Documentary
Denmark 2026
Language: English
Director: Janus Bang
Is psychiatry an illusion? To answer this question, we need to look at what psychiatric leaders do; what they tell the public that their specialty can accomplish; if the patients agree with them; and what the science tells us.
Summary
Psychiatry affects us all. We all become mentally disturbed from time to time but when are our mental issues so serious that we need treatment? Are psychiatric disorders diseases in the traditional meaning, i.e. brain diseases, or are they predominantly reactions to untoward life circumstances?
Why have we seen an explosion in recent years in the number of patients with an ADHD diagnosis? Is it helpful to label so many people with this and other diagnoses?
What is the difference between being normal and having a psychiatric disorder? Is it only a matter of degree? And can healthy people become insane if they are stressed and get too little sleep, or if they take psychiatric drugs?
Are psychiatric drugs difficult to stop?
Are psychiatric diagnoses reliable? Do people suffer from a chemical imbalance, or do they get one when treated with psychiatric drugs?
Do antidepressants protect against suicide or do they cause suicide? Can psychiatric drugs prevent relapse of the disease? Are antipsychotics neuroprotective or do they cause brain damage?
Are electroshocks life-saving or do they take lives? Do they cause permanent memory problems?
Why do patients and the public often disagree with the psychiatrists about the benefits and harms of psychiatric drugs, electroshock, and forced admission to a psychiatric ward?
Should we do something else than what we are currently doing?
In this film, Peter C Gøtzsche examines if psychiatry’s key claims are reliable. He is a specialist in internal medicine and an expert in evaluating medical research, which owned him a professorship in Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen.
He has travelled around the world to interview psychiatrists, patients, lawyers and others about these issues.