"What Heals Human Beings? Technology or Humanity- There's A Choice!"

In the introduction by Peter R. Breggin he states:

"This report from the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (CSPP) is written by Kevin McCready, a psychologist who is the founder and director of the San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center in Clovis, CA. Kevin is also on the advisory council of the center. Kevin is a truly ethical and courageous professional who has stood up against the biopsychiatric tide to establish the only full-service clinic that takes a consistent medication-free approach to treatment. I have had the privilege of visiting the clinic on several occasions and conducting benefit workshops on its behalf. At my request, Kevin has written this description of the principles and practices of his outstanding clinic. Since Kevin is a psychologist, it is fitting that this issue of the center's report inaugurates a change in name that makes it more inclusive of psychology. It is now called the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology."

Peter Breggin, Ph.D.

When an individual suffers from an emotional, psychological or behavioral problem it is an indication that somehow, in some way, the person's humanity has been compromised or violated. Emotional healing is not achieved through technologies but through the very things that make us human. These healing approaches include intimacy, community, art, music, play. They define and reflect our spirit and our humanity. They do not include drugs, shock, and other technologies that detract from and demean our humanity.

San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center (SJPC) in Clovis, California is a community based treatment facility. Services include a comprehensive day treatment program that provides an alternative to hospitalization. Traditional outpatient services are also available. SJPC does not rely on drugs, shock or other dehumanizing methods. SJPC is unique as the only facility of its kind that specializes in medication-free treatment. Over the past five years SJPC has successfully treated adults, children, adolescents and older adults spanning the entire range of psychological problems. Many have had lengthy histories of self-destructive, self-injurious, or suicidal behavior. Many have had histories of destructive or assaultive behavior.

Approximately 60 to 70 percent of individuals treated at SJPC also have extensive histories of prolonged, repeated, and severe psychiatric treatment, ranging from a few months to over 20 years. Prior treatment modes have included physical and chemical restraint as well as extensive use of electroshock. Many of our clients come to us taking from six to ten different psychotropic medications. Many have been rejected even from locked inpatient units as "untreatable." Virtually all have been told that they have some sort of "chemical imbalance" and must be on various psychotropic drugs for the rest of their lives. The implied or sometimes even stated message (i.e. threat) is that drugs are their only real hope to be loved; to have a "normal" life; or to avoid increasingly more severe, dehumanizing 'treatment" from the mental health system.

In spite of the tremendous pressure to substitute drugs for human relatedness in therapy there are many difficulties with the use of medication. One of the major problems is simply that drugs are not good for people. The primary means of action of psychiatric drugs is to restrain human behavior, cognition, affect, and emotional experience by causing damage and impairment of the person's brain. A second problem with the use of psychotropic drugs is that even at their best they don't work very well, if at all. Both the procedures and politics of studies touted as demonstrating the effectiveness of psychotropic drugs have repeatedly been questioned.

There is also what is known as the "Darling Drug Syndrome." Every few years a new drug is lauded as the miracle medication that is supposed to do all the things its predecessors were supposed to do (but didn't) without all the problems its predecessors were not supposed to have (but did). Examples of failed "Darling" drugs abound from Valium to Xanax to Prozac.

Various studies have consistently promoted the 'professionally correct' mantra that a combination of therapy and drugs is best. This is a complete contrivance. With proper therapeutic conditions the two year outcome of therapy without drugs is in fact superior to therapy with medication. The use of medication actually interferes with the quality and impact of therapy.

Finally, and perhaps most sinister, the use of medication in treatment is subject to a state dependent learning effect. This means that any newly learned behavior acquired under the influence of a drug will be effective and stable only under the continued use of the drug. Furthermore, the use of drugs to restrain behavior, thought and emotion may cause prior natural coping skills to fade, if not to disintegrate entirely.

The medical model used to justify drugs assumes that psychological disorders are the result of some hypothesized disease entity or mechanism. This speculation is supported by pseudo-scientific references to vaguely described or defined "chemical imbalances." However, there is no real evidence, test or even definition for any of these "imbalances." Yet the diagnosis of "chemical imbalance" is imposed upon patients as if it were a scientific fact.

The disease model assumes that the patient's symptoms should be purged or controlled. Patients are likewise regarded as things to be purged or controlled. No matter how pleasant it appears on its surface, any treatment system built on this foundation is fundamentally doomed in its capacity to comprehend and treat human suffering. Unfortunately, even though many manage to recover in spite of medical model treatment, many others do not. These poor souls often become persecuted victims of the very system that pretended to help them.

In contrast, SJPC adopts as its motto the words of noted analyst and author Erich Fromm: 'The criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all... of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. At SJPC there are no demeaning 'level' systems. There are no paramilitary "staff" to keep order." Yet, in five years of serving such "untreatable" clients in an unlocked, day treatment facility, without medication, shock, restraint or seclusion, has a hospital readmission rate of zero. There have been no suicides, no assaults.

SJPC offers a true milieu treatment program - a multidimensional integrated treatment approach that includes community groups, expressive arts, individual and group therapy, educational groups, and recreational therapy. SJPC affects people suffering from emotional problems by using many different dimensions of healing rather than by suppressing the humanity of the sufferer.

However, lip service to a "humanistic" model is not at all uncommon. Be wary of programs or practitioners who claim that they are "very conservative" in their use of drugs or that they use such-measures "only when necessary." Necessary will inevitably be defined as when the patient frustrates the therapist or staff, or threatens the profit margin of a managed care company. A genuine humanistic model requires consistent commitment and integrity throughout both the ideology and practice of the program. This commitment must extend beyond superficial marketing practices and is absolutely incompatible with a disease or medical model. There is no place for artificial centrism or pseudo-moderation in choosing between a disease model and a humanistic model of treatment.

The success of SJPC has not been in finding "perfect" therapists or techniques. It has been in the integrity of its commitment to human dignity and compassion. The things that make us human are all that we really have to work with. Everything else is merely a technological illusion that will ultimately betray itself and us.

Reprinted from The Rights Tenet: Summer 1995

Founded in 1971, the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (CSPP) is a non-profit network of more than 100 individuals devoted to the reform in psychiatry and to offering independent analyses of current psychiatric theories and practices. Peter Breggin, M.D. is the center director and Ginger Ross Breggin is the director of research and education. The CSPP network includes leading mental health professionals, attorneys, psychiatric survivors, patients rights advocates, and members of the U.S. Congress. Anyone can stay abreast of CSPP activities by joining NARPA. NARPA members will receive CSPP reports in each issue of The Rights Tenet and can network with many Center representatives at NARPA's annual meetings. The views of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology do not necessary reflect the views of the NARPA.