Article in leading psychiatry journal stinks of corruption

Josef Witt-Doerring is a very rare psychiatrist. Why? Because he is honest. And he is very sharp, too, which is also unusual for psychiatrists. Most of them excel in circular evidence, and their textbooks are full of wishful thinking and erroneous statements. I met with Josef in Washington DC last summer when I lectured at the Capitol about suicides among US war veterans caused by antidepressants, which they - absurdly – are routinely prescribed for their war traumas even though they double suicides. Josef also lectured and he interviewed me after the meeting.

Josef is a superb interviewer and it was one of the best interviews I have ever contributed to. We addressed many subjects, including the disaster of drug focused psychiatry; that our drugs are the leading cause of death and that psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death; corruption of doctors, their organisations, medical journals, and the media; the moral and scientific collapse of the Cochrane Collaboration; that industry corruption of Cochrane authors is allowed; the disastrous Covid lockdowns; censorship; and Kennedy’s vaccine reforms, which I fully support (see my articles about this).

I have provided an overview of the interview, with links to relevant documentation, and a representative sample of viewer comments. They were overwhelmingly positive, particularly considering that we attacked holy cows where many people have strong, vested interests.

Josef’s tweet about an article that stinks

On 14 March, Josef tweeted (@DrJosefWD) about an article in JAMA Psychiatry that has a bad smell. If you follow your nose, which means follow the money, it is easy to see the corruption. Josef did the work for us and he writes:

One of the most powerful figures in American psychiatry just published a bombshell article in JAMA Psychiatry admitting antipsychotics cause depression, kill motivation, and damage quality of life. Here is why that is not the good news it sounds like.

The author is Dr. Steven Marder, former editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry and a professor at UCLA. These are elite credentials. When someone like this publishes in JAMA Psychiatry, people pay attention.

He says antipsychotics cause dopamine blockade that leads to dysphoria, withdrawal, loss of motivation, and diminished experience of reward. He says clinicians should not assume these symptoms are just the illness. The drug may be causing them.

All of this is true. All of this has been documented. None of it is new information. So why is it appearing in a major journal right now?

At the bottom of the article there is a conflict-of-interest disclosure. Dr. Marder is a paid consultant for Otsuka and Karuna, the companies behind a new antipsychotic called Cobenfy. He helped develop it.

Cobenfy works on muscarinic receptors instead of dopamine receptors. Fewer movement side effects. More GI and urinary effects. A genuinely different profile. And a price tag of $2,000 a month.

This is not psychiatry finding its conscience. This is a marketing strategy. Discredit the old drug class, prep the market, launch the new one.

And here is my prediction. Watch what happens to SSRIs the moment psychedelics or a new antidepressant with real marketing money behind it hits the market. The same playbook will run. Suddenly everyone will be very sober about how minimally effective antidepressants are for so many people.

The information was always there. The honesty only comes when there is money behind it. That is the system we have built.

My comments

Josef ends his tweet with a link to a video where he explains the issues.

A price tag of $2,000 a month for a new antipsychotic. Who would recommend such a drug at such an obscene cost? As of March 2026, the federal minimum wage in the United States remains $7.25 per hour, a rate unchanged since 2009. In Denmark, we have fewer working hours than in the US, only about 1,900 a year but this is enough for us to prosper. If we use this amount, a US worker on minimum salary would earn $1,148 a month. It is deplorable to pay workers a salary on which they cannot survive but this is how the USA is. A rich country with by far the biggest income inequality in the Western World.

So, who would recommend such a drug? Corrupt psychiatrists would and most leading US psychiatrists are corrupt. They collect more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty; those who take the most tend to prescribe psychosis drugs to children most often; and they are also “educated” with industry’s hospitality more often than any other specialty.

The result of the corruption is colossal overdiagnosis and overtreatment of mental health issues, which make psychiatric drugs the third leading cause of death, after cardiovascular diseases and cancer. In other words: The corruption of psychiatrists has led to a catastrophe of epic proportions. Yet, some psychiatrists claim that the problem is not overtreatment but undertreatment!

It is time for everyone to wake up and shout: Enough! Call for psychiatry to be abandoned as a medical specialty. Mental health issues are not medical diseases and they are best treated without drugs, which the United Nations and the World Health Organization have realised.