Jonathan Kozol "Terrifying data conveyed in the calm and sober voice of an experienced and respected physician and researcher. A brilliantly controversial and, for me, uncomfortably persuasive work - and a major addition to our understanding of racism as it infiltrates our science and culture." Bertram P. Karon, Ph.D., author, Psychotherapy
of Schizophrenia
Book Description
Dr. Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin inspired a national campaign against the proposed federal "Violence Initiative," aimed at identifying inner city children with alleged defects that were said to make them more violent when they reached adulthood. Many of the research plans, still in operation, involve searching for a "violence gene," finding "biochemical imbalances," and intervening in the lives of schoolchildren with psychiatric drugs. The Breggins describe this broad network of private and public programs - funded by the pharmaceutical industry as well as tax dollars - in the single-minded quest for a genetic or biological answer to the rising crime rate. With several million youngsters already on Ritalin and other medications, diagnoses and treatments are replacing adult responsibility and social reform. The Breggins warn that the low priority of the rights and emotions of children is the real epidemic that must be addressed, and soon. As an alternative, THE WAR AGAINST CHILDREN OF COLOR offers a host of measures for fulfilling the genuine needs of children without invasive treatments and stigmatizing labels. Excerpted from The War Against Children
of Color: Psychiatry Targets Inner-City Youth by Peter Roger Breggin
and Ginger Ross Breggin. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission.
All rights reserved
Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases. - Hippocrates (460-375 BC) Aphorisms Some remedies are worse than the disease. - Publilius Syrus (first century B.C.), Maxims The mayor of Washington D.C., Sharon Pratt Kelly, recently appealed to President Clinton to mobilize the National Guard for help in controlling the daily bloodshed on her city's streets. This was not a far-fetched request, since Washington, D.C. - like most American cities - is being overwhelmed with escalating violence. Casualties include children, like the four-year-old youngster who died after being hit by a bullet during a shooting spree on the playground of a local elementary school. It's no wonder that some African-American leaders, including columnist William Raspberry, have joined the mayor in wanting the National Guard deployed. Many have hoped that the problem of violence would remain an inner-city phenomenon. Commenting on the rash of tourist killings in southern Florida, columnist Amy Schwartz observed that "for all the statistics, it's been slow to sink in that this isn't just a problem for other people's neighborhoods." Raspberry put it more bluntly: "The cynics said we should just cool it. After all, it was mostly dope dealers killing each other. It would be over as soon as the turf claims got settled. Meanwhile, well, good riddance to bad rubbish." Now horror stories of children killing or assaulting children can be found in every corner of America. If some of us in the suburbs feel relatively removed from drive-by shootings, we feel vulnerable to terrifying car-jackings and armed daylight robbery in our homes. Individuals with means turn to security systems - from cumbersome steering wheel bars to elaborate electronic home security units. Communities beef up police forces and band together for neighborhood watches. Most tragically, children have begun carrying guns to school in order to protect themselves. Almost everyone agrees that self-protective measures will not curb the overall violence, and that more arrests and mandatory minimum sentencing are creating new problems. Prisons are overflowing. The inmates are a mixed group ranging from the most violent perpetrators to those convicted for the sale of small amounts of street drugs, and their incarceration tends to make them into more hardened criminals. State legislators, under pressure from shrinking budgets and threatened state bankruptcies, are being forced to confront rising prison costs. Now science and medicine have stepped forward to offer a helping hand. Some of the most prestigious and respected scientific institutions in our country are increasing their efforts in response to America's growing desperation. Scientists and physicians are the miracle workers of our century, having provided everything from electric light against the darkness to a vaccine against polio. Their technical inventiveness seems capable of mastering the physical universe. In America we tend to hold them in high regard as impartial, humane, and, above all, objective. "Doctor-recommended" highlights many advertisements. We expect physicians and scientists to deal with facts - precise bits of physical evidence that are indisputable. Against this background of expectations and beliefs, scientists and doctors are attempting to address violence as a disease: The U.S. Public Health Service has launched a "public health campaign" against violence, focusing upon "vulnerable individuals." * The most powerful psychiatrist in the federal government has publicly promoted the screening and preventive treatment of inner-city children - those with a presumed biological and genetic predisposition to become violent when they grow older.Even when an epidemic has an obvious physical cause, as exemplified by AIDS, science can have its limits, and identifying or treating vulnerable or diseased individuals may not offer the ultimate solution. Educating Americans to change their sexual values and habits, for example, may prove most effective in controlling the AIDS epidemic. But in the age of science, how many of us expect salvation to come from a combination of personal responsibility and transformed social viewpoints? The prevailing vision is that breakthroughs must happen in the laboratory. Science and medicine influence our view of ourselves, and in turn science and medicine are influenced by our social prejudices. Scientific solutions are often laden with their own biases, such as an insensitivity to the value of liberty, and a moral vacancy around the rights and needs of children and minorities. Resorting to the National Guard, as hazardous as it is, may be less menacing to civil liberties than resorting to the National Institute of Mental Health. If a neighborhood is secured and made safe for a time by a military presence and curfews, the curtailments of liberty are relatively easy to perceive. So are the limits of using military force to solve social problems. But the dangers of medical and psychiatric interventions - cloaked in science and the language of disease and healing - can be much more difficult to discern and to resist. Promises for ultimate success may be uncritically embraced by a public eager to find seemingly humane medical solutions. The Faustian price for turning to the social-control doctors may not become fully apparent until the "cure" has been put into place. In our desperation to find answers, we could end up with measures that are ultimately more threatening than the street violence we all deplore, and to no avail as well. A recently proposed federal violence initiative, which we have actively investigated and opposed, epitomizes this technological approach. Perpetrators of violence in the inner city are seen as biochemically and genetically defective, and plans are developed for identifying supposedly violence-prone children before they grow into dangerous youths and adults. The violence initiative is the most recent example of a long series of attempts to resolve social conflict through science and technology. The controversy surrounding it illuminates the broader issue of the role of biomedicine in resolving social problems. Is there validity to the science of social control? Do genetics and biochemistry play a role in crime and violence? Do pharmacological, or even psychosurgical, interventions hold any promise? See online biography and comments by Peter Breggin.
People DO have various problems with life. Instead of naming and redefining these problems as various "mental diseases", and labeling people with them, as is currently done within the psychiatric community, these problems with life and living are best understood and addressed outside of the traditional psychiatric paradigm. Why? Because psychiatric "treatments" such as ECT, lobotomy, and powerful psychotropic drugs are barbaric, based upon severe faulty scientific methodology, and quite simply, harm people. In fact, they actually compound the already existing problem(s) and make matters worse!
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