Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brain-disabling psychiatric medical treatment


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. The consensus as I read it is that Breggin is notable and his book and his ideas may be notable, but that this article isn't appropriate in its current form and doesn't meet our guidelines. No prejudice toward the creation of an article which does meet our guidelines, but it should be written from scratch. Mackensen (talk) 20:17, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Brain-disabling psychiatric medical treatment

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This article is the result of a student project which has now finished; the article is about a theory that psychiatric drugs disable the brain and this theory was created and is advanced by psychiatrist Dr Peter Breggin, who promotes very polarised and biased views and is generally considered to be WP:FRINGE by his colleagues. For example he demonises the use of antidepressants for biological depression and in fact disputes the existence of biological depression. A simplistic, very outdated 1990's interpretation of the mechanism of action of antidepressants is given in the article which misleads the reader. Brain disabling psychiatric medical treatment is not notable and the phrase receives no attention in academic publications; therefore the article fails WP:N. There is also significant problems with quality of references and the references used are being misinterpreted/misused, such as ECT being wrongly described as a surgical procedure and the pharmacodynamics of neuroleptics/antipsychotics being incorrect and sounding closer in description to amphetamines. WP:MEDRS, WP:RS and WP:V are not adequately met as sources are being misused, misinterpreted and are of poor quality and also there is evidence of possible WP:NOR violations. There also are important issues relating to WP:NPOV. There is no doubt side effects and even toxicities occur from certain psychiatric drugs, e.g. tardive dyskinesia from antipsychotics or hypomania/mania as side effects from antidepressants but these can be discussed on the respective pages without needing to have a WP:FRINGE article on a non-notable 'theory'. MrADHD |  T@1k?  18:34, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, as nominator. -- MrADHD  |  T@1k?  19:01, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, minor technicality: nominator can not vote. History2007 (talk) 01:51, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know. :)-- MrADHD  |  T@1k?  03:36, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Technically, neither can anyone else. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:55, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions.  MrADHD  |  T@1k?  19:19, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete, clearly. Classic example of an WP:ESSAY or WP:SYNTHESIS, and so POV that even the title is POV. --MelanieN (talk) 19:34, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As noted above, the article was created by a special purpose account who states, "I'm a biomedical engineering major from Georgia Tech, participating in a Wikipedia article writing project under this Wikipedia assignment." I see that she was not notified about this AfD; are you going to do that, MrADHD, or would you like me to? (Thanks)--MelanieN (talk) 19:41, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yup all done, she has been notified now. :-)-- MrADHD  |  T@1k?  21:10, 5 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete: OR and synth on non-notable fringe topic based on poor sources, with major POV problems. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:17, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete I stumbled on this a while ago and was quite appalled by this essay. Absolutely unencyclopedic POV. --Randykitty (talk) 21:42, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. POV-tastic. JFW &#124; T@lk  22:03, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, per all of the above. The material contained in the page could better be covered in summary style at Biopsychiatry controversy, for example. I feel especially strongly that pages whose content might influence medical choices by our readers should be held to a high standard with respect to not presenting fringe views in a misleading manner. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:39, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Changed my mind: please see below. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep There are significant problems with this article especially in terms of its neutrality but that does not in itself constitute an argument for deletion. It's also certainly meets the criteria for WP:FRINGE but it is still notable. Breggin himself is a notable anti-psychiatrist or at least a notable critic of the medical-model of mental disorder. But he is significant and his positions are notable within the context of the anti-psychiatry/psychiatric survivor movement and a wider discourse critical of so-called biological psychiatry. The notability of the thesis can be established through Google Scholar if one isn't too restrictive in searching for the exact phrase used in the article title. Thus searching for '"brain disabling" OR "brain damage" AND breggin' returns 827 references, quite a proportion of which have been authored by Breggin himself, but the thesis has obviously been treated in academic publications. Typically, his position has been refuted in articles published in medical journals but has enjoyed a degree of support in psychology, psychotherapy and sociology journals. Either way its sufficiently notable for an article and it should be possible to add criticism of his thesis from secondary sources.
 * If you look at his publication, Brain disabling treatments in psychiatry: Drugs, electroshock, and the psychopharmaceutical complex Google Scholar returns 165 citations. Some of these citations meet the Wikipedia criteria for medical sources (e.g. Are Stimulants Overprescribed for Youths with ADHD, Annals of Clinical Psychiatry; 'Neuroleptic discontinuation in clinical and research settings: scientific issues and ethical dilemmas', Biological Psychiatry) but most do not and point to Breggin's influence in non-medical treatments of mental illness that are critical of the medical model.
 * Aspects of his thesis have gotten relatively significant coverage in medical publications- particularly his contention that ECT causes brain damage or is "brain disabling". For example:
 * DP Devanand, AJ Dwork, 'Does ECT Alter Brain Structure', American Journal of Psychiatry (1994)
 * Olaf C.G. Zachrisson et al., 'No evident neuronal damage after electroconvulsive therapy', Psychiatry Research (2000)
 * AD Reisner, 'The Electroconvulsive Therapy Controversy: Evidence and Ethics', Neuropsychology Review (2003)
 * The article needs a significant rewrite to establish a neutral point of view but I think it's easy enough to establish the notability of the topic and its significance within a contemporary discourse about contemporary psychiatric treatment. What this article requires is appropriate contextualisation in terms of the status of the thesis within the medical/psychiatric literature and its relevance to critics of psychiatry from other disciplines and patient movements. FiachraByrne (talk) 00:42, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You make an interesting observation, but I question whether it should be kept under the existing title, since one could make a far more NPOV title, and whether it wouldn't really require a rewrite from the ground up. Might it make better sense to delete, and create a new page from scratch, with a new title? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:48, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree. There's nothing here that could possibly be used as the basis of a future article. Delete and flush twice. That will make no difference at all to a hypothetical future editor that wants to create an article along the lines that FiachraByrne proposes. Better to start from scratch than to try to untangle all of the nonsense here. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 01:20, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Peter Breggin has an article here, and most of this material is already mentioned there. However, I would argue against a merge/redirect because of the POV title. --MelanieN (talk) 01:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Strong keep (and retitle): The mile long title may need to change, but the topic is totally notable and Bregin is well published. He is not the only author to suggest that "popping pills can harm the brain". That has been argued by a number of physicians. The main problem here is the focus on Bregin and the strange title that does not show on searches. Try this or this for instance, or variants. I will not be watching here any more, so please do not expect a response from me if you ask a question. But the topic (not the title) is notable for sure. History2007 (talk) 02:16, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Strong keep No new arguments but totally agree with History2007. This article is equivalent to an article about a book that discusses a certain issue - it is just a bit more expanded. Lova Falk     talk   10:18, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * There's no objection to a completely new article being rewitten on the topic under a different title, but that would be best done from scratch, rather than trying to use what's here as a basis. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 10:49, 6 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment If there is something useful in this essay, it could be merged to any of the numerous articles that we already have on the subject (see Category:Anti-psychiatry). --Randykitty (talk) 11:15, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment. I don't think any of us arguing for deletion would dispute that there is notable material related to what is on the page. But I would also urge care with respect to arguments based on WP:GHITS. Likewise, we should consider the last paragraph of WP:JNN: the fact of notability does not trump WP:NOT and other policies and guidelines (here, particularly, WP:FRINGE and WP:MEDRS). Anything to be kept or merged really must satisfy WP:NPOV as well as eschew anything that misleads readers medically. The question is whether, if the page were to be deleted, anything would be lost with respect to creating proper content from scratch. In that regard, please let me suggest that those editors arguing for some sort of keep specify what, on the page, you would retain on a kept and renamed page. If there is a compelling argument for keeping a significant portion of the content, then that might change my mind, but if there isn't, it would be advisable to create better material from scratch. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:55, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If those of us arguing that the article is salvageable were serious in our intent I think we would have begun to tag and edit it by this point. In its current form it doesn't belong in article space. I've copied the article to my sandbox at User:FiachraByrne/Iatrogenic psychiatric treatments (working title) and added these AFD comments to the talk page. I'm not entirely sure if it would be possible to write the article I'd like to about this subject without either inappropriate synthesis of sources or original research. In any case, the likelihood of my creating the kind of article I've proposed above is very marginal given my other article priorities and real life demands. As I can't commit to editing the article into shape myself and as I'm ambiguous about whether that's even possible I'll withdraw my keep argument. FiachraByrne (talk) 01:01, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Move Why not move it and simply make this article about Breggin's book "Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry." as he more or less coined the term if I am not correct. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:50, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a workable suggestion I think. FiachraByrne (talk) 17:36, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Good idea!  Lova Falk     talk   14:02, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Move to a revised page about Breggin's book, per Doc James. That's a very good idea, and better than deleting, so I changed my mind. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Hold it, folks. Before we accept an article about the book, the book has to be notable - and I could find no evidence that it meets WP:NBOOK. A Google search finds only listings of the book for sale, and things written by Breggin himself. Google News Archive finds nothing about the book. Google Scholar says the book has been cited 165 times, but finds no reviews or other substantial coverage ABOUT the book. Bottom line, Breggin himself may be notable, but this book isn't - and thus it shouldn't have have an article. The content is adequately covered already at Peter Breggin. --MelanieN (talk) 01:36, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Limited search returns two book reviews. I'm sure there are more if one wants to dedicate time to finding them. I've never heard of the Nursing Leadership Forum journal and I don't know if it's peer reviewed. I'd expect a trawl through the newspaper archives would return more again.
 * Journal of Psychiatry and Law (2009)
 * Nursing Leadership Forum (1998)
 * FiachraByrne (talk) 02:21, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Here's the trawl through the newspaper archives: I don't find any substantial coverage about the book; do you? --MelanieN (talk) 02:51, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Not what I was referring to; I meant a proper newspaper database like Nexis. 03:29, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * A couple more reviews/articles with substantial coverage:
 * Moncrieff, Joanna, 'Understanding Psychotropic Drug Action: The Contribution of the Brain-Disabling Theory', Ethical Human Psychology & Psychiatry Fall 2007, Vol. 9 Issue 3, p170-179. 10p - I think Breggin established that journal
 * Baldwin, Steve, 'Review: Brain-disabling treatments in psychiatry (Book)' Critical Public Health. Jun98, Vol. 8 Issue 2, p176. 8/9p.
 * Whitaker, Leighton C., 'Review:Peter R. Breggin, Ed. (2008). Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock, and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex, 2nd Edition', Journal of College Student Psychotherapy. Oct-Dec2009, Vol. 23 Issue 4, p302-307. 6p. DOI: 10.1080/87568220903167307 - now there's a stellar publication.
 * FiachraByrne (talk) 03:58, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Scopus returns 95 cites for the 2008 version of the book. Mixed range of sources and many of the usual suspects but sufficient for a book article all in all. Question would be, who's going to write it? FiachraByrne (talk) 04:18, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This article that is nominated for deletion does not cite sources about the book but inappropriately uses sources to back up a theory, so there is little content if any that could be merged into an article about Breggin's book.-- MrADHD  |  T@1k?  02:36, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If one was arsed, and in truth I'm not, that wouldn't be difficult to fix. FiachraByrne (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Rewrite as an article about the book. Personally, I think it could still be merged to the article on the author, but that could better be discussed after we see what the article on the book looks like. This article is not about the harm that might be done by psychotherapeutic agents, but rather about a particular person's hypothesis about it. that does not make for a serpatate article.  DGG ( talk ) 06:11, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If rewriting for a different topic is being proposed, deleting and replacing with a stub would be the best choice? IRWolfie- (talk) 21:32, 8 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep but retitle (indicating that this is about a book), per Doc James. Mr T  (Talk?)  [ (New thread?) ] 14:32, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Reading the comments subsequent to my endorsement of a page about the book, I want to update (yet again) what I had said earlier. I think that keeping should only take the form of stub-ifying the page (indeed, there is no reason to keep all the poorly-sourced content about drug classes), and moving it to a new page name. In effect, we would be restarting from scratch anyway, and it ends up coming down to a question of whether there is any harm in keeping the edit history (I think not). I take the point that there are two sides to the argument about whether the book satisfies WP:NBOOK, but I think that editors in this discussion have made enough of a case for the notability of Breggin's writings that we might as well presume passage of WP:GNG for purposes of the decision here. One can always take the book page to another AfD, but I think that needs to be a separate and later discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:30, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That's sorta bass-ackwards. None of the material here is of any use, so there is no point in retaining the history of the article. The book is a separate topic altogether, and there is little evidence that is is notable enough for a stand alone article. It can be covered in the article on the author. No point in creating a new article that will, at best, remain a stub or, probably, be deleted itself. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 00:49, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That could be, but I'm not yet persuaded that the book fails notability. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep(in some form) I think there is useful information here beyond the more common side effects of some medications. Though the mainstream medical community may consider this FRINGE, clearly much is being said about these ideas both positive and negative. I think it is WP:N and sources exist, as shown in the above comments. Currently the article is not balanced or neutral and probably contains OR. The fact that an article needs work is NOT a valid reason to delete per WP:DELETE. The guidelines WP:PROBLEM, WP:UGLY,and WP:NEGLECT advise that articles needing improvement and those not being edited currently should be kept if they contain valid information. WP has no deadline so the fact that no one has rushed off to start work is irrelevant to deletion. The fact that a SPA created it is also irrelevant in this case. It was not written as a promotional item and does not violate WP:NOT.
 * What I consider  MOST IMPORTANT is the title for this information. As a reader, I would want to find information that shows me the ideas that are against the age old accepted practices of treatment and any information that may show developing thoughts about long term effects of current accepted practices. I want to be able to find this even if I have never heard of this guy or his book. I am strongly against this becoming a book article. We need to remember who our writing is to benefit: this is the general public. Most editors in this discussion seem to be very well informed about these topics, but the average reader is not. Because of this, I think the article should be renamed or at least merged with another article on a similar topic. Probing Mind (talk) 00:57, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * If it isn't going to become a page about the book, I'd prefer fully deleting it. No reason why we can't have content about contrarian views, but this material is the wrong way to do it, so better to start that from scratch. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Perhaps I may summarize the above discussion: this article is not suited for WP and so flawed that to make anything out of it, one would have to start from scratch. In that case, it would need a different title, too. However, there exists a book which may or may not be notable that has a similar title, so we could re-write this to be about the book and then if necessary take that to AfD. Note that this would mean that this article will become an article about a totally different subject (the book instead of the phenomenon). If this summary is about correct, I think that the simplest way to deal with this is to delete the current article. If anybody feels the need to create an article about the book, or about the phenomenon (but with better sources and a better title), then nothing would hold them back to create these other articles. --Randykitty (talk) 13:39, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I pretty much agree. The article is not about the book but about the theory. If this article is kept, it should be stubified into a paragraph as there is little content worth saving and no content is about the book so I don't see how the 'move' to article about the book idea is going to work. If someone wants to create an article about the book rather than the theory that is a whole different project/task altogether.-- MrADHD  |  T@1k?  15:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Is it? If the book is where the theory is chiefly described and what is cited by critics as a point of reference, then I disagree, but I'm ignorant here. Best. Biosthmors (talk) 17:07, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This entry is NOT A SUMMARY of this discussion. I respect your opinion and your right to express it. You are summarizing part of the comments above, presumably the ones you support. There are several other opinions not covered in your "summary" and to call it such is totally misleading. Sorry if I am too harsh in marking this point. Best Wishes Probing Mind (talk) 18:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * RandyKitty, that's a very entertaining parody of this discussion, but please let me try to apply a little deconstruction to it. Let's say we stubify the page, thereby removing all of the unencyclopedic content, and title it to be about the book. Here, I'll make a first draft right here: "Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry is a book by Peter Breggin, in which he argues for the anti-psychiatric view that many mainstream treatments for mental illness are harmful." True, it's a very stubby stub. We've had a couple of editors in this AfD discussion claim that Breggin is widely published etc., so they potentially could expand it to a paragraph or two. All of the issues about sourcing, POV, and FRINGE that are raised in the deletion nomination go away. What we are left with is a short page about a book, and differing opinions, not a consensus one way or the other, about whether or not the book is notable. We aren't going to settle the notability of the book in this discussion. So, at bottom, what's the problem? That a page about the book might be short? That in the future someone might question its notability? That there would be some edit history? That, alternatively, someone could have started the book page from scratch? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:44, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The point is that we are discussing here keeping a page and then replacing its text with an article about a completely different subject... That's rather unusual, wouldn't you say? --Randykitty (talk) 23:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * True, but I'm reminded about the cliché about not wanting to see how sausage is made. You are right that the process is a mess, but I'm arguing that the end result is a reasonable one. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd go for "stubification" with text such as Tryptofish suggests above. FiachraByrne (talk) 12:37, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Delete - as per nominator. Clear POV/Fringe problems. In fact the entry for Peter Breggin (the source for this 'theory') lacks the secondary sources to even make him notable. -- phazakerley  (talk) 12:10, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.