Here is a collection of stories that were sent to me (Paula J. Caplan) in response to a request for first-person stories about being harmed directly by being given a psychiatric diagnosis. A few of the stories are told by a parent or partner of the person.

Psychiatrists are responsible for creating an epidemic of brain damage from electro-shock "therapy," lobotomies (yes, they still do that) but mostly and more insidiously, from the "medications" they prescribe to people who are unaware of the damage they will suffer.
The most brutal and barbaric application is in mental hospitals, where people are held prisoner and forced, often by injection, to take these toxic chemicals into their bodies.

Not only do these drugs cause brain damage but over time dramatically change the very structure of the brain, shrinking the frontal lobes while grossly swelling other areas.
Psychiatric drugs damage the heart, liver, eyes, skin - in fact, EVERY organ system in the body.
They are cytotoxins; they damage living tissue on contact.
These drugs are so toxic that psychiatric nurses in the 1950's and 60's wore rubber gloves to protect their skin while pouring Thorazine (the first phenothiazine), before universal infection control standards required sanitary gloves be worn by health care workers.
(Todays disposable Latex gloves did not exist in the 1950's)

by Joanna Moncrieff

Western society is consuming ever larger quantities of prescription drugs and many of these are for psychiatric complaints. Drugs are central to modern psychiatric practice and to much psychiatric thought about the nature and causation of mental disorders. Psychiatry has therefore become an important target for the large and powerful pharmaceutical industry. Drug companies direct lavish advertising and hospitality towards psychiatrists and provide funding for much medical education and some mental health service initiatives. The industry is now heavily involved in the organisation of research into psychiatric drugs and the dissemination of research findings. This raises questions about the scientific objectivity of this research and the extent to which the industry is able to shape the research agenda. Drug companies also provide funds for pro drug patient and carer groups and address advertising or disease promotion campaigns to the general public. They exert influence at a political level through lobbying and direct funding of political bodies including drug regulatory agencies.

USA: Prior to the arrival of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs) on the market, depression was estimated to affect only 100 people per million.

And those 100 people per million sought help from a medical professional trained in psychiatry and the treatment of depression.

Since the introduction of SSRIs, rates for depression are now considered to be in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 cases per million, or between a 500 to 1,000 fold increase, according to The Marketization of Depression: The Prescribing of SSRI Antidepressants to Women, by Janet Currie, in the May 2005 journal Women and Health Protection.

ICSPP is concerned with the impact of mental health theories on public policy and the effects of therapeutic practices upon individual well-being, personal freedom, and family and community values. For over 25 years ICSPP has been informing the professions, the media and the public about the potential dangers of drugs, electroshock, psychosurgery, and the biological theories of psychiatry. We inform others about the latest hazardous psychiatric invention and alert the media and the public to the dangers of treating social, interpersonal and personal problems as though they were medical diseases.

DON'T LET ANYBODY FOOL YOU! NEUROLEPTICS, ANTI-PSYCHOTICS, ANTI-DEPRESSANTS AND ECT ARE ALL "MIND DAMAGING TREATMENT" USED BY PSYCHIATRY AND "THE SYSTEM". HUMANS WHO LISTEN TO PROFESSIONALS WHO TAKE THE OATH "FIRST DO NO HARM" WILL FIND OUT SOONER OR LATER THAT ANY KIND OF CHEMICALS, ESPECIALLY CHEMICALS THAT PLAY WITH THE "RECEPTORS" WILL DAMAGE OR DESTROY THESE PRECIOUS PARTS OF OUR BRAIN AND THE CHANGES CAN BE IRREVERSIBLE. YOU CAN FIND THIS INFORMATION IN THE DSM IV MANUAL USED BY THESE SO-CALLED "DOCTORS".

Freedom Center has a show on Valley Free Radio for more than a year now! We feature interviews, news, and more from the world of mental health outside the corporate mainstream.

A Support, Activism and Advocacy Community by and for People Labelled with Mental Illness

Freedom Center is a support and activism community run by and for people labeled with severe 'mental illnesses.' We call for compassion, human rights, self-determination, and holistic options. We create alternatives to the mental health system's widespread despair, abuse, fraudulent science and dangerous treatments.

"The Freedom Center is one of a collection of grassroots organizations springing up across the country in reaction to the prevalance of medication in America. It alerts people to the downside of psychiatric drugs but does not try to force people off them: it seeks instead to help sufferers find the best methods of coping, even if their solution is unconventional by the standards of the medical establishment."

A Crime Against Humanity

What used to be called electroshock or electric shock treatment (EST) is now usually called "electroconvulsive therapy", often abbreviated ECT. The term is misleading, because ECT is not a form of therapy, despite the claims of its supporters. ECT causes brain damage, memory loss, and diminished intelligence.

The Antipsychiatry Coalition is a nonprofit volunteer group consisting of people who feel we have been harmed by psychiatry - and of our supporters. We created this website to warn you of the harm routinely inflicted on those who receive psychiatric "treatment" and to promote the democratic ideal of liberty for all law-abiding people that has been abandoned in the U.S.A., Canada, and other supposedly democratic nations.

Documentary video: Click title to watch

Through rare historical and contemporary footage and interviews with more than 160 doctors, attorneys, educators, survivors and experts on the mental health industry and its abuses, this riveting documentary blazes the bright light of truth on the brutal pseudoscience and the multi-billion dollar fraud that is psychiatry.

Investigating and Exposing Psychiatric Human Rights Abuse

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a non-profit, public benefit organization dedicated to investigating and exposing psychiatric violations of human rights. It also ensures that criminal acts within the psychiatric industry are reported to the proper authorities and acted upon.

As ClinicalTrials.gov reveals, in 2005, Massachusetts General Hospital conducted an 8-week trial study that recruited children as young as four years old to be drugged and monitored, including having their blood drawn, to see if their tiny four-year-old bodies would tolerate a powerful psychotropic drug (Seroquel).

Big Pharma and psychiatry are quite an evil duo. The drug companies concoct drugs to treat so-called "brain chemistry disorders," and then psychiatrists engage in rampant disease mongering combined with "screening" and "treatment" to push those drugs onto children, adults and even senior citizens. The result? Nearly half our population is now on at least one prescription drug, and yet the people are more diseased, less mentally stable and more depressed than ever before in the history of our nation.

In the fall of 2004, a letter requesting endorsers for a call for Congressional hearings about psychiatric diagnosis went out via email to a small number of individuals and organizations. That letter includes a description of the kinds of harm that can result from simply getting a psychiatric diagnosis, and it also includes the information that psychiatric diagnosis, unlike drugs, is unregulated. The number of people and groups to whom the letter was initially sent was small because this was an initiative that was independent of any group and totally unfunded. The endorsers who came from that emailing are listed here as "original endorsers" and are those to whom the letter was first sent or who received it via forwarding by an original recipient.

In this page you'll find links to articles and critical documents on biological-psychiatry. Biological-psychiatry's official theory describes psychological or personal problems as having a biological origin caused by genetic or chemical 'imbalances' to be corrected by drugs and other interventions like Electro-Convulsive Therapy [ECT] or insulin shock. These widely used but controversial methods in official medicine have been for many years amply invalidated, showing clearly that they are absolutely unscientific, that they tend to alienate patient's rights, are unable to solve the problems presented, are dangerous for one's health, and are submissive to pharmaceutical companies. The need for a drastic reduction in the power of the medical-chemical-industrial lobby is an important task to ensure that all people have the right to positive mental health, and to re-direct science's energies towards therapeutic practices which are focused upon the social and familial systems which are generating the personal suffering, instead of upon erroneous and misguided efforts to eliminate symptoms of social distress generated in individuals.