Word: mental
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...many other people saying such nasty things about him? The head of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill calls Breggin "ignorant" and claims he's motivated by a lust for fame and wealth. The former director of the National Institute of Mental Health brands Breggin an "outlaw." The president of the American Psychiatric Association says the doctor is the modern equivalent of a "flat earther...
...renegade. As his book jackets proudly point out, his background is pure establishment: Harvard College, Case Western Reserve Medical School, a teaching fellowship at Harvard Medical School. But early in his career, he became deeply disturbed by the treatment of psychiatric patients, particularly the many long-term residents of mental hospitals who spend their lives in a drugged-out state. In 1971 Breggin declared his rebellion, launching the Center for the Study of Psychiatry in Bethesda, Maryland, as a way to push for reform...
...issue is the very nature of mental illness. For the past few decades, the majority of researchers have worked to show that psychiatric disorders are triggered by chemical imbalances in the brain that can be rectified with medication. Breggin, by contrast, clings to an old-fashioned view: the emotional problems that land a person on a psychiatrist's couch result from traumas caused by outside forces, like sexual abuse during childhood. Drugs can't erase these traumas, he asserts, and aren't even appropriate for such severe conditions as schizophrenia and manic depression. "These are not illnesses," he says. "They...
...dangerous. Though he warns his readers against stopping their psychiatric drugs too abruptly or without medical supervision, at least one schizophrenic man threw away his medications after listening to Breggin on TV. The patient became suicidal and was hospitalized for two weeks. "Breggin reinforces the myth that mental illness is not real, that you wouldn't be ill if you'd pull yourself up by the bootstraps," says Susan Dime-Meenan, president of the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association. "His views stop people from getting treatment. They could cost a life...
Psychiatric patients are generally insulted by contentions that their trouble was brought on by bad parenting, childhood trauma or weak character -- that they don't actually have a disease. While experts agree that family problems and other external factors can exacerbate mental illness, most have long ago concluded that the underlying causes are often biological and genetic. None of the recovered patients in the NPR documentary blame family woes. In fact, the illness caught many without warning. "I was looking up at the sky, and suddenly it cracked like a mirror, in a thousand pieces," recalls Laura Young...