CRITICAL PSYCHIATRY FOR QUEERS

 

             Excerpts from Lavender Rising; A Personal History of the Queer Struggle

                            

                 

Largactil was introduced into the UK in about 1954. While initially hailed as the new wonder drug (Ban, 2009), it doesn’t appear to actually cure any psychiatric illness, and two of its really debilitating side effects (tardive dyskinesia and narcoleptic malignant syndrome) can be left undiagnosed or blamed on the mental disorder. More recently in Edinburgh, it caused a frequently injected, bisexual, paranoid schizophrenic patient ‘Angus’ to suffer from severe sunstroke and various other troubling side effects. Sometimes, the needle hit his pelvic bone when they forcibly injected or ‘jagged’ him.

The horrific eugenics across the USA initiated by the despotic Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin at the U.S. Eugenics Records Office in Cold Harbor Springs NY, its destructive impact on American psychiatry and on the victims of the Holocaust will be discussed further in Section 8.4.

All of this is highly relevant to the brutal suppression of queer folk e.g. by the U.S. Government towards their gay and lesbian employees during the Lavender and Red Scares of the post WW2 era, by the persecution and maltreatment of gay men in post-WW2 Britain (e.g. Dockray and Sutton, 2017, King et al, 2004), by asphyxiation in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany, by the murderous gay purge in Chechnya, and by the more recent state-controlled murder of trans people in Brazil..

Some of the maltreatments occurring since 1950 and mentioned by King et al (2004) in their prestigious article in the British Medical Journal are absolutely mend-bending. There was little evidence that any of these ‘treatments for homosexuality’ were effective.

Quote: Basically the first year I was there (as a student), more or less all I ever did was shove electricity down homosexual patients.

Further Quote: We had to become electrifying geniuses! The situation was you had the screen, the person sat at the table with the things [equipment] on and with a lever that they had to pull to avoid the shocks. The pictures started off with pretty men, working their way through ugly men into ugly women and into pretty women. That was the whole process literally.

Further Quote: They were psychologically castrated if you like--heavy word. But we didn’t have anything to put in its place.

UCL Professor Michael King and his co-authors warn that ‘social and political assumptions sometimes lie at the heart of what we regard as mental pathology and serve as a warning for future practice.’ Nevertheless, some psychotherapists and psychiatrists in the UK still offer conversion therapy for gay and trans people (UKCP, 2023). This is of course both harmful and unprofessional. It is also represents an attitude expressed by some psychiatrists towards the public in general.

Whenever they’re prosecuted for damages for medical negligence, psychiatrists have been very much protected by the Bolam test. In practice, they usually only have had to find one fellow psychiatrist who’s prepared to say that he’d have given the plaintiff the same treatment. This biases and tends to corrupt the system, grants effective immunity to the ‘shrinks’, and damages the livelihoods of many long-suffering mental health patients (whether gay or straight). For more details of the Bolam test, see Waldrons [1] and Math (2021).

Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that is supposed to be concerned with the study, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness, but many are critical of it. Kinderman (2019) feels that we need a revolution to change it, and some of the speakers on Intelligence Squared (2014) blamed psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry for the ongoing epidemic of mental disorders.

Peter Kinderman believes that critics of traditional psychiatric thinking have begun to question the creeping medicalisation of normal life, and to criticise the poor reliability, validity, utility and humanity of conventional psychiatric diagnosis. I agree, but what we are going to change psychiatry into is a very serious and largely unresolved question, Society would appear to need top to bottom social change to reduce the ongoing trauma but how exactly we should change society is as yet unclear.

Per Laterna (2023) report articles in the Guardian concerning over 26000 rape and sexual assault incidents over 5 years in UK mental health institutions. I regard bad psychiatry as forever serving to violently suppress people with mental health issues and to violate swathes of queer people.

Drescher (2010) argues with numerous activists that, as in the case of gayness during the 1970s, it is wrong to label expressions of gender variance as symptoms of a mental disorder and that perpetuating DSM-IV’s TR GID diagnoses in DSM-V would further stigmatize and cause harm to transgender individuals. Other advocates in the trans community expressed concern that deleting GID would lead to denying medical and surgical care for transgender adults. Another possibly is to de-medicalise gender recognition entirely, as attempted in the Scottish Gender Recognition Bill (see Sections 6.1 and 6.5). In any case, more queer psychiatrists need to assert themselves in their profession and seek to clarify such issues. See University of Toronto (2023).

I regard myself as part of the psychiatric survivor movement (a component of the Critical Psychiatry movement), having taken a massive overdose on 10 January 1981 following what I perceived as extreme homophobia in the academic workplace. I persisted in adhering to the straight path, while riddled with anti-depressants, until October 1983. The Wisconsin health insurers turned turtle on me and made me pay for my, albeit outstanding, psychotherapist who put everything down to my furious anger at my dire academic experiences.

We long-term survivors are increasingly concerned as to how many so-called mental illnesses can be beneficially treated using a medical model, whether they can be responsibly diagnosed, and as to how many mental health issues are created by socio-economic, working environments, homophobia and transphobia, rather than underlying ‘chemical imbalances’ or medical deficiencies.

Furthermore, any of the enzyme-poisoning psychiatric medications can cause debilitating physical side effects and iatrogenic illnesses. Tardive dyskinesia is an example of a physically debilitating iatrogenic illness, as evidenced by numerous posts to the ‘Healing from Tardive Dyskinesia’ and ‘Tardive Dyskinesia Bully Free Support Group’ Facebook groups. I have acquired an enormous amount of further anecdotal evidence in Edinburgh and from elsewhere, since 2011 and have been alarmed by the huge number of, at times multiple, serious side effects among people taking psychiatric medications (see Section 6.10). Sometimes I even wonder whether everybody taking a narcoleptic medication with a standard daily dosage level is likely to suffer from a serious physical side effect or iatrogenic illness sooner or later.

Nevertheless, many suicidal people are kept alive by taking such psychiatric medications, even though the medications dampen their psychiatric symptoms rather than curing the disorder. Some paranoid schizophrenics find potentially harmful anti-psychotics necessary, in the absence of better-researched holistic treatments, in order to achieve a harmless and at all rational existence.

A group of self-promoting ‘reforming’ psychiatrists and their supporters known as Drop the Disorder sometimes try to dissuade people experiencing manic mood swings from taking their medications (Rob Howard, 2023). Leading supporters of Drop the Disorder once agreed on their Facebook page that, ‘ADHD is BS’. Dr. Lucy Johnstone once claimed ignorance about neurodiversity during a meeting of Drop the Disorder in Edinburgh. Their ‘hatchet man’ Gary S. badgered me by private messaging e.g. on my views on psychiatric medications, and declined to put a history of ADD on-line, and they have reportedly put unfair pressures on their Facebook members, including a Quaker woman called Kiera, to ‘tow the party line’ on other issues.

While it is self-evident, as Drop the Disorder so rightly emphasise, that social stress and trauma are at the root of many mental health problems, that does not negate the existence of such diagnosable disorders as psychopathy, paranoid schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder.

Followers of Thomas Szasz and Bonnie Burstow, the Scientology movement, far right or conspiracy theoretical anti-vaxxers such as R.F.K Jr., Peter Gøtzche, and Peter Breggin who are also anti-psychiatry, can be much more harmful than Drop the Disorder. This is despite the highly cogent things Gøtzche and Breggin sometimes say about harmful psychiatry.

Such right wing elements splinter the Critical Psychiatry movement and detract from its credibility as a whole. The much-respected Facebook group Mad in America (founded by the cutting edge writer Robert Whitaker) does its best to mend those of these schisms that are worth mending. But beware also on-line apparent ‘Big Pharma puppets’ who sometimes distort the conversation, while seeming to be working in the financial interests of the pharmacutical companies.

I have previously challenged the ‘reforming psychiatrist’ Dr. David Healy of Cardiff University as to whether he really is a reformer owing to his strong advocacy of ECT (See Shorter and Healy, 2007, and Admin, 2022). However, he has recently produced some seminal research regarding the damaging side effects of anti-depressants e.g. Healy et al (2022). His on-line RxISK program addresses the side effects of psychiatric medications.

My selective history of psychiatry in Chapter 10, will focus, in part, on its history in London and Scotland, but also on international material collated during my twelve or so years campaigning (beginning around the end of 2011) against problematic twenty-first century psychiatry.

The seminal work on the underlying causes of depressive disorders by Professor Joanne Moncrieff at UCL has relatively recently epitomised the urgent need for, albeit belated, change to, or replacement of, the entire discipline of psychiatry. Professor Moncrieff has changed public attitude towards the treatment of clinical depression, following the news that it isn’t caused by a chemical imbalance. See Moncrieff (2022). She believes that treatment by anti-depressants should be continually adjusted, e.g. tapered or reduced, according to any physical side effects thought to be caused by the medications.

For various ineptitudes from a former President of the highly protective Royal College of Psychiatrists, see Burn (2020). In 2018, Wendy Burn co-signed a highly irresponsible letter to the Times, asserting that, ‘In the vast majority of patients, any unpleasant symptoms experienced on discontinuing anti-depressants have resolved within two weeks of stopping treatment’. Burn is a consultant old age psychiatrist. In the pre-Covid period, she seems to have been an extremely ignorant one.

For a discussion of how to address childhood trauma, see Mackler (2023). Daniel Mackler is concerned by the frequency of extreme childhood trauma, while seeing the world growing more pathological, confused, polluted, overpopulated, and disturbed by the day

Knapton (2023) reports that anti-depressants raise the risk of suicide while also giving people the means to kill themselves. Psychologists at the University of East London, lead by the pioneering reformist Professor John Read, analysed media reports of nearly 8000 coroners’ inquests in England and Wales between 2003 and 2020 in which antidepressants were mentioned. They found that the drugs [presumably including the infamous imaprimine, Prozac, and Seroxat] were linked to 2718 cases of hanging and 2329 overdoses, of which 933 people had overdosed on the antidepressants themselves. A further 2083 had been struck by a train, tube, lorry or other vehicle, had jumped or fallen to their death, drowned, shot themselves , or been involved in a fire or electrocution. Experts said that the figures were likely to be just the tip of the iceberg, because many suicides and inquests are not fully reported in the media. (For very insightful discussions of the social and biological roots of psychosis see Read et al, eds, 2013)

Psychiatry has frequently been used to damage native populations. For example, Dr. Selwyn Leeks used electric shocks without anaesthetic from an ECT machine to torture over 300 children between 1972 and 1977 in the Lake Alice psychiatric hospital in New Zealand (Smale, 2022, Ellingham, 2022). Most of the tortured children had been sent to Lake Alice from state-run welfare homes and around half were Maori boys.

The children received electric shocks or were demeaningly injected with paralysing drugs such as paraldehyde as punishments. Many were sexually or psychologically abused. The Crown and the psychiatric profession reportedly protected Leeks, and he was never held to account for his heinous sadism. He lived for another 45 years while his surviving victims still suffered from their horrific childhood experiences.

Depixol/flupentixol can paralyse patients from the waist down and put them on crutches. This happened to a young and handsome, learning-disabled bisexual man ‘Timothy’ in Edinburgh in around the year 2000 when he was sectioned into the ‘Royal Ed’ for impersonating a Holy entity. Timothy, who was vulnerable to exploitation by butch guys but preferred the company of his girlfriend, was repeatedly ‘jagged’ with depixol in his left buttock at the behest of a highly eminent and notoriously sarcastic, Quaker psychiatrist. Timothy’s legs turned rubbery and he was put on crutches.

The sarcastic and possibly sadistic psychiatrist later put Timothy into 14 days of solitary in a cell with an iron-barred window for grinning too much on the ward. Timothy said that the course of depixol continued for three years and had life-changing, unexpected effects on his feelings of sexual attraction. The multiple injections left a sizeable deep red blotch on his bottom. Timothy hadn’t recovered from the experience when I last met him in 2019 even though he’d been incessantly ‘jagged’ (chemically raped) with narcoleptic medications, ever since.

According to the Glaswegian consultant psychotherapist Dr. Graham Vahey (various conversations with myself and others on the Mental Health Discussions Edinburgh Facebook page) who worked with the great reforming psychiatrist R.D. Laing, electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) has very harmful effects while seldom curing any psychiatric disorder. It destroys brain cells, can detach frontal lobes from the remainder of the brain, and causes cognitive problems and short-term, persistent, or permanent memory loss. While it can lead to quite temporary feelings of euphoria, ECT can cause deep, long-term depression and the need to be ‘meek’, to acquiesce and to comply.

Shorter and Healy (2007) would disagree with this viewpoint as they reek havoc around the world. But Professor John Read Admin (2022), on behalf of the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry (see Admin, 2022) refers to the lack of placebo-based studies for ECT, all of which have been seriously flawed, and states to the effect that the psychiatric profession is unfairly and obstructively defending itself. Meanwhile, the Scottish Health Inspectorate approve of ECT and persist in insisting that it is beneficial to numerous patients (John Williamson, the ‘Scottish Gatekeeper’, personal communication).

Psychiatry has been used throughout decades of history to damage or destroy many queer people’s lives e.g. by damaging their brains with ECT or by imposing courses of aversion therapy for ‘sexual perversions’ (Davison, 2020, Vido and Byers, 2014), or by the NHS or private clinics giving children or adults hefty doses of unnecessary, harmful medications after diagnosing or misdiagnosing them with ADHD (e.g. Panorama Team, 2023).

Even when a psychiatric maltreatment damages people regardless of their gender or orientation, it injures a disproportionately large number of queer folk, simply because queers are much more likely to have mental health issues.

Here is a totally anonymous quote (15 May 2023), from an erstwhile inpatient, who is too frightened to give their name, but has given me permission to publish:

Horrible horrible place poor old ladies being electro shocked, injecting people in their sleep, violent prisoner tactics being rushed pinned down and injected for just being upset and crying it's so inhumane these horrible ‘private’ yes out the way mistreatments where nobody can see what they do it's absolutely gross poor poor hurting people it breaks my heart

For Martin Harrow’s seminal empirical investigations that invalidate the cruel treatment of schizophrenia by anti-psychotics, and the dismissive attitude of the psychiatric profession towards Harrow’s firmly based conclusions, see Whitaker (2023). Robert Whitaker’s exposure is truly ground-breaking, and highlights the banality of much of the psychiatric profession. The politically expedient psychiatrists are nevertheless passionately protected in Britain by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and, in my perception, by the Royal College of General Practitioners.

The ‘optimal’ dynamic treatment regimes proposed by Shortreed and Moodie (2012), where patients are switched from one harmful anti-psychotic to another, give rise to a large collection of excruciatingly debilitating side effects that the patients could and often do suffer. Patients can switch between olanzapine, perphenazine, quetiapine, risperidone, ziprasidone, and clozapine, though it’s not at all obvious whether any of these choices would actually improve the patient’s underlying psychiatric condition rather than suppressing some of the symptoms e.g. shutting the patient up.

Professor Shortreed carries out her very frightening, futuristic, research at the Kaiser Permanente Health Washington Research Institute in Seattle, and refers to Jeffrey Lieberman of Columbia University’s nefarious, 74% attrition-rate CATIE study (see Self-Study Exercise 2.14 and Lieberman et al , 2005) when determining her ‘optimal’ dynamic treatment regimes. I don’t see how Shortreed can say ‘optimal’ when there isn’t even a control group. Since the 1493 patients with schizophrenia in the supposedly randomized study were not chosen at random from a reference population, it’s not at all obvious what on earth Shortreed is playing at. But she’s the way to go if you want Artificial Intelligence to take over, and if you want highly theoretical, assumption-dependent, weird and strangely behaving (Bayesian random effects) statistical models to help determine your next choice of enzyme-poisoning, narcoleptic medication.

The CATIE study has brought everlasting shame to Jeffrey Lieberman and Columbia University. The study sacrificed the good health of many of the 1493 patients, hospitalised a fair number and caused 74% of them to stop treatment within fifteen months. There could well have been of the order of 300 or 400 queer patients in the trial. Extrapyramidal side effects were experienced together with akathesia, movement disorders, weight gain, increases in glycosylated hemoglobin, cholestorol, tryglicerides, prolactin levels, cataracts, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation. What were these professionals trying to do to their patients?

For instances of more direct psychiatric assault in nursing homes see section 6.15. Not only psychiatric, but other medical patients get abused. According to Chiu (2021) about 40% of people with MS are abused e.g. by their carers or nurses. When the abuse is physical, it includes getting beaten, hit, or slapped. But physical abuse can be more subtle. For example, a caregiver who is handling a person roughly or aggressively while tending to their needs may be causing physical abuse.

6.10 Psychiatric Discovery in the Steamworks. The Steamworks and Pound customers over the years have included a great many psychiatric nurses, psychiatric survivors, and self-proclaimed consultant psychiatrists. Their testimonies e.g. in the jacuzzi and the restaurant provided me with masses of information about bad psychiatry that was of relevance to our mental health campaign. ‘Angus’ talked with outpatients in the Cambridge Street Centre and Stafford Centre, and we campaigned for several years via our registered charity, the Edinburgh Equality Collective Advocacy Forum (EECAF) which held insightful monthly meetings in the MacDonald Road Library. Some of the psychiatrists also haunted the gay bars, and a couple of them nick-named Café Habana the ‘Waiting Room’.

Angus and I were concerned at the huge number of people regularly taking a narcoleptic psychiatric medication at a standard dosage level who reported suffering from a serious physical side effect or iatrogenic illness sooner or later. Diabetes, gout, skin cancer, lymphoedema, cellulitis, asthma, pulmonary problems, slurpy speech, stiff fingers, sunstroke, and impotence were just twelve of the problems which we heard about, and some side effects occurred simultaneously. Patients were frequently misinformed or uninformed as to the likelihood of being physically damaged by a side effect and some psychiatrists reportedly either simply didn’t care, or got agitated and bewildered by any visible evidence of the side effect. Some general practitioners are reluctant to concede that any condition is a narcoleptic side effect. Some apparently caring people believe that talking about the wide spread serious physical effects of psychiatric medications ‘is not acceptable conversation’.

I also discovered that many of the consultant psychiatrists in the sauna were just as impervious to these problems as in the real world outside. The pro-jaggers and electric shock boffins could be just as formidable in the altogether or when only dressed with white towels around their waists, but they turned into shocked antagonists when I challenged them about their traditional practices.

A tiny, docile ‘shrink’ from Glasgow turned prickly when I told him about my mental health campaign. But the self-aggrandising, pro-jagging, turkey-like forensic psychiatrist, who I initially stupidly mistook for a redoubtable high heid yin at the Orchard Clinic, was extremely polite and gentle to his elderly tricks.

10.9 Queer Talk. Hey, guys. William Sargant’s legacy (see section 9.6) and his introduction of many brands of neuroleptic medication into Britain takes us back to the present and to the disturbing revelations about bad psychiatry in the last section of my introduction. The biological model is still winning in the UK, but Professors Peter Kinderman, Joanne Moncrieff, John Read and their similarly enlightened colleagues may yet save us from it (Kinderman, 2019, Moncrieff (2022), Read et al, eds, 2013).

Dynamic psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy help patients to handle their conditions but do not typically cure ‘schizophrenia’, manic mood swing or other serious mental health problems.

Little or nothing is particularly geared towards queers. If patients advise their consultant psychiatrists that they are queer, then this could, in principle at least, modify or improve the diagnoses by those psychiatrists who wish to probe their patients’ social backgrounds, Unfortunately, psychiatrists have such an alarming track record that many queer patients will baulk at the prospect of informing their consultants that they have any queer inclinations at all,

Big Pharma’ subtle anti-stigma advertising frequently has the effect of encouraging people with mental health issues into thinking that they are ‘safe’ enough to embed themselves into the NHS system. Big Pharma’s propaganda programs encourage mental health patients into taking more and more neuroleptic drugs. Many of the Scottish mental health charities comply with Big Pharma since that’s where lots of their funding is coming from. Many charities are part of the same system, and some exploit outpatients for unpaid, and at times demeaning, hard work, e.g. cleaning the daily muck off the Water of Leith (two queer friends ‘Timothy’ and ‘Mish’, personal communication). The Edinburgh mental health advocacy charity Advocard hasn’t always had a great reputation for providing anything more than token advocacy.

Many people are struggling to make ends meet during the post-pandemic era, particularly LGBT+ people without traditional families. This is creating many more mental health problems for LGBT+people. The psychiatric profession finds its resources to be over-increasingly meagre and overstretched, with little to spare for special programs, as it experiences increasing difficulty in coping with all of its inanities and our insanities.

But we are, as ever, in desperate need of queer-motivated mental health professionals, LGBTQI+ friendly folk who are trained to address the mental health issues of queer people and the many of us queer people who are neurodiverse. See University of Toronto (2023) and a book on queering psychotherapy compiled by Czyzselka, ed (2022).

Many traditional psychiatrists remain oblivious to the need to adjust and improve diagnoses and treatments according to orientation or gender diversity. We also need many more local support groups for queer and neurodiverse people with mental health issues. But it is an uphill battle, and for many in authority the cognitive problems of our elderly can be of more direct concern.

Thomas Ban (2009)Fifty years chlorpromazine: a historical perspective Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment3(4): pp 495–500 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2655089/ Accessed 23 April 2023

Keith Dockray and Alan Sutton (2017) Politics, Society and Homosexuality in Post-War Britain Brimscombe:Fonthill Media.

Michael King, Glen Smith and Annie Bartlett (2004) Treatments of homosexuality in Britain since the 1950s-An Oral History British Medical Journal 328 (3437); 429 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC344258/ Accessed 27 June 2023

UKCP (2023) Conversion Therapy (UK Council for Psychotherapy) https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/policy-and-research/public-policy/conversion-therapy/ Accessed 24 June 2023

Waldrons [1] What is the Bolam test? https://www.waldrons.co.uk/insights/what-is-the-bolam-test/

Suresh Math (2021) What is the Bolam Test? (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wctVD9mX1oA

Peter Kinderman (2019) A Manifesto for Mental Health: Why we need a revolution in mental care London: Palgrave MacMillan

Intelligence Squared (2014) Psychiatrists and the pharma industry are to blame for the current ‘epidemic’ of mental disorders (Youtube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlFbuqunb1I Accessed 26 June 2023

Per Laterna (2023) Rape and Sexual Assault in UK Mental Health (Real Story of Psychiatry) https://perlanterna.com/articles/rape-and-sexual-assault-in-uk-mental-health/? Accessed 12 June 2023

Jack Drescher (2009) Queer Diagnoses: Parallels and Contrasts in the History of Homosexuality, Gender Variance, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

Archive of Sexual Behavior 39, pp 427–460 DOI 10.1007/s10508-009-9531-5

University of Toronto (2023) Queer in Practice (Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto) https://psychiatry.utoronto.ca/quip? Accessed 17 June 2023

Robert Howard (2023) Tweet message https://twitter.com/ProfRobHoward/status/1668678158919389184

Accessed 17 June 2023

Joanne Moncrieff (2022) How to take the news that depression has not been shown to be caused by a chemical imbalance (Critical Psychiatry Network)

https://joannamoncrieff.com/2022/07/24/how-to-take-the-news-that-depression-has-not-been-shown-to-be-caused-by-a-chemical-imbalance/ Accessed 22 March 2023

Wendy Burn (2020) Medical Community must ensure that those needing support to come off anti-depressants can get it (the bmj opinion)

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/09/25/wendy-burn-medical-community-must-ensure-that-those-needing-support-to-come-off-anti-depressants-can-get-it/? Accessed 22 May 2023

Daniel Mackler (2023) Healing Childhood Trauma (Wild Truth Blog) https://wildtruth.net/ Accessed 24 May 2023

Sarah Knapton (2023) Anti-depressants increase the risk of suicide for some patients, scientists warn (Telegraph) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/17/antidepressants-suicide-drugs-prozac-research/ Accessed 18 April 2023

John Read, Richard Bentall, Loren Mosher, and Jacqui Dillon, eds (2013)Models of Madness; Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Psychosis Abingdon;Routledge.

Aaron Smale (2022) Notorious Lake Alice Psychiatrist Dr. Selwyn Leeks Dies (Stuff) https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/300503822/notorious-lake-alice-psychiatrist-dr-selwyn-leeks-dies Accessed 5 May 2023

Jimmy Ellingham (2022) Lake Alice: Why psychiatrist Dr. Selwyn Leeks was never charged (RNZ) https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/462498/lake-alice-why-psychiatrist-dr-selwyn-leeks-was-never-charged Accessed 5 May 2023

Edward Shorter and David Healy (2007) Shock Therapy: The History of Electro-convulsive Treatment in Mental Illness. Toronto: University of Toronto Press

Admin (2022) Professor John Read: Fear and Loathing in the ECT Debate (Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry)

http://cepuk.org/2022/02/15/blog-by-prof-john-read-fear-and-loathing-in-the-ect-debate/ Accessed 17 June 2023

David Healy, Dee Mangin, and Jonathan Lochhead (2022). Development and persistence of patient-reported visual problems associated with serotonin uptake inhibiting anti-depressants International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine 33 (1), pp 37-47

https://rxisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/jrs210018.pdf Accessed 16 September 2023

Kate Davison (2021) Cold War Pavlov: Homosexual aversion therapy in the 1960s History of the Human Sciences 34 (1) pp 81-119

Stephen Vido and David Byers (2014) A Half-Century of Conflict over Attempts to ‘Cure’ Gay People (Time) https://time.com/3705745/history-therapy-hadden/

Panorama Team (2023) ADHD: Private clinics exposed by BBC undercover investigation (BBC News) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65534448

Robert Whitaker (2023). Martin Harrow: The Galileo of Modern Psychiatry (1933-2023) Mad in America https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/03/martin-harrow-the-galileo-of-modern-psychiatry-1933-2023/ Accessed 1 April 2023

Susan Shortreed and Erica Moodie (2012) Estimating the optimal dynamic antipsychotic treatment regime: Evidence from the sequential multiple assignment randomized CATIE Schizophrenia Study. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C (Applied Statistics) 61 (4) pp 577-599 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3475611/ Accessed 15 April 2023

Ryan Chiu (2021). Preventing abuse and multiple sclerosis. (My MS Team)

https://www.mymsteam.com/resources/preventing-abuse-and-multiple-sclerosis#

Accessed 15 April 2023