Psychiatric Madness

People labeled as "mentally ill" have, over the ages, been subjected to horrific mistreatment. We've all heard the stories about deplorable conditions that once existed in state-run mental institutions, for example, sordid tales of restraint and abuse that seem totally at odds with our American ideals of freedom and compassion. We know this already. We've seen Jack Nicholson in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. But there is more to this story that needs to be told. Much, much more. Click Here for Entire Article

Electroshock Therapy: The Shocking Truth

September 20 Dr. John Breeding Interview

Electroshock therapy, also known as ECT or electroconvulsive therapy, invented by an Italian psychiatrist in 1938, induced its seizures by means of electricity, seizures that were as intensely violent and physically devastating as those induced by an injection of metrazol. But broken bones were the least of the patient's worries. Psychiatrists often administered paralyzing agents to prevent this type of bodily damage, but the actual intent of this fiendish procedure was to CREATE such damage in the human brain! Electrodes were placed on both sides of the head, and an electric current, strong enough to kill were it to go through the heart, was passed through the delicate regions of the cerebral cortex, causing "acute injury to the nerve cells," resulting in confusion, disorientation, memory loss, and an impairment in intellectual and cognitive function.

How such a grotesque state of mental debilitation could ever be seen as a desirable outcome is a mystery that defies all human understanding, yet such was the GOAL of these insane pseudo-doctors. The phraseology they used to describe their dark purposes makes clear their intent in no uncertain terms: to "knock out the brain," to "reduce the higher activities," to "impair the memory," and to reach "the proper degree of therapeutic confusion," as if imbecility and confusion are traits to be desired! It's enough to arouse one's absolute contempt!

One such case that was utterly despicable was that of a seventeen-year-old girl named Jonika Upton, who was committed to a sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico on January 18, 1959 by members of her family who disapproved of her behavior. She had run off to California with an "artist" boyfriend, had previously had a boyfriend they thought was "homosexual," had developed "peculiar speech mannerisms," and often "walked about carrying Proust under her arm," which for some reason or other her family found disturbing.

Her parents may have been disturbed by her "defiant" behavior, but where in this description is anything to indicate that she was mentally disturbed in any way whatsoever? One would have to conclude, based on this account of her history, that she was a perfectly normal and sane young woman who was simply embroiled in a family conflict.

But her doctor, suffering from a profound lack of insight and what some might consider a case of insanity, deemed her a candidate for electroshock instead and initiated a series of interminable treatments, which ultimately totaled sixty-two in number. Over the course of the next three months, as her mental condition precipitously deteriorated, her doctor complained that she wasn't deteriorating enough! In his twisted, warped, and insane way of thinking, black was white and deterioration was "improvement." She wasn't "nearly as foggy" as he might have wished. Although there was "considerable confusion" and "dilapidation" of thought, "under this type of treatment a patient usually shows a great deal more fogging and general confusion." Fogging, confusion, and mental dilapidation were seen by this madman as the desired ends of treatment!

Finally at the end of April, this previously normal and healthy young woman, who on the date of her admission had been alert and vibrant, was finally seen as sufficiently "confused" and mentally "dilapidated" to satisfy her doctors. She was now quite incontinent, walked around naked, and couldn't even remember if her father was living. Shortly thereafter, she was discharged from the "hospital" and didn't seem to recognize her own foolish parents. The memory of her boyfriend had been effectively erased. Indeed it was true, as her doctor boasted on the day of her release, that "she showed marked changes in her thinking and feeling." But whether those "changes" were truly for the better didn't seem to matter to this schizoid profession. Psychiatry could now claim another "therapeutic victory" at the expense of having ruined a young woman's life.

It's widely assumed that psychiatry came to its senses, that this shocking relic of a bygone era was eventually relegated to the shelf of a museum, and that it's no longer used by modern practitioners. But medical websites of the twenty-first century still tout this savagery as a "safe" and "effective" treatment. Clicking a link to the WebMD website is like being transported to an alternate universe, a place where truth is mysteriously absent. In this "other reality," the world of psychiatry as it's presented to the public, the door to the shock room is invitingly left open with the "big, bad wolf" of shock treatment lying stealthily under the covers.

In this fairy-tale world of WebMD, shock treatment is portrayed as something quite harmless, like Little Red Riding Hood's sweet, loving grandmother. Nowhere is there any mention of its true mode of action: that it suppresses patients' symptoms by damaging their brains. Instead, prospective patients are told quite the opposite: that the seizure induced by an ECT treatment "causes brain chemicals to be released, helping the brain function better," and that "studies have shown that ECT is safe, and there is no evidence that ECT causes harm to the brain." So here, in the alternate reality of WebMD, ECT, the harmless-sounding name for the big, bad shock treatment, is safe, causes no harm to the brain, and in fact, causes the brain to function even better? Only in the fairy-tale land of health-care answers, the parallel universe of WebMD!

Can they really expect us to believe such Mickey-Mouse hogwash when in the real-life world, "lower cognitive functioning," "extended memory loss," "restriction in intuition and imagination and inventiveness," and other such descriptions of the harmful effects of shock treatment have been published extensively in the psychiatric literature and discussed openly among psychiatrists for the last sixty years? It boggles the mind how they could think we're that stupid.

The intense electric current applied to the head in this vile and utterly contemptible procedure, strong enough to kill were it to pass through the heart, is falsely described here as "small electrical pulses." The violent seizure induced by this strong electric current, intense enough to break bones in an unanesthetized patient, is misleadingly characterized as "a brief and mild convulsion" resembling something as benign as a bodily "tremor." But this is only because of the drugs that are administered which act to suppress the true intensity of the seizure. And the reason many people are afraid of electroconvulsive therapy, so goes the story, "is probably because of lack of understanding about how the procedure works," as if there's no valid REASON to be fearful.

Perhaps in the Looney-Tunes world of WebMD where falsehood masquerades as "reliable information," shock treatment is harmless and "safe," as advertised. But in the real-life world that we all must return to, this ghastly assault on the essence of our being is indeed a threat that we all should fear, even as we might fear death itself. Even the name electroconvulsive "therapy" is itself an outrageous and damnable lie. This sorry excuse for a "therapeutic modality" is, in fact, quite the opposite of therapy, since it leads not to healing but to the worsening of patients; it leads not to enlightening but to the extinguishing of light. It is a disgrace that this dark relic of the 1940s is still shamelessly promoted in our own modern age!

The Most Extreme Form of Child Abuse

One of the chemical agents that was used in psychiatric research to "exacerbate" symptoms in susceptible patients is extremely intriguing, considering its other major use in psychiatry. Of all the various agents tested for the purpose of "symptom exacerbation," methylphenidate was tops, according to one study, causing an astounding doubling in symptom severity. In another study of seventy first-episode patients, methylphenidate caused 59 percent of them to become "much worse" or "very much worse" and greatly lengthened the time it took for them to recover. When methylphenidate, in another of these studies, was injected into patients who were partially recovered, it caused a "moderate" or "marked deterioration" in most of them, causing researchers to definitively conclude that "methylphenidate can activate otherwise dormant psychotic symptoms."

Another 1987 study revealed how methylphenidate injections provoked psychotic episodes of "frightening intensity." Fifteen minutes after an infusion, one patient shouted, "It's coming at me again - like getting out of control - it's stronger than I am," as he slammed his fists into the bed and table and warned his doctors not to touch him, lest he might become assaultive.

Psychotic episodes of "frightening intensity." That, indeed, is a fitting description of recent events in our nation's history, bizarre outbreaks of senseless violence that are now taking place like never before. On December 1, 1997, fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal opened fire on students at a high-school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teen-age girls were killed, and five other students were seriously wounded. On March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, thirteen-year-old Mitchell Johnson and an eleven-year-old accomplice shot fifteen people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding ten others. On May 20, 1999, T.J. Solomon, a fifteen-year-old student in Conyers, Georgia shot and wounded six of his classmates. All three of the shooters are believed to have been taking methylphenidate at the time of the shootings, the same chemical agent used to provoke and exacerbate psychotic symptoms in psychiatric research studies.

How in heaven's name did these kids obtain methylphenidate? Did they break into a psychiatric research facility and steal this dangerous substance that "can activate otherwise dormant psychotic symptoms" and use it in the manner of an illegal drug? No, they were PRESCRIBED this potent psychosis-provoking agent by their "well-meaning" psychiatrist or family doctor like millions of other school-age children in our country who obediently take their daily dose of Ritalin. Methylphenidate and Ritalin are one and the same!

What a deceitful gang of unprincipled scoundrels! To use this admittedly "frightening" agent in psychiatric studies to "provoke" and "exacerbate" psychotic symptoms in hundreds of improperly informed research subjects is highly unethical, to say the least. But to turn around and prescribe this exact same substance under a different name to millions of totally defenseless CHILDREN (and to claim that methylphenidate, as Ritalin, is "safe") is an offense that can only be described as CRIMINAL in nature, and is something that our society must not tolerate! It is time that the charlatans prescribing this poison are held accountable for these acts of terror!

Antipsychotic Drug Treatment Mythology

Following World War II and the lessons it taught us, America stood at a crossroads in the treatment of the mentally ill. The Nazis had been defeated, eugenics was now a discredited "science" because of its intimate ties with Hitler and the Nazis, the horrific conditions inside America's own "detention camps" for mental "defectives" were being exposed in the media, and America began to rethink its care of the insane.

Although this was the perfect opportunity for a renaissance in mental health care, a return to the more enlightened principles of Pinel and the York Quakers, no modern-day equivalent of "moral treatment" appeared. Instead, a new Dark Age was once again dawning in the enduring mistreatment of America's mentally ill, a time hailed by some as our "advanced" modern era.

Our own "modern" age in the treatment of madness can be said to have dawned in May of 1954 when Smith, Kline & French introduced Thorazine into the American market, the first of psychiatry's so-called "antipsychotic" medications. Although presently perceived as something quite different from the brain-damaging therapeutics that immediately preceded it, this was not how chlorpromazine (the generic name for Thorazine) was seen in the 1950s. In an uncharacteristic expression of psychiatric honesty, it was seen as a possible "pharmacological SUBSTITUTE for lobotomy," not as a treatment that was radically different. Indeed, its effects were eerily similar to lobotomy, making it ideally suited to the control and management of potentially unruly patients in the confines of an institution.

Neuroleptics, as these drugs were originally termed before they were promoted as "antipsychotics," interfere in an essential function of the brain, the transmission of nerve impulses by means of the neurotransmitter, dopamine. By binding to dopamine "receptor sites" so that the dopamine itself can't bind as it's supposed to, nerve impulses are partially blocked by the drug, creating a condition of biochemical imbalance resulting in a diverse array of drug-induced pathologies.

It is important to note that there is absolutely no scientific evidence of dopamine abnormality in psychotic patients prior to treatment with neuroleptic drugs. Their brains, in this regard, are perfectly normal, as has been shown repeatedly in scientific studies. The assertion that so-called "antipsychotic" medications somehow restore normal function in a malfunctioning brain by "correcting" some sort of mythical "biochemical imbalance" can only be characterized as a bald-faced LIE propagated by drug companies to promote further drug sales (which is all they're ever really concerned with). In fact, exactly the opposite is happening in patients whose brains are chemically assaulted. Neuroleptic drugs actually CREATE biochemical imbalance by blocking the normal action of dopamine and thwarting the normal transmission of nerve impulses. Though the average moron should be able to grasp this, apparently psychiatrists find the concept too difficult.

The pathological disruption in dopamine activity induced by these mislabeled "antischizophrenic" agents assaults NORMAL brain function in three vital areas:

1) The ability of drugged patients to initiate body movements is dramatically impeded, making these drugs ideally suited for use in psychiatry as "chemical restraints."

2) The capability of drugged patients to experience emotion is severely curtailed or totally obliterated, resulting in more docile and more easily "managed" patients who are more to the liking of psychiatrists and staff.

3) As is the case with electroshock and the other brain-damaging atrocities, the capacity of drugged patients to control their own destiny by being able to reason clearly and to think for themselves is similarly compromised by this drug mode of "therapy," which impairs intellectual and cognitive function.

Clearly, calling drugs such as these "antipsychotic" or "antischizophrenic," as though they specifically target a patient's psychosis, grossly misrepresents their true mode of action. Neuroleptics "work" to suppress psychosis by suppressing our mental processes in general.

Early investigators observed such a hodgepodge of adverse reactions to chlorpromazine that it is difficult to understand how such a blatantly DANGEROUS substance could ever be considered appropriate for long-term use, even in the sickest and most desperate of patients. In addition to producing "an effect similar to frontal lobotomy" with "completely immobile" and "waxlike" patients who "couldn't care less" lying "quietly in bed," doctors also observed distressing PHYSICAL symptoms as well. Although the drug didn't seem to have any specific antipsychotic properties, it did often induce Parkinson's disease symptoms and the symptoms of viral lethargic encephalitis.

Yet THIS was the toxin that was eventually made over as the new "wonder drug" for the treatment of psychosis, a drug comparable to penicillin for infection and "insulin for diabetes" that would initiate a "revolution in psychiatry" and enable schizophrenic patients to "lead relatively normal lives and not be confined to institutions." But how could one lead even the SEMBLANCE of a "normal life" in the pathetic stupor brought on by this drug? Anyone with even an iota of sanity can see that this "veritable medicinal lobotomy" is entirely unacceptable as a means of "helping" even the most severely afflicted! Perhaps the drug should be administered to its advocates to test its "antipsychotic" properties on their own brand of madness!

Over time, as more and more patients were recklessly placed on these drugs for long-term treatment like "insulin for diabetes," other adverse effects that weren't immediately apparent in the short term began to crop up in alarming frequency.

Probably the most serious and well known of these adverse reactions to neuroleptics is a drug-induced neurological disorder known as tardive dyskinesia, or TD for short. Patients so afflicted exhibit abnormal spasmodic body movements, such as an uncontrollable jerking of the arms and torso and a rhythmic forward and backward motion of the tongue. What makes TD so insidious is that it tends to be permanent, persisting even after the drug is discontinued. Also, the extremely high incidence of TD in drug-treated patients can only be described as shocking and frightening: something on the order of an additional five percent risk for each year of treatment, which translates to a fifty percent risk over a ten-year period. Victims are often so mentally impaired by their drug use that they frequently don't realize that there's anything wrong with them.

As if the high risk of being stricken with the crippling and embarrassing ailment of tardive dyskinesia weren't enough already to make patients want to fly over this cuckoo's nest, neuroleptic drug use entails other perils as well. Akathisia, a profound and intolerable restlessness and anxiety, which especially afflicts users of more potent neuroleptics such as Haldol and Prolixin, is a potential cause of both suicide and violence. Studies have shown that arrest rates of patients, in relation to rates for the rest of society, have INCREASED since the introduction of neuroleptics. Prior to 1955, before such drug use, discharged mental patients were arrested for crimes at no higher rate than the general population.

It is important to understand that violence can be initiated in two separate ways by neuroleptic drug use: either as a direct result of taking the drug or by experiencing the effects of drug withdrawal. Too often when someone commits a bizarre act of violence after terminating a course of psychiatric drug treatment, the withdrawal effects of the drug are not considered and the violence is blamed on the patient's untreated "illness," when it's the drug itself which is truly to blame. Such was the case with Andrea Yates, the mother in Houston who killed her five children while suffering from the effects of withdrawal from Haldol, the insidious agent the Soviets used to torment political prisoners in psychiatric "hospitals."

Take time to reflect a bit on this madness: The very SAME drug that was once used to torture and to control Soviet dissidents in psychiatric prisons is now routinely administered like "insulin for diabetes" to "help" ailing patients such as Andrea Yates! In Russia, this "psychiatric chamber of horrors," as it was perceived at the time by most Americans, was a "horrifying" conversion of "human beings into vegetables," a form of "spiritual murder," and a "variation on the gas chamber." But HERE in the good old USA, as an alleged form of "medically sound treatment," these SAME "antipsychotic" drugs "are among the safest group of drugs known." Given this mind-set of doublethink and hypocrisy and our insane public policy of doling out drugs like psychiatric candy, chilling atrocities like the Houston child murders should come as no surprise. They are the inevitable result of our own stupidity, the frightening consequence of giving free rein to evil, and the final catastrophe of a society gone mad.

In addition to the risk of being turned into a cripple and being influenced to commit heinous criminal acts, neuroleptic drug use entails yet another serious danger: death itself as the ultimate side effect! Neuroleptic malignant syndrome, which can affect as many as one percent of patients and can therefore be classified by the FDA as "frequent," is a fatal toxic reaction that, like tardive dyskinesia, is too often lost in the Thorazine shuffle. This is in addition to the high risk of developing Parkinson's symptoms and degenerative symptoms resembling viral encephalitis. Only a delusional and degenerate profession could so poison its patients and see it as "help."

Further evidence of psychiatry's callous disregard for its patients can be seen in its failure to respond to these new drug-induced disorders. For an interminable time after it was first discovered and to a certain extent even up to the present, it was as though TD simply didn't exist. Psychiatrists and doctors simply went about their business of recklessly prescribing high doses of neuroleptics without so much as even mentioning to patients the extremely high likelihood of tardive dyskinesia.

With billions of dollars of drug money to consider, pharmaceutical companies and their friends in psychiatry were concerned with far more important matters than anything so trivial as the welfare of patients.

In the early 1970s, Loren Mosher, director of the Center for Schizophrenia Studies at the NIMH, set out to find an answer to this question: Would treating acutely psychotic patients in a drug-free environment and in a way that emphasized empathy and compassion be as effective as treating them with standard neuroleptics? Mosher obtained funding for his study and in 1971 established Soteria House in Santa Clara, California which provided accommodations for six "residents" at a time.

There, acutely ill "schizophrenic" patients, who might otherwise be restrained and drugged in a psychiatric hospital, would be given food and shelter and be cared for in a kind and compassionate manner by a respectful and caring non-professional staff, in a mode of treatment that was essentially identical to the "moral treatment" of the early nineteenth century. They would be seen as "residents," not second-class "patients," and would be treated at all times with dignity and respect. Most importantly, they would NOT be exposed to the "antipsychotics" that were the standard fare of conventional therapy.

When the results of the experiment were finally tallied, not only was it found that Soteria House treatment was "as effective as" conventional neuroleptics in the treatment of acutely psychotic individuals, it was also determined to be significantly MORE effective, producing patient outcomes that were decidedly BETTER. But when this striking success was reported by Mosher to the committee of psychiatrists overseeing the project, they denied that the positive results were "compelling" and criticized the study for having "serious flaws." Mosher was replaced with another investigator, one who would agree to obediently "work with" the committee, and was essentially accused of being scientifically dishonest for rediscovering a truth that was heretical to psychiatry: that common and ordinary NON-professionals (and without using drugs!) can achieve better results than highly paid psychiatrists.

Perhaps the most egregious and amazing example of psychiatry's propensity for ignoring the truth, while pursuing its own self-serving agenda, can be seen in its response (or LACK of response) to a landmark study conducted by the World Health Organization in the 1970s and 1980s. This truly astounding study proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that an overwhelming majority of "schizophrenic" patients can indeed COMPLETELY recover, and that the major risk factor for having a POOR recovery is living in one of the richer nations, and receiving so-called modern psychiatric "care."

The WHO researchers were able to determine that almost 64 percent (that's nearly two thirds!) of "schizophrenic" patients living in the impoverished nations of India, Nigeria, and Colombia were completely recovered at the end of five years. In contrast, almost the exact same percentage (nearly 65 percent) of "schizophrenic" patients in the USA and other developed countries were faring POORLY at the end of the same five year period, with only a scant 18 percent who were asymptomatic and functioning well.

What possibly could account for this mind-boggling paradox (as if the solution to this puzzle is not already obvious)? Patients in rich countries were faring quite poorly, while patients in poor countries had lives that were richer. WHO investigators set out to discover the "elusive" cause of this amazing disparity.

After a painstaking analysis of the study data, the dumbfounded researchers finally concluded that for UNKNOWN reasons "schizophrenic" patients in developed nations typically failed to "attain or maintain a complete remission of symptoms," whereas patients in poor countries generally recovered, not really explaining the reason for the difference.

Perhaps they simply lacked the courage to humble themselves and face the truth, the obvious answer that should be clear to anyone: The only variable that could account for this difference was in the type of medical care these patients received, with the so-called "advanced" type of care provided in the richer countries producing outcomes that were decidedly WORSE. In the developed nations experiencing such dismal outcomes, 61 percent of "schizophrenic" patients were being maintained on the usual "antipsychotics," whereas in the third-world countries, where most patients recovered, only 16 percent were kept on these drugs.

Here was credible, irrefutable SCIENTIFIC evidence that psychiatrists were making their patients worse, not better, and here also was psychiatry's golden opportunity to right this wrong, to set the record straight, and to provide a measure of new HOPE to its patients by swallowing its pride and admitting the truth:

"Schizophrenia is not a biological condition, requiring antipsychotic medication like insulin for diabetes that patients must stay on for the rest of their lives. It isn't a case of being hopelessly defective. It is, in most cases, a transient illness from which patients can hope to COMPLETELY recover!"

Imagine what good news this would have been to these patients and how this message of hope could have helped them recover! But alas, such words of hope were never once spoken by any of our "compassionate" and "caring" psychiatrists (except perhaps by Peter Breggin), and in 1998, more patients than ever were having their lives utterly ruined by being placed on disease-CAUSING neuroleptic drugs. An astounding 92 percent of American "schizophrenics" were BEING MADE hopelessly defective for the rest of their lives [by being maintained on these horrific and counterproductive neuroleptic drugs]!

Book Review: The Antidepressant Fact Book

Feeling constantly depressed and down in the dumps? Finding it more and more difficult to get out of bed? Perhaps you haven't cleaned house in quite some time now? Maybe it's been a long time since you last mowed your lawn? Perhaps you haven't showered or bathed in a few days either?

If so, there's "help" available, according to WebMD, the site you can "trust" for health-care answers. You should make an appointment to see your doctor, who can evaluate your condition and possibly prescribe medication to treat your "disorder."

Since depression, the story goes, is a medical condition, an actual disease, it's best that it's treated by medical means. Your doctor may prescribe an antidepressant, which will "correct" the "imbalance" causing the depression.

This, in essence, is the advice that we're given almost everywhere we turn when we're seeking help for depression. But how wise is this advice and how complete is this information? And, most importantly, is it advice that we can really trust?

Dr. Peter R. Breggin's THE ANTIDEPRESSANT FACT BOOK provides the "rest of the story" in regard to depression, including effective alternative strategies and other vital information you won't find anywhere else, and certainly not from establishment sources such as WebMD. Only by weighing all of this evidence will you be able to make an informed decision. You owe it to yourself to read this book before making a commitment to any course of action.

The more that one learns about psychiatric medication, the less attractive an option it inevitably becomes. Why do we have such an accepting and complacent attitude toward these powerful psychoactive substances while we so vigorously condemn other such drug use in our society? Isn't this an example of doublethink and hypocrisy? Shouldn't saying "no to drugs" ideally mean saying no to psychiatric drugs as well? How are these drugs any different or any better than the drugs that are illicitly sold on the street corner? Does the fact that they are legally sanctioned and that they are pushed by pharmaceutical companies and doctors magically endow them with innocuous properties?

"Antidepressants have been proven safe and effective by the FDA for the treatment of depression, whereas illicit drugs have been shown to be harmful," you may be thinking. Let's examine these claims of safety and efficacy for antidepressants and see how these drugs truly compare to tobacco and to other drugs which we know are harmful.

Here again we return to the issue of trust. Can we trust drug trials to be fair and objective? The answer becomes apparent when we consider who conducts them. The studies are conducted not by the FDA itself, but by "independent" researchers who are paid by the drug companies. Trials are ultimately managed by the drug companies themselves, and only reviewed in the approval process by the FDA. Not only are they biased for this basic reason, but the FDA also is itself frequently biased in favor of the drug companies. So the idea that these studies can be relied upon and trusted is an all too commonly held misconception.

For example, in the Prozac trials, an important research protocol was violated, and important information was stealthily suppressed. Early in the drug trials, Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, discovered that a significant percentage (38 percent) of Prozac patients were becoming over stimulated (were exhibiting symptoms of agitation and anxiety like those produced by stimulant drugs). The company decided to hide this crucial data and to give the patients tranquilizers in an effort to conceal the Prozac-induced stimulation. (No other drugs were supposed to be given with the Prozac so that the effect of the Prozac could be adequately evaluated.)

So, in blatant violation of FDA procedures, it wasn't Prozac itself which was finally tested and ultimately approved, but a combination of Prozac and benzodiazepine tranquilizers. Even though after approval, Prozac would certainly be prescribed by itself, during the trials, Prozac by itself wasn't adequately tested. And the FDA allowed this infraction of its own rules!

Aside from being hopelessly biased in favor of the drug companies, drug trials conducted to gain FDA approval exhibit two other characteristics that tend to make them extremely unreliable, especially in regard to the issue of safety: Drug trials are typically short-term studies conducted on a relatively small number of people. For instance, the Prozac studies only involved a few hundred people followed over the course of only a few weeks.

And yet, claims of safety are based on these studies. Reflect on the absurdity of such claims for a moment: How can the long-term safety of a drug that may ultimately be taken by millions of people continuously over the course of many decades be determined in a small-scale, short-term study of only a few hundred people lasting at the most a few short weeks? Obviously such claims of "proven safety" are patently false, just like other outlandish claims made for these drugs. No one really knows what the long-term effects are!

One could just as easily "prove" that tobacco is "safe" (by supplying each of a few hundred people with a pack of cigarettes each day for a period of a few weeks and at the end of the study testing them for adverse effects such as emphysema or lung cancer). I bet you wouldn't find any emphysema or lung cancer over such a short time period, but would that reliably prove that tobacco is safe? Certainly not! And short-term clinical trials don't prove Prozac safe either!

Consider the so-called "antipsychotic" medications, drugs such as Haldol and Thorazine for example, a class of drugs which have been in use much longer than SSRI antidepressants. Initially they were deemed to also be safe. But now, after decades of unconscionable human experimentation, it is now admitted by the psychiatric profession that these drugs do indeed cause tardive dyskinesia, a crippling and disfiguring neurological condition characterized by abnormal body movements. What similar horrors await the hapless SSRI antidepressant drug user after twenty or thirty years of continuous use?

Aside from the unknown long-range effects, which are frightening enough to have to consider, Prozac and its cousins produce an incredible array of well-documented reactions, page-long listings of adverse effects. Also especially troubling is an increased risk of suicide and violence, evidenced by the unprecedented rash of particularly brutal and bizarre murder-suicides so often linked to these dangerous drugs.

A drug advocate will invariably tell you that it isn't the drugs that are to blame for these bizarre acts of violence. "No, it's the underlying mental illness of those perpetrating the violence that's responsible for such senseless and outrageous acts."

But there is a major problem with this psychiatrist's delusion: As Robert Whitaker points out in MAD IN AMERICA, before the use of psychiatric drugs (prior to 1955), discharged mental patients committed crimes at no higher a rate than the general population. It was only after the introduction of psychiatric drugs (in this case "antipsychotics") that arrest rates of discharged mental patients began to exceed the arrest rates of persons in the general population. This tends to strongly indicate that it is indeed the drug that's the problem!

Eli Lilly was aware of an increased risk of suicide among patients taking Prozac but repeatedly withheld this critical data while continuing the dealing of its lucrative drug. Depressed patients, already at high risk of suicide, being steered toward a "treatment" that can make that risk higher? It kind of reminds me of how a uncaring cocain drug dealer might make the risk to his customers greater. This is absurdity, lunacy, insanity, and sheer, flat-out depravity all neatly rolled up into one little capsule: a total disregard of everything decent and moral in deference to the pursuit of billions in drug money!

So much for the mythological safety claims made for antidepressant "medications." What about the claims that they are effective? How effective are antidepressants in the treatment of depression? Here again, Prozac falls flat on its face.

Eli Lilly had to really work at it to show that Prozac was in any way "effective." It barely squeaked by the drug approval process, and probably wouldn't have had it not been for the machinations and manipulations described earlier. After a great deal of manipulative statistical chicanery, the combination of Prozac and benzodiazepine tranquilizers showed itself to be marginally effective. Prozac by itself, which is much more likely to produce amphetamine-like effects, was never properly tested.

Indeed, a recent review of all antidepressant drug trials used for FDA approval over a period of ten years only showed a meager 10 percent advantage of these drugs over placebo. Overall, 41 percent of the drug-treated patients showed some "improvement" (not recovery), whereas 31 percent of the patients given a placebo improved. Over half of the drug-treated patients didn't improve at all.

Even considering how biased and how pro-drug these studies inevitably are, the drug companies were only able to make their drugs appear marginally effective. It might just as easily be shown, using similarly designed trials, that other psychoactive drugs, such as amphetamines and alcohol, are equally if not more effective than Prozac in "improving" the way that depressed people feel. But should these other drugs be used for this purpose? What is it that makes Prozac so special?

"Amphetamines and alcohol can be highly addictive, whereas Prozac and other SSRI antidepressants are not habit-forming," you may think. Think again.

SSRI antidepressants quite frequently cause distressing withdrawal reactions when they are abruptly discontinued, effects such as one might experience when getting off heroin. It can be extremely difficult to stop taking these drugs. In fact, after starting antidepressants for whatever reason, many people continue to take them solely for the sake of avoiding unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, everything from nausea and vomiting to rebound depression and anxiety. Such users, once started, are stuck on the drug...with the pharmaceutical drug dealers receiving a fat monthly stipend!

Moreover, returning again to the issue of efficacy, even if it can be determined that an antidepressant is "effective" in alleviating the symptoms of depression, it doesn't necessarily follow that it's effective in the true sense. It may mask depression by blunting the emotions and producing an artificial sense of well-being, but it doesn't address the actual cause, which can be either psychological or physical in nature. Seen in this light, antidepressants are invariably ineffective and only compound and confuse the original problem. What the drug user experiences is an illusion of "feeling better," just as with giving pain killers to a patient with appendicitis. The underlying condition remains untreated, and the person so anesthetized is worse off than ever.

"But antidepressants DO address the cause of depression; they work to correct a biochemical imbalance of the brain," retorts the typical biological psychiatrist. This is what psychiatrists and their drug company puppet masters would have us believe: that they are so far advanced in their scientific knowledge that they are able to successfully micromanage the delicate chemistry of the human brain, the most complex entity in all the known universe.

But we may never understand its intricate workings. Not even Mr. Spock or Dr. McCoy using futuristic Star Trek technology could accomplish such a feat! It would take a god to fully understand brain function, yet the arrogant claims made by psychiatrists that they are somehow able to "correct" brain "imbalances" presume just this sort of god-like knowledge.

Recall that just a few short years ago (in the 1940s) these same psychiatrists were hammering ice picks into their patients' eye sockets, destroying vital brain tissue, and touting such butchery as an "advanced" form of treatment (termed a transorbital lobotomy). Such savage "doctors" were truly insane, far more mad than their helpless victims!

Do they really expect us to believe that they've made the transition from barbarian to deity in such a short time frame? Or are their modern-day "miracle" drugs simply a NEW means of assaulting the brain, a "stab in the dark," but this time by chemical rather than mechanical means? It's ironic that these drugs actually CAUSE biochemical imbalance, the exact same dysfunction that they are supposed to "correct."

It seems that psychiatry is as insane as ever. The world of psychiatry, with its Prozac and Ritalin, with its Lilly-sponsored WebMD, with its "antipsychotics" and "antidepressants," and with its barbaric, brain-damaging shock treatment that even in our supposedly enlightened age still lingers, is sadly a world of sham and illusion.

Its purpose is not to serve the interest of its patients, but to cater to its own self-serving interests and to the drug-dealing corporations that are pulling its strings. It is a "world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth," the most important truth being that our soul is sacred, and that treatments that assault our brain and psyche are also an assault on our very soul.