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INTRODUCTION
The John Dewey Academy is a drug and psychotropic medicine -free high school for talented, troubled, troublesome, and tortured teens. More than seventy percent who arrive addicted to psychotropic medicine are detoxified. Although we developed our theories independently, Breggin's rejection of medicine has radicalized The John Dewey Academy's decision to prohibit all psychotropic medicines.
Breggin's Anti-Medicine Mission
Breggin was among the first to attack and reject the trend to medicate when he pronounced taking pills under medical supervision communicates the anti-therapeutic message that "something is wrong with your brain, and you need a potent medication to function as 'normal.'" Breggin (1991) writes, "biopsychiatrists...reject psychological approaches and instead make extraordinary claims for their efficacy" (p. 150). Breggin (1991) lambasts neuropsychiatric/psychological researchers and the profession when he writes the psychiatrist's "training and commitment is more likely devoted to 'medical diagnosis' and 'physical treatment.'" The therapist may view the personin-distress "with...all the empathy and understanding of a pathologist staring through a microscope at germs, and then offer...a drug" (p. 11). Breggin condemns the damage done to children and adolescents whose only crime may be excessive enthusiasm, energy, and exuberance. Breggin excoriates researchers who dehumanize children; they forget it is "age appropriate" for adolescents to be distracted and, at times, disruptive. When viewed from this perspective, prescribing Ritalin can be "cruel and unusual punishment" for those who are irritating.
There is no reputable study in a reputable journal that substantiates the cause of psychological aberrations to be chemical imbalances in the brain. Breggin (2001 & 1998) refutes the psychopharmacology cause of ADHD in a book that should be required reading for those who diagnose children and adolescents. Breggin's research is comprehensive, citing more than six hundred publications which substantiate his anti-medication and anti-Ritalin position. Understandably, Breggin received a massive, hostile reaction motivated by economic concerns from the proponents of the "better living through chemistry" club who want to silence him, especially after Breggin & Cohen (1999).
Biological psychiatry assumes mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Pharmacological solutions create the comforting illusion that deviance can be controlled easily and cheaply by pills.Breggin excoriates pharmacologic researchers and the FDA for uncritically accepting self-serving and flawed studies financed by pharmaceutical corporations for economic gain. Breggin...