatry (Science House) in which he says the concept of mental illness is invalid and that involuntary psychiatric treatment violates the principle of rule of law.

In 1973, Stanford University psychology professor Daniel Rosenhan got widespread attention after publication of his article “On Being Sane in Insane Places” in Science magazine, showing psychia­trists cannot distinguish the sane from the insane and that what happens in psychiatric hospitals is harmful to patients, not therapeutic as psychiatry supporters claim (“On Being Sane in Insane Places”, Science Vol. 179, January 19, 1973, p. 250).

Neurologist John Friedberg, M.D., published Shock Treatment Is Not Good For Your Brain—A Neurologist Challenges the Psychiatric Myth in 1976.

Lee Coleman, M.D., a psychiatrist, published The Reign of Error—Psychiatry, Authority, and Law (on the dust cover: “A startling exposé of psychiatry’s misrule in the courts, mental hospitals, and prisons”), published in 1984.

Sydney Walker III, M.D., published A Dose of Sanity—Mind, Medicine, and Mis­diag­nosis in 1996 in which he says psychiatry has substituted the science of diagnosis with the pseudoscience of labeling (describing) and challenges the use of psychiatric, especially neuroleptic, drugs. In 1998 he published The Hyperactivity Hoax debunking the concepts of Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD).

Boston University psychology professor Margaret A. Hagen, Ph.D., published Whores of the Court—The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice in 1997.

Psychology and neuroscience professor Elliot Valenstein, Ph.D., published Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health in 1998 showing the lack of evidence for chemical imbalances in the brain as a cause of mental illness and questioning the usefulness of psychiatric drugs.

Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, published Prozac Backlash in 2000 showing the harm done by so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac.

Journalist Robert Whitaker published Mad in America—Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill in 2002 showing people considered to have mental illness were more likely to live successful lives before the advent of psychiatric drugs. In 2010 he published Anatomy of an Epidemic—Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America further documenting the fact that psychiatric drugs not only are not helpful but have caused an epidemic of disability.

Psychiatrist William Glasser, M.D., published his book Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health in 2003.

Neurologist Fred A. Baughman, M.D., published The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes “Patients” of Normal Children in 2006, questioning ADHD as a true disease or disorder.

Richard P. Bentall, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Uni­versity of Bangor in Wales (UK), published Doctoring the Mind—Is Our Current Treatment for Mental Illness Really Any Good? in 2009 wherein he makes arguments supporting what he calls “rational anti­psychiatry”.

British psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff, MBBS, MSc, MRCPsych, MD, Senior Lecturer, Department of Mental Health Services, University College London, published The Myth of the Chemical Cure, A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment, Revised Edition in 2009. Also in 2009 she published A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs. In 2013 she published The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs.

In 2013 three professors of social work or social welfare (Stuart A. Kirk, et al.) published Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis, and Drugs. British psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff summarizes the book in a few words on the dust cover: “Mad Science…describes how the unfounded but repeatedly stated notion of madness as a brain disease helps to disguise the dark heart of coercive practices that remain at the centre of psychiatric care.”

Many former psychiatric “patients” and their families and others have published books showing how psychiatry violates basic human (including constitutional) rights or how psychiatric treatment is ineffective and hurts rather than helps people. Among them are Francis Farmer, Will There Really Be A Morning? (1972), James A. Wechsler, In a Darkness (1972), Janet & Paul Gotkin, Too Much Anger, Too Many Tears—A Personal Triumph Over Psychiatry (1975), Kenneth Donaldson, Insanity Inside Out (1976), Judi Chamberlin, Own Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System (1978), William Arnold, Frances Farmer—Shadowland, (Berkley Books 1978), Doug Cameron, How to Survive Being Committed to a Mental Hospital (1980), and Howard Dully and Charles Fleming, My Lobotomy (2007).

I’ve gone to meetings of anti-psychiatry, human rights groups as long ago as 1972. At many of them I heard the myths underlying modern psychiatry debunked by speakers better than myself. Yet, when I talk with people who are directly responsible for or involved with psychiatric oppression, I find they know nothing of any of the above cited writings nor organizations opposing psychiatric quackery, oppression, and despotism. For example, on October 14, 2010 at San Antonio State Hospital I observed involuntary commitment hearings of supposedly mental ill persons who were not charged with crime and asked one of the Mental Health Public Defenders if she had read anything by Dr. Thomas Szasz or Dr. Peter Breggin. She said she had not in a way that gave me the impression she had never heard of either.

On September 2, 2011 in a face-to-face conversation an attorney in Portland, Oregon employed as a public defender whose practice was largely representing civilly committed persons said to be mentally ill and not charged with crime told me she had never heard of Drs. Szasz or Breggin.

On March 8, 2013, a mental health public defender in Austin, Texas told me he’d heard of Dr. Szasz and might have read an article about him decades ago but had never heard of Dr. Peter Breggin. A mental health public defender who has never heard of Dr. Thomas Szasz or Dr. Peter Breggin is like an American history professor who has never heard of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

In 2011 I told a New Hampshire psychiatrist who was a member of the American Psychoanalytic (not Psychiatric) Association I was looking for a psychiatrist whose thinking is similar to Thomas Szasz, Peter Breggin, or Ronald Leifer. I was looking for a psychiatrist willing to certify to people’s compe­tence when executing psychiatric advance directives. He told me the only of those three names he’d heard of before was Thomas Szasz.

In November or December 2013 I asked a board-certified psychiatrist at Manhattan Psychiatric Center if she had read any critiques of psychiatric drugs by psychiatrists Peter Breggin or Joanna Moncrieff. She said she had not. She also could not name any critiques of psychiatric drugs she had read although she said she did know psychiatric drugs have “side effects.”

On December 5, 2013 I asked another psychiatrist who I’d seen and heard testifying at an involuntary civil commitment hearing in the courtroom at Manhattan Psychiatric Center who later told me she’d completed residency training in psychiatry five (5) years before if she’d ever heard of Thomas Szasz or Peter Breggin. She said she had not heard of either.

The truth about psychiatry cannot prevail if people working in mental health such as psychiatrists, lawyers, judges, and the people who make our laws such as state legislators, governors, and members of Congress are unaware of it.

If truth were more powerful than widespread myths promoted by huge financial interests such as pharmaceutical companies that with costly advertising make huge profits by convincing professionals, lawmakers, and the public that mental illness is biological, to increase psychiatric drug sales, both the concept of mental illness and psychiatry (the pseudo-medical specialty based on the myth of mental illness) would have vanished decades ago. The ignorance of people re­spon­sible for the unscientific, harmful, and morally objectionable activities about which the above mentioned authors have written illustrates the powerlessness of truth to prevail over highly promoted, well-established myths, selfish professional interests of psychiatrists and those who work with them, and the problems created by the inadequacy of rule of law I describe in my essay Why the Myth of Mental Illness Lives On. Someone, perhaps expanding on Mark Twain’s remark, once said the truth is powerful and will prevail, but only if efforts are made to bring it to light. Obviously, hundreds of books and articles and videos (many of which are available on YouTube.com), and television and radio appearances by psychiatrists such as Thomas Szasz, Peter Breggin, Ron Leifer, Joanna Moncrieff, Grace Jackson, Colin Ross, Lee Coleman, neurol­ogists such as Fred Baughman and John Friedberg, and psychologists such as John Breeding, Theodore Sarbin, and Jeffrey Schaler, are inadequate to overcome the propa­ganda causing most of us to accept the myth of mental illness as fact. Laws in every state of the U.S.A. and most if not all other countries provide for involuntary “treatment” with “hospital­ization”, drugs, and electroshock of persons who supposedly have mental illness. The situation is analogous to the late 1600s when everybody believed in witches and there were witch trials.

Since the commendable efforts of the above cited authors and others have proved to be inadequate to overcome well-established, widespread psychiatric myths, more is needed to reveal the truth to the people who make and administer our laws: legislators, governors, lawyers involved in civil commit­ment, judges, and potential jurors, meaning the whole population. Efforts to repeal involuntary treatment laws are commendable and must continue. Even if the myths on which psychiatry is based are so widespread and effectively promoted that it is impossible persuade legislators, governors, and judges to create a society in which mythological illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar and personality dis­order and other supposed mental illnesses are no longer used to justify depriving law-abiding people of liberty, and to rationalize sub­jecting them to assault called involuntary psychiatric treat­ment, it is important for us to make the effort. In the words of Elie Wiesel, once a prisoner in Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz, Buna, and Buch­en­wald concentration camps, and later a university professor, political activist and novelist, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” We must at least try if we want to live in a truly free society and to pass a tradition of liberty rather than oppression and thought-control to future generations, and to protect people from brain-damaging quackery such as voluntarily or forcibly administered psychiatric drugs, electroshock, and psychosurgery.

Here are a few ideas: Buy a copy, or a few copies, of Dr. Breggin’s Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second (2008) Edition, or Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America or Anatomy of an Epidemic and give them to judges who hear civil commitments. I’ve done that. Giving a copy of Dr. Breggin’s book, or this book, The Case Against Psychiatry, to lawmakers, judges, and journalists may help overcome well established psychiatric myths. Giving them to mental health public defenders or lawyers appointed to represent “patients” may motivate them to provide real advocacy for their clients, although as observers have noted (see “Assistance’ of Counsel?” in Unjustified Psychiatric Commitment in the U.S.A.), in many cases the judges before whom they appear will not tolerate them doing this. Dr. Breggin’s Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition is the most comprehensive writing I’ve seen showing how harmful are psychiatry’s supposed medi­cations and electroconvulsive “therapy”. It is for sale in hardcover on Dr. Breggin’s web site, breggin.com or at amazon.com. Dr. Breggin’s book, or excerpts from this book, The Case Against Psychiatry, which I’ve made available free on the Internet, can be given to judges, lawyers, and members of your state’s state senate and house of representatives or assembly. These books can also be given to members of Congress who might be persuaded to end federal government support for psychiatry in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration, and to abolish the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and to repeal the federal mental health parity laws forcing health insurance companies to pay for psychiatric treatment as if it were bona-fide health care.

Writing letters can be part of this effort. When the U.S. Congress formed a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, composed of both U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives, called the Super­committee, to find ways to reduce the U.S. Government budget deficit, I wrote letters to all members of the Committee suggesting an end to federal government support for psychiatry, which I said would both reduce the budget deficit and improve the nation’s health. With each letter I enclosed a compact disc of short YouTube.com videos, including the speech by Dr. Jeffrey A. Schaler in 2006, exposing psychiatry as quackery and as contrary to America’s promise of liberty. Later, after doing research showing the Super­committee could have met its deficit-reduction goal with the single measure of ending U.S. federal govern­ment support for psychiatry, I wrote a letter to U.S. Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, making this suggestion.

It is especially important to educate members of your state’s legislature. The scope of practice of licensed professionals is determined not by federal law, not by the U.S. Congress nor the Food and Drug Administration, but by state law created by state legislatures. It is state legislators who decide whether physicians may prescribe narcotics, or lethal drugs to assist a person who wishes to commit suicide, whether doctors of osteopathy (physi­cians with a D.O. rather than M.D. degree) will have the same scope of practice as doctors of medicine (M.D.; in all 50 states of the U.S.A. and many other nations, they do), whether psychologists can prescribe psychoactive drugs, whether optometrists (doctors of optometry-O.D.) can prescribe medicine for eyes, whether pharma­cists can give injections (as they do in North Carolina), the scope of practice of podiatrists (doctors of podiatric medicine, D.P.M.), whether doctors of chiropractic (D.C.) or naturopathy (N.D. or N.M.D.) or naprapathy (D.N.) or midwives will be licensed and what their scope of practice will be, whether emer­gency medical technicians (E.M.T.), nurse practitioners (N.P.) or physician assistants (P.A.) can prescribe or administer medicines or do surgery and if so what classes of medicine they can prescribe or administer and what kinds of surgery they can do. State legis­lators have it within their power to protect us from health care quackery such as biological psy­chiatry even if the FDA will not. State law can ban electro­convulsive brain damaging (electroconvulsive “therapy” or ECT) or define ECT or prescription of psychoactive drugs such as neuroleptics, SSRI antidepressants, and benzodiazepines, or psychosurgery, as outside the scope of practice of all phy­sicians, including M.D.‘s, within a particular state. State legislators have it within their power to repeal involuntary “medication” and electroshock laws and define any involuntary treatment with drugs, electroshock, or psychosurgery as assault or as another kind of act prohibited by the state’s penal code. We, the public, cannot compete with drug companies who induce cooper­ation of the FDA by hiring FDA officials at enormous salaries, thereby encouraging those who remain at the FDA to do the same. We may not be able to equal the influence of big business such as drug companies that make huge campaign contributions to politicians. We can and should, however, try to influence our elected representatives, especially state repre­sentatives and state senators representing the district where we live.

Antipsychiatry activists don’t have the advertising budgets of drug companies that make billions of dollars from selling psychiatric drugs (that are typically paid for by insurance companies and government programs) and therefore can and do buy television advertising and full-page advertisements in magazines. However, custom-made bumper stickers, buttons, and T-shirts can be bought inexpensively from local vendors. Copies of pamphlets and articles can be made at Office Max, Staples, and FedExOffice or Kinko’s Copy shops and similar businesses and given to persons considering psychiatric care for themselves or persons in their families, and to governors, legislators, and judges.

Goals

The most important goals of the antipsychiatry movement are abolishing involuntary psychiatric treatment, establishing rule of law, and guaranteeing liberty to all law-abiding persons. Many people are gullible enough to be harmed by psychiatric treatment they accept voluntarily, and licensure laws exist to protect the public from health care quackery. Another goal of the antipsychiatry movement must therefore be prohibiting unscientific and harmful psychiatric treatment by licensed health care practitioners. This means enacting laws defining the scope of practice of all health care practitioners as excluding all of psychiatry’s biological therapies—"medications", electroconvulsive brain damaging, and psychosurgery—with the exception of persons who are withdrawing from or who are permanently addicted to psychiatric drugs and cannot withdraw from them without terrible consequences. Success will be complete when psy­chi­a­try no longer exists as a supposed medical specialty, medical schools have abolished their departments of psychiatry, specialty or board-certification in psychiatry no longer exists, courts no longer accept psychiatric testimony as evidence, and people working as counsellors or ad­visors about dealing with life’s problems are no longer called “therapists”. Until rule of law is established and involuntary psychiatric “treatment” of law-abiding people is abolished, interim goals should be creating a right to refuse “medication” prior to a trial on the merits of a pro­posed civil commitment, trial by jury in civil commitment where it does not already exist, enact­ment of laws requiring government to abide by psychiatric advance directives (see next section), and suspending court-orders imposing involuntary “medication” or electro­shock during appeal of those orders.

However, because of widespread public ignorance, and perpetuation of the myths that seem to justify psychiatric oppression by the news media, and by fiction script writers for television and motion picture dramas, and selfish professional and financial interests of psychiatrists and others, such as manufacturers of psychiatric drugs that profit from duping people into believing psychiatric drugs are medications, and family members who want a rationale for suppressing and oppressing others in their families, and most of all because of the ignorance and irresponsibility of legislators and judges who are personally responsible for authorizing psychiatric assault, “the Berlin Wall of psychiatry is probably not going to collapse in our lifetimes."1 The only solution in our lifetimes—if there is a solution—is likely to be an individual solution. If and for so long as democracies (not to mention autocratic dictator­ships) refuse to guarantee liberty to all law-abiding persons, and fail to protect citizens from health care quackery such as biological psychiatry, the strategies to protect our­selves and those we care about from arbitrary imprison­ment called "hospitalization” and torture and brain damage caused by modern psychiatric “treat­ment”, must be primarily about protecting ourselves and those we know and care about personally.

copyright Wayne Ramsay, 2018; permission to reproduce was granted
provided that the reproduction is accurate and proper credit was given