In this searing, myth-shattering exposé, psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D., breaks through the hype and false promises surrounding the "New Psychiatry" and shows how dangerous, even potentially brain-damaging, many of its drugs and treatments are. He asserts that: psychiatric drugs are spreading an epidemic of long-term brain damage; mental "illnesses" like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorder have never been proven to be genetic or even physical in origin, but are under the jurisdiction of medical doctors; millions of school-children, housewives, elderly people, and others are labeled with medical diagnoses and treated with authoritarian interventions, rather than being patiently listened to, understood, and helped. Toxic Psychiatry sounds a passionate, much-needed wake-up call for everyone who plays a part, active or passive, in America's ever-increasing dependence on harmful psychiatric drugs. The concept and use of the term "mental illness" is actually a metaphor. In the same way we say "my car is ill" or "that was a sick joke", so we say "he has a sick mind" or "he suffers from mental illness". The term refers to a comparative conception which, in fact, refers to no actual or specific physical human ailment such as cancer or arthritis. "Mental illness" actually refers primarily to problems with life and living, which modern psychiatry has redefined to mean "brain disease", "biochemical imbalances" or "genetic disorders". None of these actually exist despite propaganda to the contrary and years of "studies" conducted by the psychiatric field and drug companies (who want so much for it to be true so they can sell their drugs to a largely falsely informed public). CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR Toxic Psychiatry: "Dr. Breggin is the conscience of American psychiatry. The truths he tells are important not only for patients and professionals, but also for the general public. Definitely a 'must read'; even more important, a 'must think about."' - Bertram P. Karon, Ph.D., author of Psychotherapy of SchizophreniaSee online biography and comments by Peter Breggin.
PETER R. BREGGIN, M. D., is a leading critic of psychiatric drugs and the psycho-pharmaceutical complex. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Case Western Reserve Medical School, and was formerly a teaching fellow at Harvard Medical School and a full-time consultant with the National Institute of Mental Health. He is the director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and has been in the full-time practice of psychiatry in Bethesda, Maryland, since 1968. Dr. Breggin is the author, with Ginger Ross Breggin, of Talking Back to Prozac and The War Against Children.
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