The Hidden Side of Psychiatry
by Gary Null, PhD
Gary Null,
PhD, award winning investigative reporter, has authored 50 books on
health and nutrition, as well as numerous articles published in leading
magazines. Dr. Null holds a PhD in human nutrition and public health
science from the Union Graduate School. Former publisher of Natural
Living Newsletter, the current Gary Null's Natural Living Journal
reports on healthy alternatives in today's medicine, nutrition and lifestyle
choices, ten times a year, and is available by calling 516-547-7177.
Null hosts a nationally syndicated radio show, Natural Living,
from New York City. Call 212-799-1246 for a radio listing in your area.
Part 1 (Issue #162)
Mental illness
is at an all-time high, with 40 million Americans affected, according
to reports emanating from organized psychiatry. But just how accurate
is this account? As you will see, people seeking help from the mental
health industry are often misdiagnosed, wrongfully treated, and abused.
Others are deceptively lured to psychiatric facilities, or even kidnapped.
No matter how they arrive, though, once they are there, inmates lose
all freedoms and are forced to undergo dangerous but sanctioned procedures,
such as electroconvulsive therapy and treatment with powerful drugs,
that can leave them emotionally, mentally, and physically marked for
life. Some psychiatric patients are physically and sexually abused.
Millions more are told that they need harmful medications, such as Prozac
and Ritalin, but are not told of the seriously damaging side effects
of these.
Add to all
this a mammoth insurance fraud which we all pay for and what we have,
in sum, is the dark side of psychiatry. Millions of individuals are
being grievously harmed by the mental health profession, and it's time
that we as a society faced this.
Fraudulent Practices in Mental Health
Fraud in
the mental health industry goes beyond being a problem; it's more like
an all-pervasive condition. By way of introductory illustration, let's
look at the recent legal problems of a company that owned several chains
of psychiatric hospitals, National Medical Enterprises (NME). As author
Joe Sharkey reported in his book Bedlam 1,2
in 1993 the FBI completed its investigation of fraud in NME's psychiatric
hospitals and raided several NME facilities, in Texas, Colorado, Indiana,
Arizona, Missouri, California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Sharkey described
the extent of the morass into which this enterprise had sunk:
An estimated
130 lawsuits were filed against NME's psychiatric hospitals by patients.
Between 1992 and early 1993, three major suits were filed by insurance
companies against NME for insurance fraud. These suits identified more
than $1 billion in claims paid to NME's psychiatric hospitals. One month
after the FBI raids, NME agreed to pay $125 million to settle two of
the large insurance company lawsuits. Soon after, they settled the third
suit bringing the total costs in legal fees and settlements to about
$315 million....
In April
1994, NME paid almost $375 million in fines to the US Department of
Justice for violations of Federal law. NME had announced that it would
completely divest itself of its psychiatric hospitals and reserved $237
million to cover the write-offs for selling them. All told, NME's settlements
and fines have totaled $927 million.
Insurance Scams
The wrongdoings
of NME are not the exception; indeed, insurance fraud seems to be the
bread and butter of the mental health industry. Scams occur whenever
a psychiatrist or a psychiatric institution bills Medicare, Medicaid,
or private insurance companies for work they didn't do, for unnecessary
or bogus treatments, or for patients confined against their will. Here
are a few examples.
Patient Brokering
Consider
this story, carried by the Los Angeles Times in 19943:
Michael quickly
realized that A Place For Us wasn't a place for him. Overweight and
suffering from stress, the New Yorker had flown cross country to attend
what was advertised as a weight loss clinic in southern California.
The airfare was free and the treatment, he was told, was fully covered
by his Blue Cross plan. But when Michael reached Los Angeles, he was
shocked to see himself booked into a psychiatric hospital in a rundown
section of [town] where he was diagnosed as suffering from psychotic
depression and bulimia, conditions he denies ever having. Then he was
told he couldn't leave. Michael is one of many stories emerging from
federal and state lawsuits in Los Angeles in which insurers accuse A
Place For Us of enlisting doctors and hospital staff to falsify diagnosis
and medical records in order to obtain payment for treatment that, whatever
its value to patients, was not covered by their health plans.
Michael's
story is not an isolated incident. Overweight people are frequent targets
of insurance scams. Patient brokers fraudulently advertise 1-800 numbers
on television, and people call in thinking that they are talking to
health spa representatives. In actuality, they are speaking to sales
agents of psychiatric facilities whose only motive is to determine whether
or not potential clients have insurance, since the size of their commission
depends upon how many patients they can get into the hospital and how
long they can keep them there.
It's hard
to believe that this is going on in America, but the reality is that,
as a result of gross deception by sales agents, people are frequently
unaware of the fact that they are about to enter psychiatric institutions.
If an unsuspecting party has coverage, the person is flown free to a
facility, usually located in Florida or California. A limo awaits at
the airport, and the place seems very accommodating until the person
actually arrives at the facility and is locked up against his or her
will. Once the person realizes what is going on, it's too late. People
who become upset and attempt to leave can be threatened or diagnosed
as combative.
Civil litigation
attorney Randy Lakel works pro bono to represent patients who were voluntarily
committed to psychiatric facilities by deceptive patient brokers. He
describes a case involving two men from eastern Pennsylvania who were
approached by people in the crowd at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting
and taken aside.4
The brokers suggested to them that maybe they needed a little extra
help, which could be offered by professionals at overeaters' clinics.
The men were lured to the institution under false pretenses and then
locked up.
Lakel believes
that the problem has reached huge proportions: ...There are federal
grand juries investigating this. I've also spoken to general counsel
from very large insurance companies that have called me up to inquire
whether their insurance company was involved in any of my investigations….
The general impression I got from the mention of a grand jury investigation
and the general counsel from a large insurance company was that it was
not an isolated incident that I was dealing with.
The broken
world of patient brokering encompasses more than fat farm fraud; it
affects people who might need help with all types of problems. A nine-month
investigation of deceptive brokering practices conducted by Florida's
St. Petersburg Times was enlightening and upsetting.5
It was found that patient brokers sometimes share their finder's fees
with school counselors who help provide likely young candidates for
the brokers' institutions, or with public health workers, union representatives,
or police and probation officers who steer prospective patients their
way. Finder's fees can be as high as $3000 per patient. Another investigation
finding was that patients are sometimes given false diagnoses, for insurance
purposes. This is not surprising. The trouble is (on a personal level,
and letting alone the issue of massive fraud!) these false diagnoses
of mental illness can return to haunt patients throughout their lives.
Indeed, according to Randy Lakel, the worst part of the problem is having
a psychiatric record for life:
Once people
are committed, it goes on their insurance record. These people...are
appalled that they now have a psychiatric record for the rest of their
lives. It can interfere with any kind of employment opportunity. One
of the people I talked to was a professional in the medical field. In
her application, she was afraid that they were going to ask her if she
ever had psychiatric commitment. How do you get that off the record?
That, from a legal point of view, is clearly a damage.4
A disturbing
aspect of patient brokers and referral services is that they are largely
unregulated. As the St. Petersburg Times reported,5
in Florida and other states, referral personnel do not need licenses
or special training before they can deal with the sick and the troubled.
So people with criminal records are among the brokers, many of whom
will do whatever it takes to get one more body into a treatment center.
Says Paul
McDevitt, a licensed Massachusetts mental health counselor5:
These people have no ethics at all. They're morally bankrupt. They're
like the grave robbers in old England who provided cadavers for the
medical schools. The grave robbers of today are taking the bodies of
those so confused as to be dead and shipping them out to treatment centers
where they never get well. And the doctors who are the pillars of society
are still reaping the benefits and still never asking where the bodies
come from.
Bogus and Nonexistent Treatments
Psychiatric
facilities consistently charge consumers for nontherapeutic treatments
or services not performed. Adolescent facilities are common perpetrators
of this abuse. One Texas hospital, for example, billed insurance companies
$40 a day for relaxation therapy. This treatment, which simply consisted
of turning on Muzac while teenagers were getting undressed, was actually
far more exorbitant when you consider that each patient's insurance
company was billed that price for one person turning on the Muzac one
time.
Bruce Wiseman
is president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, an organization
that champions mental health consumer protection.6
He can provide a plethora of examples of how psychiatrists rip off the
system. Wiseman tells of a Texas psychiatrist who was known for his
hundred-dollar handshake. All he would do was walk by the beds of various
patients, shake hands with them, and then bill each person's insurance
company a hundred dollars. Another investigation discovered that charges
for nutritional counseling were to cover the person going to lunch.
Insurance companies are also charged for individual therapy when a group
of people are placed in a room together and told to scream at each other
for a couple of hours. These would be a little bit funny if they weren't
so devastating in terms of what they do to insurance premiums and our
taxes.7
Wiseman states
that psychiatrists collect $600,000 to 900,000 a year on bogus or nonexistent
treatments. We have plenty of cases where they just bill the insurance
company or the government for treatment that was never given. They don't
even see the patient and they send the bills in.7
Abusive Treatments
The scenario
worsens when you consider that economic exploitation is often coupled
with physical abuse. Wiseman tells how an adolescent facility in Reno
tormented a 15 year-old boy and then billed his parents' insurance company
$400,000:
They would
drug this kid with Haldol, a so-called antipsychotic drug, until he
was in a stupor, and then tie him in four-point restraints. They would
tie his hands and feet to the bed, and then tickle him until he was
hysterical. For that treatment this child's parents' insurance company
was billed $400,000, and the insurance company paid it! If anyone else
does to a child what the psychiatrist does, it is called child abuse.
But here the insurance company pays almost half a million dollars for
it. This is the kind of treatment and insurance fraud that exists.8
This is not
an isolated incident, Wiseman explains, but typical of what goes on:
In the Reno facility, children are subject to frequent take-downs. If
a kid smarts off' or jumps the guards, he or she is physically abused.
One patient in a Texas hospital had her legs strapped to a chair for
four hours because she was moving her legs. They called it purposeful
exercise, which she was not supposed to do. Kids are made to stand and
look at a wall for 16 hours a day for months on end. There is also sexual
abuse regularly going on in these hospitals.8
Nickie Saizon,
who regrettably placed her son in a psychiatric facility, says that
routine punishments were called treatment. Her insurance company was
billed exorbitant amounts for these procedures:
If they punished
them with a time out, they had to sit in a chair in the hallway all
day without moving. They charged $37.50 for that. When the kids would
get mad and angry, they would have a nurse and counselors surround the
kids and tell them, Get mad, get it out, have your fit.' They would
keep on until they got mad and really started having a big fit. Then
they put them down on the floor, held them there, and cut their shirt
off. For that they charged $45. Then they put them in a room which they
call a think tank. The room is bare and empty. There is no carpet, no
chairs, nothing. They have to go in there and think over how they should
have handled the problem....They charged $87.50 for this room. Every
time you turned around there were hidden costs.9
Wiseman believes
that people would be outraged to learn what really goes on in these
institutions: The general public isn't aware of it, but one would be
hard pressed to walk into any psychiatric hospital and not weep at the
treatment' that occurs in these places.8
Your Taxes Pay for This
In the final
analysis, fraudulent insurance practices hurt taxpayers since the maintenance
of moderate insurance rates becomes virtually impossible. Consider these
figures. The American public is swindled out of $42 billion a year.
That's $3 billion a month, $800 million a week, $116 million a day,
$4 million an hour, $80,000 a minute, and $1300 a second.
The federal
government and the insurance industry are finally waking up to the problem
and starting to fight back. In 1993, seven of the largest insurance
companies sued one of the largest psychiatric hospital chains, National
Medical Enterprises, for $750 million. In addition, every attorney general
now has an assistant attorney general to oversee health care fraud prosecutions.
As a result, some progress has been made. Wiseman states:
Psychiatrists
make up 8% of doctors, but 18% of those health care practitioners that
have been kicked out of the Medicare system for fraud. Last year, $411
million was paid to the government in fines and penalties for health
care fraud and 90% of that was paid by psychiatrists or psychiatric
institutions.7
Although
this is a start, it is Wiseman's belief that to truly resolve the problem
the public must become more informed about what's going on, and insist
on putting an end to the corruption.
Psychiatric Research
Each year,
hundreds of millions of tax dollars are wasted on pointless research
conducted by the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH). For instance,
these are examples of the types of studies they are funding under the
guise of learning more about sexual behavior: a four-year study of horses
masturbating, an eight-year study of castrated quail, a four-year study
on the nasal cavities of hamsters during intercourse, a two-year study
on the sexual preference and behavior of prairie moles, an 11-year study
in which female pigeon genitals were stimulated to measure how hormones
affect sexual behavior, a 9-year study of maternal licking of the genital
region of male versus female ferret babies, a 9-year study on the sexual
behavior of lizards, a 23-year study of sexual odors and social factors
that affect male Asian monkeys, and a 23-year study on the sexual behavior
of male rats as a biological basis for human behavior.
To study
the effects of drugs, a 13-year study was undertaken in which rats were
given hallucinogens, such as LSD, to see how they react when startled;
and a 31-year study looked at how rhesus monkeys respond to torture
while on mind altering drugs.
The NIMH
also carried out a 32-year study on the chemical reactions in the jaw
muscles of pigeons to better understand eating disorders in humans.
This is what
the NIMH is doing with our tax dollars, says Bruce Wiseman. We think
it's a travesty, and we think that organization should be eliminated.7
Wiseman goes
on to describe an NIMH study on sexual offenders that placed a Florida
community at risk: A few years ago, [NIMH] spent over a million dollars
on a program down in Florida where they took 100 known child molesters,
showed these guys pornographic material, and then turned them loose
on the community to see how they would behave. Then, when these child
molesters came back and reported their behaviors to these so-called
researchers, they were immune from passing that information along to
the authorities.7
If the NIMH
were studying how to alleviate mental illness, it would be different.
Unfortunately, these studies provide nothing useful to the alleviation
of mental suffering. According to Wiseman:
Billions
and billions and billions of dollars are poured into the psychiatric
industry. If they could have cured anything, they would have done so
over the last few decades.... [Psychiatrists] don't actually know what
bothers people. Their answer to virtually everything is to drug it.
They have convinced governments that they need billions in appropriations.
We wonder why we can't balance our budget when studies [such as the
above] cost the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. I don't
think there are many Americans who realize that their tax dollars are
being spent on studying the nasal cavities of hamsters during intercourse.
On the one hand, it's ludicrous. On the other hand, it is destructive
and wasteful.7
Inhumane Treatment
Involuntary Commitment
Each year,
approximately one and a half million people are taken to psychiatric
institutions against their will. That averages out to one person every
75 seconds. Often, there is no reasonable justification for committing
a person. According to Bruce Wiseman, psychiatrists commonly make off-the-cuff
diagnoses, having no real basis in medical fact, that result in people
getting thrown into psychiatric facilities. This is not only possible,
but easy to do, as it is sanctioned by state laws. Psychiatrists are
given the police power to lock people up against their will. Sometimes,
Wiseman states, people are put away for some of the most ridiculous
reasons imaginable:
A man who
was picked up was pronounced schizophrenic by a psychiatrist and taken
to a hospital, stripped and shocked. Subsequently, they found out that
the man was simply speaking Hungarian.... That kind of thing goes on,
on a very regular basis.
Legislation
has come out of Texas in the last year or so after the kidnapping' of
a guy named Kyle Williams whose estranged wife apparently talked to
a psychiatrist, and probably didn't have kind things to say about him.
As a result, the psychiatrist ordered the guy picked up a totally normal
fellow and he was thrown into a hospital.8
Laws vary,
but individuals are usually locked up for at least three days. During
that time, they have no constitutional rights, and no access to an attorney
or due process of law. Treatment usually consists of drugs, and sometimes
electroconvulsive therapy. After three days, they are then brought before
a judge to determine whether or not they're sane. At this point, chances
for release are slim since people are generally not in very good shape
after all that has been done to them. Chances for release are far slimmer
if the person's insurance pays for treatment. Wiseman reports:
We get hundreds
and hundreds of reports like this: A young mother took her child into
a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation and the hospital insisted that
the child stay. The mother decided to stay with the child just to comfort
her. Then the mother wanted to leave; the hospital wouldn't let her.
When she demanded to leave they placed her in a straitjacket and drugged
her.
A fellow
was checked into a psychiatric hospital for back pain. Some doctor referred
him, thinking that maybe it was psychosomatic. He was thrown into classes
on sex abuse and chemical dependency, which had nothing to do with his
problem whatsoever. He demanded to go home and they refused to let him.
When he got angry, they diagnosed him as suicidal and involuntarily
committed him. Of course, they bill the insurance companies tremendous
amounts of dollars.8
Concerning
insurance companies' bills, while it's true that companies are bilked
out of tremendous amounts of money to pay for people in mental hospitals
who shouldn't be there, we should not feel entirely sorry for the insurance
industry. According to Dr. Duard Bok, a former employee of Psychiatric
Hospitals of America, the insurance companies pay out on one side, but
get it back on the other side. They are double-dipping, because they
can disregard their billings from patients because they get it back
as shareholders.10
Electroconvulsive Therapy
Actually,
it's electric shock treatment. But as the Citizens Commission of Human
Rights points out, the people who profit from it like to call it electroconvulsive
therapy (ECT), because this sounds a little better. Regardless of the
label you give it, what this treatment amounts to is the destruction
of brain cells by electricity. In other words, it's physician-induced
brain damage.
In ECT, 180
to 460 volts of electricity are fired through the brain, for a tenth
of a second to six seconds, either from temple to temple (bilateral
ECT) or from the front to the back of one side of the head (unilateral
ECT). The result is a severe convulsion, or seizure, of long duration
i.e., a grand mal convulsion, as in an epileptic fit. The usual course
of treatment involves 10 to 12 shocks over a period of weeks.
This extreme
treatment is given for severe depression, and it does work in the short
term. That's because a facet of the brain damage caused is memory loss,
and so patients forget what they were depressed about. Unfortunately,
the memory loss is often permanent. Also, permanent learning disability
can be another effect of ECT, with disastrous career, not to mention
emotional, ramifications. The bottom line: When the patient's underlying
problems return, she or he is even less able to deal with them than
before the treatment, because of the brain injury that has been sustained.
It should be noted that women are twice as likely as men to receive
ECT.
The continued
use of this medieval-seeming therapy would perhaps be understandable
if it had been shown to be effective. But as explained in a recent article
in The Journal of Mind and Behavior,11
Follow-up studies about the effects of ECT in which recipients themselves
evaluate the procedure are both rare and embarrassing to the ECT industry.
The outcomes of these studies directly contradict propaganda regarding
permanent memory loss put forth by the four manufacturers of ECT devices
in the United States (Somatics, MECTA, Elcot, and Medcraft), upon whom
physicians and the public rely for information, much as the public relies
upon pharmaceutical companies for information on drugs.
Former ECT
recipient Diana Loper, of the World Association of Electric Shock Survivors,12
stresses that the only way ECT stops depression is that
it wipes your memory out so you don't know what you were depressed about.
Then, Loper says, after two weeks of a brain-damage high, people want
to kill themselves when they have never before been suicidal. Loper
is passionate in her work to totally ban the procedure, which she says
only causes brain damage and sometimes death:
ECT is non-FDA
approved. The machines were grandfathered to a certain extent but they
were put in category 3,
the most hazardous category that there is.... They're coming in with
new machines now saying that they're new and improved, but there's nothing
new and improved about this procedure. Why do I want to see this procedure
banned? Why does our organization want to see it totally out of the
way? Because it's damaging. Psychiatrists...are not only damaging people's
brains, they are killing people.... The APA task force states that 1
in 10,000 people die of ECT.
Our organization
will stop this procedure. This is a promise I made. I kept a diary when
I was being shocked. And I read my diary and I read it every day. And
the last thing I said to my doctor is, Some day you'll never do this
to anyone again....' We passed a law in Texas, last session. We have
the strongest informed consent bill in the nation.13
Electroshock
treatments send several hundred volts of electricity through the brain.
The brain then becomes starved for oxygen and pulls more blood into
the brain. This causes blood vessels to break, damage to the brain,
and eventual brain shrinkage. As a result of the lack of oxygen and
the destruction of the nerves in the brain, the person has a seizure.
This treatment
is nothing but barbaric. If anyone else did it, they would be locked
up as a terrorist. Yet 100,000 people a year in America get electroshocked,
generating $3 billion to the psychiatric industry. That faction of the
health care industry doesn't help. They're an enemy of the people and
they're destructive.7
Internationally
known psychiatrist and author Dr. Peter Breggin adds that the treatment
is so off base that doctors fabricate reasons to support it: Psychiatrists
end up distorting a great deal and forcing people into a model that's
incorrect, Breggin explains. Some of my colleagues claim that some undefined
biochemical imbalance causes a problem like anxiety or depression, when
we've never found a biochemical imbalance. Then, having suggested that
maybe there is such a thing as a disturbance in the brain that's hurting
a person, my colleagues go and do terrible things to the brain, such
as shock treatments for the depressed person.
Breggin believes
that this makes as much sense as deliberately putting patients in an
automobile accident. It traumatizes the brain horribly. Each person
who gets shock treatment goes into a state called delirium or an acute
organic brain syndrome. As a result, they're confused, they don't know
which end is up, they may forget where they are and how to get around
the hospital ward. They have an electrically induced closed head injury,
with all the things you find in other closed head injuries. People are
often permanently changed. They don't recover their memories and they
don't recover other mental functions.14
Diana Loper
discusses a major motivation behind the popularity of ECT profit: ECT
is the psychiatrist's most lucrative treatment, averaging between $800
and $1000 per individual treatment. A single series averages between
12 and 15 treatments, costing between $10,000 and $15,000. This isn't
even including hospitalization. ECT is administered in private, for-profit
psychiatric hospitals. In all states, insurance is what pays for this
treatment.15
Deep Sleep Therapy
Deep sleep
therapy, a procedure that has been used in the United States and throughout
the world, consists of placing people in a comatose state via barbiturates,
hypnotics, and sedatives for two to three weeks, and shocking their
brains on a daily or twice-daily basis. Jan Eastgate, the international
president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, reports on its
damaging effects: Patients suffered brain damage, pleurisy, double pneumonia,
blood clots, and at least 48 people died. It was used in mind control
experiments during the 1960s up in Canada as well. And yet it was passed
off as a therapy.16
Deep sleep
therapy has been combined with psychosurgery for the treatment of asthma,
Eastgate reports: Women who had asthma attacks were given deep sleep
therapy. One woman who had an asthma attack was also given psychosurgery.
Sixteen years later she was washing her scalp and cut her finger. She
was rushed to the hospital and they said, did you know that you had
metal plates sticking out of your head? She didn't realize that when
they did the psychosurgery they had actually left metal plates with
a serrated edge inside her head. They had to be removed.16
Eastgate
says that the treatment has been banned in certain countries, such as
Australia, but that international cooperation between psychiatrists
allows patients to be transported from nations where the procedure is
prohibited to places where it is used. For example, Eastgate says that
some Australian patients were sent to a Santa Monica psychiatrist. So
you have, internationally, some pretty horrific abuses.16
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is currently carrying out an
international investigation into the matter.
Sexual Abuse
"Whatever
houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining
free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular
of sexual relations with female and male persons, be they free or slaves."
These words
are part of the Hippocratic Oath, sworn to by all physicians. You'd
never know it, though, considering the results of a 1987 survey of over
1400 psychiatrists,17
described in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The survey found that 65 % of the psychiatrists reported treating patients
who had been sexually involved with previous therapists, and 87% of
the psychiatrists surveyed believed that the previous involvement had
been harmful to the patients. An interesting finding was that only 8%
of the psychiatrists polled reported their colleagues' behavior to a
professional organization or legal authority. This finding does not
speak well for the concept of professionals policing their own ranks.
One factor here might be that they all have a vested interest in keeping
malpractice insurance premiums down.
Sydney Smith,
in a report on The Seduction of the Female Patient,18
reports that nearly half of the patients that are sexually abused by
psychiatrists have previously been the victims of sexual abuse of one
type or another. Confusion arising from these earlier experiences can
make patients easier to victimize and less willing to come forward with
complaints when they are victimized. Plus if they do come forward, they
may seem less credible in their complaints; perhaps it was all a result
of garbled memories.
Sometimes
patient confusion is induced by psychiatrist-administered drugs. Consider
the case of Barbara Noel, who, in the book You Must Be Dreaming,
19
details her years of sexual abuse by a renowned psychiatrist. Indeed,
Dr. Jules Masserman was known worldwide as a leader in the psychiatric
field.
The Citizens
Commission on Human Rights summarized Noel's story:20
A past president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and honorary
president for life of the World Association for Social Psychiatry, Masserman
was a powerful man who abused that power often.
Barbara Noel,
who worshipped him and considered herself lucky to have him as her psychiatrist,
realized how deep the deception ran when she awoke during a frequent
drug-induced sleep administered by Masserman to find him panting loudly
as he sexually assaulted her.
Although
this was just a step above necrophilia, Masserman convinced Noel that
she could get in touch with her real feelings' by taking sodium amytal
(a barbiturate), which ironically had been used in mind control experiments
and was found to block memory rather than, as Masserman claimed, enhance
it.
Noel became
enraged when she finally realized how she had been abused for years
by a supposedly respected' professional. However, with Masserman claiming
Noel was sick' and lying, it took seven long years, court victories
by her and two other women who went public after hearing of Noel's case,
and even more women breaking their silence, before the APA upheld the
Illinois Psychiatric Society's decision to suspend Masserman for only
five years. And even that suspension was for inappropriate use of drugs,
not rape.
Scandalously,
Masserman remained as a member of the APA's Board of Trustees.
Comments
the CCHR: It is hard to imagine a teacher who molests a young student
would ever be allowed to teach again, but apparently a different set
of standards exist for psychiatrists.20
In psychiatric
facilities, patients are commonly sexually exploited as they are made
to barter sex for freedom. Joanne Toglia, whose story is further told
in a later section, says, of her abuse by a mental health counselor
in a private hospital: Finally, the bottom line came down to, if I slept
with him, I'd get out. If I didn't, I'd go to the state mental hospital.
And at the time, I had four children 2, 3, 4 and 6. I was desperate
to see them, so after three weeks of being locked up, I finally slept
with him.2
Reports of
sexual abuse are less frequent in outpatient settings, where psychiatrists,
psychologists, and counselors generally act in supportive and professional
ways. But in too many instances they do betray their patients' trust,
as the Masserman saga illustrates. Attorney Steve Silver, who represents
clients that were sexually abused by their therapists, gives one account
of how unethical behavior on the part of a therapist can devastate patients'
lives:
I prosecuted
a case against a female alcohol counselor who was roughly ten years
older than her male patient, a married man with a couple of kids. The
alcohol counselor ended up doing psychotherapy' on this gentleman, his
wife, and on their two children. Ultimately, she seduced the man while
telling his wife that because of her background of psychological problems
she should withhold sexual relations from her husband.
My client,
who was the husband and father in this situation, left his family and
married the alcohol counselor. This is a perfect example of even a low-level
therapist, such as an alcohol counselor, being able to manipulate an
entire family to ultimately serve her own romantic and sexual needs.
Of course, it was incredibly destructive to all four members of the
family, particularly the children.22
The problem
is compounded by the fact that grievances against psychiatrists have
little effect, leaving them free to prey on numerous other patients.
Even if they are punished in one state, psychiatrists can easily set
up shop in another. Silver says psychiatric boards are understaffed
and in need of increased government regulation and money. If these types
of abuses are to be stopped, there needs to be a public investigation
and sufficient resources to prosecute these bad shrinks and stop them
from practicing.22
Psychology and social work boards are better about investigating sexual
abuse, according to Silver, and their investigations can lead to the
offending therapist losing his or her license to practice.
Exploitation of Minorities
Psychiatry
is built on a foundation of prejudice against minorities, particularly
African Americans. In the 1700s, for instance, none less than the father
of American psychiatry, Benjamin Rush, asserted that African Americans
were black because they had a disease called Negritude, and that we
should not tyrannize over them, but rather find a cure for this disease.
In the 1840s a new so-called mental illness was discovered Drapetomania;
it was what caused slaves to run away! In 1887, G. Stanley Hall, founder
of the American Journal of Psychology and first president of the American
Psychological Association, put forth the idea that Africans, Indians,
and Chinese were members of adolescent races in a stage of incomplete
growth.23
Thus, these people's lack of equality was justified, because they were
not fully adult. From these historical roots of racism, according to
the CCHR's Jan Eastgate, all minority groups have become marked for
psychiatric abuse:
You have
had a targeting of the African American community, the American Indians,
Hispanic groups, as having a lower IQ than so-called whites. Based on
this scientific' justification, psychiatrists have sterilized African
Americans. By 1929, up to 6000 Californians were sterilized, and they
were largely African Americans. If you look at the statistics now, psychiatrists
involuntarily commit African Americans three to five times as often
as they do whites. The diagnosis of African American men as having schizophrenia,
by public and private institutions, is 15 times as high as whites. African
American adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 are far more likely
to be coerced into going to community mental health centers where they
are placed on mind-altering drugs, major tranquilizers. And they are
given higher dosages even than white people. So there's a concerted
effort by psychiatry to target minority groups in this country by diagnosing
them with spurious labels and then giving them mind-altering drugs and
electric shock.16
Abuse of Senior Citizens
After being
placed in nursing homes, older people are routinely forced into taking
psychotropic medications as a way of keeping them sedated. Eastgate
comments on this and other lamentable treatments: I think it's a sad
indictment of society when people [who have put so many years and so
much effort] into working, some of them fighting for this country, end
up in a nursing home, are drugged out of their heads, electric shocked,
and have to live out their final days in such misery.16
Actually,
an alarming trend today is that many elderly people are being taken
out of nursing homes and put into private mental hospitals. But it is
not their family members who are doing this. Indeed, family members
are often not consulted. The initiators of these transfers are social
workers and other employees of private psychiatric hospitals, who, amazingly,
have the legal power to transfer people to the institutions with which
they're affiliated, based solely on these employees' say-so. A powerful
motive exists for these forced visits to mental institutions Medicare
money. The government will pay the many hundreds of dollars a day that
it costs for a person to stay in one of these private hospitals, while
the nursing home from which the person was snatched can continue to
collect charges for his empty bed during his absence. The situation
has grown so widespread and horrendous that it was documented on a 20/20
TV news magazine segment recently.24
As documented
by 20/20's hidden camera, for-profit psychiatric institutions are not
doing much to improve their inmates' mental health. Rather, they're
mainly holding pens for people while their insurance money is procured.
An example shown of these hospitals' modus operandi: doctors billing
for psychotherapy for Alzheimer's patients who clearly could not participate
in a psychotherapy session. But note that not all of the senior citizens
captured by these institutions have Alzheimer's or any mental problem,
for that matter. As shown by 20/20, some are mentally and emotionally
fine. Their only problem is that they're old, and seemingly easy marks
for being, basically, kidnapped.
A factor
in this problem is the growth of the for-profit hospital industry, which
only makes profits when its beds are filled, and which finds the elderly
to be the most easily procurable bed-fillers. Author Joe Sharkey describes
the upsurge in for-profit institutions25:
The private
for-profit psychiatric hospital industry has its roots in the mid-1960s
with the creation of Medicare and Medicaid programs. These programs
created the climate in which a huge corporate hospital industry could
thrive. The rapid rise in health-care spending over the last 30 years
has paralleled the expansion of both private health insurance coverage
and federal insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Federal spending
for health care via Medicare and Medicaid programs has risen from 51%
of the total health care spending in 1960 to more than 80% in 1983.
The for-profit hospital became an investor-driven enterprise, and profits
drove the expansion of the industry. By 1990, nearly half of all U.S.
community hospitals were owned by a multiunit organization, including
the large national chains. One out of every four US hospitals was owned
by a national corporate chain.
The extent
of the fraud perpetrated by mental hospital chains is staggering. Explains
The New York Times: In the past, estimates have put fraud and abuse
at about 10% of the nation's health care costs, between $60 billion
and $80 billion. But law enforcement officials and fraud specialists
like Edward J. Kurtansky, New York State Deputy Attorney General, say
that accumulating evidence, particularly the new findings at the for-profit
psychiatric hospitals, indicates that because so much abuse goes undetected
or unreported that the percentage is probably much higher.26 Unfortunately,
it is the elderly who are frequently the victims in private-hospital
fraud.
By the way,
anyone who doubts that the for-profit hospitals take the for-profit
part of their identity very seriously should consider that their internal
handbooks set admissions goals. According to a manual obtained by the
Fort Worth Star Telegram, Psychiatric Institutes of America (which was
a part of the infamous National Medical Enterprises) set a greater than
50% admission goal for people requesting free evaluations at their numerous
hospitals. The manual also states that the goal of reasonable hospitalizations
jumps to 70% for those facilities that didn't advertise, apparently
because they would attract more serious cases.27
Prozac: A Second Opinion
Prozac is
one of the most heavily prescribed psychiatric drugs in use today, but
there are good reasons to challenge its popularity. While this medication
is primarily prescribed as an antidepressant, it is itself associated
with depression, and other severe side effects, such as nervous system
damage. What's more, its use has been implicated in suicides and homicides.
To understand why this drug was approved in the first place and how
the public became brainwashed into embracing it, we must first investigate
cover-ups during the testing phase and then look at the powerful interest
groups behind its promotion.
Worthless Clinical Trials
Dr. Peter
Breggin, author of Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren't Telling
You About Today's Most Controversial Drug, believes strongly that Prozac
should never have been approved. He backs up his assertion with a multiplicity
of reasons.
First, studies
were performed by the manufacturer's own hand-picked doctors who chose
to ignore evidence of Prozac's stimulant properties. Patients becoming
agitated were administered sedatives, such as Klonopin, Ativan, Xanax,
and Valium. This fact in itself, Breggin says, invalidates the studies,
because whatever effect the patients were experiencing was not provided
by Prozac alone. Basically, Breggin argues, the FDA should have said,
We're approving Prozac in combination with addictive sedatives.14
Second, researchers
lied about the number of people tested. Eli Lilly, the manufacturer,
claims that thousands of people received Prozac in controlled clinical
trials during its testing phase. In actuality, the numbers were far
lower, since those who failed to complete the studies due to negative
side effects were never accounted for. FDA material, derived via the
Freedom of Information Act, shows that up to 50% of the test patients
dropped out of the studies because of serious side effects. In his book,28
Dr. Breggin reports that, in the final analysis, only 286 people were
used as a basis for Prozac's approval. Significantly, Lilly has never
challenged this information. They've had me under oath in court, Breggin
says, and they haven't contested a single word that I've written in
the book.14
Third, tests
purposefully excluded the kinds of patients who would later receive
Prozac those who are suicidal, psychotic, and afflicted with other emotional/mental
disorders. Even now, Breggin reminds us, Lilly could easily study how
many people have attempted or committed suicide since the drug's release:
One of the
easiest things to study is whether your patients are alive or not. It's
much easier to study that than whether they've gotten over their depression.
That's a hard thing to judge. How do you know somebody's feeling better
or not feeling better? It's very complicated. But it's very easy to
see if a person made a suicide attempt or if a person committed suicide...Lilly
excluded all suicidal patients from its outpatient studies that were
used for the approval of the drug. They also excluded patients who were
psychotic, who had all kinds of problems for which the drug nonetheless
is now given.14(tk)
We are now
reaping the consequences of irresponsible approval. Dr. Breggin has
testified as a medical expert in an ongoing lawsuit, the case of Joseph
Wesbecker, who, while taking Prozac, shot 20 people, killing eight of
them and then himself. The data in that trial indicate that Lilly knew
beforehand that patients taking Prozac were having much higher suicide
attempt rates than patients taking placebos or other drugs.
The Medical Industrial Complex
Why did Eli
Lilly and the FDA use trickery to approve a drug it knew to be ineffective
and unsafe? Breggin says this happened because psychiatry is part of
the medical industrial complex, which, like any industry, is looking
to sell products:
One way to
look at this is to consider the industrialization of suffering. Getting
Prozac from a doctor is very similar to getting a Ford or a Toyota from
a car dealer. We are at the end point of an industrialized process with
a product. Now, psychiatrists are like salesmen in the car showroom.
We go to a psychiatrist and he's going to try and sell us a car, only
the car in this case is a psychiatric drug, and very frequently it's
going to be Prozac.... The FDA is influenced by what the manufacturers
do and what the manufacturer tells them.14(tk)
Prozac is
not the first pharmaceutical to be questioned after FDA authorization.
Hundreds of drugs that initially pass their tests end up having major
label changes i.e., a major new warning has to be made or wind up being
withdrawn. In the field of psychiatry, the rate is especially high.
During the time Prozac was approved, about 16 other psychiatric drugs
passed inspection, and nine of these have since had major label changes.
Breggin says that the FDA reveals the truth of the matter to physicians,
but not to the public: A few months ago, he reports, I attended a full
day's seminar put on by the FDA where they were openly admitting this....
They had a black poster there that said, Once a drug is approved, is
it safe? No, it's not!' They were making the point that many drugs turn
out to be very dangerous after approval.14
There are
a number of reasons why dangerous effects of medications are not known
early on. One is that the individual studies performed by the FDA usually
have a hundred patients or less. Four thousand patients may be tested
as 40 groups of 100. According to Breggin, this means that scientists
are less likely to notice a reaction in one patient:
They may
think, Jane got depressed when she took Prozac but she was probably
going to get more depressed anyway. In 40 different studies, 40 or more
people may be missed. Perhaps a fatal reaction shows up once in 5,000,000.
That's a lot of fatalities but it may not show up at all in a group
of 5000. Or it may be missed. Eli Lilly was developing a drug for the
treatment of a liver disorder. A couple of people died from this drug
but it was missed in the early stages of the study. So, it's very easy
for things to get through.14
In addition,
FDA doctors have close affiliations with drug companies. Paul Leiber,
who approves psycho-pharmacological drugs at the FDA, is known to have
friendly communication with Lilly. Breggin states, This guy is a friend
to Prozac. One statement I found in the Lilly material even says so.
You have some real issues here having to do with the collaborative kind
of relationship. 14
There are
always doctors who can be easily bought. When violence and suicide were
related to Prozac at FDA-held hearings, Breggin reports that most of
the doctors who were making the judgment at the hearing were taking
money from drug companies. One consultant, who supported Prozac in court,
was getting paid huge sums by Lilly to write a paper on the subject.
Another doctor who voted in favor of the drug was paid by Lilly to tour
the country and make speeches on its safety and benefits. Dozens of
them are getting paid by Lilly and doing clinical research for them.
Nonetheless, they think they can sit fairly in judgment about whether
Prozac is harmful or not.14
Breggin stresses
that it all comes back to the fact that organized psychiatry is part
of a medical industrial complex. It is out to push drugs, not ethics,
he feels. It's not science but a myth. They're part of industry. They're
no more objective than doctors who work for tobacco companies and say
tobacco doesn't cause cancer.14
Side Effects of Prozac
Overstimulation
Prozac acts
like a stimulant, and some of its side effects are thus the same as
those of amphetamines. Breggin explains that the major adverse effects
of the amphetamines like those of Prozac are exaggerations of the desired
effects, specifically stimulation, including insomnia, anxiety, and
hyperactivity....As is now commonly done with Prozac, amphetamines were
often prescribed along with a sedative to relieve overstimulation.29
Overstimulating
the central nervous system can cause a wide range of symptoms, including
agitation, anxiety, nervousness, increased headaches, sweating, nightmares,
insomnia, weight loss, and loss of appetite. Two common manifestations
of overstimulation are akathisia and agitation, discussed below.
Akathisia
The term akathisia refers to a need to move about. A person feels driven
to shuffle his or her feet, or to stand up and walk around. At the same
time, there is an inner sense of anxiety or irritability, like chalk
going down a chalkboard, only it's your spine.14
The feeling can be mild or torturous.
Agitation
Prozac can produce extreme feelings of agitation, often associated with
akathisia. Studies have shown 30 to 40% of people on Prozac, even when
some of them are taking sedatives, get agitated or get akathisia. Both
of these conditions are associated with violence and suicide because
they are related to a breakdown of impulse control.
Psychosis
When overstimulation
becomes extreme, a patient's nervousness reaches psychotic proportions.
People become manic and do outlandish things. They start directing traffic
naked, or spending all their money. Extreme overstimulation can ruin
lives. People can become paranoid and extremely dangerous to others,
as well as bizarrely depressed and compulsively suicidal. This effect
was noted in FDA controlled studies that were only four to six weeks
long. Out of the 286 people who finished the short-term studies, 1%
became psychotic. Actually, the rate may be higher than 1% since these
were such short, controlled studies, and the population of people studied
was so narrow. As mentioned earlier, the people chosen for the study
were carefully screened to exclude those with a history of being manic
depressive, schizophrenic, or suicidal. As a result, one can see that
the craziness people experienced was strongly associated with the drug.
Depression
Depression
is an aftereffect of overstimulation. While researching FDA materials
on Prozac, Breggin discovered that Lilly knew Prozac caused depression
and that, in fact, the company initially reported it:
Lilly admitted
on paper, in its final statement about the drug's side effects, that
it commonly caused patients to get depressed. Then it got scratched
out at the FDA, along with a whole bunch of other things. It went from
being common,' and being scratched out, to not even appearing under
uncommon.' It just disappeared from the label.14
In other
words, the manufacturer admitted that Prozac causes the very thing it
is supposed to cure. Ultimately, this places patients in jeopardy. Breggin
explains:
[People]
start taking the drug, and in the beginning they feel better. Maybe,
after all, because it's just good to get a drug. They feel like, wow,
I'm doing something for myself. Or maybe the drug gives them a burst
of energy. Stimulants will do that. They will make people feel energized.
Then they get more depressed. They get suicidal feelings. They don't
know the drug hasn't been tested on suicidal patients. They don't know
that Eli Lilly once listed depression as an effect of the drug. And
so they end up thinking they need more Prozac, and their doctor agrees.
When that fails to work, they end up eventually getting shock treatment,
never knowing that if they hadn't been started on Prozac they might
never have gotten so severely depressed.14
Tardive Dystonia and Tardive Dyskinesia
There have
been reports of serious nerve damage with Prozac. Some former users
charge that Prozac has essentially wrecked their nervous systems, leaving
them with permanent disabilities such as tardive dystonia, a condition
in which muscles tense up involuntarily, or tardive dyskinesia, in which
there is involuntary movement.
Many psychiatric
drugs, such as Haldol and Thorazine, are recognized as causing tardive
dyskinesia (TD) in roughly one out of five long-term users, and warnings
are contained in the manufacturers' prescribing information cautioning
against this permanent brain damage caused by the drugs. But no such
warning is provided with Prozac by the manufacturer. The Prozac package
insert does note that users of the drug have developed dystonia and
dyskinesia, but it contains no suggestion that these conditions could
become permanent. Current medical knowledge holds that the permanent
damage of TD is not expected to develop until the person has been on
the psychiatric drug for a year or more, hence the name tardive (meaning
late developing). With Prozac, however, the condition can develop rapidly
and without warning.
Tardive dystonia
and dyskinesia are conditions that should not be taken lightly, because
they can stigmatize a person for life. The movements and postures associated
with these conditions can look bizarre, and may make a person seem quite
mentally ill when in fact his or her movements are side effects of medications
intended to alleviate mental illness. These symptoms can persist long
after the person has come off the drug, and in some cases they never
remit at all because parts of the brain that control muscle function
have been destroyed by the drug.
Sexual Dysfunction
Prozac affects
serotonin levels and may therefore cause sexual dysfunction. Men may
find themselves unable to ejaculate or get an erection, and women may
have difficulty obtaining an orgasm. One study showed this problem to
occur in half the people using the medication. Breggin says the percentage
may be even higher, noting that many people taking Prozac won't complain
about sexual dysfunction because this drug tends to make them less interested
in other people. In fact, Breggin terms Prozac an anti-empathy drug
for this reason. Even those in psychiatry who praise the drug, Breggin
points out, admit that it reduces sensitivity. That, of course, can
reduce sexual interest, and diminish whether you care about having a
sexual problem.14
Again, when
Lilly studied this matter for the FDA, reports Breggin, they found only
a small amount of people were having sexual dysfunctions. Then after
the drug was approved, they found out that they were wrong and that
a very large percentage of people were having this particular problem.14
Skin Rashes
Several kinds
of rashes are associated with Prozac use. At the most serious extreme,
rashes that appear reflect serious immunological disorders, such as
lupus erythematosus or serum sickness, which is accompanied by fever,
chills, and an abnormal white blood cell count. A few deaths have been
associated with Prozac-induced skin rashes.
Cancer
Animal studies
show that Prozac, as well as a number of other anti-depressants, enhance
tumor growth.
Biochemical Imbalance
If you don't
have a biochemical imbalance before starting Prozac, you certainly will
have one once you are on it! Prozac has been shown to have drastic effects
on the brain's serotonergic system. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter,
or chemical messenger, that normally connects to receptor sites and
fires nerves. Prozac prevents serotonin from being removed from the
active place where it's working in the brain. It keeps the sparks alive
longer, and as a result, a lot of excess firing takes place. The brain
doesn't like all the overstimulation and eliminates 30-40% or more of
receptors. The brain, in effect, is saying, I'm not going to have receptors
for all this serotonin. It's a compensatory mechanism for the overstimulation.
Receptors can be compared to catcher's mitts. The balls being thrown
are like serotonin. After awhile the brain just eliminates its catcher's
mitts. It says, I'm catching too much serotonin. I'm going to get rid
of my catcher's mitts.
Eli Lilly
knew about the disappearance of receptors from their laboratory experiments.
What they failed to study, however, was whether or not receptors ever
come back. The experiment, which would have been simple to perform,
could have consisted of stopping the drug, waiting a couple of weeks,
sacrificing some of the animals, and then seeing if their brains had
come back to normal. The information could also have been indirectly
gleaned from performing spinal taps on human beings before and after
they had taken Prozac, to see if the breakdown products indicated that
the brain returns to normal. Neither of these approaches were ever attempted.
Obviously, Lilly is not concerned with this issue.
Dependency
Since Prozac's
release, millions of Americans have come to depend on it and to believe
that their lives are better because of it. Concerning this reality,
Breggin says:
First of
all, I don't think Prozac should have been approved. But now that it's
out there it shouldn't be taken away from anybody who thinks that it's
helping them. People should be warned, however, about its dangerous
effects. If, for example, Joseph Wesbecker committed a mass murder while
on Prozac, then we're weighing the potential good of the drug against
some real disasters.
The other
issue to look at is why people like to take drugs. The fact that so
many people feel helped by this drug doesn't necessarily mean you or
I would feel helped.
Evidence
from the FDA trials suggests that this is a very poor drug. Even a New
York Times article recently said that follow-up studies show Prozac
as not very effective.
But when
you give something to people and tell them it's a miracle, they'll believe
it.... Also, the drug does have stimulant effects. And while we no longer
believe that stimulants should be given for depression, certainly people
can feel like it's helping them.14
Overcoming Depression Without Drugs
At the core
of the problem are psychiatric theories that limit the range of acceptable
human behavior. So emotional upsets are considered diseases. When a
child is anxious or can't concentrate in school, it is called a disease.
If someone is sad or depressed, it's called a disease. Breggin says
that counter to current dogma, there are real reasons for emotional
pain, and ways of becoming healthy that do not involve drugs:
I think that
depression comes from many different sources. I think anybody who is
depressed should have a medical evaluation. There are tests for whether
your blood sugar is functioning normally, whether you have diabetes,
whether you have hypothyroid disease, whether you have Cushing's disease,
whether your nutrition is poor, and whether you need to improve your
nutrition. So, general health matters.
While there
are some diseases, on occasion, that can make a person anxious, afraid,
or depressed, it's far, far more likely that the sources of human suffering
at any given moment come from something other than a psychiatric disease....
Most people become depressed because of their life experiences. Life
is very difficult. Life is full of tragedy. From childhood on, people
are exposed to a great many stresses. Women, in particular, become depressed
more often than men and have good reason. It's harder for them to get
many of their desires fulfilled. It's often harder for them to make
a relationship feel satisfying. It's harder for them to have the same
achievements in the career arena. Almost anyone I talk with about being
depressed has a reason somewhere along the line for why their view of
life is filled with hopelessness.
Breggin feels
that coming out of a depression involves understanding what has gone
into your life that has led up to your being depressed and what ideas
you have about life that aren't helping you to live better, as well
as learning new principles that are more positive and creative. What
I try to provide, he says, and what I think every good therapist tries
to provide, is a warm, supportive, encouraging relationship to help
a person rebuild hope and confidence in themselves, to rebuild an idea
about how to live life.
Breggin believes
that a holistic approach to treating depression allows a patient the
opportunity to look at his or her life, and to choose to live in a new
and far better way. Depression, in that light, is viewed as a signal
that something is wrong, something is not understood, or some values
are not being fulfilled. While drugs can jerk people out of their depression,
they fail to help them deal with life. Unfortunately, Breggin says,
drugs are out there and millions are taking them. Now, they are a basic
part of American life and it is really a matter of following the dollars
back to the drug companies and to organized psychiatry.14
Order a subscription
to Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients to read Part
2, Psychiatry in Education
Correspondence:
Gary Null, PhD
P.O. Box 918 Planetarium Station
New York, New York 10024 USA
212-799-1246
References
1. Joe Sharkey, Bedlam, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1994,
pp. 273-4.
2. NME to Settle U.S. Fraud Charges, New York Daily News,
Apr. 15, 1994.
3. Thomas Mulligan, Los Angeles Times, Apr. 10, 1994.
4. Gary Null interview with Randy Lakel, Feb. 17, 1995.
5. C. Marbin and J. Testerman, The Patient Pipeline, St.
Petersburg Times, Nov. 14, 1993.
6. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights can be reached
at 1-800-869-2247. Help is free.
7. Gary Null interview with Bruce Wiseman, Feb. 20, 1995.
8. Gary Null interview with Bruce Wiseman, Nov. 8, 1994.
9. Gary Null interview with Nickie Saizon, Feb. 20, 1995.
10. M. Smith and C. Rugeley, Hospital Abuses Lead Lawmakers
to Rethink Controls, Houston Chronicle, Oct. 27, 1991.
11. D.G. Cameron, ECT: Sham Statistics, The Myth of Convulsive
Therapy, and the Case for Consumer Misinformation, The Journal of Mind
and Behavior, 15: 1 & 2, Winter/Spring 1994, p. 177.
12. Write to World Association of Electroshock Survivors,
P.O. Box 16164, Austin TX 78761 to get involved in banning ECT worldwide
and to receive The Disconnect News.
13. Gary Null interview with Diana Loper, Feb. 21, 1995.
14. Gary Null interview with Dr. Peter Breggin, Nov. 9,
1994.
15. Gary Null interview with Amy Rankin, Feb. 20, 1995.
16. Gary Null interview with Jan Eastgate, Feb. 21, 1995.
17. Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, American
Medical Association, Sexual Misconduct in the Practice of Medicine,
Journal. of the American Medical Association, Nov. 20, 1991, 266:19,
pp. 2742-4.
18. Sydney Smith, The Seduction of the Female Patient,
in Sexual Exploitation in Professional Relationships (G.O. Gabbard,
ed.), American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC , 1989.
19. Barbara Noel with Kathryn Watterson, You Must Be Dreaming,
Poseidon Press, New York, 1992.
20. Citizens Commission on Human Rights, Psychiatric Rape
(booklet), Los Angeles, 1995, p. 6.
21. Gary Null interview with Joanne Toglia, Feb. 21, 1995.
22. Gary Null interview with Steve Silver, Feb. 17, 1995.
23. Citizens Commission on Human Rights, Psychiatry's
Betrayal (booklet), Los Angeles, 1995, p. 5.
24. 20/20, CBS, Jan. 26, 1996.
25. Joe Sharkey, op. cit., pp. 239-40.
26. Peter Kerr, Mental Hospital Chains Accused of Much
Cheating on Insurance, The New York Times, Nov. 24, 1991.
27. Psych Chain's Handbook Sought Admission Quotas, San
Antonio Express News, Dec. 5, 1991.
28. Peter R. Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, Talking
Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Today's Most Controversial
Drug, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1994, p. 40.
29. Ibid., p.121.