no dares thinks. we dare to ask. eleanor hall the man said. this is a said he was suicidal taken to the hospital in

a mall and there i mean if he really wanted to commit suicide there's nothing i could do about it but i was going to make it easy this all started off with a bad relationship and some tests anxiety and stress in grad school and now i am a horribly dysfunctional highly suicidal individual and the only thing that's happened between then and now is i've been exposed to a series of very strong psychiatric medications right now medicines are given like a basis for seeing doctors for 5 minutes and they're given the pill it's my belief that the many of the medications that doctors are giving to patients today are more harmful than helpful to those patients they want that pill that they hope will take care of their problem thoroughly and rapidly and most of these medications will actually do that very well in the short term in the short term they really work the

problem is in the long term and mostly disastrous i'm not saying there's nothing wrong with me this is just damage to my nervous system costs from a properly taken prescribed drug that a doctor told me was safe there's nothing safe about this drug this is crazy it's very clear to me after having started the science that the way we use psychiatric drugs to foster a more harm than good i remember my obese to school i was like. other kids are going to be murdered and then like that's not created adrenaline so that when in german kids i was like oh my god am i going to be the one that does it. and then it's like yeah you're going to kill these kids and then i'm like i'm like sit here looking at my niece like i can and the thoughts are so bad they're like you're like teeth chatter i call my god i'm capable of that are you kidding me i was never like this. does scariest part because i don't know is this my normal like.

did effects reduce to me to some ball to do this to me did and abilify which one which one did it. i was very successful academically i got accepted into the naval academy in

annapolis maryland after annapolis i did a few years on destroyer base out of mayport florida and then when you're at sea you're training to be the guy directing this ship where to navigate where to go it's great fun but it's also extremely high stress but i loved it i was pre-selected for satellite systems engineering part of that was going to grad school when i got the acceptance letter from light is one of those moments for you just like this is not. happening you know it must be a mistake but then you know stars have aligned and was really happy. fall semester went off you know without a hitch i had started a romantic relationship or earlier that summer the early spring is when things started to fall apart my romantic relationship kind of. took a turn you know became toxic you know i was in distress was overwhelmed we were taking upwards of $4.00 to $5.00 graduate level courses

a semester and so i sought out care from the mental health clinic at mit the campus clinic presented solution to my problems for was a prescription for the benzodiazepine out of van which i'd never previously known about or taken. and zoloft they work as advertised i mean it's very immediate effect it's very calming. dave told me probably on our 3rd or 4th date that he was on medication for depression and. i have seen myself going to haitian for that had issues with depression and sought out help and medication and counseling it's come fairly normal now. i met the girl in my dreams going to gauge in that period work was great love it you know back to my normal what i thought was my normal self somewhere in the 8 month time range a sort of emotional flatness some sexual dysfunction difficulty remembering what

street we lived on that whole period is just a blur like i was a zombie to this big wedding planned i gotta remember talking to my mom prior to that i was mom i just i feel nothing i feel emotionally void of anything and that's when i want to psychiatry just so you know this is the stuff isn't for me you know i need to get off it i think the drug is my problem that's really when it hit the fan. i have always been very close with my parents even as a child i love school i like the base my friends a lot i feel very comforted just being around other people when i was 11 years old i moved from nashville to milwaukee wisconsin we moved a lot for my parents for jobs which is very hard in terms of keeping like lifelong friends i could oftentimes just like my room and listen to music and just like.

honestly mope around i started having a lot of anxiety about school and i was so anxious i got these stomach aches where i didn't want to eat i would eat breakfast without a stomach ache i wouldn't eat much lunch because i had a stomach ache i noticed how that she got kind of thin i just kind of blurted out you know do you think you might be anorexic she went got on the scale and she said you know i think i've lost 20 pounds and so i just totally freaked out and got in a point that same day and then the toward the end the therapist asked me to come into the room she said i think what would really be best to start this treatment is for her to get on antidepressants wait a 2nd we came here for the talk therapy right we didn't come here to kick start with meditation this the whole point of going to a therapist are for rebecca was prescribed zoloft for the 1st medication she said didn't really make a difference she didn't feel any better and she also didn't really feel any worse

at that time. so when we saw her doctor again the doctor switched her to prozac shortly after i had a business trip and i got a phone call from rebecca and she said you know i've been i've been seeing this little girl and i'm like what do you mean you've been seeing a little girl you know like you know she's not really there but i can see her and i named her alice like i genuinely thought that there were people here in the room that weren't there that people could also see but but they were very real for me she came into our bedroom late at night and she was shaking she said you know the hallucinate the hallucination touched me and asked me to come into the kitchen so i could hurt myself and they said you know enough of this she needs she needs help.

i was a waitress in new york city. pretty normal girl doing normal things nothing exceptional nothing not exceptional just normal my mind was clear i was happy the only legal issue i had was. i couldn't sleep i get out at 23 in the morning so i knew that my sleep issues were related to work in night time so i went to my doctor just my regular doctor i see him maybe twice a year. when i asked him for something for sleep he gave me a referral and i took the referral and i called a bunch of psychiatry said this one doctor in brooklyn said yeah we're seeing patients come on and he gave me a prescription for lower as a pound he told me to take 2 in the day and 2 at night i then said why would i need to take a sleeping pill during the day i don't want to sleep during the day and he said

that is how it works. he said ok i didn't even know people could have sleep issues because i was sleeping normal all my life so it's not something i thought about so but i had a feeling it was my job i just didn't think i could quit my job i thought i could get help for that's how come i went to a psychiatrist and he prescribed me distraught lorazepam i took it for 6 years. as a powerful 6 and a 6 and a half years unfortunately that's the problem that most pharmacists see will arrest a panic lorazepam again if they if the doctor takes a time out to read the package insert clearly stray not read in that i don't know. they use a benzo their subpoena has increased tremendously over the years since they've been around for such a long time a lot of doctors have forgotten about the side effects and the possible dangers of these medications none of them were meant for long term use but everybody knows somebody who's been to get better disappeared for years.

i started thinking like ok when did this start how did this start what led up to like me falling apart like i was the go to person in my unit always if they needed a job they needed done right they would ask me i was physically fit knew my job i got promoted to sergeant. after work i was like a lot of fun i like to travel go to the beach spontaneous i was just like a happy person like a happy go lucky friend like hey let's go shopping let's go to a bakery let's you know never had a 2nd thought about anything crazy that's who i was before this so when the war started i think most of it was a stressful situations every day like being shot in convoys just driving around in dangerous areas of baghdad your head was like constantly scanning for something dangerous be a strong sergeant i don't take no that's just the way i was but like the 1st 2

months i was in baghdad and i'm really really sick had nosebleeds fainting dizziness i lost like 40 pounds so they met of actually out of iraq then i kind of got hit the day after i got metal back and so i saw the kid come back in and he was one of my soldiers and i felt horrible and like that was the day that i saw psychiatry with the arrow and i walk straight there because that's what you do i don't know and they put me right that's how this all started they're trained while they're on active duty very very systematically that if you come back and you have problems you need to go to the doctor 100 years ago if they had this kind of a trauma would talk to their fellow soldiers talk to their parents talk to their friends talk to their pastor and instead they're going to their doctor and getting medicated and i think the cloud of them was starting to make me worse but they just kept telling me that's what p.t.s.d. is you have p.t.s.d. now and then i remember he looked at me he said we're going to start the proceedings for medical retirement you are not able to be around soldiers and no

weapons and i remember feeling like how was i like super soldier and non-disabled at 25 are you kidding. was a pandemic no sir you know border to nationalities. you. as a marine we pulled over to really we don't like seeing the whole world needs to be . people. judge a. 2 commentary crisis with this it until. we can do better we should. everyone is contributing. but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenges created the response has been so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we are in it together .

it's been decades since the fall of spain's fascist regime but old wounds still haven't healed. the problem is pretty famous. because only from you know. me on the bus at us is mean older than just that's important to you know. of newborn babies were torn from their mothers and given away and forced adoption and only bought about a. little my own role as a fellow mentor to this day mothers still search for grown children. hope for their birth parents. there is a post-traumatic stress and it's a problem so we would never argue with you that it's not a problem is

a problem it's a big problem but for you it's not a mental illness like i'm feeling on waking up from a nightmare. has happened to my life you lost years of your life you lost your career there's just so many things that are losses in here that's part of the situation that we're in right now as a culture is if you write to the doctor and cry about this they're going to say oh you have major depression you're very sick on the next pill instead of saying hey you know what suffering is the only normal response there's a grief process they have to go through. normal's in danger. the definitions used in psychiatry and even more the way they were applied have become so why. a far too large percentage of the population would be defined as having a mental disorder you know now we have patients come in and if there's you know they're anxious or they can't sleep or they have squandered physical pains like oh my gosh you know let's get rid of that we have really vilified pain and i'm talking

emotional pain physical pain like it has now become the responsibility of the doctor to eliminate all suffering at all costs there is a cultural context and the context really goes back to the rival of antibiotics in 90 late 1940 s. and then the polio vaccine they really do change life bacterial infections are no longer a problem and now we have this magic cure for polio so now we believe in magic bullets pretty soon we're going to be having magic bullets for everything.

what you find in psychiatrists you trace its history that is in the 1970 s. american psychiatry was in competition with other therapist for talk therapy counselors social workers what do they say to themselves they say we need to present ourselves as doctors as medical doctors we need to put on a white coat they adopt a disease model for categorizing psychiatric disorder we're going to say these are diseases of the brain illnesses of the brain that are drugs therefore treat the symptoms of those illnesses it. centers on this chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders while the causes are known depression may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells in the brain scription zoloft works to correct this imbalance when you know more about what's wrong you can help make it right it hasn't been possible to demonstrate that 1st you have a chemical imbalance and then because of that you become depressed or psychotic but

what we have shown is that the drugs create a chemical imbalance and nobody has a clue what happens when you push this system somewhere you have all sorts of reactions elsewhere it's a very naive thought that a psychiatric disorder is based on 11 single saying chemical or that went wrong and then we have a quick fix for that it's totally totally naive. in 1980 american psychiatric association adopted a disease model and began to tell that story to the american public you know who was so happy with that story the pharmaceutical industry they were thrilled with this story because now they could see the market's expanding depression anxiety all these things that we used to think of a sort of normal fluctuations in in human experience can now be seen as illnesses there for you could treat with drugs and they said wow dingy eating disorder or b.

e d isn't just over eating it's a real medical condition certain chemicals in the brain may play a role is also the most common eating disorder us adults. i never really. thought the medication was a bad thing and i was like yeah this is good with me feel better off that ok if there's other ways to make me feel better off of both these 4 or you make me feel better great let's do it i will try anything there is never any notion that the medication was causing the symptoms it was more like that the disease was developing the only thing warning she sort of gay but she was very dismissive about it was you might hear. mr green that some instances of people who are only a type of process might have suicidal thoughts but this really isn't something you

should be overly concerned about she said kind of almost flippantly like oh you might want to lock up your knives so we went out and bought. lock box and put anything you know they injure us and there and that's really i want to kind of sunk and even more like wow this is serious so i was hospitalized that 1st time when i was 13 pervert the course of a year i think i was hospitalized $77.00 times 70 times in the earlier hosp. sergeant hospital in this is you know this was not our life this was our daughter when your daughter we near me did you know a few months before she had been sort of a you know a little present always holly but this was a farly to a lot and once in the hospital there they added an anti-psychotic because she was now experiencing psychotic behaviors in addition they had to prescribe another medication to take care of the known side effects of the anti-psychotic we didn't

really know what else to do when we were in the system we wanted to trust the experts. so you know we went that route my mind was filled with horrible thoughts like about me and about how horrible i was and how much i hated myself and what is even the point of me being here anymore. many many people are getting an anti-depressant an answer a benzo is a thing as a sleep medicine without any rhyme or reason. instead of the beneficial effects of these different medicines adding up to something wonderful very often their harmful effects add up to something terrible when i got out of the army and went to the v.a. system it was like a whole nother ballgame it turned into like cocktails anti-psychotic anti-depressant benzo i would say the condition like. i don't have good feelings i just feel is not are anxious or depressed i don't ever feel happy or grateful or

like loving and then i will just add another medicine maybe that is not working and then will switch to a different one so basically my medication history is just a succession of oh this doesn't work let's call it to the highest dose and see what happens ok didn't work ok come back down ok that it works let's switch and try another one it's like a hamster wheel that i never got off of until now what happens to someone like is that when they get on these medications and they begin to to deteriorate the attribution is to their mental condition as opposed to to the medication and so when they go in and they say well he gave me an antidepressant and now i'm really depressed and they say well i see your depression is worsening. so they upped it or add a medication next thing on their own uppers and downers and i mean just see this pattern and every time they go in it's their deteriorating mental condition instead of somebody saying your drug may be your problem.

are you nice just to see if you're used to. thank you for coming. awesome to be here i'm so nervous because i can't talk like this at my own school. so i want to just like run through my story quickly and then just talk because i'm sure you have like really cool questions i was on a cocktail of 17 medications at once and then basically from 2006 to 2016 it took me all that time to like get off of everything else and every time you went in and you were prescribed these medications what were you told about side effects how much information do you give before you describe this in the office you have 10 minutes with the psychiatrist that's when they're like so how are you feeling today

and then you're like well i'm still really anxious and i didn't sleep last week and then they're like i want to take this little quiz you know do you feel jumpy in public you know do you spend time with friends like it was just one of those psychological assessments right so i'm just filling out a little and they take a knife the employ of the d.s.m. and then he's like oh yeah you have generalized anxiety disorder and i'm like what is another label going to do for me now like really another label think you know i have addict p.t.s.d. generalized anxiety panic disorder phobia major depression like for what what does any of those labels do for me. nothing i'm doing everything that you tell me to do and i'm not getting better so the most hurtful part of all of this that i want you to listen to is that i did all the therapy myself social workers therapist psychiatry psychologist not once did somebody say it could be your meds now once 13 years that is what hurt me the most and now i'm in social work school i have all.

my brain is coming back. i can write a mean a.p.a. paper. you're talking about a lot of these meds that are being prescribed for 4 to 6 years should only be taken for a few minutes do you think there's ever a place for medications are you after all it's in the hands that decision process the beginning i was like like no way. no because i'm lucky that i didn't kill myself or someone else so like how can i like say go ahead take those meds you know and mike there is times when some people and when i say some i mean my very few so i'm not in time and i'm pro informed consent so if you as a social worker want to talk to them about informed consent that is well within our boundaries we get it for surgery why are we getting it from. the labels you get if you change that rouble to something. i just think i was like i was just scared i

was a scared little girl i was 24 and like it didn't have to be so complicated you know. starts 1st diagnosed with a g. when i was 15 i think i remember being a relief to get that diagnosis oh my gosh ok that's. that's why everything's so hard it's not that i am. stupid it's not that i'm lazy i was pretty severely depressed the community can go to school i just cried all the time and at kind of a mess. i'm at that point then i was put on at a texas dream f.l. antimatter and was able to go to school on a regular basis i felt. some hope again i hear anecdotes that

very anecdotes of the great effects of drugs and i would say that's about. 2025 percent of the anecdotes i hear this is really been great for me this is help me through a very difficult time about 40 percent saying it may have helped some it's hard to tell what exactly it was doing i can say it hurt me i can't say it helped i seem kind of indifferent to what it may have done and then i get the other 30 percent to 35 percent say this hurt me this damaged me to see how it goes i've been hearing and i think that details a little bit what you find in the literature out there the reason that i kind of changed the way i practice was the realisation that i was actually harming my patients it is very clear that there is a cohort of patients for whom getting off of these drugs is exclusively painful.

one else seemed wrong. why don't we all just don't hold. any belief yet to shape out these days become active. and engaged equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. way to go for the food. bank itself movie theater. plus we've got to do all. the things in the decide this. hour and i know this top and i think. this is the only thing we do is music because

everybody fights his way. through and you can be this bill frist would. have a look at that. but i think is this is the fun that is will come from. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race. spearing dramatic development only mostly exists i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk. when the central bank

will claim there's a this is a big the most crime when they print money and yet we don't see that on the ground we see a lot of violence on the ground and that's goes directly to the fed store they have responsibility for that. a medical in tun commit suicide every 18 days and from the sounds the pandemic pushes trainee doctors to breaking point. british films as a nuss is also buckling under the strain of back with one health describing stall on info to. the judge in the trial which forward to the trial accuses the democratic congresswoman no putting the entire process in jeopardy prompted she called for a confrontation of the as a normal guilty verdict in the meantime a pig's head is thrown out the flame away.