On 30 August, I shall publish my new book, which from that date can be downloaded for free on this website. The book is a frontal attack on biological psychiatry, which is extremely harmful for the patients. See the press release. This is the first page in the book (I have removed the hyperlinks in the references):
1 Psychiatry is in crisis
We have a mental health crisis. The existing approaches that focus on drugs are not working. In the UK, mental health disability has almost trebled in recent decades, and the gap in life expectancy between people with severe mental health issues and the general population has doubled.[1] The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations have therefore recently called for systematic mental health reform emphasising psychosocial interventions.[2]
In 2019, a Norwegian study found that 52 of 100 consecutively admitted patients to a psychiatric hospital would have wanted a drug-free alternative if it had existed.[3] As I shall demonstrate in this book, psychosocial interventions are clearly better than drugs. Why can’t people get that then?
According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it is unethical to subject patients to forced treatment.[4] There is a high risk that forced treatment is being used to benefit staff in making their work less stressful. In Europe, oversight comes under the convention prohibiting torture, and a committee has observed that deliberate ill-treatment of patients in psychiatric institutions still occurs.[5] Moreover, fundamental components of psychosocial rehabilitative treatment are underdeveloped or absent, and treatment consists essentially of drugs.
I have studied psychiatry closely for 17 years. I have published many scientific articles and several books,[6] given numerous lectures and interviews, and have been an expert witness in court cases about forced treatment or psychiatric drug harms in Brazil, Canada, USA, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Australia and New Zealand.
This book summarises what I have written before and contains a lot of new material as well. I include many debates I have had with psychiatrists to help historian and filmmaker Janus Bang who wants to write a biography about me, and I think these additions will be of general interest, as psychiatrists reason in the same way everywhere.
Undoubtedly, some will find the book’s title provocative, but if you read the book, you can decide for yourself if you agree that psychiatry is a crime against humanity.
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 7, crimes against humanity refer to specific crimes committed in the context of a large-scale attack targeting civilians, regardless of their nationality.[7]
Crimes against humanity have often been committed as part of State policies. Prohibited acts include murder, imprisonment, torture, persecution against an identifiable group, and inhumane acts intentionally causing severe mental suffering or serious bodily injury.
State policies may lead to persecution of psychiatric patients. These patients have often described forced treatment as imprisonment and torture, and they have reported that their ill-treatment is sometimes deliberate. It is also a fact that State policies, in the form of clinical guidelines, may lead to much loss of life.
I have shown that psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death.[8] Depression drugs are the major killer, which is because so many elderly people take them. The pills double the risk of falls and hip fractures in a dose-dependent manner,[9] and within a year after a hip fracture, about one-fifth of the patients will be dead.
Doctors and drug regulators are surprisingly unconcerned about all these deaths. When patients die, doctors usually blame their illness rather than the drug or their own incompetence, or they simply don’t know it was a drug death, e.g. if a patient becomes dizzy, falls, breaks a hip, and dies as a result. In contrast, airline pilots are critically concerned with our safety because if we go down, they do too.[10]
[1] Shifting the balance towards social interventions: a call for an overhaul of the mental health system. Beyond Pills All-Party Parliamentary Group 2024;May.
[2] Shifting the balance towards social interventions: a call for an overhaul of the mental health system. Beyond Pills All-Party Parliamentary Group 2024;May.
[3] Heskestad, Stig, et al. (2019). Medikamentfri psykiatrisk behandling – hva mener pasientene? Tidsskr Nor Legeforen 139. doi: 10.4045/tidsskr.18.0912.
[4] United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: General comment No. 1. 2014;May 19.
[5] Council of Europe. European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). CPT/Inf/E (2002) 1 – Rev. 2013.
[6] Gøtzsche PC. Deadly medicines and organised crime: How big pharma has corrupted health care. London: Radcliffe Publishing; 2013; Gøtzsche PC. Deadly psychiatry and organised denial. Copenhagen: People’s Press; 2015; Gøtzsche PC. Mental health survival kit and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs. Ann Arbor: L H Press; 2022; Gøtzsche PC. Critical psychiatry textbook. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022 (freely available).
[7] Crimes against humanity. Trial International.
[8] Gøtzsche PC. Prescription drugs are the leading cause of death. And psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death. Mad in America 2024;April 16.
[9] Hubbard R, Farrington P, Smith C, et al. Exposure to tricyclic and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants and the risk of hip fracture. Am J Epidemiol 2003;158:77-84 and Thapa PB, Gideon P, Cost TW, et al. Antidepressants and the risk of falls among nursing home residents. N Engl J Med 1998;339:875-82; Khanassov V, Hu J, Reeves D, van Marwijk H. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor use and risk of fractures in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry 2018;33:1688-1708.
[10] Healy D. Medical partisans? Why doctors need conflicting interests. Aust N Z J Psychiatry 2012;46:704–7.