The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 06.12.19

Probably my most impassioned discussion of The Psychiatric Abuse of Children with guest psychotherapist Michael Cornwall, PhD adding experience and grounding, as well as wisdom.  And we introduce my first major reform project in years, to be directed by Michael through our nonprofit Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy.  The FDA has approved using a TENS machine called Monarch to delivery electrical “stimulation” to the frontal lobes of children to treat ADHD.  It is actually electrical disruption of normal brain function.   I stumble on air trying to find words horrific enough to describe the size of the danger to children.  The current is applied every night, all night, to the entirely normal brains of children 8 to 12 years old with no apparent limit on for how many months or years of treatment.    Now that it’s FDA approved, Monarch can e legally used on any and all children at the doctor’s whim.  The FDA required only a single 4-week long study to approve this gross intrusion to the highest centers of the normal brain.  Only 62 children were studied and only half of them got the treatment.  It’s a tiny experimental group without replication by a second study.  Meanwhile, the manufacturer is intent on a year or more of electrifying the children every night, but its 12-month study utterly failed.  All but three children and families quit the study before it was scheduled to end.  We are talking about a potentially disastrous tsunami of psychiatric abuse of children, spilling over onto adults.  Michael Cornwall and I tell you about our new organization that this atrocity has inspired.  It’s called Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children! or SPAC!   We invite you to join SPAC! And  we invite you to help us stop this latest psychiatrist abuse of children.   

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 05.22.19

This hour with my guest, author Jeffrey Masson PhD, was so stunning, I am going to do a series of shows with him, much as I did in 2015.    Jeffrey shook the psychoanalytic world when his book Assault on Truth showed that Freud knew that his patients had been sexually abused but hid the truth to further his career.  Then, having been trained as a psychoanalyst, he took on the entire psychotherapy establishment, observing that no one can be taught empathy and that licensing professional talkers was doing more harm than good.   Then, having endured enough attack on himself, he turned to writing bestselling books about animals including When Elephants Weep and Dog’s Never Lie About Love.  (The animal behavioral establishment railed against him for humanizing dogs.) In this wonderful hour, we talk about life, about birds and trees, and energy and courage, about how and why some people see through shams into the truth.  We both loved our time together; I hope you will, too.  Jeff lives in Australia, so this is a real opportunity to hear this thoughtful, courageous man.

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 05.15.19

One day before this Dr. Peter Breggin Hour, marvelous psychologist Michael Cornwall PhD sent me information about a  device newly approved by the FDA to pass electric current through the brains of children to treat them for supposed ADHD.  The laudatory hooey written by the FDA, which you will hear on the show, is beyond belief.   The entire study lasted only 4 weeks with a mere 30 or so children being afflicted with the Orwellian device.  Nonetheless, within the four weeks, children were already experiencing adverse effects such as headache and fatigue.  What will happen to them after months or years of exposure, we can only imagine, because the study lasted a mere 28 days.  I felt so outraged, I had to do something, and so I called Michael on an emergency basis to please come on the show that you can now listen to here.   We look with passionate outrage at this atrocity from a variety of moral, educational, scientific and societal perspectives.  I conclude that we will be inflicting “mini-lobotomies” on epidemic proportions on our children under the cover of psychiatry. 

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour –05.08.19

This radio program brings together leaders in the reform movement in North America to abolish  electroshock treatment (ECT). This Saturday May 12 at noon in Toronto at Queens Park, there is a shock protest and a hunger strike taking place against ECT.  This amazing hour begins with my interviewing Bonnie Burstow, PhD, a leading Canadian, researcher, teacher and writer in criticizing psychiatric oppression.  She is joined by Connie Neil, an 80-year-old Canadian shock survivor who plans to participate in the hunger strike.  Stephen Ticktin,  a Canadian psychiatrist and devoted international activist then comes on the air with us.  He is followed by Don Weitz, a Canadian survivor of insulin coma shock, who has for decades been a leading psychiatric reformer.  Each of them will be at the shock protest.  Finally, we are joined by an anonymous American shock survivor.  

Shock treatment is a crime against humanity that is defended by all the force that can be leveraged by psychiatry, including the shock and drug manufacturers, the psychiatric and medical associations, the media, federal insurance programs including Medicare, and the FDA.   

From the human stories to the politics and the details about how shock causes damage—this is an extraordinary hour.  It was for me a great moment, having so many old friends and reform-minded colleagues together on the air.  When the show started, I had no idea how amazing it would become.   It is disillusioning to hear that such a dreadful abuse as ECT has recently found FDA approval but it is inspiring to hear the progress being made in the courts, including my research and forensic work.  Most inspiring is how survivors of shock treatment like Connie and Don, continue to fight back along with honorable professionals, like Bonnie and Stephen.  

 www.123ect.org

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour –05.01.19

Today, Wednesday, May 1st, is your introduction to a remarkable psychiatrist on The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour.  I am often asked, “Are there any other psychiatrists like you?”   By psychiatrist like me, they usually mean psychiatrists who care so much about their patients that they do psychotherapy and avoid giving them drugs.  They might also mean a psychiatrist who will fight for patient rights.   Well, there are not enough psychiatrists like that, but they do exist and more and more of them are surfacing.  Today’s guest is psychiatrist Gail Tasch from Wisconsin–and today she “came out” on the Dr. Peter Breggin Hour.  There is much to be gained from this hour, including the effectiveness of treating newly admitted inpatients without starting them on drugs or by starting them on minimal drugs or by reducing some of the medications they were admitted on. Working within the conventional psychiatric system, Dr.  Tasch  manages to help people.  Also, we can learn from her journey from more traditional psychiatry into the reality that drugs are dangerous neurotoxins.   An enlightening, lively hour.

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 04.25.19

This was Open Mic Wednesday, the last Wednesday of the month.  I start out addressing the fact that psychiatric drugs are neurotoxins.  Then I open the mic to six callers in a row who present very challenging problems in their lives or the lives of family members, often complicated by the psychiatric drugs they are taking or took in the past.  No miracles, but you get a good idea about the direction and encouragement I give people when they or their family members are stuck in a bad place and want new and better approaches.

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 04.17.19

My guest today is the “Best of the Best,” Commander in the US Navy, Mary Neal Vieten, PhD. This psychologist directs a most extraordinary program to help active duty and retired warfighters to reconsider psychiatric medications, to deal with trauma and other blocks to success, and to achieve new goals for themselves. Especially impressive to me is the thoroughness with which she has dispatched the medical model and all the lingo associated with it in order to remove all stigma and to focus on empowerment. Commander Vieten is accomplishing one of the single most important goals we can aspire to—the successful development of non-medical, educational and caring-based programs for people who are suffering from severe emotional stress compounded by dreadful medical diagnoses and treatment. I am deeply appreciative of her work. One of my most esteemed audience members just texted me, “Exceptional episode! One of my favorites.” Commander Vieten’s approach called Warfighter ADVANCE is at the cutting edge of improved services for those who need to be treated as human beings rather than as patients and disease entities.

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 04.10.19

The second in a row of two great radio hours with Jeanne Stolzer, PhD as my guest talking across a broad range of extremely controversial issues including the biological basis of gender differences, the reality of male abuse of women, and the backlash about toxic masculinity that is crushing the identity of boys and men.   We emphasize the  importance of shared values that defy the concepts of diversity and encourage a unity of basic beliefs in responsibility, mutual respect and love.  Society thrives when one-to-one human-to-human relationships transcend warring diverse groups.  Shared values that empower all individuals are more important than diversity in creating a healthy society. This is an hour that sharpened my own thinking because Jeanne Stolzer is such an astonishing combination of courageous communicator,  devoted scientist, and genuine advocate for freedom and equality.   Join the intellectual and spiritual ride that she creates!

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 04.04.19

A very challenging show, with my brilliant and enthusiastic guest Jeanne Stolzer, PhD., an award-winning teacher. It is filled with unorthodox but scientific ideas that do not yield to political correctness.  About the differences between women and men built into our bodies by physical evolution, passed on by our genes, and then affected by family and society and our own individuality.  How these differences were used by men in very recent millennia to develop patriarchal societies that enforce the subjugation of women.  But how, on the other hand, the reflexive rejection of these actual biological and evolutionary differences between men and women has been especially harmful to boys and men in recent decades, disempowering and intimidating them.   Is masculinity now a “disease” as the American Psychological Association says, and what does such a concept do to boys and men? How women of course have a right and ought to be free of patriarchy and also to reject traditional roles, but what can society do to support those women who do want to be the primary caretakers of their children?  What are the consequences of not nursing a child and not providing a constant, loving caretaker in the early years of life?    You are not likely to hear a discussion remotely like this anywhere else, making this a unique and important hour of conversation that is critical to all our lives and to where society is going.  It simply would not be permitted at most universities or in the media.

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 03.27.19

A very good Open Mic Wednesday, which takes place every last Wednesday of the month at 4 pm NY time.   The number to call from anywhere is 888 874 4888.  Today, calls varied from how to live life without drugs to surviving as a good therapist in professional communities that push drugs.  I also talk about the secrets to life.  The last Wednesday of the month focuses on callers, but you can call my talk radio show at 888 874 4888 at 4 pm NY time any Wednesday while you listen to the show on www.prn.fm<http://www.prn.fm> or its app.