X-Persona: Received: from avocet.mail.pas.earthlink.net ([207.217.120.50]) by akmhcweb.org (Merak 5.9.4) with ESMTP id CRA37691 for ; Sun, 31 Aug 2003 01:10:58 -0800 Received: from user-uive9p2.dsl.mindspring.com ([165.247.39.34]) by avocet.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19tOEJ-0007YR-00; Sun, 31 Aug 2003 02:10:41 -0700 User-Agent: Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.0.6 Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2003 05:10:33 -0400 Subject: Hunger strike From: "N.S.Lehrman, M.D." To: Message-ID: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="MS_Mac_OE_3145151433_7959288_MIME_Part" As a psychiatrist since 1947, who was voluntarily hospitalized for three months in 1963-4 for paranoid schizophrenia, I want to shout from the housetops my support for the Pasadena hunger strikers. Not only does the "brain disease" hypothesis of mental illness, and the resultant nearly exclusive reliance on drug treatment, lack any basis in scientific fact, as the strikers maintain, but it has greatly worsened treatment results in these conditions. This was most strikingly demonstrated by the recent discovery of 15,000 mentally crippled, over-drugged former hospital patients locked in back wards of New York nursing homes. We know how to help mental patients get better thru psychosocial methods - I speak as both psychiatrist and ex-patient - but the drug companies have conned the profession into doing the opposite. A formal ongressional investigation is long overdue. Nathaniel S. Lehrman, M.D., 10 Nob Hill Gate, Roslyn NY 11576; 516/626-0238; former Clinical Director, Kingsboro Psychiatric Center, Brooklyn NY