By Erin Wright
“Psychiatry kills, asshole!” screamed angry hecklers at a free forum on depression and mood disorders last Thursday night at U of T’s Convocation Hall.
Angry survivors of Canada’s mental health system shouted profanities at the panel, which featured 60 Minutes co-host Mike Wallace, and Helen Hutchinson, former co-anchor of W5 and Canada AM and current host of the Women’s Television Network’s Point of View Women. The panel also included Dr. Sid Kennedy, Head of the Mood Disorders Programs at the University of Toronto and the Clarke Institute.
The forum marked the launch of a $2.2 million fund raising initiative by the Clarke Institute to establish a Chair in Disorders Studies at the University of Toronto.
Kennedy hopes the establishment of a professorship at the University of Toronto will help to elaborate on the causes of mood disorders and long-term effects of present therapies.
But psychiatric survivors like Don Weitz are not so optimistic.
“Peopel aren’t being told the truth because it is not in their interest to do so. (Anti-depressants) are poisons and (psychiatrists) are poison pushers,” Weitz said.
Police stopped Weitz from handing out a newsletter about the negative effects of Prozac, an anti-depressant drug manufactured by Eli Lilly, which co-sponsored the forum.
Weitz hosts “Shrink Rap,” a bi-monthly segment on CKLN FM’s news opinion show “Word of Mouth” and co-authored Shrink Resistant: The Struggle Against Psychiatry with feminist psychotherapist Dr. Bonnie Burstow.
At the age of 20, Weitz was committed to a mental institution by his family for being what he calls “a loud mouth kid.” He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, and was treated with Insulin Shock Therapy which induced periods of starvation, convulsions and even a coma.
“They are making lots of money off of our suffering…psychiatrists are beating up people and calling it therapy,” Weitz said.
He recommends self-help groups, establishing more crisis centres and making friends as alternatives to psychiatry’s “cruel and unusual treatment” of sufferers.
The controversy surrounding anti-depressants such as Prozac is not new. These drugs have been criticized for, in Weitz’s words, their “lobotomizing side effects which suppress appetite and sexual drive.
But the Clarke Institute claim drugs and other forms of psychiatric therapy help 80 per cent of people who suffer from depression. With about 3 million Canadians suffering from serious depression, the need for further research is apparent, especially with such high-profile advocates as Hutchinson and Wallace claim that psychiatric treatment has saved their lives.
Hutchinson was first diagnosed with clinical depression in 1987 and was admitted to the Clarke after a suicide attempt in 1988.
Wallace, known for his journalistic integrity and relentless fact-probing, doesn’t appear to fit the stereotype of a depressive.
“People know Mike Wallace is going to go after the truth and find it. Here is a man on top of his image—then to find out Mike Wallace is vulnerable? It makes us all more human,” Morrison said.
Wallace had his first depressive episode in 1984 after a controversial expose, “The Uncounted Enemy – Vietnam Deception,” was aired on 60 Minutes, General Westmoreland, in charge of the American troops in Vietnam, was infuriated and decided to sue CBS for libel.
“I started to feel very bad about it. I felt spacy…I had pains in my arms and legs. I didn’t want to eat, my sex drive was utterly gone…,” Wallace explained, “I started to realize ‘I am a basket case.’ It was as if someone had pulled the rug out from under me.”
The 76-year-old Wallace is now on the anti-depressant Zolaf and will be for the rest of his life.
Dr. Kennedy emphasized the importance of realizing depression is an illness and not a “character flaw,” as is so often its social stigma.
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