By Peter C Gøtzsche
Institute for Scientific Freedom
Copenhagen
Tuva Andersson was 37 years old when she committed suicide. Her mother wanted me to tell her story hoping it might prevent other tragic and unnecessary deaths.
Tuva suffered from anxiety, which should have been handled by psychosocial interventions. Instead, she was exposed to professional incompetence, gross medical negligence, malpractice, stigmatisation by a variety of fluffy, ever changing, and unspecific diagnoses, polypharmacy with psychiatric drugs, and forced treatment with a depot neuroleptic.
During the last year of Tuva’s life, her psychiatrists took away her hope of ever leaving psychiatry and becoming better, which is the worst thing a psychiatrist can do to a patient, as it increases the suicide risk dramatically.
During this time, Tuva was at very high risk of suicide; she had nothing to live for; and yet the psychiatrists’ only concern was to continue to write prescriptions for drugs that clearly harmed her. When Tuva had difficulty concentrating and focussing or had other issues, the psychiatrists consistently ascribed this to her psychiatric “illness,” not to their drugs, in contrast to some alert nurses.
Tuva so much wanted to come off her drugs but the psychiatrists ignored her. And she did not get the psychotherapy she requested repeatedly, which would likely have saved her life.
Read my 15-page summary of this gruesome story here.