Reflections from an obituary

Contrarian Psychiatrist Loren Mosher dies, 70

--decried excessive drugging of the mentally ill, large treatment facilities and the sway pharmaceutical companies had over professional groups....is he talking about institutional schools??? Oh, no, he's speaking of treating the mentally ill -- we need the schools to help create the mentally ill...

--advocated a largely drug free treatment regimen for schizophrenics, whom he viewed as tormented souls needing emotionally nourishing environments in which to recover. He said drugs were almost always unnecessary, except in the event of a violent or suicidal episode.

--established small, drug-free treatment facitilites more akin to homes than hospitals. Soteria House in San Jose. Crisis house in Rockville, Md, McAuliffe House, based on Soteria's principles.

-- Mosher "the idea that schizophrenia can often be overcome with the help of meaningful relationships, rather than with drugs, and that such treatment would eventually lead to unquestionably healthier lives."

-- Mosher, in his resignation letter from the American Psychiatric Association "...in my view, psychiatry has been almost completely bought out by the drug companies."

-- During the Ritalin craze of the 1990s, he was often featured as a dissenting view in articles. "If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth," he said of medication. Purposeful link to the Nazis' propaganda techinique of the Big Lie???

Facts from the Washington Post in July 2004. Commentary by Sparky.

I've put this on here simply because it makes me wonder and I want the information to be available to me should I decide to look into his research in the future. Its just too hard to keep track of all the scraps of paper...

I wonder about the effects of drugging children into submission by diagnosing them as ADD, ADHD or whatever and then prescribing drugs to control them. If schools must drug children to make them learn [and its debatable whether they are learning or just being mollified], then maybe we must ask whether schools are right for these children?