Why I'm Antipsychiatry

People don’t like any term that begins with “anti” as it implies that a person is ready to jump down the throats of others while spewing sheer propaganda out of their mouths. However, sometimes there really isn’t any other term to describe someone who is very critical of a certain idea, scheme, organization, profession, etc. In that case, I am what people call antipsychiatry, a term made famous by Scientologists who, quite frankly, promote the same techniques that psychiatry uses to acquire “patients” to recruit new members into their little cult. However, I’d like to dispel some of the myths surrounding the Mental Health Liberation Movement and the beliefs of those of us who are just very critical of anything that promotes a disease without proof. I’m also going to talk about the different kinds of drugs out there and how they harm us and society in general, and, hopefully, leave you with some new insight and trivia knowledge that you may not have otherwise known. I also hope that you have a greater understanding of some other possible causes for abnormal behavior, and also insight into some different treatment options.

First of all, not everyone who is antipsychiatry is a Scientologist. Scientologists weren’t even the first antipsychiatry extremists! L. Ron Hubbard was also pretty hypocritical in his antipsychiatry stance in that he actually died from an overdose of psychiatric drugs. Now, you’ll probably see a lot of pamphlets, videos, etc. made by the Citizens Commission of Human Rights, which is less about human rights as a whole and entirely antipsychiatry, and some of them are very misleading.

For one, Scientologists don’t seem to be able to distinguish psychologists from psychiatrists. If you don’t know the difference, I’ll explain it to you. Traditionally, psychologists have been about studying human behavior. They look at the behaviors of people and search for the underlying reason why. Why do we conform? Why do we care about how others perceive, or why don’t we care? The list goes on and on. They didn’t search for “mental illness” initially because they believed that a person’s instability arose from suppressed feelings, past trauma, their relationships, etc. Of course, now they’re ready and willing to disband this train of thought in order to have a closer relationship with the psychiatric profession, but this wasn’t always the case.

Psychologists aren’t M.D professionals, either. They obtain PhDs and Master Degrees, so they don’t have the authority to actually diagnose someone as mentally ill or prescribe drugs, but they can refer you to a psychiatrist. As a whole, psychologists are the ones who talk out your problems with you, suggest coping skills, etc. Ironically, however, one of my college psychology books, Psychology Applied to Modern Life, spends most of its time talking about electroshock and drugs in its psychotherapy chapter.

Psychiatrists, on the other hand, believe that abnormal behavior is not caused by the circumstances of one’s life but by a biological problem. The answer to most of the questions they ask themselves will be, “Because so-and-so is mentally ill!” Why don’t you pay attention in class? Why are you prone to anger? Why are you so lazy? Those are the kinds of questions they ask and have only one real answer for. Sometimes they’ll write something off as being caused by a poor relationship, a stressful environment, etc. but only in a few circumstances.

Psychiatrists paraded the halls of asylums, more or less shunned by the real medical community for a number of years until they came up with their largely fabricated chemical imbalance theory. They were medical doctors technically, but they really didn’t emerge until they came up with this theory and their treatments, such as lobotomy. This led to marketing drugs, the creation of the DSM (Diagnostics and Statistics Manual), and the American Psychiatric Association. Despite what you’ve seen on the show Monk, psychiatrists don’t talk out your problems with you. Their primary training revolves diagnosing and prescribing. Granted, I’m a fan of Monk, but Dr. Kroger always came off as a bizarre cross between psychiatrist and psychologist. He could prescribe drugs, but he wasn’t a drug pusher and preferred to let his patients make their own choices. Some psychiatrists are like this, but they are a rare find.

Another myth is that antipsychiatry crowds don’t believe that people have real problems. They say things like, “Well, you must have never been severely depressed!” and, “You don’t have a son like me!” Yes, I’ve been very depressed and my brother was diagnosed with just about everything in the book, but more on that later. The antipsychiatrists know that people have problems, and sometimes very severe problems, we just don’t believe that these problems have a biological basis, at least not a chemical imbalance or genetic issue, and would prefer to see people taking some responsibility and helping themselves in ways other than through drugs, such as conventional therapy.

One thing about antipsychiatry folks is that they can be very pushy, especially if they happen to be Scientologists. This is because the use of drugs and electroshock are usually administered by force or before giving the patient an informed explanation as to what these methods do, the harm involved, and alternative ways of going about treatment. Patients typically don’t have much say as to which treatments they’d like to pursue, especially children in foster care and the elderly in nursing homes. Granted, if you really want to go down the route of drugs and electroshock, be my guest. I’ll try to talk you out of it, but you can take my advice or leave it. However, I know plenty of other members of the Mental Health Liberation Movement who would practically throttle you before you even had a chance to speak with a psychiatrist! Bottom line, don’t judge everyone by their bossy behavior. Most of them are genuinely trying to help you, and, especially the ones who call themselves psychiatric survivors, are just desperate to not see anyone else hurt.

Moving on, why is psychiatry so bad? It has to do with a lot of things. First of all, the theory that all behavior problems are the result of some biochemical problem has never been proven. Believe it or not, no one has ever seen what a real bipolar brain, ADHD brain, or even schizophrenic brain looks like! Some say the brains of psychotics are smaller, but the reason they appear smaller is due to the drugs administered to them, especially with the rise of newer atypical antipsychotics. An unmedicated schizophrenic or bipolar brain looks no different from an average person’s. On top of that, no “crazy” gene has been found. If you want to get particular, we don’t even know what balanced chemicals look like, let alone imbalanced ones!

So, how do these disorders get classified in the DSM and passed off as fact? Believe it or not, they are actually voted into existence by psychiatrists. A really good site regarding the DSM is here: http://www.psychdisorders.org/psych_billing_bible.html. If I were to list off a number of symptoms, for example, bed wetting, night terrors, inability to concentrate, mood swings, and irritability, then ask you, “Should this be a disease?” you’d probably stare at me like I was the insane one. Yet this is exactly how disorders are voted into life by the APA! Cancer wasn’t voted into being a disease, nor was diabetes, the common cold, or osteoporosis, yet psychiatrists are always trying to pass their disorders off as actual physical problems.

I should also mention that you only have to have 3 of the 5 symptoms (5 is usually the magic number), so be diagnosed as mentally ill, and then it depends on which illness the psychiatrist wants to diagnose you with since, for example, irritability, mood swings, and concentration issues are present in a lot of the so-called disorders! It depends on which symptom the psychiatrist thinks is the most important, and he’ll make a decision from there.

By putting a label on someone, telling them their disease is incurable, and then telling them that their actions are out of their own control liberates people from a certain responsibility. I don’t have to be on time because I’m ADD, or, I can’t help it that I’m angry. We can use it as a way to avoid personal responsibility (while some psychiatrists try and help a person gain control of their “symptoms” they always maintain that it’s mostly beyond their control), it also destroys our chances of living a life free of stigma and free of a “cure”. Also, you may develop a wide variety of problems that arise from the medications you take. If, however, you choose to avoid drugs and electroshock, you must reexamine your life, your choices, and it can be painful, depressing, and may invoke some major changes. However, in the long run it allows one to retake control of their life.

Now then, what’s so bad about taking medications anyway? Psychiatric drugs range from stimulants and SSRI medications, such as Ritalin, to full-blown antipsychotics, such as Depakote, Risperdal, Abilify, and Zyprexa. Each of these medications has their own range of side-effects, so let’s just start with the stimulants.

When my brother was young, Ritalin was the drug in style. There was a test going on in the early 1990s to see if hyperactivity could be predicted in toddlers, and children as young as two and three years old could be placed on Ritalin or any other stimulant to see if it could be stopped before it began. Think along the lines of taking aspirin just to prevent a headache in case it should arise. This was the time when young kids were first being prescribed psychiatric drugs, unleashing chemicals upon their developing brains.

For a quick rundown of what Adderall and Ritalin (my example drugs) do, they are officially called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. There are around 14 kinds of serotonin in the brain, and I have yet to discover exactly what kinds of serotonin are inhibited. Even my second year psychology teacher couldn’t tell me, and he was a huge drug pusher! We really don’t know, and that in and of itself is a bit dangerous.

What are the potential dangers of these drugs? For one, they are gateway drugs. They say that marijuana is the biggest gateway drug we deal with, however, we are learning that it is in fact these “harmless” ADHD drugs that are being gateway drugs. It starts with kids buying and sharing these drugs for the effect they get, then they sometimes go on to the illegal stuff. Technically speaking, Ritalin itself is a legal form of the drug known as speed.

These drugs can also cause respiratory problems, cardiac arrest, memory loss, etc. I believe the founders of ablechild.org lost their fourteen-year-old son to heart failure when he was taking these drugs, and a quick video I saw on TV once told of a twelve-year-old girl who was rushed to the emergency room and died of a heart attack after being on Adderall.

I do have personal experience with this drug. In elementary school, teachers were just beginning to be trained in spotting trouble kids. I always found school a bit boring, and I prefer to read and educate myself. Why? Probably because I’m very introverted and dislike a classroom setting. That and the fact that teachers can be boring. Well, it was recommended to my mom that I be placed on a stimulant, and soon I was taking 12 mg of Adderall. I could always tell when the drug would take effect because I’d feel lightheaded, my hands would turn purple, my legs would grow weak, and I’d have difficulty breathing. I didn’t feel like myself and my doctor refused to take me off of them or even change the dose.

Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I was faking taking the pill every morning, tossing them in the garbage, or shoving them in undisclosed places to avoid it. I don’t blame my mom at all, because people take what their doctors say for granted, and I don’t consider myself a psychiatric survivor in any way. This wasn’t what made me dislike psychiatry, seeing as how I went on to major in psychology, but I can tell from personal experience that these drugs can really make you feel bad, and that doctors don’t particularly care.

After going through high school without ever taking the drugs, I finally decided to give it one more shot in college, the reason being that most students would try and buy the drugs off kids around test time in order to get an extra boost of concentration. I figured a doctor would just give me some as a sample, and I’ve never done that again. It was Adderall XR, a more potent (and deadly) version of the original Adderall. I got all the same symptoms as I did before but it felt like it was ten fold! If I’d had a car, I would’ve gone straight to the emergency room, but seeing as I didn’t, I just doubled over in bed and vowed not to ever do that again. No more chemicals for me, but I didn’t tell that to my psychology professor!

Okay, enough of that – on to antidepressants, since they’re almost in a league of their own. Antidepressants are supposed to be on the same wavelength as the stimulants, their goal being to cure you of your sadness. Let’s start with some trivia here. The boys involved with the Columbine shootings were on antidepressants. Let’s keep going. The boy from Cass Lake who went on a shooting spree in his school was taking antidepressants. Antidepressants were also involved in the Virginia Tech situation. Every single recent school shooting has been linked to antidepressants. This is pretty common knowledge now, but when you think of the fact that young people have been able to get firearms since America’s beginnings and haven’t shot their classmates and teachers, this is very shocking news.

Antidepressants are also linked to an increased risk of suicide, which is pretty sad considering that’s really the one thing they’re supposed to prevent. Violence and SSRIs have been holding hands for a while now, yet no one seems to pay attention. Despite the fact that volunteers in studies have committed suicide while on these drugs, they still manage to reach a doctor’s hands.

Also, every kind of drug I’ve mentioned thus far can actually cause symptoms that look like other problems. Most people, particularly young ones, who were diagnosed as bipolar were first diagnosed as ADD, ADHD, or depressed and placed on drugs. These drugs produce anxiety, mania, and a whole myriad of other symptoms mimicking what psychiatrists call bipolar. At least nine out of ten bipolar young adults have been on one of these drugs, their symptoms not becoming pronounced until afterwards.

For a really quick example, after my brother started on Ritalin, he became fidgety, anxious, and was hallucinating. He thought he saw bugs everywhere, and he wouldn’t go outside unless I was holding his hand at all times. It ostracized him from his peers (he was around 9), and he was prone to panic. He also grew violent around this time. Not violent in a potential school shooter kind of way, but he would hit or kick if he lost his temper, which was very frequent. He was eventually sent to an institution where, rather than withdrawing him from meds to see if that helped, they instead instantly diagnosed him as bipolar and went on to shove antipsychotics down his throat.

Next up, antipsychotics. Why are they bad and are they ever needed? I don’t believe antipsychotics are ever needed, although I understand that if someone is severely delusional, they may benefit from temporary use of antipsychotics, and I mean very temporary. Long-term use of these things is worse than the SSRIs.

First of all, they cause brain shrinkage. A lot of times you’ll hear a “professional” say that the difference between a bipolar brain or a schizophrenic brain and a “normal” brain is the size. The brains of these so-called diseased people are supposed to be smaller in size. However, studies have shown that unmedicated brains are the same size as a regular person’s, thus disproving this earlier theory. So, if I were to diagnose someone as being a schizophrenic and not medicate him, his brain would be identical to mine. There is nothing physically different between the brain of a so-called mentally ill person and healthy person, therefore, brain shrinkage is just one side effect of antipsychotics, the atypical antipsychotics (namely Zyprexa aka olanzapine) being the most notorious for this. One study conducted on non-human primates concluded that olanzapine shrunk the brain by 20% after a 17 month trial period. That’s pretty frightening and not to be taken lightly.

Another side effect that is less of a side effect and more of a direct effect of this drugs is weight gain. I’m not talking about a couple pounds here and there; I’m talking 30 or more pounds, mostly condensed in the stomach region, which is where you definitely need to keep weight off in order to avoid health complications later. It’s usually pretty easy to tell whenever a person is obese due to an unhealthy lifestyle and when it’s caused by medication.

I’m going to really pick on Eli Lily’s Zyprexa again, because the users of this drug usually end up diabetic due to their weight gain. Moreover, it’s not a normal diabetes, either, as it also includes a greatly increased risk for hyperglycemia. Between 2005 and 2007, Eli Lily settled more than 28,500 lawsuits from patients who were suffering from diabetes and other health complications and grieved family members who lost loved ones to the drug. However, while Zyprexa seems to be taking a lot of the heat, that doesn’t mean that other antipsychotics don’t have this same effect, with the atypical ones being much worse.

I could write another ten pages on the topic of antipsychotics, but for this summary I’ll refrain from doing so and point you to a paper that covers a lot of information regarding withdrawal, the effects of the drugs on a person’s brain function, etc. http://psychrights.org/research/Digest/Chronicity/50yearecord.pdf

Also, these drugs are notorious for off-label use. Most antipsychotics are approved only for persons over the age of 19, but recently children as young as 2-years-old have been prescribed them, and sometimes in massive doses! This is off-label, but no one is checking it at all. I was once talking to a psychologists who had been doing the job for a number of years and was involved in a school shooting case, and asked him why he prescribed antipsychotics to mildly troubled teenagers, especially when it wasn’t approved. His answer was, “Everyone else does it! Do you have any idea how many antipsychotics are used off-label!” I just nodded, but I felt enraged inside.

Not only are the drugs being given to children, but due to their miraculous ability to pack on the pounds, they’re also given to anorexic teens! Teens who are not considered mentally ill are given these drugs until they regain a healthy weight, and if that’s not an off-label use then I don’t know what is!

I just have one more piece of information to share with you as to why the system is rather frivolous in my eyes. First, let’s think of how cancer is diagnosed. You see a lump or display some other symptom and go to the doctor. Blood samples and x-rays are taken and probably some tissue as well. Later, the doctor informs you that you do or don’t have cancer. It’s the same wherever you go, no matter what country. That’s how real diseases are diagnosed, however, when it comes to mental illness, each country has its own standards by which they determine what, say, schizophrenia is, or what bipolar is. It’s different everywhere you go! Also, some societies are very accepting of certain behaviors – maybe even encourage them – while another society believes these behaviors to be a sign of illness. It depends on where you are, and that only further discredits the profession, in my opinion.

Now, before I end the paper I’m going to share my brother’s story so that you, too, know that I have walked in your shoes before and am not just a dusty old academic trying to push some piece of propaganda in your face (that’s the psychiatrist’s job!).

One of my two younger brothers was still in his toddler years during the early 90s, which was a time when psychiatrists figured that they could start problem children, or even potentially problematic children, on drugs to stop them from acting up later on. Later diagnosed with autism, he would throw tantrums like you wouldn’t believe. It was almost impossible to take him into a store, because by the end of the shopping trip, he’d be on the floor, screaming, writhing, and embarrassing the rest of us. He was usually led out to the car.

I should also note that my parents, now divorced, weren’t the most patient of people, so while all this was going on our dad would be making threats and our mom would be pleading with him to stop. They should have been embracing him and using positive methods to make him stop, especially since he got worse as they got angrier. So, please, parents, remember that your reaction makes a big difference in your kid’s behavior. I’m not going to say that either of my parents were bad, but they could have reacted in a much more positive way.

Anyway, I’d better share with you the positive things about my brother before you all figure he’s a wild and crazy child. Despite his tantrum habit, he was actually very conscious of rules, and he would never ever break one. He threw tantrums, but he never did anything that would get him in trouble otherwise.

He’s also insanely smart. Paleontology was his hobby throughout his childhood, and he could name almost every single dinosaur known to man, as well as its approximate height, length, where and when it lived, and what its diet was. Most kids can name the most common dinosaurs and whether it was a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore, but my brother put them all to shame. Not to mention, he got amazingly good grades in school.

However, he was placed on Ritalin when he was still a toddler, and it would definitely affect his behavior later on. By the time he was eight-years-old, he would refuse to leave the house. He’d begun to hallucinate that bugs were everywhere, and unless someone was holding his hand, he wouldn’t take one step outside. When he did, he got very jerky, would spin around in search of his elusive foe, and have a panic attack.

His temper also got worse. He’d lose it over the smallest of things, resulting in what could almost be called a frenzied attack. He would hit, kick, shout, and threaten every morning as our grandma tried to prepare us for school. It was a regular thing for us, and he never seemed to understand what he was doing. His final attack when he was eleven resulted in a threat to “kill someone” and it was off to a hospital with him where he was immediately diagnosed as bipolar and placed on a number of heavy antipsychotics. When I went to visit him a few weeks later, he was so different, both physically and mentally, that I couldn’t recognize him. His attitude now went from extremely high to extremely low and I was afraid that his new weight would cause him a whole lot more problems than needing an entirely new wardrobe.

After the hospital, he was shipped off to a foster home which definitely did him more harm than good. He never recovered from the trauma of being placed in a hospital, nor all the insults, teases, etc. he would receive afterward, but the foster home was also terrible for him. On visits home he would regularly break down in tears and beg not to be sent back, and his foster parents weren’t the kindest people in the world, either.

By his mid-teens he did little more than eat and sleep. Every time he would act up, they’d increase the dosage, and now it was impossible to recognize him as the innovative little kid that he once was. He went from Discovery Channel to Nickelodeon, and he refused to watch anything that was informative. We became polar opposites and his temper hadn’t improved much.

By the time he graduated, he was border diabetic, had an insatiable need to be in control of everyone all the time, and was impossible to reason with. However, he eventually had himself weaned of most of his antipsychotics. You wouldn’t believe the improvements! Not only did he lose weight and clear up his diabetes problem, but he also started to act a little more like the kid he once was. He became much kinder, more generous, and even happier. His mood began to stabilize and we started showing signs of actually having things in common again.

Now he’s entirely off of medications and living in an apartment on his own. Withdrawal was terrible for him, and the hallucinations started up, but they eventually left and now he’s perfectly happy, healthy, and doing well. He invites me over often, calls a lot, etc. He still has some quirks, but, hey, are quirks, habits, etc. are what make us human beings.

Humanity cannot be measure by statistics, nor can our individuality be confined by them. We are all different, and it’s not up to us to say who is normal and who isn’t. If someone is conducting criminal behavior, stop them, but don’t blame the brain.

Further Reading:

Unholy Madness: The Church's Surrender to Psychiatry - Seth Farber, PhD

And They Call it Help: The Psychiatric Policing of America's Children - Louis Armstrong

The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses: What to Do When Your Child Is Labeled a Problem by the Schools - John Breeding, PhD

Toxic Psychiatry - Peter Breggin, MD

The Anti-Depressant Fact Book - Peter Breggin, MD

On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System - Judi Chamberlin

Blaming the Brain: TheTruth About Drugs and Mental Health - Elliot S. Valenstein

Free Resources:

Letter of Resignation from the American Psychiatric Association - Loren R. Mosher, M.D. to Rodrigo Munoz, M.D., President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA)

Psychiatry is bogus: Mental illness, Chemical imbalances are mythical money makers! - Great for Christians, but beware of broad generalization

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