Mental Health Survival Kit and Withdrawal from Psychiatric Drugs

A User's Manual

Peter C. Gotzsche

• Publisher: Modern History Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781615996216
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Psychiatrie & geistige Gesundheit

This book is the collected images of Joanna Walitalo's first five years of woodburning artwork. Pyrography, the use of heat or fire to create an image, is an uncommon and sometimes under-appreciated media in the art world and commonly considered more of a craft. Joanna, like many other Midwest kids, was given a craft wood-burner when she was young, tried it once or twice, burnt herself and subsequently put it away. Many years later, she picked it up again, and this time stuck with it, pushing herself to create high detail, realistic artwork. Her professional background in biology, environmental policies and forestry led her to the idea of incorporating what she had learned about wood products into this unique art form, using her skills as an artist to spread the message of love, beauty and respect for the environment and our natural resources. The concept that all of her work is done on scrap wood builds an ethic of recycling into each piece of art. The name J. Walitalo was chosen because it covers both James and Joanna, a husband and wife team. The Walitalos enjoyed this hobby, where they could work together, James preparing and finishing the wood on which Joanna does her artwork. "It is very satisfying to work together to create something unique and special, especially when I can do it with my best friend, " Joanna reflects, referring to her husband James. No two pieces are the same because of the wood--each piece is a different size, species and grain. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right piece of wood for a particular image or to find the right image to fit a particular piece of wood. Each piece of art is done freehand, either drawing from life or from looking at reference photos. "Joanna's vision is honest and straightforward. Walitalo loves wood, and she thoughtfully integrates the natural design of the various wood grains and knots within her rendering. Under Joanna's experienced craftsmanship, scraps of basswood, pine, curly maple, etc. become her partners in the creative process. Walitalo's drawings are a wonderful example of the artist uniting her life's passions with her perfect expressive medium."
--Michael Volker, Assistant Professor (Lecturer III) Painting and Drawing, Central Michigan University "An extraordinary convergence of art, personal experience, growth and utilization of a renewable resource as a canvas. The narrative depicts and shares with the reader the thinking of the artist, her experiences in life and in her work. Joanna Walitalo has created a collection of artwork that utilizes pyrography to recognize people, nature and landscapes, and brought it to a single work that shares wood, nature and life."
--Andrew J. Storer, Dean, College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Tech University "Joanna Walitalo has an amazing capacity to recognize the personality of her subjects-both animal and human-and infuse that element into the finished piece. Using fine lines in either ink or pyrography, she brings forth the character of the time and place in her art. Her ethics of recycling wood that has either been rejected or has passed its time of usefulness as a product, lends heart and value to her work. This is an artist who loves, understands and values the natural world and can bring nature right into your home. Incredible!"
--Barb Rogers, Manager, Wildlife Recovery Association, and retired art instructor

1	This Book Might Save Your Life

I have written this book to help patients, and when I decided to write it, one of my tentative titles was, “Listening to the voices of patients.” Most people I have talked to about mental health issues, be it my family, friends, colleagues, sports partners, filmmakers, gardeners, cleaners, waiters and hotel receptionists, have had bad experiences with psychiatry or know someone that have.

Coming from a background of being a specialist in internal medicine, which is entirely different, it slowly dawned on me how harmful psychiatry is. It takes years of close study to find out that psychiatry does vastly more harm than good,¹ and my own research has contributed to revealing this.

My findings resonate closely with what the general public have concluded based on their own experiences. A survey of 2,031 Australians showed that people thought that depression pills (usually called antidepressants), psychosis pills (usually called antipsychotics), electroshock and admission to a psychiatric ward were more often harmful than beneficial.² The social psychiatrists who had done the survey were dissatisfied with the answers and argued that people should be trained to arrive at the “right opinion.”

In early 1992, the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists, in association with the Royal College of General Practitioners, launched a five-year “Defeat Depression Campaign.”³ Its aim was to provide public education about depression and its treatment in order to encourage earlier treatment-seeking and reduce stigma. Campaign activities included newspaper and magazine articles, television and radio interviews, press conferences, production of leaflets, factsheets in ethnic minority languages, audio cassettes, a self-help video and two books.⁴ When 2,003 lay people were surveyed just before the launch of the campaign, 91% thought that people with depression should be offered counselling; only 16% thought they should be offered depression pills; only 46% said they were effective; and 78% regarded them as addictive.³ The psychiatrists’ view on these responses was that, “Doctors have an important role in educating the public about depression and the rationale for antidepressant treatment. In particular, patients should know that dependence is not a problem with antidepressants.”

When challenged about the fact that the colleges had accepted donations from all the major manufacturers of depression pills for the campaign, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Robert Kendall, acknowledged that, “One of their major motives was the hope that an increased recognition of depressive illnesses both by the general public and by general practitioners would result in increased sales for them.”⁵ He didn’t say what the companies’ other major motives were. I doubt there were any. Money is the only motive drug companies have.

The psychiatrists embarked on their re-education campaign. But people were not easily convinced that they were wrong. A 1998 paper reported that changes were of the order of only 5-10% and that depression pills were still being regarded as addictive and less effective than counselling.⁴ Interestingly, 81% of the lay people agreed that, “Depression is a medical condition like other illnesses” and 43% ascribed depression to biological changes in the brain, but most people nonetheless ascribed it to social causes like bereavement (83%), unemployment (83%), financial problems (82%), stress (83%), loneliness/ isolation (79%) and divorce/ end of relationship (83%).⁴ Something didn’t add up.

My interpretation is that despite claims through many years, also long before 1992,¹ that psychiatric disorders are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, the public is not so willing to accept this falsehood.

In 2005, Danish psychiatrists reported what 493 patients had told them about their depression pill treatment.⁶ About half the patients agreed that the treatment could alter their personality and that they had less control over their thoughts and feelings. Four-fifths agreed that as long as they took the drugs, they didn’t really know if they were necessary, and 56% agreed to the statement that, “Your body can become addicted to antidepressants.” The psychiatrists refused flatly to believe what the patients had told them, which they considered wrong, and they called them ignorant. They also felt that the patients needed “psychoeducation.” The problem with this was that the relatives shared the patients’ opinion.

“Educating the public” and “psychoeducation” so that they can arrive at the “right opinion” is what we normally call brainwashing. Particularly when what the patients and the public reported are more than just opinions; they drew conclusions based on their own experience and that of others.

It is not only in research that psychiatrists dismiss what their patients tell them, they also do this in clinical practice. Often, they either don’t listen or don’t ask the appropriate questions about their patients’ experience and history and therefore don’t find out that the current symptoms are very likely caused by trauma or severe stress, and not by any “psychiatric disorder.”

Please note that when I generalise, it does of course not apply to everyone. Some psychiatrists are excellent, but they are in a small minority. It is no wonder that the UK pre-campaign survey found that “the word psychiatrist carried connotations of stigma and even fear.”³ This is understandable, given that psychiatric drugs kill hundreds of thousands of people every year and cripple millions, physically and mentally.¹

The term “psychiatric survivor” says it all in just two words. In no other medical specialty do the patients call themselves survivors in the sense that they survived despite being exposed to that specialty. They fought their way out of a system that is rarely helpful, and which many survivors have described as psychiatric imprisonment, or a facility where there is a door in, but not a door out.

In other medical specialties, the patients are grateful that they survived because of the treatments their doctors applied to them. We have never heard of a cardiology survivor or an infectious disease survivor. If you have survived a heart attack, you are not tempted to do the opposite of what your doctor recommends. In psychiatry, you might die if you do what your doctor tells you to do.

Many psychiatric survivors have described how psychiatry, with its excessive use of harmful and ineffective drugs, had stolen 10 or 15 years of their life before they one day decided to take the responsibility for their life back from their psychiatrists and discovered that life is much better without drugs. They often say that what woke them up was that they read some of the books about psychiatry by psychiatrists David Healy, Peter Breggin or Joanna Moncrieff, science journalist Robert Whitaker, or me.

There are thousands of personal stories by psychiatric survivors on the Internet, e.g. on survivingantidepressants.org. In many of them, people explain how they withdrew from psychiatric drugs, one by one, often against their doctor’s advice and often with great difficulty, because the drugs had made them dependent and because the psychiatric profession had failed totally in providing proper guidance about how to do it. The psychiatrists have not only been uninterested in tackling this immense problem but have actively denied its existence, as you have just seen and will see much more about in this book.

Mental health issues prevent you from living a full life and they go on in your mind. All patients should be offered psychotherapy, which is also what 75% of them want.⁷ However, this is not what they get, which shows once again that the psychiatric profession doesn’t listen to its patients. A large US survey of people with depression showed that 87% received depression pills, 23% psychotherapy, 14% anxiety pills, 7% psychosis pills and 5% “mood stabilizers” (a euphemism that the psychiatrists never defined, but they usually mean antiepileptic drugs and lithium, whose main effect is to sedate people).⁸

Most people have issues with their mental health now and then, just as they have issues with their physical health. There is nothing abnormal about that.

Throughout this book, I shall give advice based on the scientific evidence that I have good reasons to believe will lead to better outcomes than if my advice is ignored. But please note that whatever you do and whatever the outcome, you cannot hold me responsible. The information I provide is not a replacement for consultations with healthcare professionals but might empower you to engage in meaningful and informed discussions or to decide to handle the issues yourself. I shall start with a little advice and will give the background for it in the rest of the book:

1. WARNING! Psychiatric drugs are addictive. Never stop them abruptly because withdrawal reactions may consist of severe emotional and physical symptoms that can be dangerous and lead to suicide, violence and homicide.¹

2. If you have a mental health issue, don’t see a psychiatrist. It is too dangerous and might turn out to be the biggest error you made in your entire life.⁹

3. Don’t believe what you are told about psychiatric disorders or psychiatric drugs. It is very likely to be wrong.¹

4. Believe in yourself. You are likely right, and your doctor is wrong. Don’t ignore your hunches or feelings. You can easily be led astray if you don’t trust yourself.¹⁰

5. Never let others have responsibility for your life. Stay in control and ask questions. Avoid therapists that are positive toward psychiatric drugs.

6. Your spouse or parent might be your best friend or your worst enemy. They might believe what doctors tell them and might even see it to their advantage to keep you drugged.

Many of the stories I have received from patients have a common theme. The patients had no idea how dangerous it is to become a psychiatric patient and trusted their doctors, willingly following their advice, until they found out years later that their lives had been ruined.

What is particularly diabolic is that the psychological and physical deterioration often occurs gradually, and therefore passes unnoticed, like if you become nearsighted, which you don’t discover until one day a friend wonders why you cannot read a road sign close to you. The patients may even be grateful for the drugs they received, although it may be obvious to others that they have been harmed.

Gradual and unnoticed deterioration is not the only problem. A brain under chemical influence may not be able to assess itself. When the brain is numbed by psychoactive substances, the patients may be unaware that they can no longer think clearly or evaluate themselves. This lack of insight into feelings, thoughts and behaviors is called medication spellbinding.^11,12 Medication spellbinding is usually ignored, both by patients and their doctors, which is surprising because we all know that people who have drunk too much cannot judge their ability to drive.

Here is a patient story that illustrates many of the common issues.

A Patient’s Psychiatric “Career”

In November 2019, I received an outstanding account from Stine Toft, a Danish patient I met when I lectured for “Better Psychiatry,” an organization of relatives to psychiatric patients.¹³ Stine was seriously harmed by psychiatric drugs; her life became endangered; and she suffered an excruciating withdrawal phase because she did not receive the necessary guidance. But she is doing well today, aged 44.

Stine gave birth to her second daughter in 2002 after a hard time with “all kinds of trials and hormone treatments.” In the aftermath, she wasn’t well. She was afraid of losing her daughter and of not being able to protect her well enough. Her doctor diagnosed her with depression, and she was told it was perfectly normal and that she should just take Effexor (venlafaxine, a depression pill) so that her brain would work again—possibly for the rest of her life, but at least for five years.

Her life changed markedly. She put on 110 lbs. (50 kg) and had several weird episodes that she didn’t understand. Once she wanted to dig a sandbox for her children, but she ended up putting an entire trampoline two feet into the ground by removing nine cubic yards (seven cubic meters) of soil with a shovel. She also knocked down a wall in the kitchen without warning and without being a craftsman in any way because she felt the family needed a smart conversation kitchen. One day during a job clarification process, she told the job consultant that she wanted to become a lawyer even though she is dyslexic and would never have been able to achieve this.

Stine saw a psychiatrist again, and 15 minutes later the case was clear—she had become bipolar. She was sent for psychoeducation and was told that her condition would definitely last for the rest of her life. S...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise for Mental Health Survival Kit and Withdrawal from Psychiatric Drugs
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Index of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 - This Book Might Save Your Life
• Chapter 2 - Is Psychiatry Evidence-Based?
• Chapter 3 - Psychotherapy
• Chapter 4 - Withdrawing from Psychiatric Drugs
• Chapter 5 - Survival Kit for Young Psychiatrists in a Sick System
• About the Author
• References
• Index