Posted by OldSchool on December 31, 2001, at 15:50:05
In reply to Has anyone read, Your Drug May Be Your Problem, posted by sjb on December 31, 2001, at 13:29:02
> by Peter R. Breggin, MD and David Cohen, PhD - 1999.
>
> It's very spooky and scary but I'd like advice/opinions on the authors and their research before I throw out the meds!!!!!! I know, I know, I should ask my PDoc, and I will, but I want other feedback.I wouldnt put much stock in Peter Breggin's books. The man is a notorious leader of the "anti-psychiatry" movement. Which is heavily funded by the cult of scientology. Individuals like Breggin who are members of this anti-psychiatry movement refuse to believe or admit that mental illness is biologically based, in the brain.
From what Ive read of Breggin's works, the man is still stuck in fifties era psychiatry, with a heavy emphasis on old style, classical Freudian psychotherapy. Breggin doesnt believe in using drugs much to treat mental illness, nor in ECT. The man might have been better off had he become a psychologist, rather than a psychiatrist. What with his preferences for classical talk psychotherapy over drugs and ECT.
All of that being said, there are a few things I do personally agree with Breggin on. I agree with him on the subject of anti-psychotic drugs being used inappropriately, such as in nursing homes to combat agitated elderly folks. I agree neuroleptics are some potentially very hazardous drugs, which are misused many times.
Breggin also was heavily involved in getting rid of the lobotomy in the early seventies. Which was only a good thing for all of us folks with severe mental illness! Breggin also was influential in helping to end the common practice in "old style" psychiatry of forcing ECT on patients who didnt want it. I thank Breggin for that.
However, all in all, Breggin's books reflect the darker era of psychiatry, more as it was in 1965 or 1970, not the year 2001. Basically the man is anti-psychiatry med, anti-ECT, anti-anything that could make a severely mentally ill person's life better.
Breggin still thinks its 1960 in psychiatry, IMO.
Old School
poster:OldSchool
thread:88357
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011222/msgs/88369.html