Brian Thomas-Peter
@BTP52
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Author, academic, manager of mental health service, consultant. Novels include ‘The Last Truth’ and ‘The Kissing Fence’ (Caitlin Press, March 2020)
British Columbia
Joined October 2011
It is remarkable to me that that psychiatry has sustained the double-think of alluding to science while some acknowledge the ineptitude of the psychiatric edifice. It could be so much better.
Powerful words from the guy who chaired the DSM-IV Children “labeled with a serious condition for challenges that would better be viewed as a variation of normal” “overdiagnosis can happen whenever there’s a blurry line between normal behavior and disorder” “It is difficult to
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Goodness! I hate that some people will not say what they really think…
Psychiatry is a totally corrupt specialty, ethically, scientifically and financially, with devastating consequences for the patients. https://t.co/UcUlHPZ1mk. Stop it! @brokenmedics @SecKennedy @DrJBhattacharya @MartyMakary @cdcgov @WHO @NIH @martinkulldorff
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This
A psych-diagnosis doesn't identify what your problem is. It's rather, at best, an fumbling attempt to describe the form your suffering takes. Diagnosis has therefore nothing remotely useful to say about what generates your distress. That's the most generous take I can muster.
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There are so many psychiatric apologists who will remain silent at this.
This study finds that psychiatrists who worked on DSM-5 received $14M in undisclosed funding from the pharmaceutical industry; the very industry that has profited enormously from DSM's over-medicalisation of everyday life.
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Remarkable that this study is still being touted as evidence in support of medication for depression. Even the author, was moved to describe the added value of antidepressants over placebo as ‘trivial’.
Which antidepressants work most effectively, and which barely beat placebo? The largest meta-analysis (Cipriani et al., 2018) compared 21 antidepressants in 116,477 patients, revealing striking differences in efficacy and tolerability. Here’s how this data can transform your
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Another meaningless ‘disorder’ with poor reliability, without aetiology or treatment. In the new form there will be a new demand for consultants, juniors, training, resources that suck the life out of every other discipline and service. There is no science in a name change.
Functional Neurological Disorder takes its rightful place as one of 7 main Neurology specialisms - now the challenge is to provide resources for the new services mandated in this service specification
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This is absolutely shocking. I cannot think of anything more destructive. Is this psychiatry making a commercial move by inserting themselves irresponsibly in our lives, or some misguided initiative by someone who doesn’t know better.
1/10 Illinois just became the first state to mandate mental health screenings for EVERY student from 3rd grade through high school.Starting in 2027, we're going to ask 8-year-olds to self-diagnose their psychological state.This is how you manufacture a generation of patients.🧵
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Here is the problem. Psychiatry/ pharma’ perpetuate the untruth that ‘science’ is advancing with new chapters, adding value to our care. No, it is not science. They merely evolve the deception with layers of complexity and pseudoscience avoiding substantive reform.
Science isn’t replacing the story — it’s adding chapters, new characters, richer plots, and deeper connections.
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A RCT comparing Saffron and SSRI’s in the treatment of MDD. No difference was found but saffron had fewer side effects. In particular, it had no impact on libido. Not the last word but interesting. Will someone try to patent it! https://t.co/f3dz80MKam
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True
Antidepressant efficacy is inflated by the cumulative impact of publication bias, outcome reporting bias, spin, and citation bias on the evidence base. 🧵1/12
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You and the op-ed’s are almost right. There are anti-psychiatry people and reformers. It is psychiatry and acolytes who lump them together, because they don’t want reform and demonizing all critical voices suits their purpose. There is an irony here that few people will get!
Has anti-psychiatry turned from stimulant of change to a more harmful concoction? A timely and pointed op-ed by several prominent mental health voices here on X @jonathanstea @tylerblack32 @psychunseen The op-ed argues that today’s anti-psychiatry movement gets a lot wrong and
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Good to hear this being said out load. As a matter of interest, heroin and cannabis will do the same. Just like prescribed medication they too are not related to the cause of psychological distress.
A common psychiatric outcome: not happier, just quieter.
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Some of us have been saying that for years.
The next frontier in medicine, psychiatry, and neurology is realizing that depression is not a Prozac deficiency, ADHD is not a Ritalin deficiency, schizophrenia is not a Zyprexa deficiency, and heart disease is not a statin deficiency.
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Not to be too anti-psychiatry.. and I don’t want to offend those with unquestioned faith/ allegiance with psychiatrists, but …
Yet another study...The science has been clear for decades that antipsychotics don't actually work, even short term. So why are they the main form of forced psychiatric treatment? The drugs restrain pts & have a placebo effect on onlookers. (And most pts improve naturally.)
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The sentiment and acknowledgement is good, but you appear to be proposing change, providing psychiatry retains its dominance and authority. This is no change at all. Psychiatry cannot profess to be the solution, having been the problem.
@BTP52 I hear your anger, and I don’t take it lightly. Criticism—especially from those who’ve been harmed—is essential if we’re ever going to build something better. This isn’t about defending a system blindly. It’s about acknowledging pain, holding space for multiple truths, and
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Hard to describe how utterly misguided this. Just read the literature on stigma and mental health.
People misunderstand stigma. A diagnosis is not stigmatising. Stigma stems from how people with that diagnosis are treated by others. When anti-psychs claim 'stigma!', they are really saying 'Having a MI is shameful'. Hence, they are the ones perpetuating stigma.
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Hard not to agree with this, but it can be expressed differently. There are too many psychiatrists. They have no allegiance to science or unique claim on humanity, humility or connectivity. That which they do offer is too expensive.
In psychiatry, we are far too focused on biology & less on humanity, humility & human connections.
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This is true. The same is can be said about equating ‘anti-psychiatry’ with ‘ideology’. So easy to dismiss the ideologue. The irony is that in the absence of evidence to support its basic premise, psychiatry is an ideology of its supporters. The critique of this is not.
"The pejorative use of the phrase 'anti-psychiatry' [seeks to] denigrate the critic as irrational, unreasonable... thus weaponising the phrase in an attempt to misrepresent or delegitimise critical debate and dissent". 👇 https://t.co/w4xV4veTrb
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Shall we simply swap carefully contrived stories of good and bad, each mocking the other? I ask you re poor science, iatrogenic harm, overdiagnosis, bad side effects, informed choice and withdrawal issues; you reply with ‘you don’t care about my patient.’ Is this all you have?
1/2 A patient tells me that the auditory hallucinations are unwanted, distressing, & disabling. He finds the psy-medication to be helpful, with no significant side effects. According to antipsychiatrists I should tell him to avoid the medication because the illness is a blessing
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Hard to disagree with this. We just need to define ‘most effective’, and make sure long term harm and informed choice is part of that algorithm.
All mental health professionals should be united in wanting patients to have the most effective treatment available, whether it’s medication, therapy, or ECT, or a combination of these.
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