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Title: Reclaiming Our Children: A Healing Solution for a Nation in Crisis by Peter R., M.D. Breggin ISBN: 0-7382-0426-9 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: February, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (9 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: A compassionate critique of the mental health industry
Comment: Dr. Breggin has written extensively about the dangers of pharmaceutical treatment. In this book, he expands his discussion to look at the social context for how the society has been driven toward dangerous quick fixes rather than healing the society in ways that nurture children. One reviewer calls Breggin a Christian Scientist due to his anti-drug stance, when in reality he seems to have connections to the Jewish faith. Pure Christian Science opposes any medical drug treatments (which Breggin doesn't), including for seemingly purely physical symptoms and illnesses, since it sees physical reality as completely a product of mind and spirit. Breggin makes many valuable observations, although I perceive his parenting ideas as overly libertarian in some instances. Breggin also is unrealistic about the ability of ordinary psychotherapeutic and parenting methods to address very challenging child symptoms and difficulties. Theoretically, all mental health issues can be resolved without using medications to suppress symptoms. However, in our society few people have the knowledge or skills to facilitate holistic healing methods and access subconscious levels of mind that often trigger biochemical and psychological dysfunctions. Every cell, tissue, organ, and system in our bodies is guided by some level of consciousness, and even seeming "biochemical" issues can be resolved by accessing the consciousness that controls biological functioning and reorienting it to direct the body to function in a balanced manner. Since almost no one in the health care professions is trained to facilitate this, and only a minority of professionals are even trained to use nutrition, massage, hypnosis, and some other less invasive alternatives, then many people mistakenly assume that certain people absolutely have to be medicated. Breggin focuses mostly on the social ills of our society and the social and political context of mental health approaches to children, doing a solid job in this regard. However, a more expansive understanding of health, healing, and reality is needed to help more people realize the wealth of alternatives to drugs.
Rating: 5
Summary: What kind of solution do we want?
Comment: Has "A reader from Wisconsin, United States" (first reviewer) actually read the book?
Do you want to chemically zonk children into performing and behaving up to our standards or do we want to find out the CAUSE of their problems and address that?
Mainstream medicine 99% of the time attacks symptoms, and not causes, does suppressing the cough, runny nose and fever of someone with a cold actually get rid of the virus or is it suppressing symptoms? It is our own immune system that destroys the invader not nyquill or benilyn. Once the virus is gone, then we become well again.
Also remember the cause MAY or MAY NOT be the child him/herself
Rating: 1
Summary: save our kids from peter breggin!
Comment: What Breggin says might be true of some children but he is wrong to make it a blanket statement.
I have worked in schools for many years and yes, I have seen parental problems ignored or skirted out of misplaced diplomacy. Certainly, there are times when, for example, anxiety is caused by an emotionally abusive parent and the child is treated medically instead of the family being treated therapeutically or some other way.
However, it is downright abusive to deny proper treatment to children with genuine physically-generated psychiatric problems. I worked in a school with an eight-year-old kid who had real psychotic episodes, and the family wouldn't medicate him. How can it be better for him to be hallucinating, trying to kill himself, and physically attacking others, than to take an anti-psychotic medication that could help him?
Children with real psychiatric problems are miserable. To pretend that their problems stem from character flaws on the part of the children or their parents, is not only to deny them the genuine help that can be provided by appropriate medication and treatment, but to add insult to injury and risk complicating their problems with depression and suicidally low self-esteem.
Yes, it can be difficult to tell the difference between parental-induced problems and physiological brain disorders, but a good clinician will devote him- or herself to making this differentiation and to helping children the best way possible. New technology is allowing psychiatrists to actually use brain-imaging techniques to see where, precisely, a person's brain is malfunctioning, and to target that problem with the appropriate medication. ADD and other problems clearly show up in these brain images.
Peter Breggin is a Christian scientist driven by the ideological obsession that medication is bad under all circumstances. This is simply wrong. Each situation must be evaluated separately, and the priority should not be ideology, but rather the health and well-being of the child. Medication is sometimes appropriate.
You wouldn't deny a child glasses and tell him that courage and determination will allow him to see perfectly. No more should children or parents be told that psychiatric problems are a character defect. Shame on Peter Breggin for misleading millions and condemning their children to suffer needlessly.
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