Chemical Brain Injury and the Coming Epidemic of Drug Induced Dementia:

Chemical Brain Injury and the Coming Epidemic of Drug Induced Dementia: How Psychiatric Drugs Harm the Target Organ of Neuropsychiatry and What to Do About It

Grace Jackson, M.D.

This workshop is organized around the principle that Target Organ Toxicity (how drugs harm the "target" of treatment) must become the focus of psychiatric rights activists.

The speaker will present an overview of psychiatric medications and the scientific roots of the so-called Pharmacological Revolution, explaining how a knowledge of history can illuminate the mental health system's 60+ year legacy of Chemical Brain Injury (CBI). While every family of psychotropic drug is capable of harming the central nervous system, this workshop will focus on the problems of antidepressants as a cause of chronic dysphoria and mixed dementia.

Goals:

  1. to review the historical roots of the Pharmacological Revolution

  2. to explain the problem of tardive dysfunction (chemical brain injury >> physiological harm)

  3. to emphasize the concept of Drug Induced Dementia (chemical brain injury >> structural damage)

Objectives:

  1. to protect the rights of mental health care providers, system users, and other stakeholders by providing information from EBM (Evidence Based Medicine) which undermines the coerced use of neurotoxic drugs on scientific principles

  2. to advance the cause of PharmARRU as a new model of psychiatric care and mental health policy

[PharmARRU = pharmaceutical avoidance, reduction, and/or responsible use]

Link to brief presenter bio: Grace Jackson, M.D.