Peter Roger Breggin (born May 11, 1936) is an American anti-establishment psychiatrist who has long been outspokenly critical of widely used evidence-based treatments within psychiatry(psychiatric medication) and medical care in general. Breggin now lives in the Finger Lakes, Central New York.
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.
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 several books critical of evidence-based psychiatric care, including Toxic Psychiatry, Talking Back to Prozac and Talking Back to Ritalin. His book, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, discusses his theory of medication spellbinding (in which patients are said to worsen after treatment, failing to recognize why), drug and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) adverse effects, the hazards of treating children, and the "psychopharmaceutical complex."
Education and early career
He graduated from George W. Hewlett High School in 1954 from Harvard College in 1958 and from Case Western Reserve Medical School. His postgraduate training in began with a mixed psychiatry/medicine internship year at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. Breggin began psychiatric residency at Harvard's Massachusetts Mental Health Center, finishing his final two years at SUNY. This was followed by term appointment at National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Breggin claims to have held faculty appointments at 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 private practice intermittently since 1968.
Breggin makes many claims about his early career which are not verifiable. For instance, he reports being "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."
Career and distinctions
He 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. In 1979 "Electroshock: Its Brain-Disabling Effects" was published. Breggin falsely claims this was the first medical book that dealt with a critical analysis of this method of treatment as inhuman.
Breggin is a life member of the American Psychiatric Association and an editor for several scientific journals. Early on, his theories received some favorable media coverage including Time magazine and The New York Times. He claims to have appeared as a guest on shows including Oprah, 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Good Morning America.
He later ran The Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living, a 501(c) organization.
In 2002 he moved to Ithaca. 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". A book about his life, "The Conscience of Psychiatry", was released in 2009.
Research
Breggin wrote mainly about clinical psychopharmacology until the COVID-19 pandemic. In, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, he published many of his own papers.
Breggin published one science fiction novel, After The Good War: A Love Story, in 1972. It has a strong proportion of psychiatric subject matter.
Conventional psychiatry
Breggin writes about psychiatric medications, arguing that harmful side effects typically outweigh any benefit. Breggin also claims that psychosocial interventions are almost always superior in treating mental illness.