Dr. Peter Breggin's
Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy,
Education & Living

Newsletter
 
  April-May 2012 - Volume 3, Issue 4-5
 
       
  In This Issue

New Study Confirms Electroshock (ECT) Causes Brain Damage

German Medical Association Apologizes for Nazi Era Doctor Atrocities

DSM 5: Debate and Resistance Continues

Many Psychiatric Drug Studies Never Published in the Scientific Literature

Could it Have Been Different?  by Mary Ellen Copeland, PhD




Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living
EmpathicTherapy.org
1-607-272-5328








Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living
101 East State St. #112
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-272-5328
           

  Dear [Contact.First Name],

We had a great Empathic Therapy conference in April with over 200 attendees.  We will be presenting the next Empathic Therapy Conference in 2013, again in Syracuse, New York State.  An exceptional group of speakers have already agreed to present with up to the minute topics.  Read more details about our upcoming conference and presenters here, and mark your calendars now!  

Very best, Ginger Breggin, Editor


New Study Confirms Electroshock (ECT) Causes Brain Damage


by Peter R. Breggin, MD
first published in the Huffington Post, April 9, 2012

A new study shows ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) causes brain damage? That's not what you will find in the many promotional press releases published in the mainstream media. As usual, biopsychiatric press releases always come out before the research articles are easily available, making critical analysis impossible until the wave of false promotional euphoria has passed. The Bloomberg News headline crowed: "Shock Therapy's Effect on Depression Discovered, Researchers Say." The Huffington Post news headline, posted March 20, 2012 declared "Shock Therapy's Effect On Depressed Brain Explained by New Electroconvulsive Therapy Study." Time Healthland's article was titled "How Electroconvulsive Therapy Works for Depression." Fox News' headline for the Reuters news story they carried said: "Study shows how electrotherapy may treat depression."

The media coverage was unquestioning and wholly positive. ECT is touted as the best treatment for depression and we are told that science has finally, after more than 70 years, found out how it works. The method used was bilateral ECT -- the most grossly damaging and most commonly used form of the treatment. Both electrodes are placed over the temples, overlapping the frontal lobes of the brain. The most intensive surge of electricity hits the memory centers in the tip of the temporal lobes and affects the highest human functions in the frontal lobes.

The title of the research paper actually tells the story: "Electroconvulsive therapy reduces frontal cortical connectivity in severe depressive disorder." The specific area is the "dorsolateral prefrontal cortical region." This is the same area assaulted by surgical lobotomy. It contains nerve trunks connecting the rest of the brain with the frontal lobes -- the seat of our capacity to be thoughtful, insightful, loving, and creative. Think of what it takes to be a person; all of that requires the unimpaired functioning and connectivity of the frontal lobes of your brain.

Using a functional MRI in nine patients, the authors of the study conclude, "Our results show that ECT has lasting effects on the functional architecture of the brain." The result of these lasting effects is "decrease in functional connectivity" with other parts of the brain. In other words, the frontal lobes are cut off from the rest of the brain. The authors call this "disconnectivity." Does this sound familiar? It is a "lasting" frontal lobotomy.
Read more here.



German Medical Association Apologizes for Nazi Era Doctor Atrocities  

Professor of bioethics Art Caplan, PhD reports “the German Medical Association has issued a remarkably blunt and straightforward apology, more than six decades after the end of World War II, for the role it played during the Holocaust in the mass murder, sterilization and barbaric medical experiments done on Jews and many other groups.  The apology, made Wednesday at the Bundesärztekammer (German Medical Association) meeting in Nuremberg, makes no excuses.  Unanimously adopted by the delegates of the Physician's Congress, the declaration says that contrary to popular belief doctors were not forced by political authorities to kill and experiment on prisoners but rather engaged in the Holocaust as leaders and enthusiastic Nazi supporters.”  Read more of Professor Caplan's commentary on MSNBC.com here.

Dr. Breggin was one of the first (and few) psychiatrists to expose the role psychiatry and psychiatrists played in the killing of mental patients by psychiatrists in Nazi Germany and how that provided a model for the larger holocaust. 

In 1988 Dr. Breggin delivered the first academic talk on the role of German psychiatry in helping to bring about the Nazi Holocaust.  His paper was presented at "Medicine without Compassion", a conference on the history of  medicine in Nazi Germany, in Cologne, Germany. Dr. Breggin followed up with a peer-review article on the role of psychiatry both in Germany and internationally as an entering wedge into the Holocaust.  He has lectured about psychiatry and the Nazi holocaust so that we may never forget.  Here is some historical video footage from early 1990s of one of Dr. Breggin's lectures.


DSM 5: Debate and Resistance Continues

One of the most recent chapters in the debate over the expansion of various psychiatric diagnoses in the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders –DSM V—is an unsigned editorial just published in the journal Lancet

The Mail Online reports “…experts argue that grief does not require psychiatrists and that 'legitimizing' the treatment of grief with antidepressants 'is not only dangerously simplistic, but also flawed.'  The debate follows a decision by the American Psychiatric Association to classify grief as a mental illness in a bid to allow to doctors to be more flexible about how early patients can be treated for depression after the death of a loved one.”  Read more of the Mail Online article here.

An editorial, published in Investors Business Daily, addressed  the continually widening definition of autism related conditions. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has just declared Autism an epidemic after reporting in March that 1 in 88 children now have autism.  Relevant social, economic and statistical issues of Autism Spectrum Disorder are examined by  Paul Sperry in his Viewpoint piece for IBD: 

Mr. Sperry states in part:

“Before the 1990s, when only 1 in 2,500 were diagnosed as autistic, symptoms were obvious. Kids with classic autism didn't speak or make eye contact. They hit themselves. They soiled themselves. Many even ate broken glass. Now more than half of autism cases fall under the mildest range of the spectrum, known as Asperger's disorder. These kids fidget. Or brood. Or they may pick their nose and eat only yellow foods. But they are high-functioning students who will be able to hold jobs as adults. And they shouldn't be labeled mentally disabled..."

Mr. Perry continues "A growing body of scientific research has found that the rise in autism diagnoses is not due to a true increase in the incidence of the cognitive disorder, but rather to a widening of the definition and increased screening by schools and doctors, who are rushing to diagnose and medicate socially awkward or difficult kids. According to recent studies that control for changes in the diagnostic criteria, the rate of autism has actually been stable over time. And the number of language disorder cases have fallen as autism cases have risen, suggesting one disorder has simply been substituted for another. In other words, there is no autism epidemic. The problem is mostly statistical.” 

In addition to the moral issues of assigning lifetime psychiatric  labels to young children, the economic and social costs are examined in this article. See the whole article here.


Many Psychiatric Drug Studies Never Published in the Scientific Literature

Dr. Breggin has written for decades about the selective publication of psychiatric drug studies.*  The studies that do get published in the scientific literature are prodrug and journals will often turn down papers that do not have any positive findings.  These practices lead to a “skewed view on a drug’s effectiveness,” according to psychologist and researcher John M. Grohol, PsyD, Founder and Editor In Chief of PsychCentral online. 

Dr. Grohol offers a summary of the current status of this  problem, including links to recent news articles in Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.  He concludes:  “If more companies take it upon themselves to ensure all negative results also find a way to publication (whether in a journal or not really isn’t as important as simply providing the information and making it available through some public means), this problem will likely be resolved. And if the companies don’t want to take it upon themselves to do so, the FDA should make it a new requirement before accepting any new drug applications from the company.”  Read his complete blog here.

*See some of Dr. Breggin's discussions of this issue in his medical text Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition (2008) as well as in various of his scientific papers, available here



Empathic Therapy Conference DVD set for sale 

The The first ever Empathic Therapy Conference, held April 8-10, 2011, was a marvelous success with exciting, informative and innovative speakers from around the world. The DVD set of the first Empathic Therapy Conference is now available. Filmed speakers include:

Peter R. Breggin, MD: What is Empathic Therapy

Alberto Fergusson MD: Guided Self-Rehabilitation of Psychotic Street People

Howard Glasser: Inspiring Greatness

Richard Gottlieb MSW: Psychotherapy for People with Traumatic Brain Injuries or Stroke

Mathy Downing, Karl Protil JD, Peter Breggin MD and others: Personal, Legal and Medical Perspective of Psychiatric Drug Tragedies

Kathryn Douthit PhD: Therapeutic Approaches to people with Dementia

The DVD set has these and many more speakers.  These lectures will be exceptional teaching tools for professors and academicians.  Professional therapists, counselors, social workers, nurses and others in the related fields will be both informed and inspired.  And we have heard from many psychiatric survivors, patients and families who have found these lectures to be both healing and very useful in their own journey of recovery and regaining well being.

The Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy is charging only  $79 for over 14 hours of video from one of the most highly praised reform conferences ever held.


Could it Have Been Different?

by Mary Ellen Copeland, PhD

I first became aware of "mental illness" when I was eight years old. My mother began spending all of her time sitting in a rocking chair-rocking, crying, very frightened and unbearably sad. No one asked her why she was crying. No one took the time to sit with her and hold her hand. Instead they took her away to a mental institution. That's where she spent the next eight years of her life. This brilliant woman with a degree in nutrition, ahead of her time in her understanding of the effects of food on the body, deeply caring and compassionate, was treated with 150 electric shock treatments interspersed with various experimental drugs available at the time to stop her sadness. She spent her days behind a series of thick locked doors, sharing a sleeping and living space with 50 other women, in a dark, smelly ward with no privacy--50 beds in one room with only the space for a small night stand between. They wondered why she didn't get better, why she kept crying. Instead she got worse. Instead of just crying, she started wringing her hands, walking in circles repeating over and over, "I want to die." Several times she tried to kill herself. Sometimes she was very different. She would be racing all over the place, laughing hysterically, behaving in a bizarre manner that made us even more frightened than we were when she was depressed.


I know this because every Saturday morning for eight years, I went with my three brothers and sister to visit her. It was a truly frightening experience. This was not the person we had remembered as our mother. They told us she was incurably mentally ill. They told us not to bother to come and see her anymore. But we did. She still remembers that the next time we came to see her after they told us not to come and see her anymore, we brought her a big bouquet of gladiolas.


Something strange happened. A volunteer noticed she wasn't having these episodes anymore. She was even helping to take care of the other patients. She still wonders if it had anything to do with that volunteer who sat with her for hours and listened to her, even took her for some rides. She says she kept apologizing for going on so, but the volunteer said to go right ahead. So she kept talking. She talked and talked and talked. Then she got herself discharged.

This incurably mentally ill woman came home to her family, got a job working as a dietitian in the public schools, kept that job for twenty years while keeping up with the activities of her ever growing family of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. She's now 82 years old. Thirty-eight years ago she got out of the "hospital". On many days I feel as if she has more energy and enthusiasm for life than I do. She's never taken any psychiatric drugs. Incurably mentally ill?


She will never remember what it was like when we were little. Her memory of those years was wiped out by electroshock. She lost 8 precious years of her life and had to overcome the stigma faced by any person who has spent time in a mental institution.

Sometimes I fantasize about my mother's life. How might this story have been different? Suppose when Mom said that she wanted a part time job-just before this sadness and crying started -Dad had said, "Sure Kate, what can I do to help?"

Suppose her women friends and her lovely Pennsylvania Dutch family had gathered around, listening for hours on end, holding her hand, empathizing with her, crying with her--then what would have happened? Suppose they had offered to take the kids for a day or two, or a week, or a month so she could do some nice things for herself. Suppose they had offered her a two week cruise in the Caribbean. A daily massage. Suppose they had taken her out to dinner and a good movie, a play or a concert. Suppose someone had told her to get out and kick up her heels, to read a good book, go to a lecture on the importance of good nutrition. Suppose, suppose, suppose....

Maybe I would have had a mother when I was growing up. That would have been nice. My brothers and sisters would have liked one too. I'm sure my Dad would have liked to have a wife and my grandmother would have liked to have her daughter in her life. Most important, my mother would have had herself, with all her memories intact.

Suppose, 20 years ago, instead of going to the psychiatrist to be told that mental illness is hereditary and I have the same disease as my mother, I had searched out my friends to hold me and listen while I cried and laughed. Suppose my husband had said, "Don't worry, Mary Ellen, I can handle things. Just take a break. You deserve it." Suppose the family had pooled their resources and sent me on a hiking trip to the White Mountains or encouraged me to take some much coveted courses, or taken me out to lunch and for a bike ride, or to pick flowers, or brought me a kitten. Suppose the house had been decorated with beautiful flowers. Suppose I had had my own little space to go to whenever I wanted and do what I needed to do for myself. Suppose I had known that I had some value and could do for myself whatever it was I needed to make myself feel better. Go to every movie playing for a month. Whatever. Just suppose.


Maybe I wouldn't have spent too much of my life in mental institutions looking for ever elusive answers to my pain, too many years with my brain in a drugged fog, too many years of deep sadness and suicidal ideation interspersed with periods of outlandish behavior. It has taken me years to undo the damage. Maybe there would be no tremor in my hands, maybe some of the relationships that ended for me during those hard years would still be part of my life. Maybe my career and reputation would have remained intact instead of having to start all over again at 50.


Through all those foggy years something was stirring in me. Something that knew somehow that all of this was not right. Something that caused me to ask my psychiatrist how people deal with these illnesses on a day to day basis. He said he would get me that information. (Finally a promise of some useful help.) When I returned the next week in great anticipation he told me no such information had ever been gathered. The only information he could give me was on psychiatric treatment, medication and restraint. From someplace deep inside me a voice kept saying "this is not right." The voice got louder and louder.


For the last four years I have dedicated my life to finding out how other people cope, and the more I learned, and put this learning into practice in my own life, the better I felt. I learned that there is a silent but very courageous group of people all over the country who, like me, have been told that they are incurably mentally ill. These people have not given up. They have found the way out of the maze and I have become the vehicle for getting their important messages out to the rest of the world. I gather the information and spread it as far and wide as it needs to go--through seminars, lectures, books, videos and grass roots networking.


This is the most important thing that I have learned: people being there for people creates more wellness and more recovery than anything else. The next time you start feeling low (or high or strange), reach out. If someone you love is having "psychiatric symptoms," sit with them, listen to them, let them cry, scream, shout, swear. Don't judge them. Don't criticize them. Hold the advice. Just be there. Bring them good food or flowers. Take them away to a place of beauty where they can rebuild their strength. Do for them what you would like to have done for you.


Dr. Mary Ellen Copeland gave us permission to reprint her paper in the Empathic Therapy newsletter. She said:  “My mother would have loved Peter's work.  Although she died in 1994, today is the 100th anniversary of her birth, January 7, 1912.  While Peter has done such great work exposing the system and horrific treatments (absolutely critical), I have been looking for ways for people to recover using simple, safe, noninvasive and self-determined approaches.  WRAP grew out of that.”  Peter and I thank you, Dr. Copeland.


Mary Ellen Copeland is an author, educator and mental health recovery advocate. She specializes in the successful self-management of psychiatric symptoms. Her work is based on her intensive nationwide studies of thousands of people who have psychiatric symptoms and on her own personal struggle with manic depression - rising from total incapacitation to enjoying a rich and rewarding life. She is the author of The Depression Workbook: A Guide to Living with Depression and Manic Depression, Living Without Depression and Manic Depression: A Guide to Maintaining Mood Stability, Wellness Recovery Action Plan™., Winning Against Relapse, The Adolescent Depression Workbook, The Worry Control Workbook, The Loneliness Workbook, Healing the Trauma of Abuse: A Women's Workbook, and more.  Her work and the WRAP program is available via her website:  mentalhealthrecovery.com


Comment by Peter R. Breggin MD:
Mary Ellen Copeland's article is very poignant and true. I was touched by how a volunteer helped her mother heal and leave the hospital, since my own career started at age 18 as a college student volunteering in a state mental hospital where we created a case aide program run by students.  That program is described in his first book: College Students in a Mental Hospital: Contribution to the Social Rehabilitation of the Mentally Ill (New York, Grune & Stratton, 1962) (jointly authored by Carter Umbarger, James Dalsimer, Andrew Morrison, and Peter Breggin).

 

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Thanks for reading through our newsletter.   Watch for the announcement about Dr. Peter Breggin's upcoming book: Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and Their Families.  Those of you who wish may order your copy now at a special pre-publication price.  Order here.

Very best regards,
Ginger Breggin, Editor



WARNING -- Most psychiatric drugs can cause withdrawal reactions, sometimes including life-threatening emotional and physical withdrawal problems. In short, it is not only dangerous to start taking psychiatric drugs, it can also be dangerous to stop them. Withdrawal from psychiatric drugs should be done carefully under experienced clinical supervision. Methods for safely withdrawing from psychiatric drugs are discussed in Dr. Breggin's books, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2008) and Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008).


Peter R. Breggin, MD is no longer affiliated with the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, informally known as ICSPP and now ISEPP, which he founded and led from 1972-2002,
and Dr. Breggin is no longer involved in its conferences.

Copyright 2012

Peter R. Breggin, MD



   
 
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