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How Mistaking Relapse for Withdrawal Can Lead to ECT   May 15, 2026 – Robert Carter      Dr. Anders Sørensen, a Danish clinical psychologist specializing in psychiatric drug withdrawal, helps people taper safely off psychiatric drugs by using gradual, hyperbolic dose reductions. He also helps them work through any prior underlying emotional or mental symptoms. He is the author of Crossing Zero: The Art and Science of Coming Off and Staying Off Psychiatric Drugs .      He was recently invited to Washington DC to speak at the Mental Health and Over – medicalization Summit about how withdrawal from psychiatric drugs is repeatedly mistaken for relapse. That misidentification puts someone right back on their medication and, in some cases, even increases it. A complete transcript of his talk is on his May 8th Substack post.      Sorensen presented the key factors leading to this dangerous mis-identification and the ensuing and further over-medication of patients. He cites the 2025 study in The American Journal of Medicine which revealed that the major antidepressant trials available only follow medicated patients for eight weeks, on average.      That short duration of study shows little to nothing about the long term effects of those antidepressants on the body and the brain.      Consequently, the results of those short term trials are virtually worthless because the median duration of antidepressant use in America is a full five years. An eight week study has little practical applicability to those taking antidepressants in the real world.      Over that long term ingestion of antidepressants, Sorensen points out, the body adapts to its altered brain chemistry. The longer the duration of taking antidepressants, the harder it is for the body to adapt back again to a medication-free state. If someone tries to stop their medication too quickly, the system rebels and is thrown quite out of balance.      Hence, severe withdrawal symptoms. One begins to experience dizziness, nausea, headaches, muscle discomfort, shaking, burning sensations, and fatigue…in varying levels of intensity. Such abrupt drug cessation can be painful. One also experiences a host of debilitating emotional and mental states such as anxiety, panic, insomnia, irritability, depressed moods or mood swings, brain fog, difficulty concentrating and bothersome, unexpected thoughts.      In other words, these intense physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms can look like the patient is relapsing into the original symptoms of the initial diagnosis that started their antidepressant prescription in the first place.      When this misidentification occurs, the patient is then put back on the original medication, its dosage is often raised, other psychotropic drugs can be added to it, and when none of that full cocktail works, the patient is labeled “treatment resistant” and is given electroshock therapy, voluntarily or involuntarily.      Sorensen does not cover that in the transcript of his report to the Washington Summit, but that is what happens too often in the real world when proper, careful, slow tapering is not done and when psychiatrists are too blind to distinguish withdrawal from relapse.      And that gap matters. Especially when it comes to dependence and withdrawal.       Time matters. Because the body adapts.      If you alter brain chemistry for long enough, the body adapts – not overnight, but gradually, over months and years. And the longer that adaptation has been building, the more sensitive it becomes to change, and the harder it gets to come off.      In many cases, that means tapering over years. Because when you then remove the drug or reduce the dose too quickly –the system is thrown out of balance. That imbalance is what we call withdrawal; an imbalance between what the system expects – and what it gets.      What’s confusing is that withdrawal from psychiatric drugs isn’t just physical symptoms. It’s not just dizziness, nausea, headaches, muscle pain, shaking, burning sensations, fatigue. It’s that, too.      But it’s also anxiety, panic, insomnia, irritability, depressed mood, mood swings, brain fog, difficulty concentrating, intrusive thoughts. Withdrawal can mimic relapse. Or new diagnoses.

On-line AI Mental Health Chatbots: Feeding the Tapeworm May 1, 2026 – Robert Carter Richard Sears reported on the Mad in America website this week about a new AI mental health chatbot study just published in the Journal of Medical Internet  Research. A Syracuse University research team recruited 1805 participants between 18 and 49 years of age for their anonymous on-line survey about on-line AI mental health chatbot use. The invitation to participate was made through an on-line participant recruitment system that described the survey as focusing on perceptions and attitudes toward seeking mental health help, but it did not refer to AI. The overall question for this young to middle age audience was to name the sources they typically turn to when facing mental health concerns. Amazingly, a full one third of the respondents said they consulted an on-line AI chatbot at least once a week about mental health concerns. Participants who self-reported moderate to severe symptoms of depression or anxiety were 71 percent more likely to discuss their mental health with an AI chatbot. This was not the most scientifically exacting survey, of course, but was more a self-reported data collection. However, given such a significant number of participants, it does suggest an underlying tapeworm-like motif to AI mental health chatbot use. Just as an insatiably hungry tapeworm is caused by ingesting contaminated food, these heavy users of AI mental health chatbots develop an uncontrolled appetite for obsessive self-diagnosis aided by these AI programs. The original contamination? Their acceptance of a DSM-based label of a mental disorder for themselves. The enforced stigma of being so labeled – either by another or by themselves – sets off their insatiable search to solve this mystery about their mental make-up through hours of on-line interaction with these chatbots…programmed, of course, by the same minds that came up with the DSM labels in the first place. The sad irony is that there is no mystery solve about their mental health. There is only the original mental contamination from that false DSM label that they’ve been given. The sad, hopeless on-line pursuit that they’ve taken on to try to solve that unsolvable mystery is what follows. They’ve innocently ingested a DSM tapeworm that keeps trying to eat its own tail.

Big Pharma’s Gold Rush Mentality April 24, 2026 – Robert Carter The state of Utah is currently looking at a pilot program proposal that would authorize prescription refills for select psychiatric medications by an on-line AI software system, per an article published on Medscape this week. There is no concrete information yet on how the final program would work, but there is already concern about its legality and about patients being able to refill psychiatric medication without adequate safeguards. This new AI chatbot prescription program would be a product of the telehealth company Legion Health. Since late last year the state of Utah has already been using another AI prescription filling program designed by Doctronic, and a recent independent security review of their software by Mindgard, a cyber security research firm, has exposed some troubling flaws in the Doctronic AI program. Mindgard’s stress testing of a Doctronic AI chatbot software revealed some frailties in the healthcare system that make it a less than reliable program. When Mindgard gave the chatbot system adversarial prompts, they found the Doctronic AI recommended methamphetamine for “social withdrawal” and it mistakenly tripled one patient’s oxycodone dosage. Besides the risk of mis-programmed chatbot instructions, an AI based prescription refill program could also be illegal because neither Legion Health nor Doctronics are licensed practitioners, per the FDA’s standards for online prescriptions. While Utah’s desire to service its residents more efficiently through on line AI charbot software may be admirable, the apparently shaky technical and legal ground that Legion Health and Doctronic are operating on shows the gold rush mentality some firms are still exhibiting to take advantage of the huge profits available in the big pharma field. Doctronic recently posted recruitment ads as part of its expansion, and the copy for their Business Writer ad is telling. “Strategic thinker who understands what matters to enterprise buyers and can position accordingly, translate clinical validation data and regulatory milestones into compelling narratives that build trust and credibility, and write case studies, white papers, RFP responses, and partnership proposals that win enterprise deals.” The product of focus in the marketing copy they will produce is obviously sales, not sooth. On-line AI telehealth chatbot technology is the newest Big Pharma “gold fever,” and even forty years after the release of the original pharmaceutical blockbuster, Prozac — earned Eli Lilly over $22 billion in its first twelve year patent – today’s tech panhandlers are still looking for a quick get rich turnarounds through their forays into what is now “legal drug fever.”

Big Pharma’s Blockbuster Wages of Sin April 17, 2026 – Robert Carter A research letter published recently in The Journal of American Medicine reveals the enormous fines Big Pharma has paid from court cases indicting them for their many illegal kickback payments to psychiatrists, physicians, and patent advocates. The Yale study found that from 1999 to 2025 Big Pharma illegally paid out over $12.5 million dollars to inflence sales of their psychotropic drugs. Of course, they paid out a lot more “legally” to effect a similar influence. In 2024 alone they paid out $13 billion to physicians. From 2015 to 2022 they paid $100 million to psychiatrists in research money alone. That figure does not include speaking fees, consulting fees, travel, and other payments made to psychiatrists who altogether were paid $340 million by Big Pharma in just the six years from 2014 to 2020. Of course, all of those figures are a drop in the bucket compared to the annual revenue Big Pharma rakes in for its drug sales…an average of $2 billion per drug of the 105 drugs studied in the Yale article. Forty-nine of those drugs brought in more than $1 billion each in one year. Those most lucrative puppies are called “blockbusters” by Big Pharma. And how much does Big Pharma make altogether? More than $1.4 trillion in 2022. That’s the annual GDP of oil rich Saudia Arabia or of the international banking capital Switzerland. Big Pharma’s annual revenue is almost one hundred times that of all Mexican drug cartels combined from the sale of fentanyl, meth-amphetamine, cocaine, and their other equally lethal drugs. However, Big Pharma’s profit margin is much less than that of the Sinaloa and their cohort cartels. The sale of legal psychotropic drugs only made about 14 percent profit from 2000 to 2018. Still, that is twice what the average, legitimate Fortune 500 Company’s profit margin is. The wages of sin might be death, but until then Big Pharma is making a pretty good living hooking 80,000,000 American on antidepressants.

Big Pharma’s Three Card Monte April 10, 2026 – Robert Carter Shell companies, third party vendors, complex corporate structures. These are some of the financial ploys Big Pharma has used over the last twenty-five years to hide their outright bribery of government officials, inspectors, regulators and private physicians. Big Pharma has worked hard to hide their illegal payments to ensure approval for drugs that did not meet safety standards and to evade regulatory restrictions for unapproved off-label sales of their drugs to increase their own already huge profit margins. A new study from the University of Toronto just published in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics exposes long term planning, executing, and approving of these bribery strategies by everyone from the sales and distribution personnel through the middle managers and local executives right up to high-ranking corporate officers of most all pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, J and J, Eli Lilly, BMS, AstraZeneca, and GSK. The study searched through financial reports from 1999 to 2025 made to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Working Group on Bribery and found illicit paymentswere made by Big Pharma which totaled $12,633,989.00. Those pharmaceutical companies that were prosecuted and convicted then had to pay over $1,000,000,000 in sanctions, fines, returned profits, and prejudgment interest. Big Pharma has been rife with financial corruption for the last twenty-five years. These fines are for illegal, three card monte type business practices and are separate from the many billions Big Pharma has also paid out for lawsuits over the damage caused to individuals by their psychotropic drugs. The study also concedes that this level of bribery and corruption may only be the tip of the iceberg for Big Pharma. Smaller firms in the pharmaceutical industry that have escaped detection, companies in areas with more lax oversight or enforcement, and companies that have made bribery settlements confidentially will not have appeared in these OECD records. The authors conclude that “these findings underscore the systemic nature of bribery in the pharmaceutical sector.” Enough said. And these are the guys the American public is trusting to medicate us safely and effectively – per their multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns — for every little emotional wrinkle life presents? Caveat emptor. Thanks to Richard Sears for bringing this study to light in his news article on this week’s Mad in America website.

Big Pharma’s Font for Lies Is Always Boldface March 26, 2026 – Robert Carter Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring made this request at the end of his Monday Facebook post this week: “If you believe people deserve informed consent before being handed a psychiatric medication in a seven-minute appointment, share this post.” We’re honoring his request here. In a response to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK’s now looking into the over-prescription of America, leaders from America’s psychiatric community recently issued a public statement in defense of the safety and the effectiveness of psychiatric medications. The lies they include there are so boldface, it is stunning. Dr. Josef read through the entire text of their argument and said, “It is one of the most masterful efforts at deception I have seen in a long time” and equivalent to those medical experts who, contrary to all the available evidence, used to deny that smoking causes cancer. The organizations that issued the pro-drug, Big Pharma statement are either heavily funded by the pharmaceutical industry or run by individuals with their own deep financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Their statement claims that psychiatric medications are both safe and effective, and in it they attack anyone raising any concerns about that and they imply they are putting lives at risk by trying to deny the “mentally ill” public those drugs. If the drugs were effective, that might be true. But they are not. First, the clinical trials that show that these medications are safe and effective usually only run for three months or less, but half of all Americans who take antidepressants have been taking them for more than five years. There is no rigorous long-term evidence from any study which shows what these drugs actually do to a person, mentally or physically, over the long term. Second, the “relapse prevention” studies that have been made about psychotropic drugs only medicate their subjects for six months and then abruptly switch half the control group to a placebo, sometimes with as little as five days of tapering off the drug. Of course they show a relapse of their condition, but it is not a relapse. It is simply harsh withdrawal symptoms from ceasing the heavy duty medication so abruptly. Those last two paragraphs, you’ll notice, are not in boldface. They don’t have to be. They contain no lies. Thank you, Dr. Josef, for all the good work you do. We’re more than happy to share your message. Who Knows? Maybe even RFK Jr. will read it.

Big Pharma Bribes to Psychiatrists: How Much Difference If They’re Disclosed? March 22, 2026 – Robert Carter The medical journal BMJOpen recently published a study that revealed that $645,135 of Big Pharma payments to authors publishing in the American Journal of Psychiatry and the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry were undisclosed between 2020 and 2022. Most of these were research payments to these authors and the study voices concern about the conflict of interest suggested by this amount of “silent” money and its influence on the credibility of the research. That’s a valid concern, of course. Why would these doctors, mostly psychiatrists, not want to disclose these payments if the subsequent research was valid? Withholding reporting a substantial payment like that becomes suspicious because only 14 percent of all such payments to these authors were undisclosed. The ten authors receiving the highest amount of undisclosed payments had worked in 12 randomized control trials, 11 of which were for new psychotropic drugs. Big Pharma rakes in tens of billions of dollars every year from psychotropic drugs. However, that $645,135 is a drop in the bucket compared to the fully disclosed $4,539,207 paid to these authors by Big Pharma during the three year period of the study. $895,000 of that four and a half million was in “general” payments and $3,644,100 was in research payments. The American Journal of Psychiatry authors received about twice as much money as the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry authors did. The fact that some of these authors disclosed their four and a half million dollars in payments is legally praiseworthy, of course, but does that lessen the conflict of interest possible from that much Big Pharma money, disclosed or undisclosed? Bribery is persuading another to act in one’s favor — illegally or dishonestly – because of a gift of money or other inducement. Not only have these authors received enormous amounts of money, they have also fattened up their resumes by putting their names on Big Pharma trials for new psychotropic drugs and then publishing their results in these two psychiatric journals. And their “improved” research reputation can then make them even more eligible for further bribes, no?

What Do Psychiatrists Think of Women? March 13, 2026 – Robert Carter Not much, it seems. For years women were not even used as subjects in clinical trials for new psychiatric drugs because their monthly periods might have skewed their results compared to male subjects. The FDA had issued a 1977 guideline that barred women of reproductive potential from participating in early-phase clinical trials. Finally, in 1993, the National Institute of Health Revitalization Act required the inclusion of women in any NIH research. Male bodies had been the “norm.” Women’s were not. Psychiatry had reworked mental illness to be seen as a medical, not a psychological problem, in order to raise psychiatrists to the authority and prestige level of medical doctors…and above the popular moniker of “quack” which had become so prevalent during the nineteen-fifties. The use of “hysteria” – the Greek word for uterus — had been dropped from the DSM in 1980, but was replaced with “histrionic disorder.” Both terms, of course, described female, not male, conditions. Finally, in 2013, “premenstrual dysphoric disorder” was added to the DSM as a mental disorder…also unique to women, of course. Two thirds of all psychiatrists are men. Male psychiatrists also comprise most of the higher authority roles in the field. Only 22 percent of college psychiatry department chairs, for instance, are women – half of what it should be proportionately. More than three-quarters of the psychiatrists who prescribe and perform electroshock therapy are male, but two-thirds of the patients who receive electroshock therapy are women. A 1994 study showed that women are three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic drugs than men for the exact same symptoms. It is estimated that in America male psychiatrists have sexually abused 150,000 of their female patients. 21,000 of these women have tried to commit suicide. 16,000 of them have ended up hospitalized because of the sexual violation by a male psychiatrist. 21,000 of them have tried to commit suicide. 1500 have succeeded. What psychiatrist came up with the bright idea to run 460 volts through a human brain as a “therapy”? A male psychiatrist. What psychiatrist came up with the bright idea to lobotomize a patent – like Rose Kennedy – and physically remove part of her brain as a therapy? A male psychiatrist. Which gender is the one most damaged by these vicious practices? Ladies, it’s you. So…what do psychiatrists think of women?

How Brainwashed Are We by Big Pharma? March 5, 2026 – Robert Carter You know you’re about to be taken for a ride into the clutches of Big Pharma when you read the headline of an Associated Press article published this week: Top FDA drug official is trying to hire a friend who’s seeking a bold new warning on antidepressants. Despite the Associated Press declaration that it is an unbiased, independent, non-profit news cooperative, this headline immediately denigrates FDA drug regulator, Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, before we even learn any facts of the case. Suggesting she’s hiring someone because he’s a friend, not because he’s a competent clinician, is an attempt to bias us against the good doctor even before we read this “news.” In fact, Dr. Adam Urato – the “friend” in question – is a maternal-fetal medical specialist with a substantial track record of accomplishments. Why are he and Dr. Hoeg being so targeted? Because both these high ranked doctors believe that, given the recent clinical evidence, antidepressants might adversely affect pregnant women and their fetuses. Therefore, a stronger Black Box warning about those risks should be printed on bottles of Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and other comparable generic antidepressants. “I think women should be informed about the potential risks so that they have time to come off SSRIs if they want to when they’re trying to get pregnant,” Dr. Hoeg told the hosts of a recent Mom Wars podcast. Sounds pretty sensible, right? After all, fifteen percent of American women take antidepressants. But it’s not sensible if you’re Big Pharma and you worry that your astronomical drug profits will be cut into by unruly, pregnant women deciding to cancel their prescriptions for antidepressants. The Associated Press article then quotes psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Payne, a University of Virginia reproductive psychiatrist, as their “authority.” “A black box warning is a big red flag with both practitioners and patients,” she says. “What’s missing in this petition is an understanding of the risks of maternal mental illness during pregnancy.” Oh, yes. There are far too many women – pregnant or not — suffering out there from mental illness. Let’s not make them afraid to take an antidepressant. It’s their only lifeline to mental health. This is the standard Big Pharma party line: Because there are so many people out there suffering from mental illness – and who knows how many more we haven’t even diagnosed yet, they say – we can’t deprive these poor souls of their psychotropic meds just because a few alarmist critics are trying to alert us to the dangers of our psychotropic drugs. So Big Pharma spokesperson Dr. Payne’s proclamation is hardly unexpected. She’s a psychiatrist, after all. (By the way, what in the world is a “reproductive psychiatrist”?) What should be unexpected is the Associated Press putting out such a covert hit piece on Drs. Hoeg and Urato. The article cites none of the recent studies that do suggest actual dangers to pregnant women from antidepressants. And there’s no factual content about Dr. Hoeg doing anything to “hire” Dr. Urato, other than using him, appropriately, as a a pregnancy expert consultant. It is true that they are long term associates — hardly surprising seeing they work in the same medical specialty field — and, as Dr. Urato says, they’ve become friendly over their years working together, just as many other of his associates have become “friends,” as well. That’s hardly uncommon in such situations. So why such a hit piece? Is it because Big Pharma is secretly funding AP? Apparently not, per the financial records publicly available. AP is exceptionally clean financially and does not accept any of Big Phrama’s $7 billion advertising payments to other media outlets. No, unfortunately this “hit piece” is due only to the long term brainwashing by Big Pharma of the conventional American mind. This is how too many people think these days, even those at news agencies like AP with a decent reputation for objectivity. Since the 1980s their coverage of medicine and health policy and has become so indoctrinated by pro-Big Pharma think – just like so many other Americans – that they don’t recognize when they have strayed so far from journalistic objectivity. If you can only think with Big Pharma’s implanted foundation of pro-psychiatry gobbledy- gook, you’re no longer going to be able to see what is actually out there.

Psychiatry’s “Adjustment” Is No Ideal for Mental Health February 24, 2026 – Robert Carter Bruce Levine published a poignantly thoughtful article this week on Mad in America in which he challenges the conventional psychiatric idea of what constitutes mental health. He points out that the idea of adjustment by a person to his or her personal, institutional, and environmental surroundings is part and parcel of their notion of mental health. Levine brightly notes that adjustment to an insane world and taking on its attributes is hardly a satisfactory description of “mental health,” let alone of an ideal state anyone should be shooting for. Levine is in good company, of course, and he appropriately cites Szasz, Fromm, Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, R.D. Laing and others who share that view. “Only a profoundly uncritical thinker would celebrate adjustment in of itself without a critical analysis of what one is adjusting to” Levine writes. That is true, but there is an underlying history to the whole idea of “adjustment” which also helps explain why psychiatry so thoroughly espouses the whole biological view of man, including the “chemical imbalance” theory. Adjustment is an idea born in the Darwinian biological theory of evolution. As such, it might effectively explain how one animal species after another came to survive longer and more robustly by “adjusting” to the threatening aspects of their environment. Adjustment is a concept that is pertinent to the field of evolutionary biology. Adjustment, however, is not a concept that is the least bit pertinent to the ideal emotional and mental state of a human being. Adjustment is only pertinent for animals. Man has been successful not by adjusting to his environment, but by conquering it. Man is a composite identity of spirit, mind, and body, and it is the spirit that provides an individual human with the life force that conquers, overcomes, or out-creates adversity in his environment. Only animals “adjust” in order to survive. Psychiatry’s claim that adjustment is an ideal state for human mental health shows how poorly they think of man. Seeing only an animal nature in man also allows them to perform electroconvulsive therapy and chemical lobotomies with this utterly misguided “animal” justification. Zapping somebody with 450 volts of electricity or turning them into a zombie with a cocktail of Xanax, Paxil, and Risperdal comes from the same theory of approach a veterinarian uses to put a dog out of his misery by euthanizing him. Psychiatry euthanizes the human spirit. They use the physical force of ECT and psychotropic medication to control humans, just as if they were trying to housetrain a puppy by continually beating his behind with the harsh blows of a newspaper every time he “makes a mistake.” Behavioral conditioning and adjustment are nineteenth century ideas about how to make animals behave as we want them to. They have no place in any field of true help from human therapy.