Customer Reviews

Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications

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For years, I have questioned how any mental health clinician could believe that psychotropic were safe or effective, with such a mountain of evidence showing that they are neither. In my practice, I have sat with many clients who were on psychiatric drugs; while none of them had really gotten better from them, so many of them seemed oblivious to this.

This book satisfies my question. They were "spellbound" by the drugs themselves: by the pharmacological properties of the drugs themselves and by the professionals who convinced them that the drugs were going to help.

It is easy to prove to an objective person that psychiatric drugs are unsafe and useless; the data are compelling, even overwhelming. But I now understand that the person taking these drugs is and cannot be objective about the drugs. This is quite helpful to me clinically.

I recommend ALL of Dr. Breggin's books; this is one of his most rigorously researched, persuasive, and conclusive yet.

Dr Peter Breggin has outdone himself. Medication Madness is a masterpiece.

There is probably no other psychiatrist in this country more knowledgeable about the lengths the drug companies will go to in order to profit off the sale of ineffective and harmful psychiatric drugs through the massive misdiagnosing of people as mentally ill.

Likewise, there is probably no other psychiatrist more knowledgeable about how far the same companies will go to cover up their wrongdoings when people are injured by their products.

Consequently, in Medication Madness Dr Beggin has provided the whole story of how the entire nation has been conned for the past 20 years and the resulting toll on human lives and society as a whole.

He leaves no stone unturned. Starting with the corruption involved in the clinical trials used to get the new generation of psychiatric drugs FDA approved to the recruitment of the so-called "opinion leaders" to publish bogus studies to sway the minds of prescribing physicians in every field of medicine to the victims left in the aftermath.

Some of the most damning chapters in the book give the details of how the legal system allowed the drug makers to keep the evidence of harm hidden for nearly two decades while they quietly settled cases out of court and made obscene profits off products they knew were causing great injury to millions of people.

This book should be required reading for not only consumers but for every doctor who is even thinking about prescribing psychiatric drugs.

Evelyn Pringle
Investigative Journalist
OpEd News columnist

Dr. Peter Breggin's ground-breaking and truth-telling new book, Medication Madness, is profoundly impacting in its focus on the dangerous side effects that can occur with psychotropic drugs. The one thing that the perpetrators of the many random appearing crimes such as the massacre at Columbine have in common is that they were taking SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) antidepressants. Dr. Breggin describes the spell-binding effects these, as well as other psychotropics, have on patients' minds. He documents many crimes where he has been an expert witness and the individual has been under the effects of involuntary intoxication.

This book is a necessity for every family's book shelf and should be a mainstay for every person who practices in any of the Mental Health Professions. It is a book that will also be enlightening for those who practice Mental Health Law. It addresses the myths regarding treatment with psychiatric medications. The evidence is clearly documented, indicating that taking such medications can be very harmful to patients and can devastate the lives of family members and friends who love and care for them.

Peter Breggin, M.D. is a Harvard-educated, main-stream psychiatrist and expert witness, who dares to proclaim that "the emperor has no clothes." He explodes the claim that those who are diagnosed with a mental illness must take medication to correct a chemical imbalance. Rather, taking such medications indeed induces a chemical imbalance in one's brain.

This book is written with clarity and empathy. It reads easily for both laymen and professionals.It truly may very well be the most important book written in this century about mood altering medications and the dire effects on the mental and physical health of those who take them. It is a must read for anyone who desires to be fully informed as to the consequences for those who take these drugs. Every professional and every consumer, potential consumer and psychiatric survivor has an invaluable resource in this book that "tells it all." I cannot overemphasize the importance of reading this important new work by the Conscience of Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin.

Delores Jankovich, MA, LMSW
Overland Park, Kansas

I had the distinct honor to have had a chance to review the manuscript for Medication Madness in early 2007 and have been impatiently waiting for its publication because of its exteme importance to the country. Dr. Breggin has been so right for so long about so many things regarding the harms caused by psychiatric drugs and Medication Madness continues this excellence. Through his meticulous research and experience, especially as an expert in legal cases, Dr. Breggin has had the perfect vantage points to come to understand how psychiatric drugs cause people to experience what he calls "spellbinding." In the extreme cases, people commit terrible acts of self-harm or violence, including suicide or homicide. This is a riveting, as well as important book.

If one thinks about it, prior to the introduction of the first "SSRI" antidepressants we virtually never had students shooting up schools. Now it occurs all too often and when the truth has come out these anti-depressants are almost always implicated. In Medication Madness, Dr. Breggin presents an unassailable case that these drugs cause such actions.

Dr. Breggin uses the term Medication Madness to refer to the effects of psychiatric drugs on those taking them. I would suggest it is also just as applicable to our society, which is suffering from Medication Madness by having such a large percentage of people taking these very powerful drugs. It is my hope that this book becomes a blockbuster and helps our society come to its senses in the use of these drugs.

In the interest of full-disclosure, Dr. Breggin and I have been allies for years against the oppressive forces of involuntary psychiatry and the medicalization of human suffering and he has some extremely kind words to say about me in the book.

Medication Madness offers a necessary counter balance to the mass marketing of psychiatric drugs and the consequent surge in their use. Patients are often told not to read adverse-reaction lists to avoid imagining they're having one. Yet driving into unfamiliar territory without consulting the map is simply dumb. Dr Breggin has devoted his life to reminding the public that there is a map, and the roads it charts are not as rosy as drug advertisements suggest.

Yet the real meaning of adverse effects is lost when reduced to statistical properties of faceless cohorts. What does a published 9% rate of psychosis in a cohort of kids on Ritalin really mean? Well, for any one of those kids, or the thousands of adults on psychiatric drugs, the real-life meaning can be suddenly shattered lives. Medication Madness presents real-life cases that put faces on those statistics. These cases bring the reader into lives forever changed and sometimes lost by adverse reactions. The cases Breggin presents are the most remarkable examples of drug-induced manias and psychoses encountered over his many decades as a psychiatrist and expert witness.

In Medication Madness, Breggin also advances his spellbinding thesis. Spellbinding occurs when a drug user lacks awareness of aberrant behaviors manifesting under the influence. Behaviors a user normally avoids or finds horrific suddenly seem perfectly rational to the user. The cases in this book bear witness to this effect wherein users shift from model lives to out-of-control psychoses without ever even noticing.

Breggin further proposes that the spellbinding of psychiatry's 'feel good' drugs isn't just an adverse effect, it's the 'therapeutic effect'. When psychiatric drugs 'work' they do so by blocking awareness of problems in life, the same problems that genuine psychiatry's role is to help people face, understand, and address. So the shocking cases of extreme drug-induced behavior in Medication Madness are simply further steps on a continuum of drug-induced spellbinding along which lies a 'therapeutic target zone' of moderate self-blinding. A bold and paradigm-shaping thesis indeed!

Of course I have to admit my a-priori bias, having been a research assistant to Dr Breggin for many years. And I have been so engaged because I believe in the intellectual and ethical integrity of his views and life's work.

"Medication Madness" is a must read book not only for those with loved ones taking psychiatric drugs or personally using them, but for all who want to discover the awful truth about these brain chemistry altering, most destructive substances. After reading this book, you will do everything you can to avoid ever having to take them. The book is full of true and extremely sad case hiarories of the destruction these drugs do to indiviuals and families.

Did you know the Eric Harris, who did the shootings at Colubine was on Luvox, which is
a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor? From what I have read, all of the school shootings, were committed by people on psychiatric medications. Dr. Bergen, a psychiatrist with a private practice, who also works as a medical examiner has testified in numerous court cases involving medication madness, including the one for Eric Harris.

Some of the side affects for Antidepressant medications, such as Luvox include:
1. Thoughts about suicide or dying
2. Attempts to commit suicide
3. New or worse depression
4. New or worse anxiety
5. Feeling very agitated or restless
6. Panic attacks
7. Acting aggressive, being angry or violent
8. Acting on dangerous impulses
9. An extreme increase in anxiety and talking

This is a list of the side affects for one type of psychiatric medication. You have varying toxic affects from different classes of psychiatric drugs. These classes of drugs include stimulants, tranquilizers, sleeping pills and antipsychotic drugs (neuroleptics). Also, different people react to psychiatric medications differently. While some people kill themselves or other people, some people go through life in a fog; constantly tired, with failing memory, unable to make important decisions and live a productive, fulfillilng life. They may loose interest in devoloping and maintaining relationships. And as Dr. Breggin stresses, these drugs are not at all effective in treating the conditions they are presribed for.

The reason these drugs are used instead of counseling or other more effective treatment methods is they make big bucks for the drug companies. The drug manufacturers have their people working for the FDA and also do most of the testing for the effectiveness and side effects for new drugs. Any negative trial results are doctored to make the drugs appear effective and safe when this is rarely if ever the case. So the brunt of the blame for prescribing these toxic substances goes to the drug companies and not the doctors. My advice would be, if at all possible, stay away from both the drugs and the doctors. If you are already on psychiatric medications and dcide to quit them, Dr. Bergan says you need to seek professional help in doing so.

This is an important and highly readable account, by one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of psychiatric drugs, regarding the damage these drugs are capable of doing to the patients who take them. To tell his story, Breggin uses the personal case histories of patients who arrived at his doorstep only after being manhandled and abused by a drug-driven profession that has learned to see every mental and emotional struggle as treatable by prescription drug psych-meds alone. Some of these stories will horrify and sicken the reader, but no reader will ever forget them. The Chapter entitled "Drug-Induced `Happy Faces' is alone worth the purchase price.

I picked this book up only because the title caught my eye on the bookshelf at the store. But I was hooked from that point on. I've known several people who have used psychiatric medications. Some had not had good results at all. One man commited suicide while on an anti depressant. Dr. Breggin believes in good psychology to help people, not in the theory that popping pills is the answer. I can't say I am totally against them. In a few cases maybe they are necessary but I really think that pills are far too easily prescribed. In my own experience I went to a doctor with fatigue and insomnia. The first suggestion given to me was sleeping pills and anti depressants. I was floored! Dr. Breggin writes about many people he has treated (most to get off the drugs that were not helping them). There are people being destroyed with these drugs, not helped. There are some very scary example of people's lives that have been ruined because pills have been the "easy way out". Doctors are even misinformed about what they prescribe and sometimes raise doses because people start feeling worse and their situation gets worse as they are prescribed even higher doses of meds. It's a great book. I would highly recommend it to anyone, especially if you're thinking about these meds and don't really know anything about them. Very interesting even if you don't know anyone involved with meds.

Medication Madness as people before me have stated, is long overdue. Unfortunately its the FDA and other government agencies that have gone "private", and not protecting the needs of its own citizens. It is sad that You have this author battling drug companies in court. It should be the FDA that handles these matters, sadly, they do nothing when they are seduced by big pharma money. If people wonder why our economy is going out the window, this book helps explain one aspect of the curruption that is desatroying our nation. Nothing is inevitable, Breggin has been talking bout the dangers against psychiatric meds before popular prozac came out, and finally FDA in 20004 issued mandatory black box warnings on all newer antidepressants.

[...]. It is just plain immoral to think that this well researched book is a load of [...]. Because surely the judges thought differently case after case, giving each plaintiff modified sentences.

If you dont know anyone who is on pshychiatric meds, chances are you will run into one on the freeway, or at a bar. Our society is becoming medically numb. This debacle deserves 5 star attention

I was assigned to choose between two books to read for one of my nursing courses. One book was about health and wellness and the other was Medication Madness. I didn't have a clue about what this book was about or what kind of topics this book would touch on. I was pleasently suprised by this book. I really liked the fact that it was written by a clinical psychiatrist that protects the public from unwarrented medications. I completely agree with his views about the over medication of patients and the lack of appropriate assessment and reassessment of patients by thier healthcare professionals. I was very interested by the case studies involving medicating children and the lack of use of good clinical judgement with such a vulnerable population. This is a great book!