The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 07.18.18

My wonderful listening audience, thanks to you our first Open Mic Wednesday on the Dr. Peter Breggin Hour was a great success.  I had announced it three days earlier on my Frequent Alerts and the moment the hour began at 4 pm New York time the phone lines lit up.  I took half-a-dozen great calls from India, Canada and across the US.  Questions like “Is schizophrenia curable?” and “Do bipolar people have to keep having manic episodes if they don’t take drugs?” as well as “How do I help my son sleep?” brought thoughtful and hopeful exchanges.  A Chicago colleague I hadn’t heard from in decades stimulated enlightening reminisces about how Ginger and I led the successful fight to stop the racist, eugenic Federal Violence Initiative in the 1980s.   PRN did a truly professional job of handling the calls smoothly and keeping the show in a great rhythm.   I will soon announce another Open Mic Wednesday.   Keep up with the Dr. Peter Breggin Hour and our other activities by joining the free Frequent Alerts on www.breggin.com. 

Thanks, Peter

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 07.11.18

With our new and more interactive radio program format with news, commentary and callers, today my guest is Wayne Douglas, cofounder of Benzodiazepine Awareness Day which is going on around this world on this very day.   Wayne's infectious enthusiasm keeps you on the pioneering edge of what global leaders are doing to confront the harm being done by psychiatric drugs.   In his life, Wayne illustrates what one individual can do to help improve the world!

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 06.27.18

Welcome to the second show in my new format with special features and callers.  My guest Pam Popper PhD is the best, most science-based nutritionist I have ever known and a great person as well.  The show goes back and forth between nutrition and psychology in a lively conversation with the most truly informed and ethical nutritionist you will ever hear on the air.  Among the topics, What is the connection between mental health and nutrition?  Are there helpful vitamins and supplements?  What's the financial cost of eating right?  Pam's nutritional knowledge has greatly improved my health, the health of my family members, and the health of my psychiatric patients.   Listening to this could increase your health beyond your imagination.   

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 06.13.18

_{This show introduces a new, exciting and varied format, bringing you, the listener, into much closer communication with me and our audience.}  

_{First, I am taking callers for the first time.  Call 888 874 4888 between 4 and 5 pm on Wednesdays.} 

_{Second, I have an email where you can send questions and suggestions for the show at any time.  The email isbregginlive@hotmail.com.  I cannot answer by email, but selected questions will be aired and every suggestion will be appreciated.} 

_{In addition, there are special features each week, including suggestions for a better life and Breaking News and Information.  My website, www.breggin.com, will offeer links to the stories that are covered on the radio.} 

_{Today was the first reformatted show and it will be replayed next week when I'm traveling.  My great guest is Michael Cornwall, PhD, one of the most kind and thoughtful people in the field of psychology.} 

_{The two of us answered questions from callers in this the maiden voyage of my new and more stimulating format.  Great guests, great callers, and a wonderful audience!  And now you can communicate with me  and ultimately with our audience by calling in or by email.} 

_{I am more than delighted with this initial effort to bring me and you, my audience, into closer communication with each other.} 

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 06.08.18

My guest, Peter Kinderman PhD, is an articulate leader in British psychology who is having a positive influence on psychology, psychiatry and the politics of mental health--achievements that could not yet happen in the US.  Peter works within the system in a way that could not yet occur here within our professional organizations, universities or federal government.  Hear about some good trends in mental health in Great Britain and Europe that are ahead of the US.  Peter Kinderman spreads hope and shows new directions!

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 05.23.18

Patrick D. Hahn is a genuine scholar of the history of psychiatry who leads us through the turns and twists of psychiatry's struggle with its untruths from the Nazi doctors led by Ernst Rudin to the field of psychotherapy led by Sigmund Freud.  It's an endless tale of ignoring what people really suffer from--abuse and rejection in growing up, followed by abuse and rejection in most of what passes for mental health treatment.  This is a very thoughtful hour about psychiatry and psychoanalysis that everyone should know about and rise above.   

 

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 05.16.18

What if I told you that the pharmaceutical industry has very little to do with the epidemic of opioid drug overdoses and deaths in America?  What if I told you that escalating opioid deaths have very little to do with bad prescribing practices?   What I told you that these deaths stem more from drug trafficking from China than from overproduction by giant corporations?  What if I told you that government efforts to restrict opioid prescribing is a disaster for genuine pain patients?  And finally, what if these increased pain-killer drug deaths ultimately reflect the culture of despair afflicting our youth?   I can guarantee you new insights into these issues from one of my best-informed guests, Richard Lawhern, PhD. 

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 05.09.18

I wish everyone in the world could listen to this hour.  I learned a huge amount.  Yet it’s a topic many find unbearable because it requires rethinking ourselves and society.  My friend and colleague Jeanne Stolzer PhD explains the transformative importance of the first few years of life.  Did you know that infants nursed into early childhood grow up much smarter, healthier and happier?  Did you know that mothers who nurse have little or no post-partum depression and instead thrive mentally and emotionally?  Did you know that a mother's milk is unique and never the same from moment to moment, hour to hour? Want to know why?  Jeanne is a true scientist and she has the data on this and more for a truly radical and informative hour of conversation.  If you listen, you are guaranteed to be informed in a new way about who you are.  You will be stirred into thought about how far human society has gone away from what sustained, nourished and informed us for 99.9999% of our evolution.

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 05.02.18

Kim Witczak is the consumer representative on the FDA’s psychopharmacology committee.  That’s the mostly “professional” group that recommends for or against new drugs to the FDA.   Other than Kim, the regular participants are mostly drug company flacks.  When you read that the FDA’s committee approved a drug 11-1, the one dissenter is probably heroic Kim Witczak.  No one can give you better insight into what goes on in the regulatory agency.  Learn about the latest menace recently unleashed on neurological and psychiatric patients, already causing hundreds of deaths!   

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour – 04.25.18

My wonderful audience, I hope you listen to this show and share it.   Psychologist Bob Foltz and I talk about what really matters in helping relationships and how important they are in every aspect of our lives.  Sharing what I know about relationship is where my own work is moving because I feel it’s the most important issue in every one of our lives--how we relate to each other, whether in professional therapeutic relationships or in friendship and family life.  As Bob reminds us, we can best measure the satisfaction we have in life by the quality of our relationships.  Fame, wealth or success in fulfilling our ideals as contributors to society can build our self-esteem and make us proud, but it cannot make us fully satisfied and even happy with our lives; only wonderful personal relationships can do that.   Even in formalized therapies, it is the caring relationship that ultimately matters.  My goal is the liberation of people-helping-people from the confines and corruption of professionalism and to make the know-how of relationship and helping one another available to everyone.