Banned by Bio-psychiatry: What Users and Survivors of Psychiatry Really Want

Chaired by Peter Lehmann


The power and influence of modern biological psychiatry depends on legally sanctioned force and coercion that would be regarded as fundamental human rights violations in any other sector of society. This symposium will discuss how this power is also used to exclude alternative approaches to psychic problems that many users and survivors want. Biological psychiatry does not recognise the social nature of psychic problems, the benefits of less harmful non-medical therapies, and of peer-support self-help programs that many users and survivors say helped them more than the drugs. As well as promoting human rights violations, the ideology of bio-psychiatry also promotes misinformation that suppresses critical information for users and survivors, and dominates funding of services so that non-medical services are starved of resources. Withholding information on alternatives is another form of coercion that denies users and survivors of their right to give informed consent and access to the services they most want.


Photo of Peter Lehmann
Peter Lehmann

 

Respecting Human Rights as a sine qua non for All Kind of Treatment and Support: The Strategy of MindFreedom International
David W. Oaks     Video documentation (1)

Strategies of Drug Companies to Optimize the Sales of Their Psychiatric Drugs—The Rise and Fall of the 'Atypical' Neuroleptics: A Case Study in How the Pharmaceutical Industry Hypes its Products
Robert Whitaker     Video documentation (2)

The International Network Toward Alternatives and Recovery (INTAR)
Peter Stastny     Video documentation (3)

Cooperation and Understanding versus Custodialism and Violence: User- and Survivor Involvement in Services, Education, Administration and Political Decision-making
Mary Nettle     Video documentation (4)

< Symposium, held at June 7, 2007, at the congress "Coercive Treatment in Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Review", run by the World Psychiatric Association in Dresden, Germany, June 6-8, 2007

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