The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour

My guests are Tom and Diane Vande Burgt. If you want a vivid real-life introduction to what’s the matter with biological psychiatry and better alternatives, this is it. In the first half hour Tom describes what happened to him when he came back from Iraq with “PTSD” and was immediately put on four psychiatric drugs at once and thrust into a downhill course of medication spellbinding. In the second half hour, his wife Diane describes how she developed a family-oriented alternative called Lest We Forget, a PTSD support group. The show dramatizes what’s wrong and provides a model for what’s needed.

December 6, 2010

November 29, 2010

Dr. Breggin’s outstanding guest is Charles L Whitfield, MD, a physician, psychotherapist and expert both in addiction and in childhood trauma and abuse. In private practice in Atlanta, Georgia, he is the author of the best-selling book Healing the Child Within and many others worth reading. Dr. Whitfield delves deeply with Dr. Breggin into the nature and impact of childhood abuse, the role of the 12 Steps in recovery, and the importance of ethics and spirituality in living a successful and rewarding life. This hour should inspire anyone interested in therapy and personal growth.

November 22, 2010

November 15, 2010

Dr. Sarton Weinraub hosts the show for Dr. Peter Breggin who was away at the time testifying in a criminal trial on behalf of a victim of medication of madness.  Dr. Weinraub is joined by this week’s guest, Melanie Sears, RN, MBA.  She is the author of a very good book, Humanizing Health Care: Creating Cultures of Compassion with Nonviolent Communication. Melanie specializes in Nonviolent Communication, a partnership approach to solving conflict that is applicable to every level of relationship from our personal lives to drug-free counseling and even world politics.  It’s an interesting and wide-ranging show.    

November 8, 2010

The show opens with Dr. Breggin’s vivid description of his participation as a medical expert in the infamous trial of mass murderer Joseph Wesbecker in 1994. Drug company Eli Lilly fixed the trial in order to stem the tide of product liability suits for violence and suicide induced by Prozac. Today’s guest is Dr. Ed Pigott, a Maryland psychologist in private practice who has helped develop and evaluate effective alternative approaches including “mobile intensive crisis intervention” through which teams of professionals respond to emergencies without resorting to psychiatric hospitalization. Dr. Pigott also discusses his soon-to-be published “deconstruction” of the famous Star*D study in which the federal government wasted millions on one more flawed and manipulated attempt to show that antidepressants work.

November 1, 2010

Today’s guest is Brian Kean, PhD, professor of education at Southern Cross University in Australia. Dr. Breggin and Dr. Kean describe why parents, educators and healthcare providers should avoid using diagnoses like ADHD and stop using medications to treat this mythical disorder. Then they talk about the real needs of children and how they can be fulfilled in a rational and caring manner.

October 25, 2010

Dr. Breggin’s guest is Joanne Cacciatore, PhD, LMSW, who teaches at Arizona State U.  In despair following the loss of a child, Dr. Cacciatore rejected establishment psychiatric interventions, recovered, earned a PhD, and went on to found  a world-wide organization to help the bereaved deal with their loss and suffering, to research the problem, and to train counselors in empathic therapy.

October 18, 2010

Dr. Breggin begins by describing his basic critique of psychiatric drugs and then is joined by psychiatrist Alberto Fergusson, MD, from Columbia, South America.  Dr. Fergusson’s program helps homeless individuals who have been labeled “schizophrenic” with drug-free therapy by teaching them to take charge of their own recovery through accompanied self-rehabilitation.

October 11, 2010

Dr. Breggin’s guest is author Pamela Glasner whose novel , Finding Emmaus, delves deeply into the psychological and spiritual nature of empathy and describes how psychiatry for centuries has diagnosed and abused people who are especially empathic.