David Cohen - Mad Science, Psychiatric Coercion and the Therapeutic State

On MIA Radio this week, MIA’s Peter Simons interviewed David Cohen, PhD, a social worker, professor of social welfare, and Associate Dean for Research at the Luskin School of Public Affairs of the University of California, Los Angeles. He discussed his path to becoming a researcher focused on mental health, coercive practices, and discontinuation from psychiatric drugs.
He studies the social construction of psychoactive drug effects, the union of law and psychiatry within a criminalization/medicalization system and envisions alternatives to the current mental health industrial complex and the medicalization of everyday life. He has also taught in Canada and France, and for over 20 years held a private practice to help people withdraw from psychiatric drugs.
He is the author of over 100 book chapters and articles. His first book, published in 1990, was Challenging the Therapeutic State: Critical Perspectives on Psychiatry and the Mental Health System. His latest book, published in 2013, with colleagues, Stuart Kirk, and Tomi Gomory is Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis and Drugs.

[@huntasoup]

I wish there were more people advocating for this and spreading the truth.

[@eduardodossantosguerra6289]

👍

[@MrChristwill1]

Great interview

[@ildikoivanyi6873]

I had to come off adderall by myself lol! My life improved vs being drugged.

[@bullterror5]

Coersion & Threats by Psychiatrists are illegal in my jurisdiction but that does not stop them claiming they have more power than any courts & can come good on those threats, despite it being totally illegal! Yeah Psychiatrists should be dressed like police, they need to either lose some power or be exposed for the power they abuse...

[@stevekaylor5606]

The courts and legislatures rubberstamp what Standard of Care psychiatrists are yet allowed to do!

[@miltonjohnschmidt4517]

current consumer of mental health services ... negatively disposed toward anti-depressants after multiple voluntary experiments over the years ... the program I'm in seems to be willing to offer whatever help I might think I need BUT I've lost confidence in them because of my experience with medications and Psychiatrists (to be fair, I'm comfortable assuming that they don't know what they are doing based on my negative experiences) ... who knows what's available in San Diego, California in the way of alternative mental health treatment? ... how would I begin to search-out a possible starting point to find a recovery community?

[@paper3691]

Laura Delano and her program The Inner Compass Initiative.

[@bullterror5]

Find a GREAT Cognitive Therapist & back it up with a Support Community

[@stevekaylor5606]

Ethical psychiatrists are seeped in Freudian ideology, labeling, drugging and corralling sad people as cash cows!

[@rickp.6251]

An alcoholic withdrawal ing from alcohol is an example of drug withdrawal. A person who stops smoking and is craving a cigarette and is confused and extremely miserable is going through drug withdrawal.

[@stevekaylor5606]

If someone is demoralized or distracted - then have him join happy clapping + stomping classes {PBS T.V., 2006}. Soon, people are laughing - since happiness & physiology are being triggered together, which the subconscious mind takes literally. Next, he might sing in a Glee Club or join an amateur orchestra - thus he will be developing a mental + emotional cathexis, which is what Mental Health is! / This is aesthetic Talent Training - like that offered by Howard Glasser, Peter Breggin and Madan Katara!

[@anthonymurray9603]

Forced treatment must be abolished

[@stevekaylor5606]

Blood tests are given to outpatients, who are not compliant enough!

[@clausdamsgaard]

"What the hell, people still love drugs."

[@wildhumans8116]

Paliperidone sucks.

[@rickp.6251]

Look Doc. I'm a twisted pervert and God is going to destroy me, I can't cope with it, save me from God and the devil and all the good people.

[@stevekaylor5606]

At least you don't seem to be caked in fear - like many psychiatric patients!