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| Comments on Dan Fisher's Article: We've Been Misled By the Drug Industry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ RE: "We've Been Misled by the Drug Industry" Dear Editor: I would like to thank the Washington Post for courageously publishing Daniel B. Fisher's op-ed "We've Been Misled by the Drug Industry" (August 18, 2001). America's mental health care system has been dominated for too long by big business and unproven theories about the biological nature of most mental illnesses. As Dr. Fisher rightly points out, those individuals with mental and emotional problems need love, care and attention--not medications of dubious value and forced hospitalization. This makes logical sense, since most "mental illnesses" do have environmental causes and are easily understood within the context of an individual's life. Biopsychiatry not only robs many suffering people of their humanity, but it also robs them of any opportunity to heal from their traumatic life experiences. Mainstream psychiatry desperately needs to be reminded of the Hippocratic Oath. Sincerely, Leah Harris
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28103-2001Aug18.html We've Been Misled by the Drug Industry By Daniel B. Fisher Sunday, August 19, 2001 I have recovered from schizophrenia. If that statement surprises you -- if you think schizophrenia is a lifelong brain disease that cannot be escaped -- you have been misled by a cultural misapprehension that needlessly imprisons million sunder the label of mental illness. In the last 20 years, the pharmaceutical industry has become the major force behind the belief that mental illness is a brain disorder and that its victims need to take medications for the rest of their lives. It's a clever sales strategy: If people believe mental illness is purely biological, they will only treat it with a pill. Drug companies have virtually bought the psychiatric profession. Their profits fund the research, the journals and the departments of psychiatry. Not surprisingly, many researchers have concluded that medication alone is best for the treatment for mental illness. Despite recent convincing research showing the usefulness of psychotherapy in treating schizophrenia, psychiatric trainees are still told "you can't talk to a disease." This is why psychiatrists today spend more time prescribing drugs than getting to know the people taking them. I, too, used to believe in the biological model of mental illness. Thirty-one years ago, asa Ph.D biochemist with the National Institute of Mental Health, I researched and wrote papers on neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. Then I was diagnosed with schizophrenia -- and my experience taught me that our feelings and dreams cannot be analyzed under a microscope. Despite what many people assume when they hear about my recovery, that original diagnosis was no mistake: It was confirmed by a board of six Navy psychiatrists after my four-month inpatient stay at Bethesda Naval Hospital. I was devastated by being branded a schizophrenic. My life seemed over. Six years later, however, I had defied everyone's expectations and recovered. The most important elements in my recovery were a therapist who believed in me, the support of my family, steadfast friends and meaningful work. And I had a new goal: I wanted to become a psychiatrist. My therapist validated that dream, saying, "I will go to your graduation." (When I received my degree from George Washington University Medical School in 1976, he was there.) Drugs were a tool I used during crises, but I have been completely off medication for 25 years. I am not an anomaly. Thousands of others have recovered, but are afraid to disclose their past due to the stigma of mental illness. The definitive Vermont Longitudinal Study, led by Courtenay Harding, followed 269 patients diagnosed in the late 1950s with severe schizophrenia. Three decades later, Harding found that two-thirds of them were living and functioning independently; and of those, half were completely recovered and medication-free. The Swiss psychiatrist Manfred Bleuler -- whose father, Eugen, coined the term schizophrenia in1908 -- obtained similar results. His father had mistakenly concluded that people did not recover from schizophrenia -- because he rarely saw his patients after discharge. Our own research at the National Empowerment Center (NEC), funded by the federal Center for Mental Health Services, shows that the most important factor in recovery from mental illness is people who believe in patients and give them hope: Medications are a less important factor. But that is not how psychiatrists are being taught; recently I was reminded of how tightlytraining is controlled. I contacted a colleague at a major West Coast medical school to see if he could get me an invitation to conduct one of their teaching rounds. He apologetically told me that he couldn't: Since he had published a critique of the biological model of mental illness, demonstrating that people could recover from schizophrenia without medication, he himself was no longer allowed to speak to the residents in training -- even though he was on the faculty. The pharmaceutical industry also controlsthe public's education. Who can avoid the TVimage of the phobic man who needs Paxil to socialize? Industry-funded research and experts have a huge impact on media coverage. Finally, the drug companies have taken advantage of well-intentioned advocacy groups who support the biological model of mental illness -- and they give those groups much-needed financial support. Schizophrenia is more often due to a loss of dreams than a loss of dopamine. At the NEC, we try to reach out across the chasm of chaos. I know there are many people who feel they have done all they can, have struggled against mental illness to no avail, and we understand their pain. Yet we believe that recovery is eventually possible for everyone -- although it can take a long time to undo the negative messages of past treatments. We can offer hope from first-hand experience. Addressing the needs of people with mental illness will require a large-scaleretraining of mental health workers, decision-makers, families and the public. There will need to be more research into the ways that people recover. There will need to be more jobs, housing, peer support and self-help, for these are the pathways to self-determination and independence. And there needs to be a cultural shift toward people rather than pills to alleviate this form of human suffering. Daniel Fisher is co-director of the National Empowerment Center, a nonprofit organization run by people who have recovered from mental illness that seeks to help others recover.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From: dweitz@interlog.com (Don Weitz) Subject: Letter re Fisher's op/ed piece August 22, 2001 Editor, Letters Editor: Dan Fisher's powerful and courageous critique of biopsychiatry strikes a deep responsive chord in me and, I'm sure, thousands of other psychiatric survivors ("We've Been Misled by the Drug Industry", Aug. 19). Many years ago, I was not only labelled and falsely diagnosed "schizophrenic", but also forcibly drugged (insulin subcoma shock), and locked up for 15 months. Why? Because I openly expressed justified resentment against my parents and their middle-class values. Forced drugging-and-incarceration (involuntary commitment) in a psychoprison like Mclean Hospital didn't cure me of anything--it just terrorized me into temporary submission and silence. I was never "schizophrenic" or "mentally ill" in the first place. Like Fisher, I recovered from psychiatry and its stigmatizing-libelous labels and disempowering "treatment", and have been active in the psychiatric survivor liberation movement for over 25 years. I respect Dr.Fisher as one of many critics and human rights activists struggling to expose psychiatry's biomedical model as social control and the psychopharmaceutical industry as not only misleading but health-threatening and unethical. Psychiatrists who forcibly drug, shock and incarcerate (involuntarily commit) people should be charged with medical malpractice, criminal assault and wrongful imprisonment. And corporate drug pushers who promote addictive antidepressants like Prozac and Ritalin and brain-damaging neuroleptics like Zyprexa (olanzapine) and Prolixin ('Modecate' in Canada) as "safe and effective medication" should be charged with fraud and misleading advertising. Yes, we need "people rather than pills" but people who really care and give a damn and respect our dignity and our human rights, including the right to refuse ANY treatment. Thanks to critiques like Fisher's and the international psychiatric survivor movement, I feel more encouraged to continue my struggle against psychiatric oppression and for human rights and survivor-run alternatives including safe houses in Canada. -Don Weitz Toronto ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Web site: http://www.welcomeworld.org Dear Editor, I have recovered from schizophrenia. But only after I had become a homicidal and suicidal paranoid schizophrenic. This is why I personally appreciate _The Post_ publishing the op-ed by psychiatrist Dan Fisher ("We've Been Misled by the Drug Industry," August 19, 2001). The silence is being broken and the cause behind the 'mentally ill" tragedy headlines will be printed: Psychiatry Exacerbates Naivete and Fear into Homicidal and Suicidal Terror and Despair. Collapsing from the grief of not being loved, I was committed to my first state mental institution when I was 20 years old. I was labeled a non-person and considered not worth having a brain. "Schizophrenic" was downgraded to "paranoid schizophrenic" after I was subjected to electric-shock near-death seizures and poisoned with brain-targeting drugs. If spoken to it was with contempt; if touched it was with cruelty. I was no longer just grief-stricken from being neglected and not being loved, I was violently mentally ill and periodically exploded in homicidal and suicidal, hopeless and helpless, terror and despair rages. Some people trapped in psychiatry's brain targeting, disabling treatments do kill others. More kill themselves. Most are killed by the drugs. Born a gentle pacifist, I was able to avoid injuring anyone else, yet four times my homicidal explosions were potentially life-threatening to others, one a child. Real doctors in emergency rooms, operating rooms, and intensive care units in real hospitals saved my life over ... over ... over.... After 31 years of psychiatric violence, physically, mentally, and emotionally devastated, I was incredibly still alive. A male nurse in a emergency room said, Go to Alcoholics Anonymous, they teach people how to get well there. They taught me self-directed, cognitive examination, knowledge, healing, and discipline. Within six months I had changed from the automatic-reaction, terror-controlled, psychological child into the free-will psychological adult choosing to love and serve God by loving and serving others as myself. I am author of, ESCAPE FROM PSYCHIATRY, The Autobiography of Clover. See reviews: www.amazon.com. I am founder and director of Welcome World, a Spiritual/Cognitive Healing Alternative to Psychiatry's Brain Disabling and Exacerbating of Symptoms. To contact: phone: (970) 563-4433 or write: P.O. Box 116, Seeking Healing for All, Clover Smith,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MARILYN WELTON August 23, 2001 In 1991, my son, Jeff, vandalized my home. He vandalized my home because of unresolved emotional trauma, including sexual molestation on at least two instances as a child and other loss events in his life. Because a small fire was involved, we were told that it had become a legal matter and it was out of our hands. He would have to be accountable through the legal system. The Fire Marshall at that time talked to me and said that he had had a similar experience with a family member who was mentally ill and said it would be better for Jeff to go to a hospital instead of being charged with arson and being sentenced to jail. We took his advice. The court sent Jeff to Eastern State Hospital, Vinita, Oklahoma. He was placed on a drug regimen of first-generation drugs, including Prolixin, and he ran away immediately. He said he could not tolerate the drugs. He has often me he should have just gone to jail over the situation. In retrospect, I wish he had, too. Putting my faith in the doctors, and wanting to learn as much as I could about mental illness, I entrenched myself in study and involvement with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (AMI). I served two 3-year terms as President of the McAlester AMI and two 3-year terms as a State board member of the Oklahoma AMI. I conducted local meetings and activities, attended State meetings and National AMI conferences. In about 1993 or 1994, during Mental Illness Awareness Week, a planned activity was to be available for telephone discussions with callers at the local KTMC Radio station. The medical director of the Carl Albert Community Mental Health Center in McAlester, Dr. Jane Robinette, and I made ourselves available to take calls. While waiting for calls, we discussed my son, Jeff. She made the remark to me that if she could start over with Jeff, she would do things differently. I went to see her at the CACMHC a week later to ask her what she meant. She and her husband had resigned their positions and had already moved without notice to her clients. I stood against my son and forced him to take the drugs over a period of years while he continuously told me that the drugs made him worse. I had requested several times that Jeff’s medication be changed and or that dosages reduced. I was not heard and was arrogantly told by one psychiatrist that no, his medication will not be changed and if he felt that Jeff needed to be on more of them, that he would increase his dosage. The same psychiatrist told me that the drugs were made from herbs. This continued for 7 years. During this period of time, Jeff became angry and acted out his anger by sending what was interpreted to be “threatening and intimidating” postcards to his ex-father-in-law, State Representative Mike Mass, Senator Gene Stipe, staff members at the CACMHC who had forced him to take the drugs, and President Clinton. In multiple efforts to escape taking the drugs, he took me to a jury court more than once in attempts not to be force-drugged. He would go to the street because there was no other place for him to go. In withdrawal, he was impossible to live with in my home and on one occasion in 1993, I, myself, made him leave my home and forced him to go to the street. Three of the times he was out there, on the street, alone, lonely, afraid, hungry, cold, being exploited just so he could eat, becoming physically ill, he broke the law by writing the postcards and he was criminalized, felonized, and sentenced to prison. He has spent time in the Pittsburg County Jail, Madison County Jail in Canton, Mississippi, Lexington State Prison, various jails and mental facilities across the country, Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, Federal Medical Centers in Springfield, Missouri, and Lexington, Kentucky. The FBI told him he was part of a study, meaning research. While in jails and prisons, he was forced to take psychiatric drugs. When he was released on probation, he was involuntarily committed and forced to take the drugs. He has always said the drugs “make me worse.” Not only has he been forced to take the drugs while incarcerated, he has been raped, kept in isolation over a month at a time, beaten up by prisoners, beaten by law enforcement officers, and coerced to sign informed consent forms. While in one Federal prison system, when Jeff refused to sign the informed consent form, a Federal judge overruled him in a court proceeding and forced him to take the drugs. The drugs were always drug cocktails (meaning a mixture of drugs, including Haldol and Lithium, which combination is contraindicated and can cause death). Over the years, I have become painfully aware that I have participated in my son’s and my own victimization by the mental health system. I have come to know that what he has told me over the years has been the truth, that the drugs made him worse. He has said that Prolixin, Haldol, and Thorazine make you want to hurt or kill people. He has gone to great lengths and has suffered in attempts NOT to feel that way. Jeff and I have come to know that “informed consent” is a big lie, because the courts and society, including family members, will not listen to a person with a diagnosed mental illness. I have come to know that the interests of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, a family-member-run organization, does not represent the interests of “consumers” but the peace and tranquility of the family members by drug control of their loved one who has been diagnosed as having mental illness. I have come to know that the reason mental health professionals tell you at the outset that a “consumer” will have to stay on the drugs the rest of his/her life is because they understand the extent that the drugs alter the mind. They understand that the drugs are also addictive, and if someone abruptly stops taking the drugs, this is when he/she really becomes ill because they will go into withdrawal symptoms. I did not comprehend withdrawal until just this past year. Withdrawal symptoms are severe, can kill, and can also be long lasting. Because the drugs are stored in the body, and because a person is generally given drug cocktails over long periods of time, I have come to know that it takes a minimum of 6 months to 2 years or more to completely detox from them. Another reason that mental health professionals say someone will have to be on them the rest of their lives is because they know that there are no safe places anywhere that a person can detox from psychiatric drugs over a long period of time. Not making a person aware of this is fraud, and it is unconscionable. I know now that since 1991, Jeff has been experiencing withdrawal and has never been allowed to complete withdrawal with appropriate support or care. There are no places for the thousands of people like Jeff to be safe and detox. Psychiatry is perpetuating itself by creating and perpetuating withdrawal symptoms, which appear to society as mental illness, thereby he is re-hospitalized, and put back on the drugs. Withdrawal symptoms are any new emotional or physical problem felt during drug withdrawal, which quickly ceases when the drug is re-instituted. They manifest in the following:
But, it could be “rebound,” which is the return of the original symptoms more intensely than before taking drugs; or, “relapse,” which is the return of symptoms of the original problem. (1) On release from hospitals, because of the side effects, Jeff comes off the drugs and because of his erratic withdrawal behaviors, he is re-hospitalized, perpetuating the cycle. This is fraud and it is unconscionable. This is the reason for the exorbitant rise in numbers of mentally ill statistics. This is the reason for the billions of dollars wasted in mental health staff and services and auxiliary staff and services. Families cannot deal alone with the effects of detoxification and withdrawal. No funds are available for wellness programs during withdrawal and recovery from the drugs and for therapy to deal with the initial emotional traumas. They are only available for programs that perpetuate the systems that destroy. Or, Jeff can have a medical problem, such as problems with his feet for having been on the street, and because he is having erratic withdrawal symptoms, emergency room doctors or doctors he visits in an office will coerce him into psychiatric treatment or more forced drugs. I have come to know that there are medical reasons a person should not be given psychiatric drugs. Some medical illnesses manifest in psychiatric symptoms. These illnesses are not addressed nor treated; instead, because psychiatric symptoms are present, psychiatric drugs are given which can precipitate, exacerbate, and perpetuate psychiatric illnesses. For example, Jeff has been medically/laboratory tested and has been found to be severely allergic to a great many environmental agents; a fasting blood test revealed him to be borderline hypoglycemic; he has had a positive test for porphyria, a metabolic disease. Psychiatric drugs should not be given in these conditions. He was court-ordered to take the drugs anyway. His diets have not been regulated. His medical illnesses have not been appropriately addressed. This is unconscionable. I have come to know that society has become mystified with the medical profession, including psychiatry. Psychiatry is attempting to convince society that its art is based in biochemistry. The medical profession is offended when alternative methods for good health are suggested, such as holistic medicine involving proper nutrition and food supplements, etc. Within the past month, a psychiatrist did not allow my son, Jeff, to take vitamins and food supplements while he was being drugged. He was too concerned that it would interfere with his prescribed drug regimen. Mental health professionals will deny that talk therapy does any good while in acute phases of emotional and mental distress, when this is the time it is needed the most. Just having someone there in a trust relationship until the crisis is dealt with, gotten over and past is the right and proper thing to do. This leads to wellness and trust relationships. Being threatened with drugs that blunt your emotions, control your actions, and cause great physical pain and damage to various body systems only alienates and does harm. Psychiatry is betraying society when it espouses drugs for quick fixes. It is akin to pasting a smiley face over lives that are overwhelmed with pain. It is worse because in their efforts to mask emotional pain with pills and long-lasting injections, they are creating a legal pharmocracy of substance abuse accepted by society through deception. I have come to know that psychiatry in America is verging on eugenics. Psychiatry has developed a means of human subject research for which they will not be held accountable and will be accepted by society. It is with outpatient commitment laws. Focusing on the “gravely disabled,” basically defined as those persons who are homeless, they will be placed in treatment (drugs or other). I have come to a new awareness about research. One thing that is malpracticed by psychiatrists is that inpatients in research centers are given cocktails of drugs or given other treatments that have not been proven safe. This constitutes research testing that is done without the patient’s awareness. For the past year, I have lived with people who are going through withdrawal, titration, and receiving therapy, who are being allowed to express their sadness, anger, their emotions without fear of reprisal or drugs. They are getting back or have regained their sanity, are regaining their lives and are growing and productive. The DSM-IV is a travesty. It should be outlawed, recalled, or banned. It is not based on science. The American Psychiatric Association needs to be held accountable for this. Everything imaginable is listed as a psychiatric illness for which a person can be diagnosed and ultimately be caught up in the mental health system. The proofs that “mental illness” is biologically based are absent. The professional scientific community should be in an uproar against the psychiatric profession for claiming this. It diminishes the whole of science. The professional medical community should be in an uproar against the psychiatric profession for causing harm. The medical model of psychiatry is a farce. The religious community should be in an uproar against the psychiatric profession because it is literally destroying the human soul. The soul is comprised of the will, intellect and emotions, and the brain is being drugged with mind-altering and addictive drugs. The professional social community should be in an uproar against the psychiatric profession because it is running amok in prescribing drugs to society bringing about more social problems than can be addressed and alleviated. Reasons why there is no uproar become glaringly apparent when consideration is given to the number of jobs that are created when things run amok. People benefit from disaster, but at what price? It becomes a matter of politics, money and economics. Pharmaceutical companies make the drugs and lobby the politicians to pass bills, e.g., involuntary outpatient treatment laws, to get society to use the drugs. Doctors use the drugs on patients after a 15-minute examination, which causes one of two things to happen. The user ends up either controlled and becomes a non-thinking person, or he refuses. If he takes the drugs, there are doctors, case managers, social workers, and a slew of other kinds of jobs who serve and take care of these people who have no lives of their own. If he refuses to take the drugs, he will be in violation of some law, and vast judicial, law enforcement, and correctional systems, are created to take care of the violators. In addition, all these systems are administered by people in jobs created to support the services that are provided the user. The loser in this scenario is the person who has been caught up in the mental health system and labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis and the family who is forced to deal with the results. The patient is either controlled or he is in violation. This has spread to our children, who have no voice or choice, are being entrapped into the psychiatric system, and being force-drugged. The homeless are now the most recent targets. Many of the homeless are those who have fled the system and have no place to go. I am sending this letter to you because you have had some involvement in my son’s and my lives. We are victims. Our lives, to the present, are destroyed. I want our lives back. I want our lives to stop being hurt. I want our lives to be free. We live in America and our lives are not free. As long as my son is “out there” without support and care, detoxing from these drugs without proper medical supervision, nutrition and housing, we continue to be victims. I am a mother. I want my son to stop being hurt, to stop being threatened, literally, by neighbors and law enforcement who have not comprehended and do not want to comprehend because they do not care. I want my son to stop being hurt with threats by systems that fall under the guise of doing good when, in fact, they are doing great harm. I know the truth. I have lived under both ideologies regarding psychiatry. Psychiatry is based on fear, fraud, and force. Psychiatry has not wanted my loved one’s life restored. If it had, just as Dr. Jane Robinette said, Jeff would have been handled differently. He has never been handled differently. It has been said that insanity is repeating the same behaviors over and over again expecting different results. It is realistic to believe that the psychiatric methods used in the treatment and care of my son has been insanity. Psychiatry has done the same thing over and over again. If those practicing psychiatry in Jeff’s case expected different results, it would appear then, that they would be insane, based on that definition. If they did not expect different results, then their methods were intentional in perpetuating his and my suffering. Psychiatry, law enforcement, the media have been known to cause my son, Jeff, to appear dangerous.
The above is just a bit of our experience. I have come to know these things by experience as truth. Subsequent to understanding these truths, I have read similar truths in books and other professional papers during the past 2 years, which has confirmed my reality. In the past, a psychiatric treatment, called the lobotomy, was practiced and the physician who developed this procedure was given the Nobel prize. It was later deemed to be barbaric. One day in the future, society will also realize the barbaric truth about psychiatric drugs and other means of treatment, such as the new form of lobotomy called the cingulotomy and electro-convulsive therapy or ECT. One more thing the psychiatric community will not tell you is that there are people who disagree and oppose current psychiatric treatment methods. I was a person who believed in the professional medical community. I trusted them. I made a great mistake. It has been costly beyond measure. For a year now, I have experienced the people who have lived through bogus diagnoses and forced treatment, the people who withdrew, received therapy, and found the few people who have cared enough about them and stood by them, the people who have regained their lives and are working for changes in the psychiatric system. They, too, know the truth. These are people who call themselves psychiatric survivors. Their treatments stopped, dating back decades to 1 year. As a family member, I have become a psychiatric survivor. It remains to be seen if my son will survive. Do you have any concept what it is like to live in perpetual grief? Do you have any idea what I am feeling as a mother for what Jeff and I have experienced and endured? Do you even care? Is it any wonder that I respect my son, Jeff Welton, more than anyone I know? He has shown more strength, more courage, and more faith, just to face the day every day in a society that has damaged him and refuses to allow or to help him live free and become a whole person? He has a most forgiving heart, but anyone can be pushed only so far. I continue to believe in my Christianity, that God is a good and loving and just God, that when we live by faith in obedience to the example of Jesus Christ, by allowing His Holy Spirit to live inside of us, we will have His grace and mercy. It is my continual prayer that Jeff and I can remain in God’s will and that His will be done. Respectfully sumitted, Marilyn Welton (1) Your Drug May Be Your Problem, by Peter Breggin, M.D. and David Cohen, Ph.D. |
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