This image is the cover for the book Toxic Psychiatry

Toxic Psychiatry

Prozac, Xanax, Halcion, Haldol, Lithium. These psychiatric drugs--and dozens of other short-term "solutions"--are being prescribed by doctors across the country as a quick antidote to depression, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other psychiatric problems. But at what cost?

In this searing, myth-shattering exposé, psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D., breaks through the hype and false promises surrounding the "New Psychiatry" and shows how dangerous, even potentially brain-damaging, many of its drugs and treatments are. He asserts that: psychiatric drugs are spreading an epidemic of long-term brain damage; mental "illnesses" like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorder have never been proven to be genetic or even physical in origin, but are under the jurisdiction of medical doctors; millions of schoolchildren, housewives, elderly people, and others are labeled with medical diagnoses and treated with authoritarian interventions, rather than being patiently listened to, understood, and helped.

Toxic Psychiatry sounds a passionate, much-needed wake-up call for everyone who plays a part, active or passive, in America's ever-increasing dependence on harmful psychiatric drugs.

Peter R. Breggin

Peter R. Breggin, MD, is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York. He is the author of many scientific articles and more than twenty books, most recently Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood‑Altering Medications (2008). Many of his cutting-edge discoveries on the dangers of psychiatric drugs have been affirmed by recent scientific research and by FDA regulatory actions. He has taught at numerous universities and acts as an expert witness in legal cases involving harm done by psychiatric medication and electroshock.

St. Martin’s Press