from JASON HEWLETT

No One Should Be Forced

To Take Psychiatric Drugs

To the Editor:

As a man diagnosed with a mental illness for the past 20+ years, I have the lived experience to give the public a patient’s view of the dangers of psychiatric drugs. They are not at all what most people, including those who are mentally ill, think they are.

If you were to Google “Psychiatric Drugs: Cure or Quackery?” by Lawrence Stevens J.D., you would get some startling but very accurate information about psychiatric drugs, what they really are and what they really do.

The worst thing that often happens to someone who is involuntarily committed to a psychiatric unit and/or mental hospital (especially in the U.S.) is that their rights are often limited and sometimes violated by a psychiatrist who forces psychiatric “medications” on them – against their will. This has happened to me many times over the years.

Psychiatrists call the consequences of taking those drugs “side effects” but that’s just a nice way of saying we might suffer the diseases, disabilities and even deaths, caused by prolonged use of psychiatric drugs.

Just read the long list of “side effects” that comes with any psychiatric drug from any pharmacy so you can be warned of the dangers.

No one, mentally ill or completely sane, should have any kind of drug forced on them. In a free country such as ours, grown men and women should be free to decide for themselves what does and does not go into their own bodies.

And if a psychiatrist feels the need to give us an ultimatum or promises to discharge us from the hospital unless we comply with their “medications,” I think that we all should consider these well-known words of wisdom by Napoleon Hill: “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”

JASON HEWLETT

Oneonta