In 1961, the late, great Thomas Szasz wrote a book called The Myth of Mental Illness... Szasz, who passed away last year, was a frightening adversary in debates, and few colleagues dared take him on. He was funny, caustic and ridiculed the absurdities of modern psychiatry: “If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.”
He averred that psychiatry was unique among all professions in its capacity to commit people who have done no wrong to insane asylums by way of involuntary commitment (imprisonment). As such, it should more properly be labelled a branch of law than medicine. He was not against psychiatry per se, only what he called coercive psychiatry... All this is relevant in light of the recent mass shootings in the US. Virtually all shooters of the last decade have been on “therapeutic” levels [sic] of psychiatric drugs, something the mainstream press has belatedly recognised. Tragic though these killings are, Szasz would at least be satisfied that psychiatry is at last getting the kind of spotlight it deserves...
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/06/ciara...l-illness/
The man charged with killing one student and wounding two others at a small Seattle college last week had stopped taking his medications because he "wanted to feel the hate," and he detailed his plans in a handwritten journal for two weeks before the attack, a prosecutor said Tuesday. "I just want people to die, and I'm gonna die with them!" Aaron Ybarra wrote the day of the shooting, King County [WA] Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said... (This is not the first case in which I've seen a report that the killer was no longer taking his prescribed psychotropic medication. I recall that a few were reported to have discontinued taking SSRI antidepressants. To my knowledge, the two types of psychiatric patients most likely to discontinue their medication are paranoid schizophrenics – who often perceive any side efect as evidence of attempts to poison them – and those who experience manic phases of bipolar disorder – as they only need to stop taking drugs to feel, albeit for short periods, the euphoria that other experience from taking CNS stimulants.)
http://www.kptv.com/story/25741092/prose...t-off-meds
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