Recommended Books

Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whitaker.

“There is a story that psychiatry doesn’t dare tell, which shows that our societal delusion about the benefits of psychiatric drugs isn’t entirely an innocent one. In order to sell our society on the soundness of this form of care, psychiatry has had to grossly exaggerate the value of its new drugs, silence critics, and keep the story of poor long-term outcomes hidden. That is a willful, conscious process, and the very fact that psychiatry has had to employ such storytelling methods reveals a great deal about the merits of this paradigm of care, much more than a single study ever could.” (page 312)

Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health, by Martha Rosenberg

“Why have Big Pharma, the government, and the medical establishment turned a blind eye to patients who fall victim to suicide as a result of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs? … Having gained the trust of more than twenty doctors, researchers, and experts who were willing to come forward and finally tell all, reporter and editorial cartoonist Martha Rosenberg presents us with her shocking findings.”

Psychiatry – The Ultimate Betrayal, by Bruce Wiseman

“In the name of help, it has brutalized hundreds of thousands of individuals, hacking at their brains, searing them with electricity or numbing them with drugs. It has left in its wake shattered lives, ruined bodies and even the dead. The destruction has been almost incomprehensible. … Psychiatry – The Ultimate Betrayal examines psychiatry from its historical beginnings to the present and traces its rise to influence in our society. … The influence of psychiatric thought upon our lives has been catastrophic. In this searching examination, you will learn exactly how this has happened, how so much of what we casually think of today as ‘the way it is’ had its beginnings in the faulty theories of men who had less than our best interests at heart.”

Psychiatrists – The Men Behind Hitler, by Röder, Kubillus, & Burwell

“The result of years of research, this highly explosive and well-documented book will reveal the hidden forces behind the Nazi movement during the Third Reich – which not only inspired the atrocities of the Holocaust, but actually helped carry them out. Incredibly, the Men Behind Hitler are very much with us today, still hidden but intimately involved in almost every aspect of our day-to-day life in education, medicine, law, government and even religion. … This book names the names and presents the facts.”

The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, by Thomas S. Szasz (50th anniversary edition, 2010)

“Fifty years ago, the question ‘What is mental illness?’ was of interest to the general public as well as to philosophers, sociologists, and medical professionals. This is no longer the case. The question has been answered — ‘dismissed’ would be more accurate — by the holders of political power: representing the State, they decree that ‘mental illness is a disease like any other.’ Political power and professional self-interest unite in turning a false belief into a ‘lying fact.’

“The claim that ‘mental illnesses are diagnosable disorders of the brain’ is not based on scientific research; it is a lie, an error, or a naive revival of the somatic premise of the long-discredited humoral theory of disease.

“For more than fifty years I have maintained that mental illnesses are counterfeit diseases (‘nondiseases’), that coerced psychiatric relations are like coerced labor relations (‘slavery’) or coerced sexual relations (rape), and I spent the better part of my professional life criticizing the concept of mental illness, objecting to the practices of involuntary-institutional psychiatry, and advocating the abolition of ‘psychiatric slavery’ and ‘psychiatric rape.’

“Anyone who seeks to help others — whether by means of religion or by means of medicine — must eschew the use of force.

“Formerly, when Church and State were allied, people accepted theological justifications for state-sanctioned coercion. Today, when Medicine and the State are allied, people accept therapeutic justifications for state-sanctioned coercion. This is how, some two hundred years ago, psychiatry became an arm of the coercive apparatus of the state. And this is why today all of medicine threatens to become transformed from personal therapy into political tyranny.”