News & Articles

Myth # 1: “The FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) tests all new psychiatric drugs”

Myth # 2: “FDA approval means that a psychotropic drug is effective long-term”

Myth # 3: “FDA approval means that a psychotropic drug is safe long-term”

Myth # 4: “Mental ‘illnesses’ are caused by ‘brain chemistry imbalances’”
Myth # 5: “Antidepressant drugs work like insulin for diabetics”

Myth # 6:  “SSRI ‘discontinuation syndromes’ shouldn’t be thought of as ‘withdrawal syndromes’”

Myth # 7: “Ritalin is safe for children (and adults)”

Myth # 8: “Psychoactive drugs are totally safe for humans”

Myth # 9: “Mental ‘illnesses’ have no known cause”

Myth # 10: “Psychotropic drugs are safe to use long term”

Myth # 11: “A disease called bipolar disorder can mysteriously ‘emerge’ in patients who have been taking stimulating antidepressants like the SSRIs”

Myth # 12: “Antidepressant  drugs can prevent suicides”

In actuality, there is no psychiatric drug that is FDA-approved for the treatment of suicidality because these drugs, especially the SSRIs, actually INCREASE the incidence of suicidal thinking, suicide attempts and completed suicides. Drug companies have spent billions of dollars futilely trying to prove the effectiveness of various psychiatric drugs in suicide prevention. They have all failed. Indeed what they have discovered is that most of the psychiatric drug trials showed that all the so-called “antidepressants” actually increased the incidence of suicidality.

The FDA has required black box warning labels about drug-induced suicidality on all SSRI marketing materials, but that was only accomplished after over-coming powerful opposition from the drug-makers and marketers of the offending drugs, who feared that such truth-telling would hurt their profits. What can and does avert suicidality, of course, are not drugs, but rather interventions by caring, compassionate and thorough teams of care-givers that include family, faith communities and friends as well as psychologists, counselors, social workers, relatives (especially wise grandmas!), and, obviously, the limited involvement of compassionate drug prescribers.

Myth # 13: “America’s school shooters and other mass shooters are ‘untreated’  schizophrenics who should have been taking psych drugs”

False. In actuality, 90% or more of the infamous homicidal -  and suicidal - school shooters have already been under the “care” of psychiatrists (or other psych drug prescribers) and therefore have typically been taking (or withdrawing from) one or more psychiatric drugs.  SSRIs such as Prozac or psychostimulants such as Ritalin are the most common class of drug. (See www.ssristudies.org).

The other 10%of school shooters have typically had their medical files sealed by the authorities - probably to protect from liability and/or embarrassment the drug companies and/or the medical professionals who supplied the drugs. The four most recent of these shooters have been popularized as being schizophrenic, not because the treating psychiatrist has come forward and testified about the diagnostic method, but because of  photos (!) which were released to the media.  (In the case of the Tucson and Aurora shooters, the dramatic photos were made after they were captured, sleep-deprived, abused, and very likely under the numbing or crazy-making influence of – or going through withdrawal from - some major brain-altering psych drug or other).

Contrary to the claims of a recent 60  Minutes, Big Pharma-approved, segment about “untreated schizophrenics” being responsible for half of the mass shootings in America, the four mentioned in the segment were, in fact, almost certainly being already “treated” with psych drugs – prior to the massacres - by psychiatrists or other prescribing practitioners (who obviously are being protected from public identification and/or interrogation by the authorities).

Because of this secrecy, the public is being kept in the dark about exactly what crazy-making, homicidality-inducing psychotropic drugs could have been involved. The names of the drugs and the corporations that have marketed them (as safe drugs) are also being actively protected from scrutiny and thus the chance of prevention of future drug-related shootings or suicides. Such decisions by America’s ruling elites represent public health policy at its worst and is a disservice to past and future shooting victims and their loved ones.

The four most notorious mass shooters that were highlighted in last Sunday’s 60 Minutes segment included the Virginia Tech shooter, the Tucson shooter, the Aurora shooter and the Sandy Hook shooter whose wild-eyed (“drugged-up”) photos have been carefully chosen for their dramatic effect, and they were  repeatedly shown on our corporate-controlled media so that most people are convinced that it was the crazy “schizophrenic”, rather that the “innocent” drug or his guns that explains everything.

Parenthetically, it needs to be mentioned that many media outlets profit handsomely from the drug and medical industries. Therefore those media outlets have an incentive to protect the names of the drugs, the names of the drug companies, the names of the prescribing MDs and the names of the clinics and hospitals that could, in a truly just and democratic world, otherwise be linked to the crimes. Certainly if a methamphetamine-intoxicated person shot someone, the person who supplied the intoxicating drug would be considered an accomplice to the crime, just like the bartender who supplied the liquor to someone who later committed a violent crime would be held accountable. A double standard obviously exists when it comes to powerful, respected and highly profitable corporations.

A thorough study of the scores of American school shooters, starting with the University of Texas tower shooter in 1966 and (temporarily) stopping at Sandy Hook, reveals that the overwhelming majority of them (if not all of them) were taking brain-altering, mesmerizing, impulse-destroying, “don’t give a damn” drugs that had been prescribed to them by well-meaning but too-busy psychiatrists, family physicians or physician assistants who somehow were unaware of or were misinformed about the homicidal and suicidal risks to their equally unsuspecting patients (and therefore they had failed to warn the patient and/or the patient’s loved ones about the potentially dire consequences).

Most practitioners who wrote the prescriptions for the mass shooters or for a patient who later suicided while under the influence of the drug, will probably(and  legitimately so) defend themselves against the charge of being an accomplice to mass murder or suicide by saying that they were ignorant about the dangers of these cavalierly prescribed psych drugs because they had been deceived by the cunning drug companies that had convinced them of the benign nature of the drugs.


Myth # 14: “If your patient hears voice it means he’s schizophrenic”

Auditory hallucinations are known to occur in up to 10% of normal people; and up to 75% of normal people have had the experience of someone that isn’t there calling their name. (http://www.hearing-voices.org/voices-visions/).

Dreams, nightmares and flashbacks probably have similar origins to visual, auditory and olfactory hallucinations, but they do not represent mental illnesses, much less schizphrenia. Indeed, hallucinations are listed in the pharmaceutical literature as a potential side effect of many drugs, especially psychiatric drugs. These syndromes are called substance-induced psychotic disorders which, by definition, are  neither mental illnesses nor schizophrenia (which is of unknown etiology). Rather, substance-induced psychotic disorders are directly caused by the intoxicating effects of brain-altering drugs such as alcohol, medications, and other toxins.

Psychotic symptoms, including hallucinations and delusions, can be caused by substances such as alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, sedatives, hypnotics, and anxiolytics, inhalants, opioids, PCP, and the many of the amphetamine-like drugs (like Phen-Fen, fenfluramine, cocaine, methamphetamine, Ecstasy, and agitation-inducing, psycho-stimulating drugs like the SSRIs).

Psychotic symptoms can also result from sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and the withdrawal from certain drugs like alcohol, sedatives, hypnotics, anxiolytics and especially the many dopamine-suppressing, dependency-inducing, sedating, and zombifying anti-psychotic drugs.

Examples of other medications that may induce hallucinations and delusions include anesthetics, analgesics, anticholinergic agents, anticonvulsants, antihistamines, antihypertensive and cardiovascular medications, some antimicrobial medications, anti-parkinsonian drugs, some chemotherapeutic agents, corticosteroids, some gastrointestinal medications, muscle relaxants, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, and Antabuse.
The very sobering information above should cause any thinking person to wonder: “how many otherwise normal or curable people over the last half century of psych drug popularity in America have actually been mis-labeled as mentally ill (and then mis-treated) and sent down the convoluted path of therapeutic misadventures - heading toward oblivion?”

In my holistic mental health care practice, I personally identified and treated hundreds of them. Extrapolating my experience to the rest of America boggles the mind. There has been a massive epidemic going on right under our noses that has affected millions of suffering victims. The time to act on this knowledge is overdue.

References documenting the above information can be found in the bibliography that I hand out at the occasional seminars that I give on these subjects. One such bibliography can be found in the archives located at the Duluth Reader website at:  http://duluthreader.com/articles/2012/03/22/229_a_response_to_the_march_15_letter_to_the_reader.

A valuable YouTube talk from Child, Adolescent and Adult psychiatrist Rima Laibow can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjkcT-EifnU. It is titled, metaphorically, “I Am Adam Lanza’s Doctor”.
 
Dr. Kohls is a family physician who, until his retirement in 2008, practiced holistic (non-drug) mental health care. His patients came to see him asking for help in getting off the psychotropic drugs to which they were addicted and which were sickening and disabling them. He was successful in helping significant numbers of his patients get off or cut down their drugs using a thorough and therefore time-consuming program that was based on psychoeducational psychotherapy, brain nutrient therapy, a drastic change away from the malnourishing and often toxic Standard American Diet (SAD) plus a program of gradual, closely monitored drug withdrawal. Dr. Kohls warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any psychiatric drug because of the common, often serious withdrawal symptoms that can occur in patients who have been taking any dependency-inducing psychoactive drug, whether illicit or legal.  Close consultation with an aware, informed physician who is familiar with treating drug withdrawal syndromes, who will read and study the appropriate literature about the dangers of psychiatric drugs, is aware of the importance of proper brain nutrition and knows about the specific nutritional needs of the drug-toxified and nutritionally-depleted brain.

Dr. Kohls is a past member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. He is the editor of the occasional Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter which has been emailed in the past to some of his old patients and also to others who have expressed to him an interest in alternative, non-drug, approaches to mental ill health.