Ban Psychiatry, Not Guns

C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.

Since 1951 I have considered psychiatry the darkest side of medicine. Back then, it was not yet the insane drugs-just the crazy docs. The only psych drugs were largely barbiturates, sometimes stupefying but not killer drugs. Thorazine® was introduced in 1954, the first of scores of mood altering drugs that changed the face of the psych world forever. Now there are scores of antipsychotics, antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, not one of which I would recommend for anyone except a hospitalized psychotic.

Thorazine and the multiple families that followed it led to the emptying of the mental hospitals to create the vast majority of the homeless today and the many insane mass shootings. Yes, virtually every one of those shootings is done by someone on one or more psychiatric drugs, which not only turn some people into killers but which create more serious drug reactions than any other class of drugs. They also significantly increase the risk of self-killing, suicide.

I may have met three nice psychiatrists who seem to be different from the mass insanity which psychiatry appears to be today. I think psychiatry as a “specialty” should be banned.

Leave legal gun ownership to those with no significant psychological damage.