The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 03.01.17

When I found myself without a guest, I delivered a spontaneous hour on my latest thinking about psychiatric drugs. I start out talking about antipsychotic drugs and tardive dyskinesia, and how the "miraculous revolution" in psychopharmacology began with psychiatrists and drug companies promoting neurotoxins as cures.  Then I go on to examine the common neurotoxic effects of all psychiatric drugs, finally declaring that all psychiatric drugs are "not caring drugs."   With some subtle variations, psychiatric drugs as a group "work" by causing apathy, loss of interest, reduced spontaneity, and lack of caring.  Because of medication spellbinding, individuals often do not realize how their personalities and experience of life have been transformed for the worse, but they feel the relief of no longer caring as much about their emotional suffering, and about the people and activities in their lives.  Sometimes the personality changes are subtle in the form of mild indifference and at other times very gross in the form of apathy, catatonia, and withdrawal.  Because the medicated individuals no longer care about anything as much as they once did, they often become more docile and "easier to be with."   When their families, teachers, doctors or hospital caretakers find them "improved," it is often because the drugged patients have become disengaged from themselves and their lives, hence displaying less suffering, and causing less conflict and difficulty.    Psychiatry and drug companies, now with the cooperation of all medicine, and many societal institutions, are producing an epidemic of chemical encephalitis with disastrous effects on individuals and society.