Anatomy of an Epidemic

In 'Anatomy of an Epidemic' Robert Whitaker takes us on a journey and demonstrates how industrial compounds and various chemical 'magic bullets' evolved into the psychiatric drugs and 'blockbusters' as we know them today. He reveals the faulty logic, media deceptions, and special interests behind the various artificial epidemic(s) that were created to alert the public of their need for these so-called medicines in order to treat their newly discovered mental illnesses. He points out the amazing coincidental timing of the discovery of the widespread prevalence of these disorders in the public, parallel to the creation of a blockbuster to treat it. An epidemic of illness that is, of course, only just being fully understood, in the inevitable rush to treat it's various manifestations sooner and better. Is a rocket fuel compound called hydrazine the primogenitor of most modern 'anti' psych meds like antidepressants and antipsychotics and anxiolytics? We are told of the industrial origins of these chemicals. Of how hydrazine led to iaprozid, a treatment for tuberculosis, and eventually became an 'energizer' pill. We learn how, depressed patients treated with iaprozid, and who suffered side effects like mania and psychosis for weeks, would eventually find their depression symptoms abated completely. Does that not sound at all similar to drugs like Paxil, Zoloft and Prozac? Takes a few weeks to kick in? May have psychotropic side effects in the meantime? Whitaker explains how through lucky trial and error, phenothiazine, a compound sold by Dupont as a general pesticide became the miracle drug known as Thorazine. Thorazine worked so well as a 'chemical lobotomy' that previously delusional or aggressive patients could be released from institutionalization back into the community. We learn about a happy pill called Miltown which eventually led to benzos like Valium and Lorazapam which trapped people in a feedback loop so that if they should try to discontinue they found themselves battling an agonizing addiction and withdrawal far more powerful than say, heroin, which many addicted prison inmates sweat out after their first week or so behind bars. Some people, we find, can never, ever discontinue psych meds no matter how much they want to, because if they try, their mind and emotions malfunction too much, and only another dose of the drug relieves that distress again. Deeper in we learn of a super-trooper drug called methamphetamine that was issued to German soldiers in WWII during the winter to lessen fatigue, sharpen attention and keep up their morale which later became drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that young American teens, primarily boys, are forced to take to keep their wandering minds riveted on whatever their teacher is saying or doing in class. Whitaker tells us about psychiatry's arduous quest to become recognized as a legitimate science and their early treatments for insanity: from the dubious 'ice bath' to the Mengele-esque removal of organs, glands and teeth, to the biological shock treatments like insulin coma and electricity applied directly to the cranium to 'loosen the pattern' that psychosis had on the brain. Both methods reduced their patients to an infantile-like level of function, cured apparently, of their madness, at least temporarily, until the next episode or relapse. Psychiatrists have long wanted treatments that work for specific conditions like antibiotics do for infections in internal medicine. Whitaker clearly explains how it is really only the mechanical dispensing of prescriptions for a growing pharmacopoeia of 'anti-this' and 'anti-that' drugs for unproven mental 'diseases' (an idea that sprouted from and was nourished by--eventually disproved theories about various chemical imbalances) that actually makes psychiatry a 'real' branch of medicine. In the early to mid 90s Congress deregulated the pharmaceutical industry and ever since then the drug industry as a whole has been allowed to infiltrate nearly every form of media in existence with their advertising. The organizations that we would suppose exist to give us the straight dope on the science of mental illness and the real efficacy of medicinal treatments for it, like the FDA, APA and NIMH are, in fact, often seemingly in cahoots with them. Granted, the FDA has occasioned to put Black Box warnings on drugs, usually, only after public outcry. When enough people have died, maybe a drug will get a warning on it. Although, an independent review board assessing the FDA's decision invariably condemns the warning as 'hasty' and recommends more research first. The APA courts Big Pharma because, as Whitaker tells us, it is Big Pharma that equips psychiatry with their only effective chemical treatments for the mental diseases they write about in their diagnostic bible--the DSM. Drug companies and psychiatrists are likely bedfellows and their marriage has been an unbelievably, obscenely profitable arrangement for participants on both sides--leading to countless conflicts of interests. As in the case of Dr. Charles Nemeroff whose, as one snarky blogger once put it: "near-legendary prostitution of science to Big Pharma may hold some kind of record for the most conflicts of interest." In reference to how much stock he owned in, and how many corporate boards he sat on, of various pharmaceutical companies, as he provided expert testimony on various issues and sucked up millions of dollars in consulting fees. Dr. Nemeroff never found a drug he couldn't be paid to like and although his situation was extreme it is fairly endemic in the APA and was addressed by Loren Mosher years ago, in his now-infamous resignation letter from the APA. While it is true that previous directors of NIMH have gone on record stating (paraphrasing), "There is no conclusive evidence that schizophrenia is related to a dopamine imbalance nor is there any conclusive evidence that antipsychotics correct said imbalance," NIMH continues to toe the Big Pharma Party Line of mental disorders as chemical imbalances that need drug treatments even though they are aware that that relationship has been proven to be unsubstantiated by various studies and trials. I remember very vividly one day around during the summer of '95 or '96, sitting in the waiting room at my chiropractor's clinic and on an end table amongst a stack of adult magazines like 'Cosmo' I espied a children's magazine called 'Highlights' that I had read as a kid. Out of nostalgia, I picked it up and started flipping through it and lo and behold, right smack in the middle of it, was a two-page advertisement for Prozac. The left side was a child's drawing. A representation of a white, grey and black dreary, rainy world complete with a house, dog, and front yard. In the yard was a clearly unhappy, unsmiling stick figure drawing of 'Mommy' and also concerned diminutive stick figures of mom's kids, worry about mommy's sadness evident on their simple, compelling faces. At the bottom of the scene advertisers for Eli Lilly ask, "Is mommy sad?" In case the imagery wasn't obvious enough to any child. The right side featured the exact same kid's Crayola crayon drawing. Only now, the rain clouds were gone, a big round yellow sun was out and had a smiley face. Gone were the grays and blacks. The lawn was green. The house was red. The sky was blue. Mommy, the kids and the dog all seemed happy now. At the bottom of the advertisement, more crayon-style writing advised the child-reader to 'tell Mommy about Prozac'. Eli Lilly used artists and child psychologists to create an advertisement to prime little children into the medication modality and clearly tried to use these ads to communicate with kids what Prozac is and what it does and to get children to mention it to their mothers. The child 'nag' factor and mom's tendency to take notice of that is covered in the book 'Branded' and is obviously part of that strategy. Another obscene little fact is that Eli Lilly along with all the other pharma companies deliberately target women and mothers with antidepressant advertisements to make these otherwise healthy women want to be (even more) medicated. And evidence supports this trend. Right now, women are on twice as many antidepressants than men. It started way back with 'mother's little helper' and continues to this day, with advertisements for Abilifry and Geodont showing thoughtful-looking young women walking down beaches or doing yoga and a sales pitch telling them they could only be more empowered if they added a neuroleptic aka 'nerve clamp' aka mindwipe-in-a-bottle to their antidepressant or antiseizure drug regimen for the 'maintenance' (as in never-ending) treatment of bipolar or depression. Why has Congress not put the brakes on this and re-regulated this psychopathic, out-of-control, deceptive, calculating, money-hungry industry? It's been over ten years since you guys deregulated them and we can not trust a single thing out of their mouths. Always the suppressed truth gets subpoenaed in court a few years later after the newly patented blockbuster rakes in billions of dollars and we find, again and again, no matter the drug, that it was less effective than we were led to believe and causes more problems than they claim to treat. Is there not an obvious, repeating pattern here? Why are those of us without the power to change it the only ones who can see this? Why isn't anyone in charge in our government who actually has power, taking notes and doing something about it? 'Anatomy of an Epidemic' covers another hot-button issue that a lot of people are not even aware of. Social workers for Child and Family Services perform a service to families and communities and one of those services is to take children out of abused homes. All social workers have presumably read about how abused or abandoned children often present a plethora of mood and behavioral disorders. It's part of their training. A social worker then takes the child who has had an intervention, brings them to a psychiatrist, tell the doc the child clearly has depression, bipolar, autism, adhd, ptsd, or whatever they think the child is likely to have (based on whether the child is crying or scowling, talkative or quiet, aggressive or passive) and ask that the psychiatrist treat and prescribe for the newly minted Ward of the State. Then these kids are dropped off at foster homes with three, four, five and in some cases, many more psychotropic drugs the foster parents are told are needed to address the child's illnesses. This will interest the reader. All children and teens who become wards of the State are automatically covered by either Medicaid or Medicare until they are an adult. So the social worker gets these institutional psychiatrists to prescribe all those drugs to the child and the money that was paid to Big Pharma for the cost of those drugs comes right from your pocket because you subsidize Medicare with taxes. Nearly every state in America seems to have a nice, neat, circular loop with Big Pharma. The state provides a continuously growing, constantly renewable source of child patients who 'plainly' are in dire need of polypharmacy. They get these kids on the latest most expensive blockbuster neuroleptics and moodstabilizers and you the citizen pay for it. These kids have no say in their treatment. None at all. Most are never, ever told they they can refuse once they reach a certain age, fourteen, fifteen or sixteen. By the time they are an adult, you can bet their brains have been rewired with extra serotonin and dopamine receptors and they have a major multi-psychiatric drug addiction. They often have secondary iatrogenic diseases, like irreversible motor neuropathy, incredible obesity and diabetes and they become mentally and physically disabled adults, living in adult group homes and go right back on Medicare. You know how I know all this? Because I am a former ward of the state and was a foster kid during the late 80s and early 90s and personally saw this growing epidemic of medicated kids with my own eyes while I was under the auspices of their care, living in group homes and residential placement facilities. I am a former 'bipolar child' and while I can't tell you why social workers seem to have this drugging mandate, I can tell you that what Robert Whitaker is talking about in 'Anatomy' is just the tip of the iceberg. I would say, if the government was actually serious about cutting down on the 800 some-odd new people being added to the disability rolls daily, that an immediate and total ban on forced polypharmacy medication for foster kids and wards of the state would be a good place to save some money and cut down on future disabled citizens. And because that ban did not happen today, a portion of the 800 people that will be added to disability by tonight includes those wards of the state and foster kids. There are some serious, serious problems going on right now in this country that show no signs of changing as long as Big Pharma continues to have undue influence over the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Psychiatric Association. 'Anatomy of an Epidemic' shows us, in careful, exquisitely researched detail, how we got here, from there, with today's psychiatric pseudoscience, their fifteen-minute, drive-thru diagnoses and the resulting array of perpetual, addictive, and brain-altering maintenance treatments for them. In the final analysis, 'Anatomy of an Epidemic', like 'Mad in America', shows that psychiatry is the emperor with no clothes. Psychiatrists don't have any special insight into how the brain works. None. Right now, it's all about finding defective genes and their completely disproved chemical imbalance nonsense. If you are not willing to lie down for some electroshock or submit to medication roulette, the truth is, there is nothing psychiatry can do for you. And they don't like to admit it. That they paid for med school and the extra pharmacy education and yet their services are not needed to achieve a real mental recovery and their treatments cause more problems and quality of life issues than they mitigate. The scope of the book asks us to levy skepticism of and carefully reconsider all that we think or know to be true today about the science behind mental illness, the actual efficacy of magic bullet treatments and the sudden occurrences of new epidemics of mental illness, hot on the heels of new drugs to treat them. This treatise asks us to consider the realfact, not the goodfact. Not the facts the government has endorsed, but the facts readily available from studies, statistics, patient outcome surveys and anecdotal stories that are found in abundance in this amazing piece of critical journalism. I can not recommend 'Anatomy of an Epidemic' enthusiastically enough. It's brilliant, engrossing, and at times, very unsettling reading. It should make you upset. I cried more than once and wanted to put my fist through someone before I got halfway through it. This book explains the who, what, why and how, that was the reasoning behind the mind-destroying effects I unwillingly suffered while being coerced inpatient, under repeated threats of restraints and forced injections, to take powerful doses of lithium and a neurolepetic called Trilafon as a teenager. It explains in detail why I was told this great lie: That I could never recover from manic depression and schizophrenia; that I would always be afflicted, that my illnesses were the results of incurable hereditary genetic chemical imbalances. And why I had no choice but to take those drugs for the rest of my life. A prognosis which was clearly in error, because here I am, twenty years after my Dx, completely healed of those conditions, symptom free for over a decade, without the use of any of those so-called 'meds'. But my diagnosing pdoc apparently didn't know about Quaker retreats, Soteria houses or that according to Whitaker, Emile Kraeplin's findings show that schizophrenic and manic depressive incidences were episodic and not chronic and incurable. It was not until the New Era reductionist model of biological psychiatry came and took over everyone's opinions and told us what to expect: a lifetime of disability from those that are mentally ill, that it actually became so, and was written in all the new textbooks like an immutable fact of reality. In fact, 'Anatomy of an Epidemic' shows us how, to this day, you are more likely to heal and recover from manic depression or schizophrenia if you DON'T take the medication-for-life route. Because it is polypharmacy roulette that is actually leading to lifetime disability, not mental illness itself. Consider the stories we are told, that require some heavy-duty mental gymnastics, in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance we acquire, the longer we research these different drugs. For example, you've probably heard that ADHD meds are safe. If they weren't, who would dare put little children on them right? But what are ADD meds? They are stimulants, analogs of methamphetamine. It's revealed in their chemical names like dextroamphetamine--Adderall and methylphenadate--Ritalin. We are told that these drugs are safe if used as directed, that is, for symptoms of ADHD. But it's not safe for those without ADHD? Why is that? Is there something about the biochemistry of those with ADHD symptoms that somehow makes it safe? While we think about that, consider this. I have known a few intravenous speed users and crank heads in my time. I dated one for awhile many years ago. One thing she told me in passing was that tweakers that are hard up for a fix will happily settle for snorting ADHD meds. It's not entirely the same high, but close enough. Interestingly, if we GoAskAlice online and plug in the words 'snort Ritalin' we find a User generated question about the medical effects of inhaling ADHD stimulants. GoAskAlice says: They include rapid heartbeat, aggression, psychosis and many of the other side effects one would get from shooting speed, snorting crank and tweaking. Then AskAlice reminds the User that it's only a safe drug when used properly by ADHD patients. Which again makes us wonder, how is Adderall or Ritalin all that different from tweak? What is it about an ADHD kid that makes them immune to tweaker side effects and dependency? Answers: they aren't, and, nothing. They are taking speed just a like a doper on the street and the street doper will happily settle for grinding up and snorting those meds in a pinch because it quenches the dependency itch and gives them a buzz and the much touted super-concentration effect. Personal story. My own brother was diagnosed with ADD in the 80s and briefly medicated for it with Ritalin. Side effects included loss of appetite and inability to sleep. My brother started wasting away like a tweaker, grinding his teeth, not eating or sleeping and any tweaker will tell you that's part of the ride when you get hooked on meth. People on various drug forums will tell you that Adderall, Ritalin and other stims cause 'some kind of jaw touching, jaw grinding effect' that leaves their mouth tired and sore. Sounds like meth to me. I experienced grinding teeth and jaws when I tried speed a couple times myself. The rise of the ADHD epidemic and their methamphetimine analog treatments has created an entire generation of middle and upper class stim junkies who can't even tell they are junkies. Big Pharma is not complaining though. It reminds me of Sarah Goldfarb on ephedrine from the movie 'Requiem For a Dream'. "Ma, you're grinding your teeth like a doper," Harry tells her after she starts the weight-loss pills. "They are just pills from my dahktah" she says. "He's a nice dahktah." And then my favorite part, Sarah says to her son, "How is it you know more about medicine than a dahktah?" Harry tells her, "Trust me mom, I know." Another great piece of consumer cognitive dissonance revolves around neurolepetics, the so-called 'antipsychotics'. Scientists did some studies a few years ago on the brains of macaques with a control group receiving a placebo and one group receiving Haldol and the other group receiving Zyprexa and not too surprisingly, six months later, the neuroleptic treated monkeys had brain damage. Pockets of interstitial fluid filled up spaces where healthy ganglion formerly existed. Antipsychotics aka neuroleptics aka 'nerve clamps', are pesticides. Most neuroleptics are analogs of phenothiazines. We have known for a long time that phenothiazines were used in textile dyes. And that it was sold as a pesticide by Dupont and is used as an antihelminthic or de-worming agent. If you want to know how a bug or worm feels when it is treated with a phenothiazine or piperazine derivative antipsychotic, go to youtube, look up videos on Tardive Dyskinesia and imagine experiencing that 1000 times worse. What do you think all the drooling, twitching, motor ataxia and shuffling gait is caused by? Are you going to tell me after hearing about people twitching and drooling uncontrollably and seeing TD in action in a video, that those people are not under the effects of or already harmed by, some kind of nervous system damaging agent? Consider this, deep inside the full data sheets on antipsychotics is a warning. "Do not let the liquid version of this drug come into contact with skin or clothing." But the data sheet never says why you shouldn't do that. Could it be that dropping liquid concentrate neurolepetics onto your skin or clothes will stain or tie-dye or otherwise cause color changes in the skin or fabric? Imagine that. A chemical used in dyes, converted into a medicine that can't come into contact with clothes because...? We would put it all together and realize it's not all that different from its textile and dye manufacturing cousin and not 'medicinal'. Certainly not in a healing sense. You ever smell liquid perphenazine? If you have ever worked with industrial chemicals and I have in blue-collar factory jobs--I've handled acids, acetones and I can tell you right now, if you take a deep whiff of a liquid antipsychotic it smells like a solvent. You will never forget it if you smell it like that, it's unique in its odor but totally something you might catch a whiff of in factories that work with metals, epoxies and etching chemicals. Read between the lies. What Big Pharma does, is dilute that industrial toxin and tweak the molecule around a little and sell it as a treatment for mental illness. That's all there is to it. And it's why it hurts you and makes your brain fog up and your mouth dry and your hands to shake and makes you tired. It's a very mild bug killer that you are playing Russian roulette with. If you get the chamber with the bullet, you come down with Tardive Dyskinesia, permanent central nervous system damage, to show for it. For me, perhaps the single most useful piece of ammunition in this book to use against your NAMI and NIMH indoctrinated friends, family and coworkers is this: The 'psych meds for mental illness is like insulin for a diabetic' analogy is the most closely held talking point for the pro-meds crowd and it is a lie. They have a mantra, "Insert X disease (ADHD, bipolar, OCD, schizophrenia) is a chemical imbalance that can be treated with drugs that address the specific imbalance." That mantra is provided by Big Pharma and is so thoroughly programmed into people, from senior citizens to junior high school kids, that you find, literally hundreds and thousands of people on the internet, on blogs, chatrooms, video comments and online news articles, all spreading this same lie every single day, 365 days a year, 'Mental illness is a chemical imbalance. It's like diabetes. You need meds to treat it." If psych meds are to psych patients like insulin is to a diabetic I should be as dead as a door nail now, because I had several 'comorbid' mental illnesses that 'should have been', but were never treated with psych meds during my early adult life. Furthermore, what Whitaker deftly shows us is the exact opposite of this mantra. That according to the research, people with depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other thought or mood disorders do not have any kind of serotonin or dopamine imbalance whatsoever. That if you measure dopamine and serotonin metabolites in recently deceased people who presented with depression or schizophrenia, they had normal amounts of those neurotransmitters. If you did the same thing to people who had spent months, a few years or decades under the influence of psych meds before they died, their blood metabolites showed they very much had a drug imposed serotonin or dopamine imbalance. What actually happens to a person, when they start on an SSRI like Prozac or Zoloft, is that the drug scrambles normal serotonin function and the brain grows new serotonin receptors to compensate. Ditto for the dopamine D1 and D2 antagonists that comprise the neurolepetic drugs. When treated with so-called antipsychotics, a patient's brain begins to grow more dopamine receptors to compensate for all the dopamine antagonizing going on. This penchant the brain has, of actively trying to subvert the effects of psych meds by growing more receptors to achieve its normal balance has been documented. Whitaker makes mention of it as the brain's 'resistance to permanent adjustment' and how this was first observed by pharma scientists. It's partly why for some people, meds simply stop working after awhile and they feel compelled to try another drug formula that their brain has yet to adapt to. But not everyone's brain can subvert any psych med it encounters through this adaptation process. In fact, we hear about one guy who can never, ever come off of Klonopin because he suffers too much from the withdrawal. I personally know someone who took six years to come off an insane drug cocktail that was added or subtracted to for over twenty years. She is finally better and drug free, but is not yet physically well. Her body and mind has to completely adapt to the absence of a half dozen brain-changing chemicals that hurt her for far too long. The process is painful, but she is hopeful and so are those who support her. 'Anatomy of an Epidemic' has many facts to learn and spread to others. * Fact: It is the drugs themselves that cause serotonin or dopamine imbalances. * Fact: You are more likely to really heal if you keep your use of these drugs to a minimum or not at all. * Fact: The longer you are on these drugs the more changes they make to your brain chemistry and neuronal firing. * Fact: As you add one drug after another after another, your likelihood of experiencing some pretty shocking, disabling and disastrous unpredictable drug interaction events becomes perilously certain. Bottom line: There is no chemical imbalance that causes depression and schizophrenia and by extension, their relatives like bipolar disorder. These ailments are not, repeat not caused by serotonin or dopamine imbalances and this book shows you why that is so. It is most certainly not true that you can never recover from schizophrenia. Or that once diagnosed, never undiagnosed, never healed, and that bipolar disorder or depression is doomed to haunt you forever. Meds are not like insulin for diabetics and mental illnesses are not chemical imbalances. Those ideas are marketing pitches that clever ad people wearing office professional clothing came up with, not in a lab, but in a cubicle of a glass-walled corporate building. When your teacher or parent or friend or psychiatrist tells you its a chemical imbalance, ask them, which chemicals? Insist that they tell you. If they won't or don't know, mention serotonin and dopamine, that should get them talking again. And then demand they explain how those two neurotransmitters are imbalanced. Then drop the bomb on them. Science has unequivocally proven that the drugs used to treat the conditions cause the very imbalance they claim to remedy. If they refuse to believe, show them, in chapter and page, this book and make them see and acknowledge it. Highlight the relevant sections with a fluorescent marker. Point at them with your finger. You may have to do that for everyone you meet until people finally get it into their heads that they are being programmed by advertising and government special interests groups. Tell them how it's not just serotonin or dopamine either. Every one of the 'anti' psych meds: antidepressants, antipsychotics, antianxiety, antiseizure, from Depakote and Neurontin to Prozac and Wellbutrin to Lorazapam or Seroquel, is exciting or inhibiting circuits in your body that maintain and govern its function that have been hardwired into it through the process of evolution. The body has some ability to self-correct from this, but if it's overwhelmed, overdosed, overmedicated, it stops doing that and becomes medically damaged in a process called 'iatrogenesis.' that can be permanent. Seriously, ask your doctor if Tardive Dyskinesia is right for your depression. If you think I spoiled the book with my review, consider this, I barely scratched the surface of its contents and the issues it exposes and could go on at length, easily for another ten thousands words. I didn't even go into the bipolar child thing. And how between Dmitri and Janice Papolos and Joe Biederman's Harvard Mafia they have pretty much created pediatric bipolar disorder out of thin air. Nor did I mention until now, that in 'Anatomy' we learn about sick Joe Biederman. A full professor who is 'next to God' who sits ensconced in the safety of the Harvard elite, performing mad experiments where he uses meth to induce tweaker episodes in kids, and if they get psychotic, it's a positive litmus test for childhood bipolar. Once that dx is made, the child is put on neurolepetics and moodstabilizers, as a matter of course, 'preventatively'. Biederman's whole mission seems to be to get young kids brains rewired on stims or bug killers or anti-seizure meds as soon as possible, for life. Don't even get me started on Biederman's 'A child can be bipolar from the moment it opens its eyes as a baby,' ideology. Why this modern-day Mengele has a medical license and is not behind bars I do not understand. Tl, dr version. Amazing book. Should be required reading before any social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse gets their wings to start practicing. Buy this book. Read it. Get angry. Tell others. Then tell more. Reread it. Rinse and repeat. Even then you'll still get people who stubbornly insist on denial. You can put this book in front of someone's face but if they close their eyes, put their hands over their ears and shake their head and say "I'm not listening to you!" like Smeagol from 'Lord of the Rings' there's not a lot you can do.

As a former general physician and a current mental health professional, I strongly urge all the psychiatrists must read this book and carefully prescribe medicine to all patients just like they would do to their loved ones. This book is a collection of very disturbing cases and extremely convincing data, and thorough, honest, research-based on scientific documents as well. It proved what I have been suspecting: How my college child got the diagnosis of bipolar disorder from her college psychiatric clinic in the first place and was prescribed Risperdal by a nurse practitioner. It happened five years ago in a cold North East winter season when she felt bad mood after experiencing difficult personal issues. She went to the clinic and immediately got prescription of a combination of two antidepressant. One week later she felt the symptom was getting worse and became different, a suicidal thought, then she ended up getting Risperdal to treat the "mania." We asked her to stop the med and she did it with the doubt that she probably had a mental illness. Five years later, she became insomnia, probably due to work and stress. She thought her mental illness relapse due to the "fact" that she discontinued the med and it resulted now as an episode of "mania". She went to another university psychiatry clinic in the North West and was diagnosed bipolar again in the first visit and was told that she needs a lifetime medicine to control mental illness. It began with a young, inexperienced, some how panic, nowhere to get support, college student's one-time episode of a mood swing, and then ended up a chronic mental illness needing life time -long medicine. I felt my heart-wrenching and I am a failure of being a mother. I am a nice person and a professional woman with ethical standard and I never hated any one in my life until my child recently was diagnosed "bipolar disorder." Nowadays many college students are taking antidepressants due to little tolerance of mental stress and physical discomfort. Pharmaceutical companies and some psychiatrists should be responsible for these young lives. The thought of believing herself is a patient of mental illness and needing life time treatment is a heavier burden than the drug side-effect itself. The long-term effect of the medicine is a future consequence but the immediate consequence is the constant anxiety of "mental illness" lingering in her mind, which would cause/create/induce, so to speak, more "mania episode" happening again and again. Once the patient decides to stop the med, he or she would soon be immersed again into a strong anxiety of the coming relapses of the original symptom. That is why depression label is so difficult to get rid off by patients and by doctors. The human mind can be conditioned. What you think can make how you feel about your body and in turns, how you feel emotionally can lead to your physical response/symptoms --- insomnia, chronic muscle and joint pain, heart racing and palpitation, thoughts speeding, irregular bowel , blurred vision, lapse of memory, concentration deficits, lost interests and sexual drive, lost appetite, suicidal thoughts, etc. you named. A vicious cycle !!! A beautiful mind will eventually be destroyed. A young person with a promising degree and high achievement shouldn't be imprisoned by this kind of cruel life time sentence. Thank to Robert Whitaker. You lead the movement of "Mad in America." Every patient and every doctor should read this book.The medical field of mental health should be reformed. All psychiatrists need to take continuing education to learn about the other trends of treatment of symptoms, but not rush to verdict the patients who come to you for help. Scientific studies have proven that there is no such thing as "chemical imbalance." It is scary that many psychiatrists prescribe drugs based on what patients said about their feelings, not based on blood tests, high-tech imaging, biopsy, lab tests and long-term close observations and anecdotal of patient's daily functionings. Although a great majority of psychiatrists have a good heart to help patients, they need continuing education. In the entire medical field, there is no such highly controversial treatment of long term use of drugs as in the case of mental illness. Look at the treatment of diabetes, hypertension, thyroid problems, heart diseases, kidney diseases, autoimmune diseases, etc. , how many controversial debates can you hear? The diagnosis of these conditions is based on blood tests, high-tech imaging, biopsies and many lab tests. Yet, diagnosis of depression and bipolar disorder are based on none of the diagnostics tools. Be, aware! DSM itself is more art than science. Depression is a spectrum of symptoms, not a disease. There are other ways to manage these symptoms. Social, emotional, environmental aspects should be considered. The lifetime drug is not an answer, which does more harm than help. Please also read more comment below. Thanks.

MOST INFORMATIVE AND AUTHORITATIVE DESCRIPTIONS AS TO HOW PEOPLE ARE MISGUIDED BY PROFESSIONALS AUTHORITATIVE AND VERY DETAILED NARRATIONS OF EMOTIONAL HEALTH FOR INDIVIDUAL TO ASSESS ONE'S MIND WELL:TRUE EXPLANATIONS OF OUR EMOTIONAL HEALTH AS PROBLEMS IN LIFE NOT ILLNESS OR DISORDERS :the book ANATOMY OF AN EPIDEMIC:COMPOSED OF LOTS OF LAW COURT CASES AGAINST THE FOOD AND HYGIENE DEPARTMENTS AND PHARMACEUTICALS AND FAMILY COURTS , EXPOSING THE DISHONESTY AND SUPPRESSIONS OF TRUTH OF DANGEROUS IMPACTS OF MEDICATIONS AND HOW SECRECY OF UNPUBLISHED PAPERS OF SO CALLED RESEARCHES :is our honest guide as the best means to understand our life situation with what we call various debilitating unusual experience in life from events untoward,shock, unusual circumstances, impacts on emotional health and disturbed emotional education as well as disturbed socio psychological life style , whereby one is vulnerable to hear voices, see paranoia encrypted visions, feelings of insecurity, hopes of scarry future, disestablished present life condition, authoritative power influences our mind and emotional freedom, an encroachment on our basics of life to live on, and especially when all these including events of physical turmoil ,moral turpitude and finally impacts of various medications especially that attempts and claims to work on brain receptor to address any physical discomforts like pain etc or by antihistamine, humans are seen becoming easily a victim in the hands of pharmaceuticals doctors nurses and professionals dealing with psychology psychiatrists and neurologists. they all expose persons to immediate use of neuroleptics bringing furtherence of disturbed life with loss of lateral natural thinking ability ,decision making looses its emotional senses and logic as well as cognition. this may be happening gradually slowly with pseudo feelings of temprorary high and relaxed/numbing of few discomforts or with total global mismatch of thoughts ,exposing persons with more various other medications. the book also describes how the impacts on physical biological and chemistry of blood and other systems including muscular systems in human body, as well as functioning of heart lung kidney liver etc reaches failures in many ways. the book opens our eyes and frame of mind to view our life and issues with humanistic humane way and not as illnesses but needing help to our emotional health. how medications are used in the name of well coined sensational languages of literary credits to describe the medications and the wraps to misguide and confuse people with psychological blackmailing as antihistamine ,painkiller ,alphablocker or betablocker and sleep inducing ,nerve relieving etc various gimmicks. none of the psychotropic medications neuroleptics have had any scientific researches made ever nor possible. the book also describes to all of us to feel the issues in life as real and consequential symptoms as real and how pharmacology misrepresent them as 'illness' and 'disorders' using jargons.

Read this book… however inconvenient to big pharma and psychiatrists who blindly follow big pharma, this book is probably saving lives! No exaggeration. This is a comprehensive review of the literature, combined with reports of several people who have experienced psychotropic medications. The book is easy to read and written with several descriptions of neurological functions that help the reader follow the story of how psychotropic medication affect people in the short and long-term. It includes history of the marketing, prescribing and researching of psychiatric medications. Also included are stories and information about other approaches to psychosis, depression and anxiety that has been successful. This book is for anyone who has experienced service from the mental healthcare system and for anyone who cares about someone receiving such treatment, and all therapists. Some reviewers said that Whitaker didn’t cite studies and research: wrong! Just look at his extensive bibliography. Whitaker should get a citizens advocacy award for this very difficult but necessary piece of journalism. Kudos

Whitaker is one of a kind, this is a very thoughrough and extremely detailed and time consuming investigation into the workings and failings of psychiatric drugs and their proponents and the suspect pseudo-science behind it all, the best of its kind. After reading the book, I had a compulsion to meet the author of this highly intellectual journalistic masterpiece, and I met and spoke with him at a conference in London last year. This book is thought provoking but it will also cause astonishment, rage and the shame of having to share this planet with the people who carry out these deadly practices disguised as health care. Well done Robert for producing a story that can be of interest to anyone touched by psychiatry providing easy reading for everyone, from the top scientist to the naive layman, avoiding too many technical terms ! Carry on the good work.

A very interesting and very well written book. Helpful for understanding what's really happening in the world, at least in the scientific sphere. The ethical and moral aspects of psychiatry is implict but can be further explored.

Ein sehr gut und eindringlich geschriebenes Buch, gut und spannend zu lesen, leider gibt es bisher keine deutsche Übersetzung. Es gibt übrigens auch viele Psychiater und andere Fachleute, die mittlerweile aus mehr oder minder genau den in diesem Buch genannten Gründen das Erkrankungs- und Behandlungsmodell der traditionellen Psychiatrie ablehnen (z.B. Dr. Aderhold). Ich glaube gerne, dass die dargestellten Studien und Fakten in Wahrheit komplexer, also nicht ganz so schwarz-weiß sind, wie sie dargestellt werden, aber die dadurch aufgeworfenen Fragen bleiben trotzdem wichtig und ein lauter Weckruf unter uns Fachleuten dringend erforderlich. Bis heute arbeitet zumindest die deutsche Psychiatrie m. E. schrecklich einseitig medikamentenorientiert und ist zu wenig selbstkritisch. Psychiatern wird wenig Zeit gegeben, ein therapeutische Beziehung zu ihren Patienten zu entwickeln, sie werden oft zu reinen Verschreibern reduziert. Was wir den Betroffenen erzählen (z.B. in Psychoedukationsgruppen zu psychischen Störungen) ist peinlicherweise oft nicht mehr als platte Werbung für Psychopharmaka, mäßig wirksamen und langfristig oftmals äußerst gefährlichen Substanzen. Aus meiner eigenen Arbeit mit psychisch Kranken weiß ich genau, dass es nicht wenige "schreckliche" Verläufe gibt, die sich - betrachtet man es einmal so, was aber bislang anscheinend nur wenige tun - als Folge der jahrelangen "Behandlung" mit hochdosierten Psychopharmaka erklären lassen. Dafür, was einen die Medikamente insb. langfristig "kosten", "bringen" sie vielen Betroffenen einfach zu wenig. Es gibt andere Wege, wie man Menschen in extremen seelischen Krisen helfen kann, aber sie sind peinlicherweise wenig erforscht und wir können mit unserem bisherigen sehr vagen Kenntnisstand noch nicht allen helfen (und haben dafür weder adäquate Angebote, gut ausgebildetes Personal oder Gelder!). Warum ist das so? Warum sind jahrzehntelang Millionen an Forschungsgeldern in die Entwicklung fragwürdiger Medikamente gesteckt worden anstatt parallel intensiv andere Therapieformen zu suchen? Warum sind Recoverygeschichten und generell die besondere Sichtweise, Erfahrungen und Weisheit der Betroffenen so wenig berücksichtigt worden? Warum hat man diese wichtige Forschung ausgerechnet den Pharmakonzernen überlassen, die sich ihre eigenen Erfolgsgeschichten gestrickt und sich dann diese Geschichten propagierende Psychiater "gekauft" haben? Warum vertrauen wir den meinungsmachenden und Fachbücher schreibenden Psychiatern, die von diesen Firmen sehr viel Geld bekommen, so blind, dass wir meinen ein paar Pillen wären die entscheidende Hilfe für komplexe seelische Probleme? Gibt es die propagierten psychischen Krankheiten eigentlich wirklich als hauptsächlich genetisch determinierte Entitäten, die sich ohne Medikamente vermeintlich fast immer verschlechtern? Ich würde niemals mit meinem eigenen Verstand "russisch Roulette" spielen und anfangen, diese gefährlichen, das Gehirn verändernden Substanzen zu nehmen! Bist Du selbst aber erst einmal "Patient", wird das von Dir erwartet und Du giltst als "uneinsichtig" und "nicht compliant", wenn Du anderer Ansicht bist... Wehe, wehe, wenn Du mit oder ohne Medikamenten nicht schnell wieder gesund wirst, denn dann wanderst Du auch hier in Deutschland ganz schnell in ein Heim für psychisch Kranke und verlierst Deine Wohnung (und Deinen Job, Deine Freunde, Dein Geld, etc...). Hast Du erst einmal einen gesetzlichen Betreuer und kannst Dir in Deiner derzeitigen Krise nicht selbst helfen, kann es gut sein, dass Du in Wahrheit nicht mehr viel mitzureden hast, andere treffen dann wichtige Entscheidungen über Deine Zukunft... Auch hier in Deutschland muss vieles anders werden, wenn wir auch für psychisch Kranke ein Rechtsstaat sein wollen.