(1) Antipsychotic Drugs and Brain Shrinkage - Gary G. Kohls, MD & Joanna Moncrieff, MD (2) Antipsychotic Drugs May Result in Brain Damage - David Oaks (3) Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry by Robert Burrowes (4) Elliot Rodger, like nearly all the other young mass murderers, was taking brain-altering psych drugs (1) Antipsychotic Drugs and Brain Shrinkage - Gary G. Kohls, MD & Joanna Moncrieff, MD Gary Kohls<ggkohls@gmail.com> 7 November 2015 at 13:59 http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/11/04/6193_confessions_of_a_medical_heretic-2 Antipsychotic Drugs and Brain Shrinkage By Gary G. Kohls, MD Over the 40 years that I practiced medicine, I slowly became aware of the fact that drugs that cross the blood-brain barrier and thus impact the brain, especially those marketed for so-called mental illnesses (of unknown etiology), only mask symptoms and never cure anything - despite what the attractive, trinket-bearing salespersons from Big Pharma proclaimed as they were trying to convince me to prescribe their latest over-priced drugs (while at the same time abandoning the tried and true cheaper generics I had been using successfully for years). When I went to medical school, we were taught that the relatively few psychiatric drugs available in the decade of the 1960s were too dangerous for us lowly family practitioners to prescribe safely. However, sometime between then and the generation of the 1980s, Big Pharma started flexing its Big Business muscles, started having previously restricted drugs available over-the-counter, started ignoring the psychiatrists (who coveted the monopoly they had had on psych meds), and started marketing heavily those same dangerous drugs so that we lowly family practitioners would help them increase their “market share”. Living in a rural area where there were no psychiatrists to make wholesale diagnoses of mental illnesses (of “unknown etiology”) that supposedly warranted life-long drugging, I wasn’t asked by very many of my patients for psych drug treatment. But then came along Prozac. The one time that I was asked by a patient to prescribe Prozac for her (a so-called selective [a lie] serotonin reuptake inhibitor [SSRI]), I was totally unaware that I had been deceived by Eli Lilly’s commercials and its drug reps when I was told how Prozac was supposed to work. They also skipped over (or were ignorant of) what were the serious potential dangers of the drug, especially the long-term dangers which included suicide, homicide, addiction, brain damage, sleep disorders, mania, psychosis, dementia, permanent sexual dysfunction, etc, etc. That patient didn’t take her Prozac for more than two weeks before it pooped out. But it got me curious about what synthetic, fluorinated, amphetamine-based chemicals like the SSRIs can do to the brain. Lilly’s drug reps never tried to detail me on their so-called second-generation anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa, but by the time those drugs were being promoted, I was highly suspicious of Big Pharma and all of their mis-represented psych drugs. I had begun to understand why all anti-psychotic drugs were called “chemical restraints”, “chemical strait jackets”, “chemical lobotomies” or “zombification drugs”. So when I ran across the following article (by Dr Joanna Moncrieff, a British psychiatrist) about the most serious unintended long-term consequence of antipsychotic drugs (brain shrinkage!), I decided to print extended excerpts of it below. I have done minimal editing. Phrases in italics are mine. (The antipsychotic drugs that Dr Moncrieff is referring to include Thorazine (GlaxoSmithKline), haloperidol (generic), Abilify (Bristol-Myers Squibb), Clozaril (Novartis), Fanapt (Novartis), Geodon (Pfizer), Invega (Janssen), Resperdal (Janssen), Saphris (Merck), Seroquel (AstraZeneca), and Zyprexa (olanzapine - Lilly). _______________________________________________________________________ Antipsychotic Drugs and Brain Shrinkage By Joanna Moncrieff, MD / December 13, 2013 This article – with an unabridged reference list - has been posted at: http://joannamoncrieff.com/2013/12/13/antipsychotics-and-brain-shrinkage-an-update/ “After 18 months of treatment monkeys treated with olanzapine or haloperidol, at doses equivalent to those used in humans, had approximately 10% lighter brains that those treated with a placebo.” – Joanna Moncrieff, MD Evidence that antipsychotics cause brain shrinkage has been accumulating over the last few years but the psychiatric research establishment is finding its own results difficult to swallow. A new paper by a group of American researchers once again tries to ‘blame the disease,’ a time honored tactic for diverting attention from the nasty and dangerous effects of some psychiatric treatments. In 2011, these researchers, led by the former editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry (and therefore with significant conflicts of interest), Nancy Andreasen, reported follow up data for their study of 211 patients diagnosed for the first time with an episode of ‘schizophrenia’. They found a strong correlation between the level of antipsychotic treatment… and the amount of shrinkage of brain matter as measured by repeated MRI scans. The group concluded that “antipsychotics have a subtle but measurable influence on brain tissue loss” (1). This study confirmed other evidence that antipsychotics shrink the brain. When MRI scans became available in the 1990s, they were able to detect subtle levels of brain shrinkage in people diagnosed with schizophrenia or psychosis. This led to the (erroneous) idea that psychosis is a toxic brain state, and was used to justify the claim that early treatment with antipsychotics was necessary to prevent brain damage. People even started to refer to these drugs as having “neuroprotective” properties, and schizophrenia was increasingly (and erroneously) described.… as a neurodegenerative condition (2). The trouble with this interpretation was that all the patients in these studies were taking antipsychotic drugs. Peter Breggin suggested that the smaller brains and larger brain cavities observed in people diagnosed with schizophrenia in these studies (and older using the less sensitive CT scans), were a consequence of antipsychotic drugs (3), but no one took him seriously. It was assumed that these findings revealed the brain abnormalities that were thought to constitute schizophrenia, and for a long time no one paid much attention to the effects of drug treatment. Where the effects of antipsychotics were explored, however, there were some indications that the drugs might have a negative impact on brain volume (4). In 2005, another American group, led by Joseph Lieberman who headed up the CATIE study, published the largest scanning study up to that point of patients with a first episode of psychosis or schizophrenia (5). The study was funded by Eli Lilly, and consisted of a randomized comparison of Lilly’s drug olanzapine (Zyprexa) and the older drug haloperidol (Haldol). Patients were scanned at the start of the study, at 12 weeks and one year later and patients’ scans were compared with those of a control group of ‘healthy’ volunteers. At 12 weeks haloperidol-treated subjects showed a statistically significant reduction of the brain’s grey matter (the nerve cell bodies) compared with controls. At one year both olanzapine- and haloperidol-treated subjects had lost more grey matter than controls. The comparative degree of shrinkage in the olanzapine group was smaller than that in the haloperidol group, and the authors declared the olanzapine-related change not to be statistically significant because, although the result reached the conventional level of statistical significance (p=0.03) they said they had done so many tests that the result might have occurred by chance. In both haloperidol and olanzapine treated patients, however, there was a consistent effect that was diffuse and visible in most parts of the brain hemispheres. The idea that schizophrenia or psychosis represent degenerative brain diseases was so influential at this point, that the author’s first explanation for these results was that olanzapine, but not haloperidol, can halt the underlying process of brain shrinkage caused by the mental condition. They did concede, however, that an alternative explanation might be that haloperidol causes brain shrinkage-, but they never admitted that olanzapine might do this. It seems as if Eli Lilly and its collaborators were so confident about their preferred explanation, that they set up a study to compare the effects of olanzapine and haloperidol in macaque monkeys. This study proved beyond reasonable doubt that both antipsychotics cause brain shrinkage. After (only)18 months of treatment monkeys treated with olanzapine or haloperidol, at doses equivalent to those used in humans, had approximately 10% lighter brains (at autopsy) than those treated with a placebo (6). Still psychiatrists went on behaving as if antipsychotics were essentially benign and arguing that they were necessary to prevent an underlying toxic brain disease (7). Andreasen’s 2011 paper was widely publicized however, and it started to be acknowledged that antipsychotics can cause brain shrinkage. Almost as soon as the cat was out of the bag, however, attention was diverted back to the idea that the real problem is the mental condition. Later in 2011 Andreasen’s group published a paper that reasserted the idea that schizophrenia is responsible for brain shrinkage (rather than the now established fact that the drugs were causing the treated brain to shrink). In this paper there was barely a mention of the effects of antipsychotics that were revealed in the group’s earlier paper (8). What the authors did in the second paper was to assume that any shrinkage that could not be accounted for by the… antipsychotic effects must be attributable to the underlying disease. <snip> …without a comparison group which has not been medicated, (a virtual impossibility in this day and age) it is simply not possible to conclude that any part of the observed effect is not drug-induced. The latest paper by this research group replicates the findings on antipsychotic-induced brain shrinkage, but also (falsely) claims that brain volume reduction is related to having a ‘relapse’ (10).… The most recent analysis ignores the probable association between antipsychotic treatment intensity and relapse, but it seems likely that people undergoing periods of ‘relapse,’ (or more accurately, deterioration of symptoms), would be treated with higher doses of antipsychotics. If this is so, and the two variables ‘relapse’ and ‘treatment intensity’ are correlated with each other, then the analysis is questionable since the statistical methods used assume that the variables are independent of each other. So Andreasen’s group has found strong evidence of an antipsychotic induced effect, which they have replicated in two analyses now…. These researchers seem determined to prove (falsely) that ‘schizophrenia’ causes brain shrinkage… Their recent analysis once again confirms the damaging effects of antipsychotics, but the authors largely discount the effects of drug treatment and conclude that patients must not stop their antipsychotics. The only concession made to the antipsychotic-induced changes the study reveals is the suggestion that low doses of antipsychotics should be used where possible. Yet other prominent psychiatric researchers have now abandoned the idea that schizophrenia is a progressive, neurodegenerative condition, and do not consider that Andreasen’s study provides evidence of this (11). Bizarrely, Nancy Andreasen is a co-author of a recently published meta-analysis which combines results of 30 studies of brain volume over time, which clearly confirms the association between antipsychotic treatment and brain shrinkage (specifically the grey matter) and finds no relationship with severity of symptoms or duration of the underlying condition (12). What should antipsychotic users and their families and caregivers make of this research? Obviously it sounds frightening and worrying, but the first thing to stress is that the reductions in brain volume that are detected in these MRI studies are small, and it is not certain that changes of this sort have any functional implications. We do not yet know whether these changes are reversible or not. Of course the value of antipsychotics has been much debated, and their utility depends on the particular circumstances of each individual user, so it is impossible to issue any blanket advice. If people are worried, they need to discuss the pros and cons of continuing to take antipsychotic treatment with their prescriber, bearing in mind the difficulties that can be associated with coming off these drugs (13). People should not stop drug treatment suddenly, especially if they have been taking it for a long time. People need to know about this research because it indicates that antipsychotics are not the innocuous substances that they have frequently been portrayed as. We still have no conclusive evidence that the disorders labelled as schizophrenia or psychosis are associated with any underlying abnormalities of the brain, but we do have strong evidence that the drugs we use to treat these conditions cause brain changes. This does not mean that taking antipsychotics is not sometimes useful and worthwhile, despite these effects, but it does mean we have to be very cautious indeed about using them. (This blog is a slightly revised version of one that appeared on Mad in America in June 2013.) Dr Moncrieff is a Senior Lecturer in psychiatry at University College London and a practicing consultant psychiatrist. She has written three books: “The Bitterest Pills”, “The Myth of the Chemical Cure” and “A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs”. Dr Moncrieff is also the author of a very useful article that has been posted at http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/02/need-know-starting-drug-mental-health-problem/. It is entitled “What You Need to Know Before Starting a Drug for a Mental Health Problem”. An equally useful article that Dr Moncrieff wrote concerned getting off psych drugs was published in the medical journal Medical Hypotheses (2006;67(3):517-23). It was titled “Why is it so Difficult to Stop Psychiatric Drug Treatment? It may be Nothing to do With the Original Problem”. Reference List (abridged) (1) Ho BC, Andreasen NC, Ziebell S, Pierson R, Magnotta V. Long-term Antipsychotic Treatment and Brain Volumes: A Longitudinal Study of First-Episode Schizophrenia. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2011 Feb;68(2):128-37. (3) Breggin PR. Toxic Psychiatry. London: Fontana; 1993. (4) Moncrieff J, Leo J. A systematic review of the effects of antipsychotic drugs on brain volume. Psychol Med 2010 Jan 20;1-14. (5) Lieberman JA, Tollefson GD, Charles C, Zipursky R, Sharma T, Kahn RS, et al. Antipsychotic drug effects on brain morphology in first-episode psychosis. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2005 Apr;62(4):361-70 (9) Molina V, Sanz J, Benito C, Palomo T. Direct association between orbitofrontal atrophy and the response of psychotic symptoms to olanzapine in schizophrenia. Int Clin Psychopharmacol 2004 Jul;19(4):221-8. (11) Zipursky RB, Reilly TJ, Murray RM. The Myth of Schizophrenia as a Progressive Brain Disease. Schizophr Bull 2012 Dec 7. (13) Moncrieff J. Why is it so difficult to stop psychiatric drug treatment? It may be nothing to do with the original problem. Med Hypotheses 2006;67(3):517-23. (2) Antipsychotic Drugs May Result in Brain Damage - David Oaks PPEN # 446: Involuntary Neuroleptic (Antipsychotic) Psychiatric Drugs May Result in Brain Damage Gary G. Kohls<gkohls@cpinternet.com> 31 December 2014 at 02:34 http://ppjg.me/2014/12/30/involuntary-neuroleptic-antipsychotic-psychiatric-drugs-may-result-in-brain-damage/ http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/psychiatric-drugs/antipsychotics/neuroleptic-brain-damage/ Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 446 Involuntary Neuroleptic (Antipsychotic) Psychiatric Drugs May Result in Brain Damage By David Oaks (18 September 2007) MindFreedom International Any serious debate in 2007 about the topic of involuntary psychiatric procedures ought to include the following fact: For years, many studies have indicated that long-term high-dosage neuroleptic (also known as antipsychotic) psychiatric drugging may induce structural brain damage. This damage can include actual shrinkage of areas of the brain associated with higher-level functions, what makes us human. In his commentary, "England's New Mental Health Act Represents Law Catching Up with Science," Anthony Maden demands that "ethical advocates of a change to capacity-based legislation are under an obligation to deal with the science." However, I note that proponents of involuntary psychiatric procedures seldom explain clearly to colleagues, the public, patients or their families, the full implications of these procedures. It is undeniable that involuntary psychiatric procedures often involve psychiatric drugging, and that neuroleptic psychiatric drugs are often used in such circumstances. Therefore, the impact, risks and efficacy of neuroleptics are relevant. There are debates about these topics, including that there are effective alternatives other than neuroleptics. However, I wish to focus on one particularly relevant risk. In the last decade or two, countless medical articles have raised warning flags that long-term high-dosage neuroleptic use is associated with structural brain change. Please understand that I, and the nonprofit organization I direct, MindFreedom International, are pro-choice. Many of our members choose to take prescribed psychiatric drugs, including neuroleptics, others do not. But we are all united in speaking up for basic human rights, and a fundamental human right for patients, their family and society itself is the right to know. It is a horrible medical catastrophe that knowledge about neuroleptic-induced structural brain damage is today largely confined to the medical field itself. As a human rights activist for the past 31 years, and as an individual who has personally experienced involuntary neuroleptic drugging, I maintain that this disaster amounts to a kind of "Greenhouse effect" of the mind, and some day the public will want to know why they were not informed. Similar to the controversy about the environmental Greenhouse effect, there are industry defenders who are sowing doubt about the claims here, that long-term high-dosage neuroleptic use is associated with structural brain changes. Even though there are brain scan and autopsy studies showing these changes, some still try to deny these changes by claiming the underlying "mental illness" must be reasonable for the brain changes. This does not explain, however, why medical studies on animals can replicate similar structural brain change. Did these animals all miraculously develop "mental illness"? Why is neuroleptic-induced structural brain damage so important? Try a simple thought experiment. If any medical authority recommended that thousands of individuals out in the community receive involuntary psychosurgery -- actual surgical destruction of healthy brain tissue to change behavior -- there would be automatic outrage. Why? Because when force is combined with a procedure that is so profoundly intrusive and irreversible and damaging to the core part of our being as psychosurgery, the general public intuitively understands that coercing these procedures would be unethical. Many Studies Show that Antipsychotic Treatment can Result in Severe Structural Brain Changes Today, there are many studies showing that long-term high-dosage neuroleptics can actually result in such severe structural brain changes, that these changes can include shrinkage of the parts of our brain associated with high-level cognition. As anyone who is knowledgeable in this field is aware, there are many such studies showing that long-term high-dosage neuroleptics are associated with structural brain change. I will just mention one such study, because it involves both an older-type neuroleptic and a newer atypical neuroleptic. In this study, three groups of monkeys each were given haloperidol, olanzapine or sham for a 17 to 27 month period. There was an 8 to 11 percent reduction in mean fresh brain weights in both drug-treated groups compared to sham. The differences were seen in all major brain regions, especially in the frontal and parietal regions in both gray and white matter. There was a general shrinkage effect of approximately 20% and a highly significant variation in shrinkage across brain region The Absurd Notion That Psychiatric Drugging is Good for the Brain When I have raised concerns about studies like this with defenders of coerced psychiatric drugging I have been surprised at the response. One hypothesized that perhaps such brain shrinkage is helpful. Another hypothesized that such shrinkage is not literally "damage." Still another hypothesized the brain would snap back afterwards. All of these debaters, despite the absurdity of their defense, miss the main point. To repeat, yes, I understand some may still choose to take a neuroleptic despite these risks; if they are fully informed and offered a range of alternatives, that is not the issue here. However, any debate about the ethics of involuntary psychiatric procedures must include a discussion about the fact that long-term high-dosage neuroleptics literally have a similarity to chemical psychosurgery. The fact that any large library has the information I am discussing on its medical side, but not in the popular media side, is an indictment of the core values and ethics of the entire medical profession. This is a human rights emergency, and calls for immediate attention. In the 1800's, a medical model was utilized to help consolidate power of those leading the mental health system. It is time now for democracy to get more hands on with the mental health system. We cannot continue to abandon mental health policy to rule by a small group of experts. There are many other arguments against forced psychiatric procedures, especially on an outpatient basis, but I am focusing upon this central point about neuroleptic structural brain change because it is so important, and is so frequently totally ignored by those defending forced psychiatric drugging. Patients on the "Sharp End of the Needle" in the Mental Health System are Among the most Silenced, Disempowered, and Oppressed in Society For decades psychiatry has searched for proof of a "chemical imbalance" for any major psychiatric disorder. While they have not found proof of any chemical imbalance, those of us in the human rights field have discovered an enormous power imbalance. People on the "sharp end of the needle" in the mental health system are among the most silenced, disempowered, and oppressed in society. Due to decades of community organizing among thousands of psychiatric survivors and our allies internationally, the powerless clients are finding ways to speak out. I applaud the president of the World Psychiatric Association, Dr. Juan Mezzich, who has recently joined with us in calling for open mediated dialogue between organizations representing psychiatric survivors and psychiatric professionals. We will never be silenced again. Sincerely, David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International www.mindfreedom.org Medical study source: The Influence of Chronic Exposure to Antipsychotic Medications on Brain Size before and after Tissue Fixation: A Comparison of Haloperidol and Olanzapine in Macaque Monkeys, by Dorph-Petersen KA, Pierri JN, et al. from University of Pittsburgh.- Neuropsychopharmacology 9 March 2005 (3) Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry by Robert Burrowes Gary G. Kohls<gkohls@cpinternet.com> 6 December 2014 at 16:22 http://warisacrime.org/content/defeating-violence-psychiatry Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 442 Defeating the Violence of Psychiatry By Robert J. Burrowes - 12 September 2014 As the movement to abolish psychiatry continues to gather momentum – see ‘On Antipsychiatry’ – it is worth reviewing its delusional foundation, the history of its violence and its function as a weapon of elite social control. Psychiatry is based on a delusional conception of how the human mind works and what is needed in order to assist it to function optimally when it is not doing so. This is because the purpose of psychiatry, with the complicity of other professions in the ‘mental health’ field and the incredibly profitable pharmaceutical industry, as well as the support of the legal system and the corporate media in promoting this violence, has always been about profits and elite social control, not restoring the health of the ailing individual. The human mind consists of many interacting components. These include sensory capacities (such as sight, hearing and touch), feelings (such as thirst, hunger, nausea and physical pain), memory, ‘truth register’, intuition, conscience, more feelings (such as fear, happiness, emotional pain, joy, anger, satisfaction, sadness and sexual arousal), and intellect. Each of these capacities is separately important but, in a healthy individual, it is their integrated functioning that is used to crystallize the appropriately precise behavioral option in any given circumstance. If any one of these capacities is not functioning as evolution intended, the individual will suffer accordingly and this might result in a dysfunctional behavioral outcome as well. Dysfunctional behavior is caused by terrorizing an individual during childhood so that the integrated functioning of their mind is impeded. This occurs when you inflict ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence on a child in order to make them do what you want. This violence forces the child to suppress their awareness of the mental processes, especially the feelings that generated the original and functional behavior so that they can comply with your violence. But their obedience comes at the price of their increased dysfunctionality in the future. For a full explanation of this, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’. However, if instead of identifying and addressing the violent social conditions that lead to emotional and behavioural dysfunction, we attribute any dysfunctionalities to a supposed ‘diseased brain’, ‘flawed genes’ or a ‘chemical imbalance in the brain’, then we open the door to psychiatric violence under the label ‘treatment’. See, for example, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, ‘Psychocracy and Community’ and ‘12 Shocking Facts About the Dangers of Psychiatric Drugs’. And this psychiatric violence has catastrophic consequences for society. For some insight into the nature and extent of these consequences – which include dramatically increased violence, suicide and criminal behaviour – see the work of Dr Peter R. Breggin – ‘the conscience of psychiatry’ – whose research includes his ‘probing critique of the psychopharmaceutical complex’. See Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide, and Crime and The Conscience of Psychiatry: The Reform Work of Peter R. Breggin, MD. In fact, according to the lengthy research of Peter Gøtzsche, MD, in the USA ‘prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer’ and it ‘is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good’. See ‘On Pharma, Corruption, and Psychiatric Drugs’ and ‘Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Health Care’. And according to Dr Philip Hickey ‘all psychiatric drugs operate by creating a pathological state within the organism… [They] are toxic in and of themselves regardless of dosage.’ See ‘The Use of Neuroleptic Drugs As Chemical Restraints’. According to the ‘bible’ of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (the DSM), there are roughly 300 officially certified and distinct ‘mental disorders’. But there are no defining physical tests to diagnose any of them. However, given the publication of the DSM is worth over $5 million a year to the APA, historically totaling over $100 million, there is little organisational interest in validity. See ‘Not Diseases, but Categories of Suffering’ . In fact, as Dr Bonnie Burstow has pointed out: ‘while psychiatry has been claiming for a very long time that people who are “disordered” have chemical imbalances and frequently reiterate that imbalances have been found, the reality is that no imbalances have ever been established for a single “mental illness”. By contrast, the various treatments of psychiatry (e.g., the drugs, electroshock) have been demonstrated to create illness.’ See ‘On Antipsychiatry’. In short, there is no scientific basis for psychiatry and this is occasionally admitted even by prominent psychiatrists. See, for example, ‘Psychiatry Now Admits It's Been Wrong in Big Ways - But Can It Change?’ In fact, on 29 April 2013, the highest ranking federal ‘mental health’ official in the USA, Thomas Insel, stated that ‘While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each…. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.’ And in a candid moment some years earlier, Allen Frances, the lead editor of the fourth edition of the DSM, highlighted the real depth of the problem: ‘there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it’. See ‘Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness’. But such occasional candid admissions do not lead to change for several reasons: many individual psychiatrists are ignorant of their own ignorance (simply believing, as most people have been terrorised into believing, what they were taught at school and in subsequent training courses) and, of course, institutional forces and profits ensure that such comments are suppressed by the psychiatric, pharmaceutical and media industries ensuring that they do not get through to the public. Tragically, psychiatry has long been used to inflict violence on targeted populations. See ‘Political Abuse of Psychiatry – An Historical Overview’. Perhaps the best known of these historical examples were the use of psychiatry to justify and help perpetrate the euthanasia programs of the Nazi regime – see ‘Psychiatry during the Nazi era: ethical lessons for the modern professional’ – and the violence within the Soviet Gulag: see ‘Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union and in China: Complexities and Controversies’. But a more recent version of this type of psychiatric violence was the Federal Violence Initiative started in the US in 1992. According to Dr John Breeding: ‘This initiative includes ongoing “research” into the supposed biological basis of inner-city violence and includes proposals for biomedical social control. The US government asks “Are Black People Genetically Violent?” and plans a psychiatric screening program which would lead to mass drugging of innocent inner-city children, the vast majority of whom are young people of color.’ See The Necessity of Madness and Unproductivity: Psychiatric Oppression or Human Transformation. However, the violence of psychiatry is now at epidemic proportions given its dramatic expansion in recent decades. It includes experiments conducted on unknowing military personnel and soaring soldier and veteran suicides because of use of psychiatric drugs – see ‘The Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda’ – complicity in the development of torture techniques for use on political prisoners – see ‘The Story of Mitchell Jessen & Associates: How a Team of Psychologists in Spokane, WA, Helped Develop the CIA’s Torture Techniques’ – the use of psychiatric violence to force false confessions from prisoners of war – see ‘U.S. Drugged Detainees to Obtain FALSE Confessions’ – the use of psychiatry to imprison political activists – see ‘Are People Being Thrown Into Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?’ – the psychiatric definition of people who have a personal viewpoint at variance with elite interests – labelled ‘oppositional defiant disorder’ (ODD) – as mentally ill – see ‘Psychiatrists now say non-conformity is a mental illness: only the sheeple are “sane”’ – and now the violent psychiatric ‘management’ of children – see ‘The Proactive Search for Mental Illnesses in Children’ (part one) and (part two) – and even babies: see ‘Watchdog Says Report of 10,000 Toddlers on ADHD Drugs Tip of the Iceberg – 274,000 0-1 Year Olds and 370,000 Toddlers Prescribed Psychiatric Drugs’. Of course, pregnant women and nursing mothers don’t escape psychiatric violence either although groups such as ‘Moms & Meds’ campaign to raise awareness of the health and death risks from psychiatric ‘medication’ to the mother and unborn child. And, as you no doubt expect by now, older people, predominantly women, aren’t spared drugging and electroshocking either. Fortunately, in the USA, once a person reaches 65 their electroshocking is paid for by the government which means that, at this age, the number of people diagnosed as requiring electroshocking jumps enormously! See The Necessity of Madness and Unproductivity: Psychiatric Oppression or Human Transformation. But if you think drugging pregnant women, children and babies is bad, did you know that psychiatrists still electroshock children as well? And ‘electroconvulsive therapy’ is ‘never necessary’, damages the brain, always causes memory loss and sometimes kills! See ‘Electroshocking Children: Why It Should Be Stopped’. Obviously, psychiatrists should not be electroshocking adults either and some organisations actively campaign to end this practice too. See, for example, The Coalition for the Abolition of Electroshock in Texas. And, of course, psychosurgery, in which ‘a small piece of brain is destroyed or removed’ – ‘irreversible brain mutilation’ as it has been called – is still performed in many countries despite the very long campaign to get it stopped. See, for example, the 1982 article ‘The Return of Lobotomy and Psychosurgery’. ‘In lobotomy and psychosurgery parts of the brain that show no demonstrable disease are nonetheless mutilated or cut out in order to affect the individual’s emotions and personal conduct.’ Despite its horror history, recent ‘justifications’ for ‘irreversible brain mutilation’ are readily found. The bottom line is this: Most psychiatrists, like most people, are terrified of listening to your feelings (and especially when they are driving dysfunctional behaviour and might need considerable time for healing to occur). This is the inevitable outcome of being terrified of feeling their own feelings. Feelings won’t hurt you; suppressing your awareness of them with drugs, electroshocking or other violence will. Feelings are a vital part of the information your body gives you; feeling these feelings is the way you heal from traumas (great or small) and a vital source of information about what you need to do. If, like me, you are nauseated by the cowardice and violence of the psychiatrists, doctors, other ‘mental health professionals’ and the pharmaceutical industry personnel who so readily damage our emotional health for the sake of elite social control and personal profit, then you have a simple choice: you can choose to never consult a psychiatrist or other ‘mental health professional’ and you can choose to never subject your child to their violence either. And if you are forced into involuntary psychiatric ‘care’, you can choose to remain silent and pursue avenues for being released. In the end, even if they forcibly drug you, you have a considerable chance of making a full recovery from this (hopefully short-term) violence. (For expert assistance in withdrawing from psychiatric drugs, check out Gerson Therapy, Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families, Point of Return and the International Coalition for Drug Awareness) Unfortunately, recovery from the brain damage that results from forced electroshocking is far less likely – but for an inspirational account by someone who did survive and fully recover from psychiatric violence, including brain electrocution, you can read Ronald Bassman’s evocative account ‘Never Give Up’ – and recovery from psychosurgery is effectively impossible. You might also consider joining the movement to abolish psychiatry – see, for example, opportunities outlined in ‘On Fighting Institutional Psychiatry With the “Attrition Model”’ – as well as signing the online pledge of the worldwide movement to end all violence ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’. Some people have argued that psychiatry should be reformed. But any experienced nonviolent activist knows that psychiatry, like other manifestations of violence (such as domestic violence, economic exploitation, slavery, ecological destruction and war) cannot be ‘reformed’. We must work for abolition. Finally, value your emotional health extremely highly. An empathic listener can help you feel your way through those times when you need to feel the sadness, pain, fear, anger and other valuable feelings that evolution gave you to enable a full recovery from the inevitable traumas of life. (Although the information is directed at soldiers who have been traumatised by war, the process as outlined in this article applies to anyone who needs emotional support to recover from difficult life experiences, however ‘trivial’: see ‘An Open Letter to Soldiers with “Mental Health” Issues’.) If you don’t allow yourself to feel and express the so-called ‘negative’ feelings, you will soon find that your emotional responses to the joys of life will be unconsciously suppressed too. And life without feelings is not life: it is ‘flatlining’. _______ Biodata: Robert Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He lives in Australia and co-founded the The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World in 2011. Check out the People’s Charter website at: (http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com/). Burrowes is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His website is http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com/. (4) Elliot Rodger, like nearly all the other young mass murderers, was taking brain-altering psych drugs Gary G. Kohls<gkohls@cpinternet.com> 16 July 2014 02:52 http://www.naturalnews.com/045419_Elliot_Rodger_Xanax_psychiatric_drugs.html Elliot Rodger, like nearly all young killers, was taking psychiatric drugs (Xanax) Tuesday, June 03, 2014 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger (NaturalNews) Like nearly all mass murderers and psycho killers, Elliot Rodger is now confirmed to have been taking massive doses of psychiatric drugs. Law enforcement authorities have now confirmed Elliot Rodger, the "sorority girl" killer of Isla Vista, California, was taking massive doses of Xanax, a psychiatric drug belonging to a class of chemicals called benzodiazepines. "Elliot had been taking Xanax for awhile, according to his parents ... there were fears he might have been addicted to it, or taking more than was prescribed," a law enforcement source told RadarOnline (1), which first broke the story. "The Xanax had been prescribed to Elliot by a family doctor," the story continues. A second story on RadarOnline (2) explores, "disturbing details about the community college student's dependence on Xanax." That story goes on to report: Based on interviews with Elliot's parents, Peter and Li Chen, the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department "is being told that he was likely addicted to Xanax ... Peter and Li have been doing basic research on addiction to Xanax, and based on what they have read, they believe the tranquilizer made him more withdrawn, lonely, isolated, and anxious," a source told Radar. "It's their understanding that when Xanax is taken in large amounts, or more than the prescribed dosage, these are some of the side effects." Time after time, mass murderers are found to have been taking psychiatric drugsElliot Rodger now joins a long and ever-expanding list of other killers who were either taking psychiatric drugs or withdrawing from them at the time they committed mass murder. While the mainstream media predictably blames guns for all mass shootings, it rarely looks at the chemical drugging of the person who pulled the trigger on those guns. After all, guns don't operate by themselves. They require a person to make a decision to commit murder. In case after case, mass murderers on psychotropic drugs describe themselves as feeling withdrawn, isolated, distant and almost living out a "video game" that isn't real. This is whatpsychiatric drugs to do you: they make you feel detached from reality. Here's just some of the true history of psychiatric drugs and mass murder: * Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold's medical records have never been made available to the public. * Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather's girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded. * Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event. * Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac. * Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft. * Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days. * Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment. * Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others. * A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school. * Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded.. * A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another. * Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others. * TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates. * Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat. * James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers. * Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania * Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California * Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times. * Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman. * Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic's file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister. * Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications. * Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants. * Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled. * Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself. * Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family's Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002. * Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara's parents said ".... the damn doctor wouldn't take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil...") * Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002, (Gareth's father could not accept his son's death and killed himself.) * Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family's detached garage. * Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet. * Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill. * Woody, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms. * A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased. * Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and "other drugs for the conditions." * Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine. * Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system. * Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide. * Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone. * Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school. Missing from list... 3 of 4 known to have taken these same meds.... * What drugs was Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21... killed 6 people and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az? * What drugs was James Eagan Holmes on, age 24... killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado? * What drugs was Jacob Tyler Roberts on, age 22, killed 2 injured 1, Clackamas Or? * What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct? -- Peter Myers Australia website: http://mailstar.net/index.html |
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