I get so angry and chocked that there are no words.
I mean... there are words but I don't dare to say here. So I go with a polite:
Sir,
You insanely offended me and many of your patients..
As far as Washington Post, WSJ and New York Post are concerned:
Dear Sirs,
What you are doing is not journalism. Perhaps we should create another word for what you're doing.
But please! Don't say you are journalists and find another words for "editor; editorial and all the stuffs you're doing".
Any idea how to call what these people are doing?

The more I read about psychiatry, the more I detest it...
Psychiatry itself is a disease of society..

I forgot to say that the same happens around here.
People are already mocking when the word "media" is mentioned. And some people say: "-Oh! I see! He's a journalist!" in a sarcastic tone.
This is serious!

If we were to do a psychological profiles of the psychiatrists out there what would we discover?..

Egomaniacs?...
Sociopaths?...
Psychopaths?..
God-compex?..
Fascist?..
Perverted?..
Corrupted?...
Conceited?..
Disturbed?..
Callous?..
Evil?...

From my experience with psychiatrists I have come to hold the opinion that the profession itself attracts sick and twisted individuals...
The most common traits of the psychiatrist are "sadist" and "bully"...
But I just like to simplify it and think of them as "horrible bastards"...

I'm arriving at a time when I think: "-Thanks the Lord I'm old enough not to see what's going to happen!"
It's hard!
I'm sorry for the off topic but I believe that all people who are in this have the same feeling: it's hard!

but homelessness is easily solved with or without forced meds: by building some damn housing.

Thank you for stating the obvious! I worked for a housing project in SF that created low cost housing in a residential hotel setting for the formerly homeless "severe and persistently" mentally ill. No one was required to be on meds. It was a harm-reduction model. It was beautiful. People did very well in general and perhaps only 50% were on meds. Being off the street is a powerful antidote to crime of any sort.

Oh, my this crap makes my blood boil. I'm like you when it comes to Torrey. He seems truly evil and with most other doctors and researchers I can stay much more calm. Not so with Torrey...

Prophet? I find a more fitting label the Anti-Christ.

At the risk of repeating myself, I will anyway.. Though the fact is, I heard this man speak in public via a NAMI fundraiser.(I do not support NAMI) I went with intent on seeing what this guy was like and I seriously have never felt I was in the presence of evil before in my life. The man called him 'delusional' so many times, I couldn't keep up. I took page after page of notes and when I asked him (several questions)why he believes Haldol is an anti viral medication (that can help with that pesky cat virus that causes SZ)he said he couldn't tell me. Stanley Foundation that he is connected to is working on an under the skin Haldol disk. I'm going to say this for the millionth time here: watch out because this is a Fuller Torrey way of "preventing SZ" by way of out patient forced medication of a drug he believes cures and prevents SZ--he also wasted no time talking about bipolar being equal to SZ.The guy is nuts. Bizarre and creepy. I never talk that way, and have met many professionals over the last decade and never a person who made me run, not walk to my car. It was also disgusting that the NAMI group had him as a primary speaker about SZ, "the leading authority". Hell, that would be the same as someone hiring John McManamy as the leading authority on bipolar disorder. Some self-appointed thought leaders need to be removed from those platforms. Oh, let's not forget McMan will probably say I'm attacking him again. That's OK. He attacked me and never gave a public apology when he took me down to the carpet for telling my daughter's story. Off topic here? not really.

People are dangerous with power.

Philip, remember that as you disclose on this blog, you've been labeled bipolar, and hence you should realize that when you write about the seriously mentally ill, you need to use first person, as in "our rights are pretty much the same as anyone elses." Unfortunately the Supreme Court has limited the civil rights of people with psych labels. Grohol writes about it here: "http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/06/19/court-limits-mentally-ill-defendants"

There's so much else wrong with Torrey's mindset as you aptly point out.

This story is to be expected. We can only take comfort in the fact that Torrey is an old man and will soon be dead. He could have been expected to throw some final salvos. The reality is, he doesn't have enough time left in his lifespan to mount a giant reform campaign, that takes a younger man's vigor. There will be others to replace him yes, but at least this very nasty specimen will soon die. Unfortunately, nobody is going to vivisect his brain and desecrate his remains like he has done to so many innocent people.

The most frightening thing about Fuller Torrey is that he actually believes he's doing a good thing. He's a respected researcher and he gets a lot of media time. I really wish I knew what the fundamental core belief is that drives his work. I have my own theory about Fuller Torrey but I'd prefer not to write it here. Nah, I'll go ahead. I think it's very important for Fuller Torrey to impress upon the world that mental illness is not caused or exacerbated by faulty family dynamics. I would like to hear what his schizophrenic sister has to say about the man.

The misrepresentation of medication as some kind of holy grail in the "cure" of mental illness rather than the chemical straitjacket (and murderous agent) it really is is what makes this point of view so sickening and infuriating.

Okay, I went to read the book review and stopped about half way down because I didn't want to vomit all over my keyboard. Don't buy this book. Don't support this Nazi. Laugh and jeer at him instead. Hold him up to be ridiculed.

One question, though: The picture allegedly showing a nutter that should be behind bars is hard for me to understand. Because, call me crazy, but to me he looks like a guy sitting in clean clothes on a park bench next to an unopened box of take-out food. He has a blanket over his head. Perhaps he needs a nap? The sun's too bright? His forehead is cold? He's embarrassed about his receding hair line? What is it about this photograph that demonstrates how right Fuller Torrey is?

I find it amazing that Torrey is using the Cho Virginia Tech tragedy as an example of non-treatment when SSRI Stories is using it as an example of med treatment gone haywire.

I suppose in this Virginia Tech case we will never know the answer becaue the mental health records went missing from the college health clinic that Cho visited and the autopsy report was never released - only words to the effect that "the medication Cho was taking could not have caused this". Let us decide.

Maybe Torrey does have hundreds of murders of untreated people in his book but www.SSRIstories has thousands involving people who were on [or discontinuing] antidepressants. There are 2,405 tragic cases to be exact.

We need somebody to start a Website on tragic cases of suicide and homicide involving antipsychotics. Beat Torrey at his own game!

Fuller Torrey is a fascist, odious turd. As a result of his, er, work, regular, otherwise reasonably intelligent people end up saying things like this:

Megan Ratcliffe from Toronto, Canada wrote [in response to a heartbreaking Globe and Mail article called "The Lonely Madness of Alice G"]: "I just think we need to ... ma[k]e medication compliance enforceable ...."

And now Francesca Allan from British Columbia, Canada writes in response:

Well, honey, I can't seem to log into the Globe's website so I'm posting my response to you here.

What a horribly ignorant, hateful and vile comment, Megan. First of all, medication compliance already IS enforceable under current mental health legislation.

Secondly, there is no compelling evidence that lunatics are an especially dangerous subset of the population. Yes, occasionally a mentally ill person commits an offence. Yes, crime is bad. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN that we are entitled to trample the civil rights of an entire subset of the population just because some members of that subset MIGHT do something.

Yah know what I think, Megan?! I think sometimes young, poor, black, urban, drug-addicted youths commit crimes and I can support this statement with hard evidence. And yet you know what, honey? I would not support us creating an entirely different set of laws for black people and only black people based on this hard evidence. You know why? BECAUSE I AM NOT A FASCIST LIKE E. FULLER TORREY IS.

Megan, it seems to me that whenever society creates levels of citizenship based on hateful criteria, it doesn’t work out very well for the designated undesirables. Didn’t work out in Nazi Germany for the Jews. Didn't pan out with the Japanese internment camps. Nor for the Indian residential schools. Isn’t working out here in Canada for the mentally ill, either.

Thirdly, forced drugging (not “enforceable medication compliance,” you politically correct imbecile!) is NOT effective. There is plenty of evidence that long-range outcomes are better WITHOUT psychiatric intervention.

Forced drugging is a civil rights violation and a crime against humanity and disregards our very own Canadian Charter. Forcing lunatics to take neuroleptic medicine threatens their lives. Who cares, eh? Much better that 10,000 harmless crazies get drugged and/or incarcerated than one dangerous nutcase goes without his happy pills.

Thanks for contributing, Megan. I feel a lot better about being a Canadian now. I have to go lie down. I've had an exhausting day so far.

Cho, the nut is using Cho - he didn't have a history of being labeled bipolar or schizophrenic. Scary stuff.

Paul McHugh is one of the Chamberlains (to use that analogy from recent political arguments regarding dialogue with the enemies of the US) to the demise of psychiatry in the last 30 years. His program at Johns Hopkins lead the disgusting push for medications to the forefront of treatment in my profession, at one point dismissing therapy as non-essential to the training program principals, and every asshole who worshipped this fucking institution bought their bullshit hook line and sinker.

Yeah, I'm a bit hostile when it comes to this windbag and his disciples. I'll bet every dollar I've earned this year that the pharmaceutical industry runs that place, and controls every word of research published from their minions.

You want to talk evil about psychiatry? That is one place I would not argue against anyone who criticizes that shit hole. Them and MGH can implode and I would not shed one god damn tear.

There is something to be said that was wrong about deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, but I am not going to discuss it here.

"You want to talk evil about psychiatry? That is one place I would not argue against anyone who criticizes that shit hole. Them and MGH can implode and I would not shed one god damn tear."

Good comment, in my opinion.

Torrey is quoted in the review as trotting out his statistic that 10% of all murders are committed by "the severely mentally ill." Assuming that statistic is correct, which it's not, but assuming it were, that leaves 90% of the murders committed by people with no severe psychiatric labels. So a "sane" person is 9 times more likely to kill than a "crazy" person. Now please explain to me why the world is safer if we lock up us crazies. Shouldn't society be robbing the sane of civil rights if it wants to be safer under Torrey math?

TP, here's the problem with deinstitutionalization. Kicking the inmates with no place to go out. t wasn't the "anti-psych" folks that wanted the doors locked after the inmates left.

Also, no one can really pretend like the homeless problem of our society is caused by deinstitutionalization. What about the mortgage crisis, the lack of affordable housing, and the lack of jobs?

Can we mount a class action suit against Torrey (and NAMI) for violating the Constitutional and human rights of the disabled?

Okay, here's my rant.

Philip, you said:
The book is, of course, an "expose" of deinstitutionalization and how psychiatry failed the nation by allowing people to be released from state hospitals from the 1960s through the 1980s, leading to crises of homelessness and prison time for people with mental illnesses.

So, what I want to know is how and when did homelessness become a mental health issue and not a housing issue??? I really want to know because I came of age as a young social worker in the early 1970's--the Golden Age of deinstitutionalization. Most of my clients were severely OCD or schizophrenic. As crappy a job as we did in helping these people adjust to life with us "normies" after 25 or 30 years of institutionalization, they were NOT homeless. In our state there was only one state hospital and these folks were released to their "home" towns, a place from which they'd been absent for decades. They may as well have been released to Mars, really. They were some of the bravest and most courageous people I've ever met. I was in awe, watching them build their lives from scratch with little or not support.

But they weren't homeless. Why? Because in those days housing was considered a basic necessity, not some optional add on. That didn't happen until they cut HUD funding in the Reagan administration. Until then we had tons of mentally ill people in the community, but very few--if any--were homeless.

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but if you were to plunk me on the streets and tell me "Good luck surviving" I would be extremely symptomatic within days. So would most anyone I know--including everyone I know who lacks the sort of diagnoses I have. In fact, my guess is dear old Dr. Torrey himself would be sporting a symptom or two before long and within 30 days (at most) on the streets would have his very own DSM diagnosis.

Nothing makes me spit wooden nickles faster than people saying the answer to homelessness is "more shelters" or "more mental health services". How 'bout we start solving homelessness with "more housing" and see what's left once people feel a bit safer? Of course, after all these years of homelessness a lot of people will take an awfully long time to trust life again.

Homelessness makes me feel unutterably sad. Homelessness in the Richest Country in the World makes me feel angry.

As I remember it, homelessness was rare in the late 1970s. Despite deinstitutionalization having been underway for many years then, housing programs and disability payments in the form of SSI and SSDI helped to make sure that almost anyone could find some kind of a place to live if they wanted to. It was only in the early 1980s that homelessness started to become increasingly common. It was then when I first remember newscasters throwing around the phrase "the armies of the homeless", and it was because of political decisions to spend less on housing for the poor and, I suspect also, because of decisions to throw as many people as possible off of SSI or SSDI. I remember there was a concerted effort underway then by the Social Security Administration to find excuses to stop making these disability payments - especially to people whose disabilities were psychiatric in nature. I believe they were successful in throwing many people off of SSI/SSDI, and many of those people probably had nothing else they could rely on so they became homeless as a result. It simply became more politically acceptable for the majority of Americans to have large numbers of their countrymen living on the streets.

I read some of the reviews for that book on amazon.com and it made me feel sick. These ignorant people writing reviews in support of forced medication just make me feel sick. Just look at some of the reviews on amazon.com. It's awful, the reviews praise Torrey and say things like "Very few people cannot be helped by the hundreds of medications that exist" That's bullshit. These people who review Torrey's books are speaking out of their ass with no experience. None of these f-ing meds work. I'd like to see these people praising Torrey take antipsychotics themselves and see how great meds are. Medication sucks and it doesn't work. Fuller Torrey's book reviewers make me feel ill.