As Jack Henry Abbott observed in his book, In the Belly of the Beast,  �These drugs � attack from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain. � The muscles of your jawbone go berserk, so that you bite the inside of your mouth and your jaw locks and the pain throbs. For hours every day this will occur. Your spinal column stiffens so that you can hardly move your head or your neck and sometimes your back bends like a bow and you cannot stand up. � You ache with restlessness, so you feel you have to walk, to pace � in such wretched anxiety you are overwhelmed, because you cannot get relief.�

Whenever a �mental patient� commits an act of senseless violence, psychiatrists invariably blame the tragedy on the person�s failure to continue his medication. Such incidents are used to justify mandated community treatment and invol- untary commitment laws.  Statistics and facts show it is psychiatric drugs themselves�including the newest neuroleptics or antipsychotics�that can create the very violence or mental incompetence they are prescribed to treat.

A 1985 investigation into a commonly  prescribed tranquilizer, reported in the  American Journal of Psychiatry , found that 58% of the  treated patients experienced serious �dyscontrol,� i.e., violence and loss of control compared with only 8% who were given a placebo. Episodes included �deep neck cuts,� �tried to break own arm,� �threw chair at child,� �arm and head banging,� and �jumped in front of car.�  The findings revealed the patient who threw a chair at her child had no history of physical violence toward the child. The patient who cut her neck had no previous episodes of self-mutilation.

A 1990 study determined that 50% of all fights in a psychiatric ward could be linked to neuroleptic drugs, which induced a side effect called  akathisia (severe restlessness). Patients described that they experienced �violent urges to assault anyone near.�

A New Zealand report stated that withdrawal from psychoactive drugs can cause new symptoms. Antidepressants, according to the report, can create �agitation, severe depression, hallucinations, aggressiveness, hypomania [abnormal excitement] and akathisia.�

Dr. Joseph Glenmullen warns, �Mistaking withdrawal for a return of their original symptoms, many patients restart the medication, needlessly prolonging their exposure to the drug.�

Robert Whitaker�s research established that when patients abruptly stop taking neuroleptics they �would likely suffer intense withdrawal symptoms, and they would be at much higher risk of relapsing than if they had never been exposed to the drugs. The use of neuroleptics diminished the possibility that a person, distraught in mind and soul when first treated, could ever return to a healthy, non-medicated life.�

While heralded by psychiatrists as new �wonder drugs� with fewer side effects than their predecessors, the latest neuroleptics actually have even more severe side effects: blindness, fatal blood clots, heart arrhythmia, heat stroke, swollen and leaking breasts, impotence and sexual dysfunction, blood disorders, painful skin rashes, seizures, birth defects and extreme inner-anxiety and restlessness.

In April 2003,  The Wall Street Journalreported that over an 8-year period (1994�2002), 288 patients taking the new antipsychotics developed diabetes; 75 became severely ill and 23 died.

Also in 2003,  The New York Times reported,  �� the states, which pay enormous sums for the atypicals [new drugs] in caring for the severely mentally ill, are questioning whether the benefits of the new drugs are worth their costs.�

The state can treat 8 to 10 people with an older neuroleptic for the same price of treating one patient with a month�s supply of one of the atypicals. In 2002, Ohio, one of America�s larger states, spent $174 million on antipsychotic drugs, close to $145 million of that on atypicals.

In May 2003, researchers presented a study  on the cost effectiveness of one atypical neuroleptic in treating patients at 17 Veterans Affairs medical centers. The study, led by Dr. Robert Rosenheck, a professor of psychiatry and public health at Yale, found that the drug cost from $3,000 to $9,000 more than earlier drugs per patient, with no benefit to symptoms, Parkinson�s-like side effects or overall quality of life.

As reported by Whitaker, the new neuroleptics are �a story of science marred by greed, deaths, and the deliberate deception of the � public.� Switzerland�s Dr. Marc Rufer says that prescribing massive dosages of drugs only makes people dependent upon psychiatrists and the drugs administered to them.

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