Peter R. Breggin – författare

Based on more than 30 years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist and a therapist, Dr. Breggin's book, now available in an affordable paperback, illustrates the importance of developing a therapeutic bond--or healing presence--between helping professionals and their clients. The author provides useful vignettes, case studies, and personal insights to help both beginning and experienced therapists develop more empathy in therapeutic relationships. He asserts that the first step toward effective treatment is empathic self-transformation in the therapist. It is empathy and self-transformation that lie at the heart of being helpful. Topics include vulnerability, nurturing, helplessness, forgiveness, and spirituality, as well as tips for working with clients in extreme emotional crises, children and families, and patients of culturally diverse backgrounds.

As a physician who specializes in addiction medicine and drug withdrawal and written widely on them, I recommend Dr. Breggin's book to every health professional who deals with anyone taking psychiatric drugs. He gives highly useful information and reasons for stopping or avoiding them. It's an excellent one-stop source of information about psychiatric drug effects and withdrawal. Prescribers, therapists, patients, and families will benefit from this guidebook.Charles L. Whitfield, MDBestselling author of Healing the Child Within and many other booksPeter Breggin has more experience in safely withdrawing psychiatric patients from medication than any other psychiatrist. In this book he shares his lifetime of experience. All of our patients deserve the benefit of our obtaining that knowledge.Bertram Karon, PhDProfessor of Psychology, Michigan State UniversityAuthor, The Psychotherapy of SchizophreniaFormer President of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological AssociationThis is such an important book. Describing the problem of withdrawal from psychiatric drugs in detail, and providing clear advice regarding how to deal with this problem as Peter has done so well in this book, is long overdue. For decades, the belief system that is mainstream psychiatry has denied the existence of withdrawal problems from the substances they prescribe so widely. In reality, withdrawal problems with psychiatric drugs is a common occurrence. Because of psychiatry's reckless denial of this real and common problem, millions of people worldwide have not had the support and care they desperately need when attempting to come off psychiatric drugs, often been erroneously advised that these problems are confirmation of the existence of their supposed original so-called 'psychiatric illness.' Dr. Breggin's book is therefore both timely and necessary." Terry Lynch, MDPhysician and PsychotherapistAuthor of Beyond Prozac: Healing Mental Suffering Without Drugs and Selfhood: A Key to the Recovering ofEmotional Well Being, Mental Health and the Prevention of Mental Health ProblemsDr. Peter Breggin has written an invaluable reference for mental health professionals and lay-persons alike who are seeking a way out of dependency on psychiatric drugs. He describes the many dangers of psychiatric medication in straightforward research-based and contextually nuanced terms. Most helpfully, he articulates a method of empathic, person-centered psychotherapy as an alternative to the prevailing emotionally and system disengaged drug-centered approach. In this book, Dr. Breggin systematically outlines how to safely withdraw a patient from psychiatric medication with rich case examples drawn with the detail and sensitivity to individual and situational differences that reveal not only his extensive clinical experience, but his clear, knowledgeable, and compassionate vision of a more humane form of treatment. In this volume, Dr. Peter Breggin has again demonstrated that he is a model of what psychiatry can and should be. This is an indispensable text for both mental health trainees and experienced practitioners seeking a practical alternative to the dominant drug-centric paradigm.Gerald Porter, PhDVice President for Academic AffairsSchool of Professional Psychology at Forest InstituteThis much needed book and guide to psychiatric medication withdrawal is clearly written and easy to understand. As people become more empowered and able to inform themselves about the effects of pharmaceuticals, practitioners will be called upon to wean their patients off of damaging medications. This book will provide that guidance. Thank you Dr. Breggin for having the courage to oppose conventional psychiatric thinking and the caring to improve the quality of life for individuals who are ready to experience their own innate healing instead of reaching for a pill to mask the symptoms.Melanie Sears, RN, MBAAuthor, Humanizing Health Care and Choose Your WordsToday many psychologists, nurses, social workers, and counselors are struggling with how to help adults and the parents of children who are over-medicated or who wish to reduce or stop taking their psychiatric drugs. Dr. Breggin's book shows non-prescribing professionals, as well as prescribers, how to respond to their patient's needs in an informed, ethical, and empowering fashion.Sarton Weinraub, PhDClinical PsychologistDirector, New York Person-Centered Resource Center, NYCThis is the first book to establish guidelines and to assist prescribers and therapists in withdrawing their patients from psychiatric drugs, including those patients with long-term exposure to antipsychotic drugs, benzodiazepines, stimulants, antidepressants, and mood stabilizers. It describes a method developed by the author throughout years of clinical experience, consultations with experienced colleagues, and scientific research. Based on a person-centered collaborative approach, with patients as partners, this method builds on a cooperative and empathic team effort involving prescribers, therapists, patients, and their families or support network.The author, known for such books as Talking Back to Prozac, Toxic Psychiatry, and Medication Madness, is a lifelong reformer and scientist in mental health whose work has brought about significant change in psychiatric practice. This book provides critical information about when to consider psychiatric drug reduction or withdrawal, and how to accomplish it as safely, expeditiously, and comfortably as possible. It offers the theoretical framework underlying this approach along with extensive scientific information, practical advice, and illustrative case studies that will assist practitioners in multiple ways, including in how to: Recognize common and sometimes overlooked adverse drug effects that may require withdrawal Treat emergencies during drug therapy and during withdrawal Determine the first drugs to withdraw during multi-drug therapy Distinguish between withdrawal reactions, newly occurring emotional problems, and recurrence of premedication issues Estimate the length of withdrawal

From the author of Toxic Psychiatry and Talking Back to Prozac:Peter Breggin is the conscience of American psychiatry. Once more he updates us on the real evidence with respect to the safety and effectiveness of specific psychiatric medications and ECT. This information is needed by all mental health professionals, as well as patients and families." --Bertram Karon, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Michigan State University, Author of The Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia"Nowhere does false medical thinking do more harm than in the modern psychiatric argument that mental illness is easily diagnosed and then cured by a side-effect free drug. Nowhere is the correct psychiatric thinking more evident than in the books by Peter Breggin. -- William Glasser, MD, psychiatrist, author of Reality TherapyIn Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, renowned psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D., presents startling scientific research on the dangerous behavioral abnormalities and brain dysfunctions produced by the most widely used and newest psychiatric drugs such as Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Cymbalta, Effexor, Xanax, Ativan, Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta, Strattera, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon, Abilify, lithium and Depakote.Many of Breggin's earlier findings have improved clinical practice, led to legal victories against drug companies, and resulted in FDA-mandated changes in what the manufacturers must admit about their drugs. Yet reliance on these drugs has continued to escalate in the last decade, and drug company interests have overwhelmed psychiatric practice.This greatly expanded second edition, supported by the latest evidence-based research, shows that psychiatric drugs achieve their primary or essential effect by causing brain dysfunction, and that they tend to do far more harm than good. New scientific analyses in this completely updated edition include:Chapters covering every new antidepressant and stimulant drugTwenty new guidelines for how to conduct non-drug therapyA chapter describing how to safely withdraw from psychiatric drugs A discussion of "medication spellbinding," explaining how patients fail to appreciate their drug-induced mental dysfunctionsDocumentation of how the drug companies control research and the flow of information about psychiatric treatments

At a time when biological psychiatry claims that drugs and electroshock are the best methods for helping deeply disturbed persons, mental health professionals need to be reminded that psychological and social approaches to mental illnesses remain more effective, less harmful, and much more able to address the real needs of recovery, growth, and development for affected persons. Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons empowers counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to trust their intuitive and clinical understanding of how to help seriously disturbed people through humane, caring approaches.Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons introduces mental health professionals to an array of psychological and social alternatives that are available for helping patients considered “psychotic” or very emotionally disturbed. Focusing on psychological and social approaches to helping people who become labeled “psychotic” or who carry serious psychiatric diagnoses, contributors show mental health professionals psychological, social, and spiritual alternatives for approaching or treating these individuals. Readers learn about:a successful model for nonmedical, non-drug residential treatment centers utilizing the artwork of psychotic patients case histories of psychoanalytic therapy group therapy to help families with a “schizophrenic” member improve communication Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) with disturbed individuals psychoanalytically-oriented therapy World Health Organization research which demonstrates the positive effect of extended family and social relationships and the negative effect of modern biopsychiatric treatment research demonstrating the efficacy of psychotherapy with persons labeled “schizophrenic”These chapters combined with a review of empirical studies demonstrate to readers the efficacy of psychotherapy with psychotic patients. Students or experienced professionals in any of the mental health fields, including psychotherapy, counseling, clinical psychology, clinical social work, and Re-evaluation Counseling will find Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons a necessity for most effectively and humanely treating clients with serious psychiatric diagnoses.

At a time when biological psychiatry claims that drugs and electroshock are the best methods for helping deeply disturbed persons, mental health professionals need to be reminded that psychological and social approaches to mental illnesses remain more effective, less harmful, and much more able to address the real needs of recovery, growth, and development for affected persons. Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons empowers counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to trust their intuitive and clinical understanding of how to help seriously disturbed people through humane, caring approaches.Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons introduces mental health professionals to an array of psychological and social alternatives that are available for helping patients considered “psychotic” or very emotionally disturbed. Focusing on psychological and social approaches to helping people who become labeled “psychotic” or who carry serious psychiatric diagnoses, contributors show mental health professionals psychological, social, and spiritual alternatives for approaching or treating these individuals. Readers learn about:

a successful model for nonmedical, non-drug residential treatment centers utilizing the artwork of psychotic patients case histories of psychoanalytic therapy group therapy to help families with a “schizophrenic” member improve communication Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) with disturbed individuals psychoanalytically-oriented therapy World Health Organization research which demonstrates the positive effect of extended family and social relationships and the negative effect of modern biopsychiatric treatment research demonstrating the efficacy of psychotherapy with persons labeled “schizophrenic”These chapters combined with a review of empirical studies demonstrate to readers the efficacy of psychotherapy with psychotic patients. Students or experienced professionals in any of the mental health fields, including psychotherapy, counseling, clinical psychology, clinical social work, and Re-evaluation Counseling will find Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons a necessity for most effectively and humanely treating clients with serious psychiatric diagnoses.

At a time when biological psychiatry claims that drugs and electroshock are the best methods for helping deeply disturbed persons, mental health professionals need to be reminded that psychological and social approaches to mental illnesses remain more effective, less harmful, and much more able to address the real needs of recovery, growth, and development for affected persons. Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons empowers counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to trust their intuitive and clinical understanding of how to help seriously disturbed people through humane, caring approaches.Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons introduces mental health professionals to an array of psychological and social alternatives that are available for helping patients considered “psychotic” or very emotionally disturbed. Focusing on psychological and social approaches to helping people who become labeled “psychotic” or who carry serious psychiatric diagnoses, contributors show mental health professionals psychological, social, and spiritual alternatives for approaching or treating these individuals. Readers learn about:

a successful model for nonmedical, non-drug residential treatment centers utilizing the artwork of psychotic patients case histories of psychoanalytic therapy group therapy to help families with a “schizophrenic” member improve communication Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) with disturbed individuals psychoanalytically-oriented therapy World Health Organization research which demonstrates the positive effect of extended family and social relationships and the negative effect of modern biopsychiatric treatment research demonstrating the efficacy of psychotherapy with persons labeled “schizophrenic”These chapters combined with a review of empirical studies demonstrate to readers the efficacy of psychotherapy with psychotic patients. Students or experienced professionals in any of the mental health fields, including psychotherapy, counseling, clinical psychology, clinical social work, and Re-evaluation Counseling will find Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons a necessity for most effectively and humanely treating clients with serious psychiatric diagnoses.

A psychiatrist takes a critical look at this SSRI and newer medications that are among the most frequently prescribed drugs in America. Prozac. Millions of Americans are on it. And just about everyone else is wondering if they should be on it, too. The claims of the pro‑Prozac chorus are enticing: that it can cure everything from depression (the only disorder for which Prozac was originally approved) to fear of public speaking, PMS, obesity, shyness, migraine, and back pain—with few or no side effects. But is the reality quite different? At what price do we buy Prozac‑induced euphoria and a shiny new personality? Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, MD, and coauthor Ginger Ross Breggin answer these and other crucial questions in Talking Back to Prozac. They explain what Prozac is and how it works, and they take a hard look at the real story behind today’s most controversial drug: The fact that Prozac was tested in trials of four to six weeks in length before receiving FDA approvalThe difficulty Prozac’s manufacturer had in proving its effectiveness during these testsThe information on side effects that the FDA failed to include in its final labeling requirementsHow Prozac acts as a stimulant not unlike the addictive drugs cocaine and amphetamineThe dangers of possible Prozac addiction and abuseThe seriousness and frequency of Prozac’s side effects, including agitation, insomnia, nausea, diarrhea, loss of libido, and difficulty reaching orgasmThe growing evidence that Prozac can cause violence and suicideThe social and workplace implications of using the drug not to cure depression but to change personality and enhance performance Using dramatic case histories as well as scientific research and carefully documented evidence, the Breggins expose the potentially damaging effects of Prozac. They also describe the resounding success that has been achieved with more humane alternatives for the treatment of depression.Talking Back to Prozac provides essential information for anyone who takes Prozac or is considering taking it, and for those who prescribe it.

At a time when biological psychiatry claims that drugs and electroshock are the best methods for helping deeply disturbed persons, mental health professionals need to be reminded that psychological and social approaches to mental illnesses remain more effective, less harmful, and much more able to address the real needs of recovery, growth, and development for affected persons. Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons empowers counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to trust their intuitive and clinical understanding of how to help seriously disturbed people through humane, caring approaches.Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons introduces mental health professionals to an array of psychological and social alternatives that are available for helping patients considered “psychotic” or very emotionally disturbed. Focusing on psychological and social approaches to helping people who become labeled “psychotic” or who carry serious psychiatric diagnoses, contributors show mental health professionals psychological, social, and spiritual alternatives for approaching or treating these individuals. Readers learn about:a successful model for nonmedical, non-drug residential treatment centers utilizing the artwork of psychotic patients case histories of psychoanalytic therapy group therapy to help families with a “schizophrenic” member improve communication Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) with disturbed individuals psychoanalytically-oriented therapy World Health Organization research which demonstrates the positive effect of extended family and social relationships and the negative effect of modern biopsychiatric treatment research demonstrating the efficacy of psychotherapy with persons labeled “schizophrenic”These chapters combined with a review of empirical studies demonstrate to readers the efficacy of psychotherapy with psychotic patients. Students or experienced professionals in any of the mental health fields, including psychotherapy, counseling, clinical psychology, clinical social work, and Re-evaluation Counseling will find Psychosocial Approaches to Deeply Disturbed Persons a necessity for most effectively and humanely treating clients with serious psychiatric diagnoses.

With the first unified theory of guilt, shame, and anxiety, this pioneering psychiatrist and critic of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs examines the causes and effects of psychological and emotional suffering from the perspective of biological evolution, child development, and mature adult decision-making. Drawing on evolution, neuroscience, and decades of clinical experience, Dr. Breggin analyzes what he calls our negative legacy emotions-the painful emotional heritage that encumbers all human beings. The author marshals evidence that we evolved as the most violent and yet most empathic creatures on Earth. Evolution dealt with this species-threatening conflict between our violence and our close-knit social life by building guilt, shame, and anxiety into our genes. These inhibiting emotions were needed prehistorically to control our self-assertiveness and aggression within intimate family and clan relationships. Dr. Breggin shows how guilt, shame, and anxiety eventually became self-defeating and demoralizing legacies from our primitive past that no longer play any useful or positive role in mature adult life. He then guides the reader through the Three Steps to Emotional Freedom, starting with how to identify negative legacy emotions and then how to reject their control over us. Finally, he describes how to triumph over and transcend guilt, shame, and anxiety on the way to greater emotional freedom and a more rational, loving, and productive life.