| Empathic Therapy Center empathic therapy.org June 27, 2010 In This Issue What is Empathic Therapy? Children Increasingly a Target of Biopsychiatry Young Social Worker Seeks a Better Way Come to Dr. Peter Breggin's Empathic Therapy Conference April 8-10, 2011 in Syracuse, NY Postal Mailing Address: Empathic Therapy Center c/o Peter R. Breggin, MD 101 East State St. #112 Ithaca, NY 14850 607 272-5328 |
Dear Reader, I promised a monthly newsletter, but here I am again before the month is out! One of the issues that galls me most is the drugging of children and adolescents. The trend to increasingly drug young children continues. In the article below we provide some info about the explosion of antipsychotic prescriptions for privately insured children. We also include data about clinical trials of Paxil being conducted on young children by Glaxo in Japan. Continuing with our youth theme, a young social worker who is a founding member of our Empathic Therapy reform organization shares her experiences as a teen of watching her friends deteriorating after falling into the hands of biopsychiatry, and her experiences in working with the chronically mentally ill now as a professional. I deeply respect each and every one of you who are professionals working hard to connect with and help your clients, patients or students. Thank you all! Very best, Ginger Breggin, Editor Empathic Therapy has been examined and discussed by Dr. Peter Breggin and others over many decades. Dr. Breggin says: If we approach the human as a being, then our task is to understand and to empower. Understanding involves intuition, empathy and love. Empowerment involves self-understanding, moral encouragement through a caring relationship, and guidence toward more effective, autonomous and loving principles of living. It may also involve direct assistance in negotiating life's stresses, for example by helping the individual become more effective in utilizing community resources or by including his or her family in the therapy. If we approach the human "scientifically" or "objectively," then the tendency is to diagnose and to control, to impose our own abstract and potentially oppressive category upon the person, and to manipulate the outcome. Physical interventions, such as drugs and enforced confinement in a mental hospital, become the preferred tools. Often the patient feels misunderstood, rather than understood; disempowered rather than empowered. These approaches seem to empower the doctor far more than the patient....." Peter R Breggin, MD--Quoted from Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons One of our most important tasks as counselors, therapists, and 'first responders' for those in emotional crisis is to develop the necessary tools and skills to empathically work with our clients. Over time, we hope to include write ups from our growing membership of professionals about their use of empathic therapy in working with others. We would appreciate hearing from those of you who would like to share short articles with us. Children Increasingly a Target of Biopsychiatry by Ginger Breggin GlaxoSmithKline has no shame. They are doing 8 week clinical trials of Paxil on children ages 7 to 17 years old and diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MMD). These experiments on children and teens are being done despite the requirement by the US FDA that any SSRIs, including Paxil, contain a Black Box Warning about the increased risk of suicidality in children and youth up to age 25. These Glaxo trials are being conducted in Japan, where language barriers may prevent concerned parents from being able to access information about the dangers of submitting their children as subjects in clinical trials. The study ends this coming fall. This study is being done to establish efficacy--how well the drug works. Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the SSRI antidepressants, such as Paxil, don't work! Read more about the Glaxo study~ See the NIMH write up about the study~ Why Antidepressants are no Better than a Placebo~ Meanwhile, young children and toddlers covered by private insurance in the US are increasingly being psychiatrically diagnosed and drugged. (We have become increasingly aware of how heavily the children served by Medicaid or in foster care are drugged.) The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry January 2010 carried an article that indicated that administration of antipsychotics to children aged 2 to 5 years of age doubled in the last ten years. (Olfson, Mark, MD etal, Trends in Antipsychotic Drug Use by Very Young, Privately Insured Children, The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Jan. 2010, pp 13-23). This same report documented that less than half of the children being psychiatrically drugged received a "mental health assessment (40.8%), a psychotherapy visit (41.4%), or a visit with a psychiatrist (42.6%) during the year of antipsychotic use." Thank you, every one of you, who are working to help children and their families to find better ways to heal emotionally than the ineffective very dangerous solution of psychiatric drugs. See the next article, below by a young social worker who watched her friends in high school deteriorate during psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Young Social Worker Seeks a Better Way by anonymous I am a social worker in New England. My interest in the field began at a young age, while I was still in high school. Many of my friends and peers were being sent by their parents to see psychiatrists mostly due to normal teenage behavior such as moodiness, rebelliousness, typical teenage acting out. My friends were of course started on a regimen of SSRI's as well as benzodiazepines. At that point, I became interested in the pharmacology, checking out the PDR at my hospital volunteer position and reading on the internet. The addictive properties of the drugs worried me, as well as the side effects. Fairly soon after being placed on medication regiments, my friends began to be hospitalized. What started as a diagnosis of major depression and generalized anxiety somehow evolved to diagnoses of bipolar, borderline personality, schizoaffective, and years later in some cases to schizophrenia. I saw a friend of mine put on Clozaril at 19. I begged her to reconsider, since at the time I worked in a residential facility (my first job in the psychiatric field) with a group of highly psychotic patients who had participated in clozapine trials at a major mental health center. Practically the whole house was on clozapine; and in my opinion the side effects were devastating. We had a number of patients who suffered from extreme polydipsia, so much so that they would place their mouths against the faucet directly and drink until redirected. The incontinence was out of control. All of these patients still demonstrated acute psychosis, some of them constantly. The fact that a medical doctor would recommend a drug this potent and toxic to a 19 year old was extremely disconcerting to me. This same friend went on to allow doctors to perform a course of ECT on her, despite my emphatic rejections. The doctors told her that a course of ECT would alleviate her psychosis. I am not aware of any scientific documentation regarding the efficacy of ECT for psychosis. Furthermore, this so-called 'psychosis' was clearly iatrogenically induced by medications. Following the ECT, my friend's memory was so severely impaired she could not drive because she could not remember where anything was. This was something I heard again many times while working in the state mental health system from patients suffering from ECT because the doctors believed it would make them less psychotic. I entered the mental health field knowing that I did not believe in biological psychiatry but with the conviction that I could change the world and the system--the sort of grandeur and feelings of invincibility common among young adults before reality comes crashing down. Over the years I've come to believe that the system is inherently flawed and will never change. The bottom line is always money. More and more funds have been cut and the state pretty much provides the cheapest, most cost-effective services possible. I've worked for private community mental health providers contracted through the state beginning in 2003. I currently work out of an office that provides case management and community-based services for over 60 people living in their own homes in the community. I would say that about half of our clients were previously served by the old state hospital system and the other half is a sort of 'new wave' result of 'modern' psychiatry. Reading many charts and psychiatric histories over the years I have found it quite common for someone to have entered the hospital system due to emotional problems beginning from drug use or other events and after years of psychiatric 'help' they end up with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It just blows my mind how frequently this seems to occur. It is practically a given that all of our clients are on at least one or two psychiatric medications; most of them on much more. A fair amount of them also receive outpatient ECT for a number of symptoms ranging from severe depression to psychosis. Involuntary hospitalizations are fairly common, as well as long-lasting injectables of antipsychotic drugs for those who are 'noncompliant' with medications. There is a lot of money directed toward assuring that people remain on their medications. We have staff here who medicate people in their homes twice daily if needed. There are also countless nursing programs who will also administer meds in the home. While so much attention is focused on medication and compliance, there are barely any options for folks regarding non-biological alternatives. The quickest way to land in a psychiatric unit is to tell staff you want off of your meds. My dream is to one day work in a place that helps people detoxify and withdraw from psychiatric medications. I long to be part of the solution to this sad situation.
Editors Note: We are very glad you are part of our Empathy Network! Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. Come to Dr. Peter Breggin's Empathic Therapy Conference April 8-10, 2011 in Syracuse, NY Peter R. Breggin, MD is no longer affiliated with the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, informally known as International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, which he founded and led from 1972-2002, and Dr. Breggin is no longer involved in its October conference. Peter and Ginger Breggin and many of their closest colleagues will be holding their new annual spring conference April 8-10, 2011. Join us for 3 exciting days of speakers and breakout sessions. Our conference will be inspiring, informative, and fun with lots of opportunity to meet and visit with Peter and Ginger Breggin and the other exceptional presentors. We have more than two dozen speakers including outstanding practitioners and professors of psychiatry, counseling, psychology, social work and education, nurses, therapists, stress management specialists, public advocates, clinical directors and addiction specialists. A wealth of humane and human centered therapies will be examined. Ginger and Peter Breggin are personally organizing and hosting this conference through their new psychiatric reform organization. Learn more, sign up for the free e-newsletter, become a founding member, and come to our spring Empathic Therapy conference at http://www.EmpathicTherapy.org. Questions, write to Ginger Breggin at empathictherapy@hotmail.com. Empathic Therapy Center Offering Founding Memberships! Empathic Therapy Founding Memberships are now available and offer enrollment through December 2011. With each new membership we are offering a free autographed copy of Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime. This is Peter Breggin, MD's latest best selling book containing vital information about the hazards of psychiatric drugs, how they impact a person's life and judgement, the new scientific concept of medication spellbinding, and information on how to carefully taper off psychiatric drugs.
In addition to the signed book, membership provides you with a $10 discount on the upcoming Empathic Therapy Center's international conference, April 8-10, 2011. The Empathic Therapy Conference is really shaping up with exciting, new speakers from specialized therapy fields who will be offering inspiring and informative talks and workshops. Come to our website and join the Empathic Therapy Center! http://www.empathictherapy.org
Note that Dr. Peter Breggin's Empathic Therapy Center is not affiliated with the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology and Dr. Peter Breggin will not be participating in the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology conferences. 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. Peter 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). Empathic Therapy Center is not affiliated with the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, informally known as Copyright 2010 Peter R. Breggin, MD Empathic Therapy c/o Peter R. Breggin, MD 101 East State St. #112 Ithaca, NY 14850 607 272-5328 | ||||
