A Conversation w/ Sami Timimi, M.D.: "Insane Medicine" 

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I've been trapped in the mental health system for years, in one of those treatment traps. I really believed there was something wrong with me, and never ever any of my psychiatrists and psychotherapists told me "there is nothing wrong with you, you're just distressed, what you're experiencing is normal, human and understandable". I've been out of the mental health system for 6 months now, it was so harmful for me, and even if I don't feel good yet, suffer and have a long recovery road ahead I think I'm starting to recover slowly. This man, Sami Timimi, has had a big impact in how I see myself, my emotional distress, internal experiences and those mental "health" services that are soooo medicalized and unhealthy. He has helped me so much, even if he doesn't know it. Thanks, Sami.

I work as a school psychologist in Canada. I am also a psychiatric drug survivor (horrendous withdrawal form Paxil). I am alarmed by the increasing number of kids who are being prescribed SSRIs nowadays! It is definitely more than even a gew years ago. Prescribers are typically GPs or pediatricians. Everyone wants the quick fix. Too bad, indeed, that we can't clone doctors like Sami. Thank you for an interesting interview 😊

I'm so happy to have found your work Sami Timimi. You talk sense in a crazy world! My sons school are trying to place a label on him and I stand firm!

Sami Timimi always makes so much sense. Thank you for having him as a guest.

The treatment trap. I coined the phrase the cycle of antidepressants a long time ago. I was in the cycle of antidepressants for 32 years up until 9 months ago. Was put on Sertraline for anxiety in 1991,two and half years later decided I didn't need to take the little white pill anymore.Within 6 months was back in the doctor's surgery worse than before treatment. Didn't like Sertraline,was put on Paroxetine,two and half years later decided I didn't need to take this pill anymore,6 months later was back in the doctor's surgery being prescribed Prozac and on and on it goes,one different antidepressant after another,unable to stay off for more than 6 months however hard I tried. The lack of proper mental health treatment and whole reliance on the pharmaceutical industry in the UK and around the world is a disgrace. Thanks to the work of this channel and all the people finally speaking up has enabled me the strength and courage to come off and stay off these drugs that never even worked that well,if at all,but because of protracted withdrawal caused by reliance on these drugs. Thanks for all the interviews and information.

Thank you all for your continued education and determination to bring benzo induced injuries to the forefront of medicine. I'm still tapering after a horrifying cold turkey. I'm So grateful for your team and videos you put out❤❤❤❤❤keep up the good work 👏👏👏

I am interested in Sami talking about the fact he had different cultural references and how coming from an Iraqi culture gave him more awareness about the "truth"or validity of one story. Having said this many of the psychiatrist who work on psych units in the Uk are actually from many other cultural backgrounds...Sudanese,Middle eastern,Indian and other various African countries and certainly not just white Anglo/European backgrounds and my expereince of them has not been that they are particularly questioning of our ideas of "normality" or what is "illness" and what is health or what behaviours might not be usual or belief systems etc. I have often questioned or did question whilst in hospital once why it was that many of the doctors I was surrounded by who came from different cultural backgrounds and as someone myself who had lived in some of those countries and knew how different their concepts of the world might be and I was still dumbfounded at how ready they were to go along with this biomedical model seemingly unquestioningly. One possible conclusion I came to was the fact that many of these doctors might feel like they are low status or are not ina position themselves to question this model and bring in some different notions and treatments non biomedically based. So it is interesting that Sami thought his cultural background helped him question the dogma but as he also said in the history of psychiatry the idea of being in nature or occupational therapy or taking part in expressive arts etc was provided,so even within white Anglo saxon culture different ideas about how to respond to those seen as crazy has changed over time and also included such notions as Jinn as mentioned by Sami,this jinn notion has not always been a positive thing as the idea of possession is not always seen as benign but can often lead to quite persecutery responses. So my question would be then why is it that os many of the psychaitrists that come from more doverse cultural backgrounds seem to blindly go along with the biomedical model.?

This was such an eye-opening interview, thank you so much for sharing! Will definitely read Insane Medicine. Greetings from the UK - very grateful for this channel/website.

Great interview with Sami as usual from Nichol.This so scary for this generation medicating our children with what I think are normal life's journey's,instead of listening to our children as parents about normal worries ,they the parents want their children diagnosed as having something wrong with their brains.

i'm sure many people will find this very useful - solid explanation on the glaring issues with psychiatric diagnosis. These psychiatric 'brands' are highly marketable, profitable and a boon for corporations. Brands are also easy to manualise for training and 'therapy' and it seems people just love to follow guidlines unthinkingly. Then there is the consumer, duped into drugging themselves and their children and forever self labelling and looking for therapy often for scraps from the table in the form of benefits or 'reasonable adjustments' from the disordered work place and disordered school system.

An outstanding presentation. Thank you. !

Wonderful interview.

Although this video is a year old I have just viewed it as I am half way through Insane Medicine, a book that I strongly recommend to those interested in understanding distress. I am 74, moderately educated, completely outside of medicine, and have never had any treatment for distress. I was immensly impressed by Sami's critique that is based on applying strict (aka correct) scientific rigour to a totally chaotic practice. Many years ago I was hugely influenced by James Randi for his scientific rigour, but as a socialist (oh dear), also by psychiatrist David Smail in UK who was then one of the few to challenge therapy and locate much of distress in the issues of everyday living (not say Freudian childhood nanny problems!!). David Smail was politely but adamantly opposed to the charlatans in most of therapy (as James Randi for the paranormal etc). So, Sami seems to be in their tradition, insitance on science and of viewing distress in at least a social and political framework. The half of a book I've read is brilliant. Sadly the video is not. It assumes more immediate understanding than most people have. More importantly except for a throw away comment on Royal College of Psychiatry it does not confront the vested interests, very, very vested of the 'professional' (as in professional foul/hitman etc) practitioners and academics actively promoting a big lie. In the book, but not in video, Sami is quite clear about both. Finally, I shall continue to read book which again, I think is excellent, and hope it also covers what I think is linked - gender ideology (so called critical theory) and the parallesl with Insane Medicine.

As a high school teacher, it's astonishing how many students are on some sort of medication. It appears that doctors are arbitrarily prescribing powerful medications for the most trivial behavior issue or "indication" of depression.

That So cruel, you go to specualist to get help, you pay and youre slowly beeing killed

Put playback speed at 1.5x and thank me later. This guy takes ages to get to a point.