Customer Reviews

Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock, and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex

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Counterintuitive in an age when the "chemical imbalance" mythology of emotional problems is commonly accepted as fact, this updated work by Breggin demonstrates that psychiatrists have sold the public a bill of goods. People taking or sanctioning the taking of psychiatric drugs do not realize that much of the perceived good from these agents derives from the emotional blunting that they cause in the brain. Patient stop complaining, families don't have to listen to it, and doctors feel empowered. Little do they know that the drugs often cause the very problems they are supposed to treat.

As a practicing psychologist, I believe people attribute positive outcomes to various drugs for reasons other than dulled emotions. Placebo (what Breggin calls enhanced placebo) reactions, victimization, and withdrawl/rebound problems also can lead patients to believe that the drugs are helping. As a recent example of the latter, the Northern Illinois shooter was said to be coming off his medication when he killed several students. This doesn't mean he needed his medication any more than a nicotine addict in withdrawl needs his stimulant.

The best aspect of the new material in this book is material on how to safely withdraw from drugs. Patients will be hard-pressed to find a doctor to help them do this.

Even if this book upsets your preconceived notions about organized psychiatry, knowing the truth about drug safety and efficacy will "set you free." That the research evidence against drugs has not been completely suppressed by the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry is itself amazing.

First, let me state that I think that there is much in the work of Dr. Breggin that is important to read and think about. I would highly recommend anyone become familiar with his work, because his opinions are in the minority in the medical profession and these opinions need to be heard. Many naysayers of Dr. Breggin point out all sorts of problems with his accusations and some of this is warranted, but what is also warranted is Dr. Breggin's ability to point out problems with so-called legitimate research. Let's face it, there IS a crisis in psychiatry. Many people suffer needlessly "trying out" medications that will never cure them, may make them worse, and may not even have an effect. Most, if not all, psychiatric textbooks have this glaring sentence over and over; "we don't really know how this chemical functions in the brain". This fact alone is upsetting when thinking about how millions of children with developing brains are being medicated by compounds that "we don't really know how they work". This way of doing medicine is unacceptable and must be changed. Whether driven by drug company profit motives, or the researcher's grant needs, true answers and cures need to be found for mental illness in order for psychiatry to evolve into a branch of medicine that will finally "first do no harm."

The alarmist nature of Dr. Breggin's work points to someone who is motivated by the nearly insurmountable task of being one of the few to try to take up this mission. Armed with lots of information, this book tries to paint a picture that is very bleak and I do think that there is much truth to this outlook. Nevertheless, the solutions offered here are troublesome at best even if he were correct. His answers to the problem of treatment of mental illness are not that black and white. The whole argument over biological psychiatry needs to come to an end by coming up with better ways to do research and better ways to vet research so that profit and other motives can be discounted and true cause and effect can be seen. This task can only begin with an understanding of the problems of the research and there I think this book provides the reader with an excellent overview, and hopefully a call to action. Psychiatry needs to change. Let us hope more people like Dr. Breggin will rise to the task to try to change it.

This book is comprehensive, referenced, it is a solid indictment of modern psychiatry.

The basic premise of the book is that current psychiatric treatments (ie: drugs and ECT) are:
-Not evidence based (ie: they don't work). Ex: Antidepressants have no efficacy over placebo in double blind trials.
-Psychiatric drugs are dangerous. Breggin provides AMPLE evidence for this.
-Psychiatric works by lobotomizing patients. The evidence that antipsychotics work in this manner is very convincing.

The first chapter where Breggin explains concepts like patient dependency and "spell-binding" are really enlightening.

The chapter on how to withdraw from psychiatric drugs (ie: how to taper there use) is very enlightening.

I would love to hear Peter Breggin's thoughts on:

-The notion of spell-binding, isn't it somewhat circular reasoning? I definitely see the usefulness, though.
-SSRIs for anxiety disorders
-Anticonvulsivants for bipolar disorder (he mentions Depakote only briefly)

Paul 3rd year medical student
paultheo2004@yahoo.ca

After years of dealing with and caring for a spouse who had fallen victim of prescription writing psychiatrists, I was immediately drawn to this publication when I found it referenced. Dr. Breggin confirmed what I had been suspecting for months, if not years; my spouse was no better off for all the drugs prescribed...and she had become a non-functioning person as a result of taking those drugs. The author details the terrible side effects of commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs, and points out how the prescribers, psychiatric MD's, routinely ignore and fail to warn the patient and the patient's family of the downsides and long-term ineffectiveness of those drugs. Dr. Breggin gives specific examples and references to commonly prescribed psychiatric medications, elaborates on details of their testing and approval processes, and offers proof that the drugs are often more harmful than effective and that they tend to create the very symptoms that the patient is trying to eleviate. He also points out that the prescribers never accept responsibility for a patient not recovering, and consequently they just change medications or add additional drugs to the "cocktail" when symptoms persist. After digesting the information in the book, we have developed a plan for withdrawing my spouse from the drugs while maintaining a relationship with the psychiatrist currently

This is an amazingly researched book, extremely informative, and thorough. It details the history of each psychiatric drug and its acceptance and side effects as well as why doctors prescribe them. The author has access to all the hidden information, the failed trials that are swept under the rug, and all the less than pristine tactics employed by the drug companies in their effort to secure profitability. It is an eye opener as to the influence of drug companies on the treatment decisions of psychiatrists, and it describes how blind psychiatrists are to the harm they are causing to patients with the use of these toxic drugs. It will give you very uncomfortable information and make your blood boil with outrage. Dr Breggin shows amazing honesty and courage.
Where the book fails for me, it is in offering a solution, because its premise is that drugs are poisons and should be avoided and that every mental illness can be treated with therapy alone. I am quite sure the latter is not true, and drugs are sometimes necessary. What is quite true is the blinding of doctors to the effects of their drugs, and their inability to sort out symptoms from side effects once the patient has been medicated.

All in all, an amazing source of information on drugs and how psychiatrists think,a must read, but no clear solution for intractable problems.

Brain Disabling Treatment in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electro Convulsive Shock... second Edition
by Peter Breggin.

This is the best book ever written by Peter Breggin. If you cannot get all his books get this one!
It is produced on quality paper, everything you ever want to know is in this book!
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I have never found so much credible annotated data along with more than 40 years of caring for patient's without drugs. This gentleman and his wife are warriors that should be on NPR, YouTube and passed all over the internet in a chain letter. I buy his books and give them out like candy just to support what he has done. What I don't understand is why the Attorney Generals of all states are not slapping these CEOs in irons for homocide. They are our most dangerous 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'.