There Are No “Chemical Imbalances”: Exposing the Profit Motive Behind Psychiatry and the Myth of the “Chemical Imbalance” Theory

  • 2026/03/17 02:54


From back cover:

“…biopsychiatric theory and research resulted in a tidal wave of sales for the makers of Thorazine®, the first neuroleptic drug (meaning lobotomizing or brain-disabling drug – modern biopsychiatrists prefer to call this class of drug “antipsychotic”) and the increasing number of drugs like it. These companies, in turn, funded such research, for money invested in biopsychiatry was virtually guaranteed to result in ever-growing sales of psychiatric drugs. Drugs for depression, mania, and other “mental illnesses” followed; each made a fortune for the company marketing it; and those companies funded further research in biopsychiatry. This unholy alliance between corporations and scientists continues to the present day, giving us drugs for everything from nervousness to PMS to kids that are difficult to manage. No other medical specialty is underwritten by the drug industry to a degree even vaguely approaching that of psychiatry. And with each new drug brought to market for some condition, the list of types of consciousness that are deprecated as “mental illness” grows.

…The hypothetical disturbances of neurochemical function that are said to underlie “mental illness” are just that: hypothetical. No experiment has ever shown that anyone has an “imbalance” of any neurotransmitters or any other brain chemicals. Nor could any conceivable experiment demonstrate the existence of a “chemical imbalance,” simply because no one, least of all the biopsychiatrists, has the slightest idea what a proper and healthy chemical “balance” would look like.”

There Are No Chemical Imbalances_ Exposing the Profit Motive Behind Psychiatry and the Myth of the “Chemical Imbalance” Theory pdf

Without Informed Consent: The Global Export of a Failed Paradigm of Care

  • 2026/03/12 02:09


From back cover:

“The discourse around health as a human rights issue usually focuses on access to medical treatment. However, the “right to health” begins with the right to informed consent about the merits of a treatment, which has been lacking as a US-constructed “disease” model of psychiatric care has been exported around the globe. The narrative that supported the adoption of the disease model told of how major psychiatric disorders were due to chemical imbalances in the brain, which could be treated by a second generation of psychiatric drugs that fixed those imbalances, much like “insulin for diabetes.” Randomized clinical trials had proven that antidepressants, antipsychotics, and other psychiatric drugs were safe and effective. However, missing from this narrative of medical progress were three key facts: that investigations failed to validate the chemical-imbalance theory of mental disorders; that studies of long-term outcomes regularly failed to show a benefit for the medicated patients; and that this model of care has led to poor public health outcomes in the United States and other developed countries. The principle of informed consent in medicine can be expanded to include the obligation of a medical specialty to be a reliable narrator of its own research, which provides a framework for understanding the violation of human rights that occurred with the exporting of a disease model of care to a global population.”

Without Informed Consent_The Global Export of a Failed Paradigm of Care pdf

Unoffensive Animal Interview With Sindre, Locked up Indefinitely For Actions Against A Mink Farmer Support Zine

  • 2024/07/10 16:21

From back cover:

Sindre is a vegan, animal rights activist, 21 years old, from so-called Sweden. Sindre is a kind and respected comrade in the animal rights community, who has fought against animal abusers in various ways.

In October 2023, Sindre was sentenced to forensic psychiatric forced care. The verdict refers to prosecution for actions in 2021, against the former fur farmer Niklas Pettersson. Sindre denies the alleged crime. Sindre was also sentenced to pay SEK 10,000 in damages to Niklas. The sentence was appealed, but later in 2023 The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict. If Sindre had not been sentenced to forensic psychiatric care, his prison sentence would have been only four months.

Sindre was detained immediately after the trial, on the ninth of October, and has since been imprisoned without an end date. A horrible sentence!

Support Sindre! Help him endure behind bars, let him know he’s not alone. Send letters to the following address:

Sindre Annasson Persson
Rudolf Jonassons väg 25B
24136 Eslöv
Sweden

This info is always updated on: https://unoffensiveanimal.is/prisoner-support/
solidarity!

Sindre_Vegan_Support_Zine pdf

3 Positions Against Prison

  • 2017/09/13 08:58

Text from back cover:

“One and a half centuries ago, slavery was abolished by the United States government. This followed an enormous social struggle over abolition–wars were fought between pro-slavery elements and abolitionist elements. There were slave revolts and armed uprisings. The government intervened. And the Thirteenth Amendment ever-so-neatly includes a loophole allowing for the enslavement of prisoners (“except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”). Moreover, the economic system of chattel slavery was replaced with indentured servitude and industrial wage labor–which the Northern capitalists were struggling to proliferate. So today, we have slavery, although slavery has been abolished. The structures of society that required slaves have remained intact. And in one hundred years, prisons may be abolished, but we will still have prisons as long as capitalism remains intact.”

3 Positions Against Prison pdf

Against Prisons, Politics, Society

  • 2017/09/13 08:51

Text from the zine:

“There appears to be a trend in radical circles of distinguishing prisoners based on their so-called ‘crimes’, with the intent (conscious or not) to identify ‘political prisoners’ who, by virtue of their actions, are more deserving of support and solidarity. Prisoners who have been targeted by the state due to their political beliefs and/or actions are given special attention amongst radicals, while the rest of the prison population spending their days in a cage are often only an afterthought, used as a means to lend credibility to political ideology, or completely forgotten.

“This privileged and moralistic practice has invaded radical circles and creates a distinction between ‘political’ and ‘ordinary’ prisoner. Political prisoners are said to have been imprisoned unjustly, unlike the rest of the prison population. This can manifest either as an insistence of their innocence (as in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal), or, in cases in which the prisoner has obviously broken the law, they are viewed as acting only in response to unjust laws or conditions (as in the case of Walter Bond). In both cases, their innocence is maintained.”

Against Prison Politics Society pdf

Attacking Prisons At Their Point of Production: A Brief Look at Militant Actions Against the Prison Industrial Complex

  • 2017/09/13 08:43

Attacking-Prisons-Point of Production pdf

Celling Black Bodies: Black Women in the Global Prison Industrial Complex

  • 2017/09/13 07:24


“Since the early 1990s, increases in the prison population in England and Wales have sparked a boom in prison construction, leading commentators to comment on ‘the largest prison building program since the middle of the 19th century’ (Morgan, 1999: 110). While women make up a small proportion of those incarcerated, their rates of imprisonment have multiplied faster than men’s, causing feminist activists to call for drastic measures to counter ‘the crisis in women’s prisons’. 4 Between 1985 and 1998, for example, the number of women in prison more than doubled, from 1,532 to 3,260 (Prison Reform Trust, 2000). The prison service has responded by contracting with private corporations to built and operate new prisons, and by rerolling men’s prisons for women. Recent government initiatives designed to slow the increase in the use of incarceration, such as Home Detention Curfews, have had little impact on the number of women sentenced to prison which continued to grow during the year to 2001 by 9%, compared to 2% for men.”

celling black bodies pdf

Locked Up

  • 2017/09/13 07:22

Text from back cover:

“Prison is the most direct, brutal expression of power, and like power it must be destroyed, it cannot be abolished progressively. Anyone who thinks they can improve it now in order to destroy it in the future will forever be a captive of it. The revolutionary project of anarchists is to struggle along with the exploited and push them to rebel against all abuse and repression, so also against prison. What moves them is the desire for a better world, a better life with dignity and ethic, where economy and politics have been destroyed. There can be no place for prison in that world.”

locked up pdf

Survival in Solitary: A manual written by & for people living in control units

  • 2017/09/13 06:49

Text from back cover:

“The federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, went on permanent lock down in 1983. This created the first “control unit”. Now, in addition to the federal government, some forty states have built these “maxi-maxi” prisons — representations of the angry and cruel repression that grips our country today. Human beings are put alone in a small cell with double steel doors and no window for 23 hours a day. No program, no work, no education, meals alone, and maybe one hour by oneself in a bare dog-run outside. A religious task force calls such conditions psychological pain and agony tantamount to torture. It is torture. Here, now, in the following pages, people who are captives in these cells write about what goes on and how you can survive…”

Survival In Solitary pdf

Writing to Prisoners FAQ

  • 2017/09/13 06:48

An informational guide to writing and supporting prisoners.

writing_to_prisoners_FAQ pdf