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Peter Roger Breggin
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Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants for Children Hardcover – January 1, 1998

by Peter R. Breggin (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 22 ratings
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Explains what stimulant drugs like Ritalin, Adderall and Dexedrine do to a child's brain, what is really known about long-term effects, and possible alternatives to these drugs
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    401 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Common Courage Pr
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1998
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1567511295
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1567511291
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"As medical director of D.C. General Hospital, I intend to make this book required reading for all child care providers on my staff." -- Ronald David, M.D., Pediatrician and Medical Director, D.C. Health and Hospitals Public Benefits Corporation

"Every child needs a hero--a champion who will speak truth to power. That hero is Peter Breggin. When he writes on behalf of children and caring parents, the world should stand up and take notice. This book is packed with information needed by anyone who is considering prescribing psychiatric drugs to children." -- Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D, former projects director of the Freud Archives and author of Dogs Never Lie about Love and When Elephants Weep

"I am a mother first and a doctor second... The principles in this book help us as parents to empower our children to be successful in life." -- Sharon A. Collins, MD, pediatrician

About the Author

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Bethesda, Maryland, where he also directs the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology. He teaches on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Counseling. His background includes Harvard College, the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, a Teaching Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, and two years as a full-time consultant with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He has published more than a dozen books, including Talking Back to Prozac, Toxic Psychiatry, and The War Against Children of Color.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Common Courage Pr (January 1, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 401 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1567511295
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1567511291
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.65 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 22 ratings

About the author

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Peter Roger Breggin

Peter Roger Breggin

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Peter R. Breggin MD is known as “The Conscience of Psychiatry” for his many decades of successful reform work in the mental health field, but has now turned his attention to the misuse of science surrounding COVID-19 and its origins in what he and his coauthor Ginger Breggin are calling "global predators." He is currently the medical and psychiatric expert for an injunction against the governor of Ohio for oppressing the citizens with unending emergency decrees related to COVID-19. Dr. Breggin and his wife Ginger R. Breggin have written COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We are the Prey.

Dr. Breggin is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time Consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and part-time for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He has been approved as a medical expert in over 100 legal cases in state and federal courts on issues relating to adverse drug effects, drug approval, the pharmaceutical industry, and the FDA. He is the author of two dozen medical, scientific, and best-selling popular books, as well as dozens of scientific articles.

Peter R. Breggin, MD, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at NIMH. He is in private practice in Ithaca, New York, and is the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty books. Some of his many books include Toxic Psychiatry, Talking Back to Ritalin, The Antidepressant Fact Book, and The Heart of Being Helpful: Empathy and the Creation of a Healing Presence, and, with co-author Ginger Breggin, Talking Back to Prozac. His most recent publications include Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide, and Crime (2008) and Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex, Second Edition (SPC, 2008). His two newest psychiatric books are Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families (SPC, 2013) and Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions (Prometheus, 2014). Dr. Breggin is the founder and director of The Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living (www.EmpathicTherapy.org) His professional website is www.breggin.com.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
22 global ratings
Listen to this Mr. Dr. Breggin.
3 Stars
Listen to this Mr. Dr. Breggin.
Great book. Dr. Breggin is absolutely right about ritalin and methylphenidate. Very good book. Very informative and some things I didn't know about before I read this from book from beginning to end. The only reason why I'm giving 3 stars instead of 5 is the print and the font of the book. The ink on all the pages seems like it's coming off. I had trouble making out some of the words because the print/ink is poor quality. I wish this book could be in better quality print. The picture I have here is just a random sample of the poor quality ink. You can still definitely read it and make it out, but It's not the best quality.
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Top reviews from the United States

Aunt Helen
5.0 out of 5 stars Drug dangers
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2013
Verified Purchase
This man is an expert on the affects of this drug on the brains of children, at a time when the drig companies are moving to sell more drugs at any cost to the humans receiving them. Most of the test results are not made public, bad results are hidden, and law suits for harm done are settled out of court and paid off. There is a movement afoot to test very small children to see if there is an excuse to give them ritalin or adderal.
2 people found this helpful
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Pamela L Chubbuck
5.0 out of 5 stars Peter Breggin, MD is Awesome!
Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2019
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Must read for parents, therapists, doctors, teachers, !
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Jed Shlackman
4.0 out of 5 stars Solid Critique of ADHD Labels And Drug Treatments
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2003
Dr. Breggin has become a leading critic of the standard psychiatric approach to labeling and treating children with challenging behavioral symptoms. This book is a thorough examination of the scientific debate as well as political, economic, and psychosocial factors involved in the issue. Breggin makes many excellent points in this book about the interactions between body, mind, and environment that are largely ignored by most medical and mental health professionals. Drugs are routinely used as a form of chemical restraint, even though the withdrawal phase of the drugs actually triggers the "imbalances" and likelihood of misbehaviors that they are supposed to treat. Those who believe the medications are a wonderful way of controlling behavior believe this out of ignorance of alternative approaches to really helping the child become physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy. It is easy to just continually drug someone into submission, but in other contexts this is usually considered an abuse of human rights. The lack of responsibility and commitment by adults toward finding ways of helping children develop positive motivation and social skills is certainly one factor in the epidemic of psychiatric labeling and psychotropic drug prescriptions. The incompetence of physicians to identify real physical issues that impact children's ability to concentrate, such as poor nutrition, neurological impairment, allergies, exposure to drugs and toxins, and hormonal disturbances, is another factor. The propaganda and social programming that falsely claim mental illness is biologically determined is another factor. Having worked in the mental health field in Florida as a licensed counselor for several years, I have observed much of what Breggin talks about. Children who are labeled "ADD" in one school or home environment suddenly appear normal when their family environment becomes less stressful or when they are placed with a more compassionate teacher or in a less stressful educational setting, such as a Montessori school. When children form more positive relationships they are often suddenly able to concentrate adequately and remain more calm when necessary. Meanwhile, I have seen many children who became depressed or bipolar as an apparent effect of their medications, and have seen no lasting progress associated with drug treatments. That adults treat highly active and inattentive children poorly and treat subdued children better is true, but that is a problem of the adults that is being displaced onto the children who are given drugs that are addictive and perpetuate the child's lack of self-motivated control. There are multiple parenting and educational programs that have successfully reversed "ADD/ADHD" behavior patterns, even in supposedly severe cases, by merely helping adults minimize their emotional reactions to the targeted negative behaviors and increasing positive social attention given to the children. The physical correlates of ADD/ADHD symptom patterns are typically modulated by the psychological factors present in the individual, and cannot usually be considered to be the root causal source of the symptoms. Various alternative medicine approaches, from naturopathy, oriental medicine, energy medicine, mind-body stress management, nutritional therapy, and more have shown usefulness in reversing the ADD/ADHD symptoms, as these target various levels of the pattern, ranging from emotions, stress, and subtle energy disturbances to nutritional imbalances and metabolic disturbances, with the physical disturbances usually being triggered or facilitated in some way by non-physical (psychological & psychosocial) issues. Mental health clinics and physicians have become increasingly controlled and programmed by the pharmaceutical industry. They are showered with gifts, including boxloads of office supplies (featuring drug ads) and brochures with misleading information about "disorders" and pharmaceutical company ads for patients as well as trips and meals, typically delivered by attractive young women and less often by young men pharmaceutical reps [all of whom become speechless or irritated when you try to discuss the actual safety and efficacy of the drugs with them beyond letting them repeat their script]. I have seen all this myself, and see the pharmaceutical paraphernalia all over the office of the agency I've worked at, as well as seeing psychiatrists routinely prescribe drugs with no medical exam or any other basis than the intent to briefly manipulate mood and behavior - things anyone could do using street drugs, which happen to manipulate neurotransmitter systems the same way that prescribed drugs do. I commend Dr. Breggin for his efforts to wake people from the massive deceptions and denials governing mental health care and the topic of ADD/ADHD.
18 people found this helpful
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Hanna T
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2017
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Dr. Breggin is truly a hero. Yet another lifesaving book.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2016
Verified Purchase
A great and scientifically documented boom.
2 people found this helpful
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Deanna Spingola
5.0 out of 5 stars Breggin is wonderful as are all of his books
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2014
Verified Purchase
Dr. Breggin is wonderful as are all of his books.
2 people found this helpful
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Peter C. Dwyer
5.0 out of 5 stars Let psychiatry rebut this point for point
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2004
I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact.
It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery.
Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published.
The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable.
Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs.
I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health.
These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs).
But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on psychiatric drugs - and I've yet to find pro-drug literature that addresses 98% of these arguments, not in general, and not point by point.
This is a matter of informed consent. See if Peter Breggin's words in Toxic Psychiatry are not at least very plausible: "In the world of modern psychiatry claims can become truth, hopes can become achievements and propaganda is taken as science".
Yes, Breggin is angry. He pulls no punches and gives no quarter. But he deserves serious consideration - he has been qualified as an expert witness in numerous product liability cases against drug companies around the country. Try to find, anywhere, point by point refutations of the specific claims he makes in this book. Except for a few points, biopsychiatry's silence on Breggin's claims is deafening. Ask an "authority" on ADHD whether, as Breggin claims, the pannel of experts at the NIH Consensus Conference on ADHD DID or DID NOT conclude in their final report, "..there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction," and ask the "authority" who it was that later took it upon himself to edit that statement to muddle the wording, but without changing its bottom line. And ask if it is true that the conference organizer, Peter Jensen, later admitted in a 2000 article that the experts at this conference found NO proof that "ADHD reflects a disordered state."(See Breggin, page 16).
If, after looking into the issue, you decide to give your child Ritalin, so be it. But each parent, child and professional deserves to know the whole story - something you will not get reading standard psychiatric literature.
81 people found this helpful
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