Dr Ray Baker's Article on Addiction: Benzodiazepines in Particular - discusses the difference between addiction and dependency
There Are No "Chemical Imbalances" by Eaton T. Fores
"Today’s patients, discontented, unhappy, fragmented and confused by an increasingly frantic, alienating and violent society, come to psychiatrists for help, only to have their illusions shored up by an increased dose of a technologic fix. They are told they have illnesses that are biologic and can be fixed, instead of being allowed to speak about their unhappiness, to speak about how difficult it is to be a human being, to speak about their suffering, because human beings have always suffered and always will. To believe that we can conquer depression, despair, anxiety with modern technology is the height of hubris and bad faith, a mere childish fantasy, unworthy of any thoughtful person who has their eyes open to human history and modern culture."
- David Kaiser, M.D. Northwestern University Hospital, Chicago, IL, Psychiatric Medications as Symptoms, February, 1997
Does Mental Illness Exist? by Lawrence Stevens, J.D.
"In medicine, strict criteria exist for calling a condition a disease. In addition to a predictable cluster of symptoms, the cause of the symptoms or some understanding of their physiology must be established. ... Psychiatry is unique among medical specialties in that... We do not yet have proof either of the cause or the physiology for any psychiatric diagnosis. ... In recent decades, we have had no shortage of alleged biochemical imbalances for psychiatric conditions. Diligent though these attempts have been, not one has been proven. Quite the contrary. In every instance where such an imbalance was thought to have been found, it was later proven false. ... No claim of a gene for a psychiatric condition has stood the test of time, in spite of popular misinformation." Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in his book Prozac Backlash (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000), pages 192-193, page 196, and page 198.
Mental Health Parity: A Debate
"Nothing has harmed the quality of individual life in modern society more than the misbegotten belief that human suffering is driven by biological and genetic causes and can be rectified by taking drugs or undergoing electroshock therapy. ... If I wanted to ruin someone's life, I would convince the person that biological psychiatry is right - that relationships mean nothing, that choice is impossible, and that the mechanics of a broken brain reign over our emotions and conduct. If I wanted to impair an individual's capacity to create empathetic, loving relationships, I would prescribe psychiatric drugs, all of which blunt our highest psychological and spiritual functions." Dr Peter Breggin
Sadness is Not a Disorder Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield are authors of "The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder."
"In recent decades, what is meant by depression - the range of the psychiatric diagnosis - has expanded dramatically. Indeed, too much. Depression, for many doctors, therapists, and for our society at large, has come to encompass feelings of sadness that are not disorders at all. We may be in danger of losing the notion of normal human sadness. And that would be a loss for our sense of humanity."