"The stereotype everyone has of this disease is that there's no such thing as recovery," said Washington psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, "The fact is that recovery is more common than people have been led to believe. . . . But I don't think any of us know for sure how many people recover."
The above quote from the article, Beautiful-but Not Rare-Recovery at Healthy Place is not the typical authoritative statement citing data (not accurately either) followed with a discriminatory push for the forced drugging of those diagnosed with schizophrenia; E. Fuller Torrey is usually making. I wonder if he sees no connection to his published articles and television interviews as a supposed "authority" on schizophrenia which are typically biased and discriminatory. He claims to be an "advocate" yet his spreading of false information and discriminatory agenda, belies this claim. He runs TAC and uses distorted information and outright lies to justify the necessity of forcefully treating those who are in distress. It seems unlikely that his efforts through TAC and NAMI as an advisor/consultant, have not contributed to the general public's flawed perceptions and belief in the "no such thing as recovery" stereotype.
Torrey says, "Recovery is more common than people have been led to believe." I think it is more than a little unfortunate that the same man who stated this truth, is also one of the people who has purposely led people to believe otherwise.
Here is an example of how E. Fuller Torrey spreads his misinformation from stigmanet.org
! DR. TORREY DOUBLES HIS BOGUS HOMICIDE ESTIMATE !
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey's obsession with homicide figures dates back to the 1990s when the media were quick to accept his unsubstantiated estimate that "1,000 homicides are committed annually" by an unmedicated group of people with schizophrenia or bipolar illness. Last week, in a startling claim in an ABC News feature, Torrey raised the estimate to 1,690 annually-- that would be 36 per week every week committed by an extremely small group of individuals.
Dr. Torrey's new 'discovery' about homicides is clearly as bogus as his previous guesstimates. The new number (10% of all homicides!) doubles his earlier estimate (5%), a figure based on six clippings from the Washington Post and some deceptive tinkering with research done by others. (Note: authors of the studies have confirmed that their work does not support Torrey's conclusions.)
Torrey's source of the 10% figure, which he projects to 1,690 homicides annually, seems even more shakey. Oddly, Torrey's website file of "Preventable Tragedies" showed only 179 homicides during the peak year of 2003.
It is alarming that the most visible, articulate, and engaging psychiatrist in the business has successfully promoted facts and figures tailored to suit his narrow agenda of coerced medication. Continuous repeated references to violence by the Treatment Advocacy Center can't fail to affect public attitudes. And this is after all the Torrey/Jaffe team's goal
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