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Published in: European Newsletter of (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry,
No. 6 (Spring 1997), pp. 4-5. Deutsche
Übersetzung / Dutch translation
Peter
Lehmann
For and Against Psychotropic Drugs
[This paper is a translation of the shortened last part of my résumé
in my (German language) two-volume book "Schöne neue Psychiatrie"
("Brave
new psychiatry"), Vol. 1: "Wie
Chemie und Strom auf Geist und Psyche wirken" ("The effects
of chemistry and current on mind and psyche"), Vol. 2: "Wie
Psychopharmaka den Körper verändern" ("How psychiatric
drugs change the body"), Berlin: Peter Lehmann Antipsychiatrieverlag
1996 (ebooks in 2022).]
Assessing the administration and taking of psychotropic drugs is an especially
controversial issue. Taking neuroleptics, antidepressants, lithium, antiepileptics
(administered as psychotropic drugs), psychostimulants (administered to
children in order to subdue them) and tranquilizers can lead to apathy,
emotional deadness, depression, suicidal states, paradoxical agitation,
confusion and delirium, intellectual disturbances, loss of creativity,
lack of concentration, memory problems, epileptic attacks, weakening of
the immune system, hormonal and sexual disturbances, chromosomal and pregnancy
damage, blood damage, disturbance of body temperature regulation, heart
problems, liver and kidney damage, skin and eye damage, parkinsonian disturbances,
hyperkinesia, muscle cramps, movement stereotypy, or much more. On the
other side, many individuals made the experience, that they cannot exist
in their life-conditions now without taking these psychiatric drugs. [This
sentence I added as a result of the discussion of the paper in Reading
(England) in January 1997.]
It is up to every individual to decide for herself or himself if, for
whatever reason, they want to take these substances. However, the following
arguments do not reflect a context conducive to free decision-making nor
do they speak for a care-free liberal attitude:
-
The treated individuals are usually not informed of the risks
neither of those which exist nor of those which are possible or cannot
be excluded. The treated individuals do not know that substances are
banned from the market in some countries but sold without restrictions
in other countries. For example, penfluridol (brand names: Cyperon,
Flupidol, Longoperidol, Longoran, Micefal, Semap) is banned in certain
countries as a possible carcinogen, remoxiprid (brand name: Roxiam)
because it is associated with blood damage, and triazolam (brand names:
Apo-Triazo, Dumozolam, Halcion, Novidorm, Novodorm, Novo-Triolam,
Nuctane, Nu-triazo, Rilamir, Somniton, Songar, Triasan, Triazoral)
in connection with amnesia and black-outs.
-
Those who decide about the admission of these risk-connected substances
onto the pharmaceutical market are profit-oriented companies, doctors
who are either dependent on or sponsored by such businesses, or federal
health bureaucrats who have yet to prove that the health of the treated
individuals by psychiatry or other recipients of tested drugs play
a central role for them in their deliberations. 'Patients'-groups
and other related groups are not part of the decision-making process
concerning the admission or banning of psychotropic drugs.
-
In court cases concerning damages, the burden of proof lies entirely
on the shoulders of the treated individuals by the substances. It
is not the financially secure company which needs to prove that the
hazardous substances which it produces does not cause the damages
in question, but rather the usually financially insecure person suffering
the damages who, in drawn-out proceedings, has to prove that specific
damage can be directly and exclusively traced to the administered
drug.
-
Psychotropic drugs are often administered forcibly. An especially
criminal example is the forcible administration of psychotropic drugs
to women of child-bearing age without possible pregnancy being taken
into account.
-
More and more defenseless older people are administered these substances
as a way of chemically managing their care-taking. More and more children
who do not have the possibility of making their own decisions
receive psychotropic drugs in order to adapt them through chemical
means to an environment hostile to children. More and more women receive
psychotropic drugs to chemically neutralize their disruptive reactions
to silencing and restrictive patriarchal living conditions. More and
more people who come into conflict with the law receive psychotropic
drugs in order to keep them quiet in prisons or to break their resistance
to deportation.
-
The vast spectrum of inter- and intraindividual effects make it
impossible to predict the effect of a specific dosage of a substance.
All known damages associated with all types of psychotropic drugs
have appeared independent of the dosage and within a relatively short
amount of time, sometimes even after taking a small dosage only once.
-
More and more people receive combinations of different psychotropic
drugs. Their effects on each other as well as their combined effect
is unpredictable.
-
All psychotropic drugs create dependency, although prescribers of
the substances deny the dependency-forming effects (except in the
case of tranquilizers). They also remain silent concerning the possible
withdrawal effects, rebound effects, hypersensitive reaction of the
receptors and irreversible damage which can appear after one stops
taking the drugs, or they even redefine these effects as new symptoms.
Examples of damage caused by psychotropic treatment which can appear
during the treatment as well as while coming off of the drugs or even
after one has stopped using them altogether include: chronic fear
after long-term administration of antidepressants or tranquilizers,
chronic brain damage after the combined administration of lithium
and neuroleptic drugs, tardive dyskinesia (dystonia, movement sterotypy,
and hyperkinesia) as well as tardive psychosis after the administration
of neuroleptic drugs.
-
There are hardly any in-patient treatment facilities to support
those dealing with the effects of coming off of psychotropic drugs.
-
At present there are attempts being made by psychiatric associations,
pharmaceutical companies and family-member organisations (which are
either ideologically influenced or financially supported by these
companies) to enforce and compel the taking of psychiatric drugs,
especially the life-long consumption of the drugs. These attemps are
being made through legal measures, perfecting surveillance and enforcement
in such institutions as intermediate-care living projects, and developing
new forms of drug administering.
-
There exists neither the right to psychotropic-free treatment nor
non-psychiatric crisis facilities or financially secure self-help
and user-controlled centers.
- None of the named psychotropic drugs solve any kind of psychological
problem which is of a social nature. As a rule, they make it harder
to solve these problems, regardless of whether one has worked on the
problem through individual self-help, group-support or paid psychotherapy.
After one has stopped taking the psychiatric drugs if it ever
actually comes to that point the conditions are usually worse
than before, making it even more difficult to solve the problems which
originally led to the implementation of the psychotropic drugs.
The administration and usage of psychotropic drugs is, for all these
reasons, to be judged with great scepticism. Nevertheless, the individual's
decision to take psychotropic drugs should be respected. This is especially
the case if the individual, making his or her own thought-out decision
can, by taking as small, low-toxic and low-risk a dosage as possible for
as short a time as possible, survive an otherwise hopeless situation which
would lead to being put at the mercy of the violence of institutionalized
psychiatry and the conflict situations it entails. It is also important
to respect individual decisions to take psychotropic drugs regardless
of the reasons, the dosage, the time-span and how informed the individual
is or is not. Those who especially deserve understanding are those who,
because of psychiatrogene nerve damage, are forced to continue taking
these drugs in order to survive. This group of individuals make it clear
how important it is to avoid as far as possible ever taking psychotropic
drugs to begin with.
We need to reflect on the tension between, on the one hand, the needs
of the individuals in question who have a right to define their own conflicts,
needs and risk threshhold, and, on the other hand, the power of biological
psychiatry, irresponsible politicians, family-member associations which
get involved in internal family conflicts, and profit-oriented pharmaceutical
companies. While the needs of the individuals need to be respected, the
power of these institutions needs to be restrained. This tension can only
be reduced on a long-term basis if consumers of psychotropic drugs as
well as those who are administered these drugs forcibly are guaranteed
the following: 1) diagnosis-independent human rights [It should not be
possible to dispense a human (or civic) right because of a psychiatric
diagnosis.]; 2) easy access to financial compensation when necessary;
3) a right to psychotropic drug-free help; and, 4) appropriate alternative
non-psychiatric help.
In Reading at our conference we decided to publish this proposal-paper
in our newsletter. If you have commentaries, please send them to the editorial
department (Maths).
Copyright by Peter Lehmann 1997 |