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The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment . Joanna Moncrieff. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 278 pp., $95.00.
In the gloomiest of days during the American Revolution when George Washington's soldiers were enduring a cold, poorly clothed, and hungry winter at Valley Forge in December 1776, Tom Paine wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country." There is something of a gloom hanging over the revolution against involuntary, biological psychiatry. Like the British Empire at the time of American's War of Independence, organized psychiatry and the drug companies have all the money, all the power, and most of the big victories.
What does the opposition to modern psychiatry have on its side? What armaments are in the hands of those few who stand up for independence from oppressive and irrational biological psychiatry? We have the scientific truth and right principles, at this point spoken by a few undaunted, courageous truth speakers. Joanna Moncrieff is one of these few truth speakers.
I should begin with a disclosure of conflict of interest. Joanna Moncrieff and I get together on occasion at professional meetings, we've shared a couple of speech platforms in London, and I like her and respect her very much. We correspond occasionally. She is a board member of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, the organization...