Peter Breggin

Peter Roger Breggin (born May 11, 1936) is an American psychiatrist and critic of shock treatment and psychiatric medication and COVID-19 response.

In his books, he advocates replacing psychiatry's use of drugs and electroconvulsive therapy with psychotherapy, education, empathy, love, and broader human services.

Breggin is the author of many books critical of psychiatric medication, including Toxic Psychiatry, Talking Back to Prozac and Talking Back to Ritalin. His most recent book, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, discusses his theory of medication spellbinding (in which patients are said to do worse after treatment but fail to see this or recognize why), the adverse effects of drugs and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), the hazards of diagnosing and medicating children, Breggin's theory of a "psychopharmaceutical complex", and guidelines for psychotherapy and counseling.

Breggin's latest book is Covid-19 and the Global Predators: We are the Prey which is critical of the global COVID-19 response and explores who profits from the pandemic.

Breggin now lives in the Finger Lakes, Central New York and practices psychiatry in Ithaca, New York.

He graduated from George W. Hewlett High School in 1954 and was inducted to their Hall of Fame in 2001.

Breggin graduated from Harvard College in 1958 then attended Case Western Reserve Medical School.

His postgraduate training in psychiatry began with an internship year of mixed medicine and psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse.

Breggin completed a first year of psychiatric residency at Harvard's Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston, where he was a teaching fellow at Harvard Medical School, and finished his final two years of psychiatric residency at SUNY.

This was followed by a two-year staff appointment to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where he worked to build and staff mental health centers and education.

Breggin has taught at several universities, obtaining faculty appointments to the Washington School of Psychiatry, the Johns Hopkins University Department of Counseling, and the George Mason University Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

Breggin has worked in a private practice since 1968.

As an undergraduate Breggin had volunteered at the state mental hospital, leading the volunteer program and co-authoring a book "College students in a mental hospital".

He recalls at the age of 18 witnessing electroconvulsive therapy being practiced then in the 'shock room' and finding it barbaric.

After becoming a psychiatrist in the early 70s, he also campaigned against any return of the crude brain procedure known as lobotomy.

Breggin reports that he was threatened and insulted with psychiatric terms at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1972, by leading ECT advocate Leo Alexander, and won damages for libel and slander.

Breggin practiced psychiatry in Washington, DC and Bethesda, Maryland for nearly thirty-five years.

In 1972, he founded the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, which was known as the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology until 2011, when it was renamed the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry.

Breggin published one science fiction novel, After The Good War: A Love Story, in 1972.

It has a strong proportion of psychiatric subject matter.

His work focused on the negative side effects of psychiatric medications, arguing that the harmful side effects typically outweigh any benefit.

Breggin also argues that psychosocial interventions are almost always superior in treating mental illness.

He has argued against psychoactive drugs, electroshock (ECT), psychosurgery, coercive involuntary treatment, and biological theories of psychiatry.

According to Breggin, the pharmaceutical industry propagates disinformation that is accepted by unsuspecting doctors, saying "the psychiatrist accepts the bad science that establishes the existence of all these mental diseases in the first place. From there it's just a walk down the street to all the drugs as remedies."

He points out problems with conflicts-of-interest (such as the financial relationships between drug companies, researchers, and the American Psychiatric Association).

Breggin states psychiatric drugs, "... are all, every class of them, highly dangerous".

He asserts: "If neuroleptics were used to treat anyone other than mental patients, they would have been banned a long time ago. If their use wasn't supported by powerful interest groups, such as the pharmaceutical industry and organized psychiatry, they would be rarely used at all. Meanwhile, the neuroleptics have produced the worst epidemic of neurological disease in history. At the least, their use should be severely curtailed."

In 1979 "Electroshock: Its Brain-Disabling Effects" was published.

Breggin is a life member of the American Psychiatric Association and an editor for several scientific journals.

His opinions have been portrayed both favorably and unfavorably in the media, including Time magazine and The New York Times.

He has appeared as a guest on shows including Oprah, 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Good Morning America.

Breggin was invited many times "to testify before federal agencies and the U.S. Congress, and he has been an expert on psychiatry drug adverse effects for the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA). He has also testified many times at FDA hearings".

He later ran The Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living, a 501(c) organization.

In 2002 he moved to Ithaca.

A documentary about his life, "The Conscience of Psychiatry", was released in 2009.

Breggin studied mainly clinical psychopharmacology.

He wrote dozens of other articles, several book chapters, and more than twenty books.

He also co-founded a journal with David Cohen and Steven Baldwin, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, where he published many of his own papers.

Many of his articles discuss psychiatric medication, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug approval process, the evaluation of clinical trials, and the ethics of psychiatric practice.

In 2010, he and his wife Ginger formed a new organization devoted to speaking out against "the hazards of contemporary biological psychiatry" and promoting more "caring and empathic approaches to personal conflict and suffering".