An essay published in American Thinker argues that the country’s mental health system routinely pushes psychotropic medication on people at precisely the moment they are least equipped to evaluate it. The piece, written by Jamie Candler and dated September 15, 2026, is less a reported investigation than a pointed warning: research these drugs before you are in a position where you have to decide about them.
Candler’s central claim is about timing. By the time someone faces a decision about starting a psychiatric medication, she writes, they may not be in “the best frame of mind to digest the research or to make a reasoned decision.” That asymmetry — distress on one side, complicated risk information on the other — runs through the whole essay.
The prescription reflex
Psychotropic drugs are not only dispensed by psychiatrists, Candler notes. Primary care physicians prescribe them too, for insomnia and other complaints. She also points to a bureaucratic layer: everyone on Medicare, she writes, is asked to complete a mental health evaluation at their annual visit. Children, meanwhile, are increasingly subjected to mental health evaluations at doctor visits and in school.
Her framing of anxiety and depression is deliberately non-clinical. For most people, she writes, these conditions are experienced as the body “screaming” that it cannot do what is being asked of it. From there, she says, two reasonable paths exist — change the circumstances so the person can heal, or help the person learn to cope with the stress. Neither is what typically happens.
Instead, someone in acute psychological pain is most likely to be handed a brain-altering drug. And if they question it or refuse it, Candler writes, they are accused of not wanting to get better. She poses a series of rhetorical questions aimed at that moment: How many people are offered an alternative to a drug? How many are told about black box warnings or other severe side effects before they leave the doctor’s office? How many people overwhelmed by psychological pain are capable of making an informed decision — or of standing up against coercion to take the drug?
The argument about what the drugs do
Candler’s description of the drugs’ effects is blunt and, by her own admission, hard to convey. She characterizes them as disabling the brain to varying degrees. A person may appear to function, she writes, but for most there is what she calls a kind of autopilot — no free will as commonly understood, no rational deliberation, no weighing of multiple courses of action.
She invokes the phrase “medical spellbinding,” describing a state in which a person’s ability to articulate what is happening to them mentally is compromised, leaving them at the mercy of the drug’s effects. One of the “indescribably cruel” aspects, in her telling, is what happens when a patient does manage to report feeling worse: an arrogant doctor attributes it to the illness and raises the dose or adds another drug.
Her portrait of the best-case scenario is not especially rosy either. A very fortunate person, she writes, manages to function without seriously hurting themselves or anyone else — but that is not full immersion in life. There is a disconnect, a deadening, an invisible wall, viewing without deeply participating, going through the motions. She counts that as harm in itself, both to the person and to their loved ones, compounded by how difficult it is to wean off these medications.
The essay also flags populations she considers especially exposed: adults generally, pregnant women specifically, and children. Candler does not present original data or cite specific studies for these claims; the piece is advocacy, and it reads as such.
Where she points readers
For anyone who wants to go further, Candler names several resources rather than making a formal evidentiary case. She recommends Dr. Peter Breggin, who has written multiple books on psychiatry and psychotropic drugs and maintains a Substack, and Dr. Roger McFillin, who also writes a Substack and hosts a podcast. She also points to AbleChild, an organization she describes as helping parents who question what she calls the intrusiveness of schools regarding their children’s well-being, while working to alert the public to the dangers of psychotropic drugs.
Candler closes by stressing the importance of researching these drugs in order to help friends and loved ones as well as oneself — a note that ties back to her opening concern about decision-making under pressure. The essay ends with a nod to free expression, framing the ability to speak one’s mind as crucial to the republic, and with a fundraising appeal for the publication.
What the piece does not offer is the other side of the ledger. There is no discussion of evidence for psychiatric medication in treating serious conditions, no clinical voices defending current prescribing practices, and no acknowledgment that some patients report substantial benefit. It is a case for caution and skepticism, made from the perspective of someone convinced that the harms are being systematically downplayed.
Taken on its own terms, the argument has a narrow and practical core that is hard to dispute even outside its ideological frame: people in crisis are often asked to make consequential medical decisions quickly, with limited information, and with social pressure attached to compliance. Whether that adds up to the broader indictment Candler levels at psychiatry is a separate question — and one the essay largely leaves to the reader, and to the sources she recommends.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/mental-health-and-drugs/