Toxic Psychiatry
Drugs and Electroconvulsive Therapy:
The Truth
and the Better Alternatives
Breggin is one of the two most prominent heroes of the opposition to
psychiatry movement, who has
been campaigning against tortures in the name of psychiatry since the
fifties of the twentieth century. This is probably his best-known book,
which Jeffrey Masson rightly
calls “an all-out attack”.
What Breggin does best in this book is expose the truth about
psychoactive drugs, and especially the neuroleptics (also called
antipsychotics). Developed from dyes, these drugs were known to have
horrible side effects from the beginning. Their inventors proudly
proclaimed them to bring about a “chemical lobotomy” which was
considered an endorsement of the drugs. Breggin points out that the
so-called side effects are actually the main effects, and even the only
effects. When early psychiatrists saw what today is called tardive
dyskinesia (TD) – the movement disorders caused by these drugs – they
took it as a sign that the drug was “working.”
Breggin points out that such destructive drug effects would not be
tolerated in people about whom somebody cares. Only because they are
prescribed to society’s cast-offs can physicians get away with it.
Neuroleptic drugs are used wherever social control is at a premium: in
psychiatric institutions, prisons, homes for problem children, nursing
homes, and in
the former USSR, on political dissidents.
Early psychiatrists who spread the use of these drugs were even more
familiar with TD than today’s psychiatrists, who routinely fail to
recognize it, or attribute it to the condition being treated. Breggin
is probably the first author to describe TD and it’s variants, tardive
dystonia and tardive akathisia, in such graphic detail to professionals
and the lay public alike. There are a few forms of it he overlooks,
such as Pisa syndrome and hunchback. Perhaps he wasn’t familiar with
these effects (yet) at the
time of writing, but he covers all of his bases by stressing how
grossly debilitating and disfiguring these drugs are, “causing the
worst plague of brain damage in medical history.” It’s high time
somebody said that.
Breggin duly credits Thomas
Szasz for pointing out the political nature
of psychiatry, and the extensive but illegitimate powers psychiatrists
have to imprison and (mis)treat people. He also adopts Szasz’s position
that mental illness doesn’t exist, but Breggin doesn’t seem to carry
this idea through to its logical conclusion. The first part of this
book
is about “Schizophrenic overwhelm,” his alternative explanation to what
schizophrenia is about. Although he encloses the word schizophrenia in
quotation marks, obviously if there is no mental illness, then there is
no schizophrenia, and also no schizophrenic overwhelm. Furthermore,
even if
“overwhelm” does exist, it surely is only one of very many factors in
causing people to turn or be dragged to psychiatrists. As he himself
points out, psychiatric drugs are prescribed for an almost infinitely
wide range of conditions, real or perceived.
Whereas Szasz
places his emphasis on personal responsibility, Breggin in this and
other books largely lays
responsibility
for what ails people with their parents. He denies
blaming them, but what else could it be called? When parents turn to
him for advice, he states, he doesn’t even have to see the child to
counsel them. One of his most treasured treatments is more attention
from the father. The unlikelihood of parents who seek out and pay for
Breggin’s services being child neglectors seems to elude him. Nor does
he explain why not all children who don't even have a father
suffer from lack of paternal attention. Breggin seems to think that
parents are all-powerful, and have complete control over their
children's welfare.
The absolute nadir of Toxic Psychiatry is Breggin’s contention
that autism is
caused by parents treating their children like furniture. This puts us
back half a century to when Bruno
Bettelheim was expounding such ideas,
and is a slap in the face of dedicated and loving parents coping as
best they can with raising a disabled child. This was, of course,
written in
1992. Perhaps Breggin has changed his mind since then. I have
unfortunately not had the opportunity of reading all of his
books, so
don't know whether he has since publicly rectified his position on
autism.
Ironically, he mentions “developmental disorders” in the same book,
although this is but a new euphemism for autism. Perhaps he uses the
term to mean something else, which he doesn't explain. To be fair,
Breggin does
state emphatically that even if these conditions are to be
attributed
to the brain, that still does not justify administering psychiatric
drugs to children or adults so labeled, damaging their brains even
further.
Apparently disparaging drugs is taboo unless an alternative is offered.
Breggin is no doubt right that, for instance, depression can be
alleviated by falling in love or finding a job. The trouble is that if
people had the power to access these solutions, they wouldn’t have the
problem in the first place. Not everybody is lovable or employable.
Likewise, what’s the use of his advocating
finding a good therapist
when the people who need this elusive professional may not be able
to find or pay for him, or even to identify
him?
It’s a shame Breggin doesn’t limit himself to exposing psychiatric
drugs and electroshock for the permanently damaging and destructive
treatments they are, as the book would have been stronger and less
easily discredited without his questionable positions on parenting and
therapy. However, he deserves rousing applause for his lifelong
dedication to revealing psychiatry’s ugly secrets and warning us about
them.
When I picked the book up at the bookstore, it turned out to be a
British edition, with a foreword by Australian born
psychologist Dorothy Rowe, who, like in her foreword to Against Therapy, misses
the point.
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