Mad as hell

Hunger strikers protest drug industry’s stranglehold on psychiatry

By Michel Cicero

Last weekend, five people left their homes in various parts of the country to starve themselves in Pasadena. As ex-psychiatric patients, they’re having trouble swallowing the theory that all and sundry human emotional disturbances are biologically rooted and best handled with medication.

Using the time-tested hunger strike as a mechanism for change, they intend to rattle the main institutions of psychiatry — namely the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), the American Psychiatry Association and the US Surgeon General — into coughing up some real scientific evidence to support the prevailing medical model in mental health treatment.

The hunger strike, or “fast,” is sponsored by Mind Freedom Support Coalition International, a human rights umbrella organization that advocates for individuals who have suffered under the care of the mental health system. Prior to the fast, Mind Freedom called more than 9,000 supporters to action, urging them to contact the target institutions for answers. A phone call to NAMI confirmed that media relations personnel were unavailable to respond to the deluge of calls they received. As of press time, no one from NAMI returned a call from the Weekly.

Pasadena resident and Mind Freedom member Mickey Weinberg, one of the fast’s organizers, along with solidarity strikers throughout the US and abroad, will join the self-described “psychiatric survivors” in the fast.

Weinberg, a retired social worker who has no history of mental illness, pioneered the use of grassroots organizing strategies within the psychiatry survivors movement after witnessing numerous human rights abuses under the auspices of mental health care. Institutionalized patients were “fair game for all sorts of medical and psychological experimentation,” Weinberg explained.

Weinberg believes the hunger strike, while somewhat of a last resort, is a valuable protest tool. “It was necessary to find something that was traditional and dignified,” he said, “and couldn’t be tarred with charges that these are just crazy people behaving in a crazy way.”

While historically hunger striking hasn’t always yielded optimal results, it tends to draw awareness to the issue at hand, inevitably leading to progress. In the mid-’80s, a homeless activist water fasted for 51 days. Though he nearly died, his actions led to the construction of a $14 million shelter. Comedian-turned-activist Dick Gregory once said that in the US, “where more people die from overeating than under eating,” almost nothing will “get the attention of the masses faster than fasting.”

The “Freedom Fasters” allege that the drug industry currently dominates psychiatry and is able to do so because of the widely held belief that subtle brain chemistry disturbances are responsible for an array of symptoms and behaviors generally labeled “mental illness.” And these “illnesses” respond best to medication. That model for health treatment is referred to as bio-psychiatry, one of the most profitable of all industries and one that is rapidly globalizing.

“ We want the public to see that there’s another point of view, and that that other point of view is legitimate,” said Weinberg. The Mind Freedom fasters contend that while medication does help some people deal with psychological problems, they are not curing any diseases. Additionally, there is no straightforward evidence to prove that psychological ailments are biological diseases. Without a real disease to cure, arguments in favor of medication hold no water. If schizophrenia, depression and the myriad other “diseases” increasing numbers of people are being medicated for were actually caused by abnormal brain function, then they should be treated by neurologists.
Mind Freedom activists are not alone in this thinking. Weinberg says even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders, psychiatry’s Bible, hints that psychiatry is not a science and diagnoses are sometimes indiscriminate. “It’s like saying, ‘You may have diabetes or you may have cancer, we’re not sure, but we’re going to give you insulin,’” he said.

Mary Boyle Ph.D., head of the doctoral program in clinical psychology at the University of East London, challenged the bio-psychiatry model as it pertains to schizophrenia in a paper published by the British Psychological Society. She revealed that little credence is given to psychological traumas that precede the onset of schizophrenic behavior. Boyle wrote that, “substance abuse, unemployment, social isolation, poverty, disrupted relationships, etc, are routinely presented as consequences of having a serious mental disorder,’’ where they should be acknowledged as potential causes of the patient’s psychological discomfort and associated behaviors. This type of treatment yields a predictable result: a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and at the very least, a prescription for potentially dangerous, mind-altering medication.

Weinberg claims that if medication that dealt with real diseases had the problems that the psychoactive drugs can have, they’d be pulled off the market quickly. “These drugs aren’t meant to cure anything,” he said. “What they’re meant to do is control people and make them more acceptable to other people.”

Although the Mind Freedom fasters don’t know what, if any, response they’ll get from their nemeses in bio-psychiatry, they will consider eating again if public interest and inquiry reaches a critical mass.

In a nutshell, “We want the public to begin to question the authority they’ve given psychiatry,” said Weinberg.

For more information, visit www.mindfreedom.org.