Includes cost to the economy

In the 1990s I had a number of pen-pals who I had got in contact with through the NSF (the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, by the old name it was then called). Possibly one of these, or possibly it was someone who came on TV with his story, explained what had happened to him: he had developed schizophrenia (according to doctors) and had been treated with antischizophrenic drugs. His mental organisation had become totally disrupted: whereas before he had been (I think) a Civil Servant, or anyway in some position needing ability to think clearly, afterwards he was totally incompetent. He himself believed the mental disorganisation was due to the illness, and presumably those treating him did.
I must be about the only person treated with such drugs for schizophrenia (or as if for schizophrenia) who already knew a good deal about the illness. I knew from the start that my mental disorganisation was nothing to do with symptomatology of schizophrenia, and in fact I knew the truth, that it was due to the drugs. How it comes that no one else has understood this I find difficult to unravel. Those testing the drugs seemingly don’t measure the right things, in measuring the effects. They don’t measure the effect on ‘mental organisation’: for example (to harp on again) Armond said that antischizophrenic drugs do not affect intelligence, so I think testers of these drugs must test the effect on IQ and conclude that the drugs don’t affect mental capacity because they don’t have a measurable effect on IQ.
The effect they have (on mental organisation) is as I have said comparable to the effect of lobotomoy. I saw a TV programme about a man in the United States who had had a brain injury destroying part of his prefrontal cortex. Whereas before he had been a high-powered legal executive, afterwards he could only hold down a job as a petrol-pump attendant. This is what happened to me given these drugs: beforehand I was highly regarded as a trainee accountant (for example at Round Oak Steelworks, and for a while at Dudley Council) but afterwards I was what I would call totally incompetent.
It may be - and I hope it is - that someone sensible recently, because of events, has cottoned on to these allegations I make about the effects of antischizophrenic drugs. If they have cottoned on and find a way of testing the truth of what I say (which, if I have been adequately observed, will already be well on the way to being done for my own case) they will discover it is true, and that giving these drugs incautiously results not only in horror for the treated individuals (which they naturally blame on their illness) but deprives the economy of useful workers.