(Especially to non-prescribing Marriage and Family Counselors)
▫ You may believe your skills are sufficient for every (or almost every) case.
▫ You may or may not be a believer in psychotropic drug therapies.
▫ You may feel you keep up-to-date with advancements in your professional field.
▫ You may have thought (even said), more than once, “I am very good at what I do.”
▫ And you may, indeed, be very good,
but in this age of Big Pharma1 and polypharmacy,2 if one of your first inquiries of a new or returning patient is not: “Are you taking any medications?” then, in nigh 100% probability, you are prolonging the suffering, confusion, and peril, not just of your patient, but of those who love that patient. (The same applies to a second question: “Have you attempted or are you now attempting to end a medication regime?”)
So this is the PLEA: Please, no matter how skilled you are:
▪ if you are not asking a patient about medications (& even herbs, supplements, or hormonal therapies that have psychoactive potential);then please, please, become humble enough to look beyond your present paradigm. Be humble enough to listen to:
▪ if you are not factoring in known and potential side-effects;
▪ if you are not knowledgeable about adverse reactions, drug-induced CBI (Chronic Brain Impairment); anosognosia; medication spellbinding, etc.;3
▪ if you think it is not your place to question a prescriber;4
▪ if you are not open to the observations of family and friends of the patient;5
▪ if you are not reading and informing yourself about the mounting, evidence-based damage reports surrounding psychotropic drug use (and other psychoactive substances), AND the pervasive suppression of critical data by drug companies and others;6
Ben Goldacre: What doctors don't know about the drugs they prescribe
TED talk (Time 13:30) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKmxL8VYy0M
Peter Breggin, MD: Simple Truths about Psychiatry (1)
Do You Have a Biochemical Imbalance? (Time: 7:42)
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARZ2Wv2BoFs
Peter Breggin, MD: Simple Truths about Psychiatry (2)
How Do Psychiatric Drugs Really Work? (Time 10:50)
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Xb29geVwE
Peter Breggin, MD: Simple Truths about Psychiatry
Psychiatric Drugs Are More Dangerous than You Ever Imagined
(Time: 9:18) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luKsQaj0hzs
(See also the balance of the Simple Truths series)
Please, be open to the truths of independent, evidence-based medicine and the credible, professional witnesses that are exposing the dark-side of Big Pharma.
Please explore:
• Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families by Peter R. Breggin, MD, (Springer Publishing Company, New York, © 2013)Please, do not wait before you investigate medications, side-effects, and adverse withdrawal reactions. If you ignore the unscriptable, chemical distortions of the mind, how can you hope to guide the mind and soul toward a lasting healing?
• Psychiatric Drug Facts at http://breggin.com/
• Toxic Psychiatry at http://www.toxicpsychiatry.com/
• Beyond Meds at http://beyondmeds.com/
• Numerous other credible witnesses. They are everywhere.
Please, be part of the solution to this manufactured epidemic profiled in
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker---------------------/
1. “Twenty percent {1 in every 5] of adult Americans were taking psychiatric drugs in 2010—15% of men and 26% of women (Medco, 2011).” As quoted in Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families by Peter R. Breggin, MD, (Springer Publishing Company, New York, © 2013), p. 1.
2. “’Polypharmacy’ refers to the concurrent use of multiple medications in a single patient.” Quoted from a DovePress abstract titled, “Polypharmacy or medication washout: an old tool revisited” at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215520/
3. See Breggin, Chapter 3: Chronic Brain Impairment: Four symptom complexes: 1. Cognitive dysfunction; 2. Apathy and indifference; 3. Emotional worsening; 4. Anosognosia (patient’s lack of awareness of their symptoms).
Anosognosia: is viewed as a deficit of self-awareness, a condition in which a person who suffers certain disability seems unaware of the existence of his or her disability. It was first named by the neurologist Joseph Babinski in 1914. Anosognosia results from physiological damage on brain structures, typically to the parietal lobe or a diffuse lesion on the fronto-temporal-parietal area in the right hemisphere. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia )
4. Review Breggin, p. 2-3, section titled: “Relationship between Prescribers and Therapists”; and Chapter 12: Developing Team Collaboration, p. 147-158.
Consider: What is your primary interest—to help your patient in healing or to protect the status of a prescriber?
5. “Always take seriously the concerns of family and friends; they can be the prescriber and the patient’s best ally during psychiatric medication treatment and withdrawal” (Breggin, p. 17). “The patient’s family and friends are often the first to notice adverse drug effects, including overmedication, and the prescriber and clinicians should pay close attention to their concerns and observations” (Ibid., p. 18).
6. Suppression of Data: review Ben Goldman at TED Talks; Breggin, p. 14-16, and numerous others studies and observations.
