Again, a commenter last night popped onto the blog to tell me how psychiatric medications “do more harm than good” and how “I [the commenter] know for a fact that these meds no not work.”
Sigh.
I’m not sure how so many people confuse “fact” with “opinion.” It is the opinion of some people that psychiatric medications don’t work. It is the opinion of some people that psychiatric medications do more harm than good.
I am not of that opinion. And I actually have facts on my side.
Psychiatric Medications Work
I won’t rehash study after study or talk about how the effectiveness of medications is measured or mention that psychiatric medications fall right into the normative values of effectiveness for internal medicine medications. (If you want to know more, read: Efficacy of Psych Drugs: Do Antidepressants Work?)
No, I won’t bother.
I also won’t bother tell you about how depressed people who take antidepressants do better overall or how antidepressants have actually been shown to reverse the damage that depression causes in the brain.
No, I won’t go into that either. What I will simply say is that there have been countless studies, articles and meta-analyses on the effectiveness of psychiatric medication. We know that psychiatric medication may not be the best choice in some populations (like those with minor depression) but this is a far cry from evidence suggesting medication doesn’t work.
What Makes My Bipolar Better?
I spend lots of time writing about non-drug treatments for bipolar disorder and assorted issues. I talk about how to manage sleep and therapy treatments and alternative treatments and neurostimulation treatments. I do this because people want to know about these things and because some of these things are viable and do have research behind them.
But I can tell you, without a doubt, that in the 14 years I have been battling bipolar disorder, only one thing has improved my condition: medication. Not every medication (far from it), not every medication cocktail (again, not even close) but medication has been the only thing capable of turning me around. Period.
So Psychiatric Medications Always Work?
No, of course I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that psychiatric medications work in all situations or even that psychiatric medications are always the right choice. There are many factors to consider before making a choice like that and everyone is different.
All I’m saying is that all these people that say that “psychiatric medications don’t work” are wrong. In fact, I would go so far as to say that 99% of people for whom medication is an appropriate choice can be helped with medication of some sort. It can take a long time to find that medication. It can take years. But it’s out there.
Now, one could say this is only my opinion, and it is, but my opinion is actually based on scientific facts rather than, well, whatever it is that other people base their opinion on.
So the next time someone tells you that “psychiatric medications don’t work” I recommend that you remind them that their statement is just an opinion and a highly suspect and unsupported one at that.
My therapist feels that antidepressants dont actually work for bipolar depression. I took them for a long time and they didnt work for me. I’m a difficult case though because I’m very sensitive to meds and side effects. I honestly wish I could find a good combo of meds that actually work for me because it’s a constant struggle to get by.
Hey Natasha. It’s Laura. I read your article about how people shouldn’t say medications don’t work because science says that medications will eventually work. My only question is – what science? The studies done by drug companies? I really would have liked my medications to work but they didn’t. I tried Ambilify, Risperdal, Depakote, Xyprexa, Zoloft, Lithium and Seroquel. Am I wrong for not believing I am a canidate for medications? Your reply is much appreciated thanks.
The drugs don’t work, and your commentary is both dangerous and ought to be illegal.
Should have said psych “meds” – darn spell check.
Thank you. So many people would have much better life experiences if they would use psych mess properly. If the anti-psych med people had diabetes would they say that insulin doesn’t work? My guess is… We’ll just leave that one alone. Psych mess work well when used consistently as prescribed. Period.
Betsy.
One of psych meds gave me diabetes even after asking the doctor and getting the “its very rare response” Well, I hit the diabetes lotto. Now what. Another med for diabetes which will effect something else. I know people on 6 and 7 different types of meds and get sicker and sicker. Most of the meds werent designed for bipolar disorder but are prescribed off label. Seems to me that is not right. Would you take heart medicine for psoriasis? Why should I be subject to taking anti psychotics when I was never anti psychotic? So, Since I went on meds I now have kidney, liver, heart and diabetes issues. I was healthy before the meds. What do you say to people like me. And one of the meds is almost impossible to tit rate off of.I didnt know back when I was given it that it was for seizures and I s a benzo. I never had one. I am royally screwed // Wouldn’t you agree?. Am I the anomaly ? I dont think so. Plus we all know that the literature talks about higher rates of dementia and alzheimers for people who are on so many meds for BP and other mental disorders. I am 61 and cant even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday and what I did for most of the day. We are on a very slippery slope.. How does a very intelligent person use psych meds properly?
They DO work, if they are the right ones for your distinct brain. If they aren’t working, you’re on the wrong ones. Heaps of scientific evidence is out there. Doctors would NOT give them to people if there was no chance of them working. Some people believe the “Big Pharm” conspiracy theory, unfortunately, but of course all psychiatrists could not be on the take. For some unfortunate people, it takes a very long time to find the right medication for them, and some give up because it can be so very frustrating. Some listen to “gurus” who tell them they can “cure” their illness with herbs. Some people’s symptoms make them think the doctors are out to harm them. It all comes down to education, as well as educating oneself.
I think there are lots of people out there now with conflated opinions over things they know nothing about. They may take an experience or a small piece of anecdotal evidence and make it “truth” for everybody. For me with my illness medication has made a huge difference and I would not consider coming off it. People need to be very careful about woolgathering and inaccurate information based on a lack of true knowledge. There are people that love to set themselves up as experts after a small encounter with psychiatry or something they have read because they may be adverse to big pharma. Until there are better solutions medications are all that we have. Do not set yourself up as somebody who knows all based on limited information and disinformation. Consider where you get your “facts” from and be wiling to dialogue with people who know something more about the subject. Thanks Natasha for your site. We need solid evidenced based information
For me the choice is simple. I lost everything that I cared about when I was undiagnosed and unmedicated. I’ve regained just about everything I cared about with meds and therapy. I hate the side effects of the meds as much as anyone does, but I hate the side effects of no meds, losing everything again, far more.
Great post!
For most of us meds works. But they have bad side affects, that is if you fall within that realm , like i do, i cannot take meds in any shape or form, my immune goes on the wild side when i take them, and before you ask i have tryed just about anything that comes on the market, that is until my body went nope so i went into shock, so meds do not work for some ppl, to say that they do is very stupid , you dont know what goes on in other ppl lives. and to be total honest i have had enough of ppl telling me to try this and try that,. even tho they know my history, if i was to take another med i would more than likely die from it, so with that in mind i work thru my bi-p 1 and it isnt easy at all, i dont sleep , i sleep when i get tried , and that is sometimes around the 20 to 38 hour mark of being awake, i might sleep 10 hours and up for 28 or 30, and that is with taking something to help me sleep, i have lived with this since the age of about 7, i am now 53, My life works for me this way, the ppl around me know this, i work around the docs, i eat healthy , i dont smoke or drink, when things are really tuff i go to someone to talk, and talk it thru, without MEDS …………. I have been reading this site for ages and have never bothered to say anything, i have just watched alot of you struggle thru life, with or with meds, and its hard, because you always have the ppl saying go for meds they worked for me,,, I am totaly sick of earing it, if i wanted to go left i would, stop telling me, stop saying it works for everyone, when in truth it doesnt, we are all different and we are not made the same…….
I am so glad you spokebup,bi too cannot taje neds I have tried all of them. My body freaks out and I hsve to be hospitalized so I am med free, I talk about it, I have bad days but I am determined to live my bp 1 life drug free and I am glad drugs are working for others bit not for me. Exercise and talking and changing life styke
All psych meds have black box warnings for a reason I’ll just leave it at that
These facts you state are based on fda trial studies that are paid for by pharma and 29/31 are discarded. Read Bad Pharma by Dr Ben Goldacre if you want to know why these studies aren’t reliable.
I was a lucky one when was diagnosed. I got the right cocktail of meds; anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, mood stabilizer and Lexotan. They worked perfectly. The problem was weight gain, long term side effects, numbness and Permanent damage to some organs. I recommend taking the meds and see what is needed to adjust, like Natasha said. But depending on how serious are your symptoms you might ask your psychiatrist if you can take them for a period of time until you are stable and then evaluate the possibility of lowering down the doses or even stop taking them gradually under supervision.
Lexapro seems to have helped me greatly with little and some times no side effects. I have tried so many different meds and med combos that didn’t work but never gave up and finally found that lexapro taken with a mood stabilizer and with buspar, I manage pretty well. Everyone is different. I fully believe meds work. I can definitely tell you when my bipolar dad has been off his meds no doubt about it. He is a totally different person without them.
Psych meds never ever worked for me ever since I was put meds at the age of ten for bipolar and schizophrenia I’ve been on over 20 different meds with gods only knows how many different combinations till I went cold turkey in 2008 eventhough I still had mood swings and heard voices but then once again the voices changed on me in 2011 they were constant 24/7 he’ll bent on making suffer for the rest of my life had a series of mental breakdowns in 2012 that lead to hospitalizations got put Paxil then Thorazine then Resperdal then invega susteena then geodon nothing really worked I wold hear one set of voices and not the others or they’d be turned down but at the same time I’d start to see things more often feel things like bugs crawling on me something touching me I’d also start smelling things no one else could like smoke or flowers ect and taste things I shouldn’t like blood oh and I listening to music stopped working as far as silencing the voices plus the meds were making feel more depressed sucidial even then there was sexual side effects muscle spasms prehypertension elavated heart rate severe weight gain no kidding there I nearly weighed 300 pounds from 2012 when I was at 195pounds the meds were killing me literally I’ve gone cold turkey about 6 weeks ago down to 260 pounds bp down 20points lowered heart rate all without changing my diet or exercise routine still hear voices see things feel things touching me still tasting and smell stuff I shouldn’t and still go through mood changes but I the thing is I have the discipline to live with it
Meds don’t work on me really at all.. i have been on a few different ones..welbutrin, silexa, busbar, seraquil, latuda, geodon, abilify to name some, .. i have been diagnosed with deppression, personality disotder, and told my dr about..hearing voices, feeling presences that are not there.. i have been swiched around on meds since 2004.. and nothing seems to realy work.. the only med that seems to do anything.. and its random if it does is trazadone that i take as a prn sleep aid.. and all it does is help me with sleeping when im having issues.. i feel kind of bad cause nothing works for me.. i feel sometimes that the drs. i have had think i am lieing to them about my symptoms since nothing seems to work.. i am not saying meds dont work.. but i am saying that i believe that meds just dont work for some people.. and some ppl they do work.. unfortunately that means for the ones that meds don’t work on have to figure out a way to cope with their minds that isnt destructive in any way… i wanted the meds to work.. really i did.. but they didnt..
I’m on antidepressants, antianxiety meds in addition to the 600mg of seroquel I was on for a year. I had never been on a dose so high and had been taking it to try to control mood swings and anxiety that became crippling to the point of agoraphobia. I had been on it before a couple times in my long career as “mentally ill” and a working person. Could not take any more of it, quit cold turkey, has been a week, and a couple of days, seen my shrink and he is amazed. He knew about the cold turkey, got a message. Not one single anxiety attack since stopping, no crazy shit to write home about. Still on wellbutrin, clonazepam, prozac, topomax, keeping it that way as peace settles in finally. I took a walk to the corner coffee shop by myself on the weekend and stayed with computer a while. I touched all the plants on the way there! I caught myself smiling in the coffee shop to myself.
Dx Bipolar II, GAD, PTSD See? Not everybody loses it right away after stopping “atypical antipsychotic” aka poison.
I can’t add any scientifically proven evidence – just personal experience.
My wife was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder 20 years ago. Since then she has come off her anti-psychotic meds twice.
In both instances 3 days later she was admitted to hospital in a very bad psychotic condition.
Thats all the “facts” we need to believe that psychiatric medications do in fact work and work well.
Thanks for posting this Natasha and I hope it encourages more people to look at their meds in a more positive way
So she quit cold turkey and had a withdrawal.
Not really a proof about these meds working. You could claim heroin “works” by the same logic.
they dont work for me all it does is turn me into an evil monster.
im gonna get on the edge here and say adam’s long post had a lot of insight. i will, however, completely differ from his docial story about the reasons, the conspiracy i propose stupidity in place of evil. the fsult is western frsming of mind body, of looking for magic bullets, looking for something out of rsnge and intervening to “get it back to notmsl.” his critique re neurotransmitters is true and if one thinks from traditional chinese medical theory, it shows how primative is our “modern” theory of holistic systems, how primative our intervention. a nusnced intervention dies not merely look at outcomes (too much dopa/sertonin) but at the metabolic paths responsible. this involves precursors but also neurohormones and hormones and systems western theory see as unconnected. this is the heritige of Reductionism. the “pseudo-random walk Beysian methodology” for complex systems is still a novelty in neurophysiology, on the othet hand, it has over 3000 years of pragmatic investigation in a system our scientists will only consider in relation to “anesthesia suplementation.” again, i dont see evil in that dismissal, just stubborn ignorance!
Prescription drugs do work, but it’s the long term issues that need to be called into question. I had a friend who was bipolar, she was on Lithium for 25 years, she had advanced liver and kidney disease at the age of 43 and died at 52 from renal failure. A neighbor of mine was on lithium for years and she died at 63 from liver disease. A business associate of mine had a sister who died of liver disease at the age of 61 from liver disease. She had been on lithium for many years, too. That’s the problem: prescription drugs do what they claim to do but with consequences.
So how long do we have to live, anyway? I’d rather be sane for the years I have than live many more years and spend most of them in a psych ward.
I totally agree!
Meds not only saved my life. They gave me quality of life. So clearly ‘the commentator’ can’t differentiate between face and opinion. Too many claim they don’t work when actually the problem may be the RIGHT meds have not been considered. Meds may not help with every single factor associated with mental illness but it helps with most and especially the major factors like not being able to get out of bed due to the crushing depressive cloud hanging over you So commentator get your FACTS straight.
I really get suspicious when someone begins a sentence with “I am bipolar BUT…” and proceed to go on some very long antipsychiatry…um, opinion. And it’s usually followed by a couple of “way to go! someone speaketh the truth” responses. I am especially leery when they profess to find the ultimate solution, like eating right, exercising, meditating, facing some abuser, etc., etc. In my case, I started on the opposite side of the spectrum. I found myself struggling with depression for years, followed by “epiphanies” and some really great phases in life, only to sink down again. I was in denial, even when my professor called to meet with me personally to tell me that he thought I seemed depressed. I tried many forms of therapy, including hypnosis, where I “regressed” back to my childhood in search for some causal root in my past that didn’t amount to much except a few speculations. I exercised, meditated, ate really well, did yoga almost every day – in short, I tried just about everything – just to avoid taking pharmaceuticals. However, after experiencing a really bad mixed episode, the only thing that could get me back on track was a mood stabilizer and antipsychotics. Otherwise, I might’ve gotten stuck in that horrible sound and fury for quite some time. Also helpful is to finally have the right diagnosis, and to approach healing from that vantage point, even though I hate it, and think it sucks. My point is this: if you are truly respectful, you wouldn’t need to post your dogma so fiercely. Not sure what said purpose is, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it has more to do with you than anything else. And I truly understand your arguments – I get it, big pharma is manipulating us for huge profits, there are gaps in our current knowledge about the brain/mind. Hell, we are still debating about nature vs. nuture. But from my experience, I think medication was helpful for me, and I especially think it is a godsend for those for whom it is truly a life or death choice. We are all fighting the good fight. We are all trying to make our way through this muck called life. Some of us are luckier than others to be well equipped to deal with life in the mainstream. However you look at it, it is hard to say what is the absolute truth in this case.
I’m so late reading this, but I have to comment. I believe that your comments on this issue are so important and so, so good. I have a brain chemical imbalance, unfortuately most often called mental illness. It is a disease of my body. It is a disease like cancer, lupus and the like. If I didn’t take the appropriate medicine, I would be very, very ill again. Certainly whan I feel better, I am in a remission, similiar to remission from a type of cancer. However, my medicine keeps me alive. Yes, drug companies profit…but from all illnesses. I shutter to see so many believe that taking our medicine believe all of it will make us addicts. Yes, it is hard to stop some medication for our brain chemical imbalances but not because we have become addicts. People who have chemotherapy are not addicts, just like those of us who take antidepresants or bipolar medication are not addicts. Good doctors prescribe them so we can feel better. Thank you for this topic. The thing that is wrong is the cost. The bipolar med. that keeps me going costs six hundred plus dollars a month. That is inexcusable.
Hi you are obviously making money off your ridiculous claim that medication helps anyone, and none of us take your position seriously because it is so farsical.
You are obviously completely brainwashed by big pharma, and you should seriously consider further education into what that poison you call medicine is actually proven as doing rather than regurgating fairy tales about chemical imbalances that has never been experimentally verified.
HatePaidLiars, what the hell is wrong with YOU? Your OPINION is worth exactly nothing, and both disregards and insults those of us (and there are a few just on this thread) who know for a fact we would be DEAD or INSTITUTIONALIZED if not for our medication. How do we know this? Because at one time or another we’ve been off of them, either due to financial issues or just deciding, “Hey, maybe all these anti-psych people are right,” and going off them… with terrible results.
Unless you’ve experienced any of these things, you’re unqualified to comment.
You’re just talking through your tin foil hat. “Big Pharma” and their products are keeping all sorts of people alive who’d have been dead if not for all their research and invention of things like chemotherapy drugs, statins, corticosteroids, antibiotics, antivirals and thousands of other medications that treat conditions that were fatal as recently as 30 years ago.
Please try to moderate your opinions and be respectful of others opinions whether you agree or not. Your messages are getting obscured in your disrespectful responses.
Ha! A tone troll…
Are you saying that “HatePaidLiars” is being respectful? Sorry, but I have respect for neither persons nor opinions that accuse people who use medication of being either brainwashed or in the pocket of “Big Pharma.”
People die because they listen to these kinds of paranoid ravings and stop taking their medicine when those drugs might be the only thing between themselves and suicide.
HatePaidLiars- I used to feel quite wary of psychiatry and psychiatric meds. I suffered and suffered and suffered for DECADES because I was as ignorant as you are. I studied holistic kinesiology and also became an acupuncturist. All because of the desperate need to find healing. It was wonderful. But it did jack shit for the Mania and depression I was constantly cycling through. Flower essences just weren’t cutting it. Nothing helped for more than 5 minutes. Admittedly kinesiology did change the course of my illness for the better in terms of understanding my biorhythms but it didn’t fix nada alone.You know what fixed my brain? Lithium and lamotrigine. Coupled WITH holistic approach. Why does everything have to be so extreme these days jeez.
JOSH- these middle aged people dying of liver failure and kidney failure, wouldn’t happen if they had their blood panels done at least every 6 months depending on blood levels and dosage which detects changes in liver function and enzyme levels and same with kidney function. . Testing for kidney problems and thyroid problems are half the reason for needing regular bloods in the first place. Kidneys very rarely get damaged over night and that’s even more true regarding the liver. And if they do it’s very very rare and it’s probably because they’re 60 and spent their youth self treating with drugs and alcohol and not looking after themselves. Like a lot of us did. Also when bipolar finally gets managed, alcohol and drug consumption goes down substantially if not completely.
We suffer bipolar. A life of extremes. Personally I prefer to take the middle road with my opinions. It makes the ups and downs more navigatable. Who wants a compass that doesn’t work when u need it the most?
You might sound vaguely credible if you weren’t so insulting and immature. You may need some sort of help with your anger and aggression issues. We can disagree respectfully.
Hi Natasha,
I suffer from schizophrenia. I take antipsychotics to control my symptoms. However, I read an antipsychiatrist website that made me have doubts about taking them. It said that anti-psychotics don’t really directly target delusions and hallucinations but rather disable the brain so much so that a person cant have delusions or hallucinations anymore. Do you have a response to their claim, Natasha?
Thank you.
Hi Gabriel,
It is far more complicated than that.
No, antipsychotics do _not_ “disable” the brain. Antipsychotics, among other things, target dopamine (a neurotransmitter) in your brain and it reduces its impact. This is not a “disabling” of anything.
Keep in mind, we don’t know exactly what causes psychosis, but we do know that these medications treat it effectively. We don’t know every way in which the psychosis occurs and we don’t know every way in which the medications work. This is the case with many medications.
Here are a few more technical points about the brain and antipsychotics:
“The first is the mesolimbic pathway–the bundle of dopaminergic fibres associated with the reward circuit. This pathway originates in the ventral tegmental area and innervates several structures of the limbic system, including the nucleus accumbens. The mesolimbic pathway is important for memory and for motivating behaviours. By blocking this pathway, antipsychotic drugs reduce the intense emotions caused by conditions such as schizophrenia.
The mesocortical pathway also originates in the ventral tegmental area, but projects to the frontal cortex and surrounding structures. Some evidence indicates that a malfunction in this pathway might be the cause of some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations and disordered thinking. Medications that block this pathway reduce psychotic delirium, but also reduce the overall activity of the frontal lobes.”
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a_03/a_03_cl/a_03_cl_que/a_03_cl_que.html
“Damasio calls this type of consciousness “core consciousness” and says that it depends chiefly on the cingulate cortex and on the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus. Indeed, experiments have shown that bilateral destruction of the centromedial portion of the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus also eliminates consciousness, produces a coma, or causes other states similar to brain death. In addition, this region of the thalamus is one of the main sites acted upon by anaesthetics and by antipsychotic drugs.”
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_12/i_12_cr/i_12_cr_con/i_12_cr_con.html
Yes, I know that stuff is hard to understand, but this is complicated stuff.
In short, yes, antipsychotics do affect the way the brain works – they have to to treat the psychosis. In a non-scientific way, I think of psychosis as being “overactivity” in the brain and the antipsychotics turn this activity down.
Antipsychiatry sites, by and large, are not accurate. Please discuss your concerns with your doctor. They should be able to answer all your questions.
– Natasha Tracy
Since 13 years old I have struggled with persistent and negative symptoms, the least of which was losing my ability to fall asleep. When I look back at my life and say “poor me” I’m really saying I grieve for the ‘normal’ childhood and adolescence that I didn’t experience. Rather than worrying about boys and zits, I worried about the world, how I would support myself as an adult, how I could somehow eliminate myself – things that most kids should never have to deal with.
When I was diagnosed 35 YEARS LATER with bi-polar and borderline personality disorder I actually celebrated. I was so happy to be able to put a label (yes I celebrated labelling) on what I was going through. I embraced the drug program I was put on. And then……. NOTHING happened. I didn’t feel better. And so began the drug circus. If drug therapy is such a ‘scientifically sound’ treatment, I wonder why it is a hit ‘n miss when it comes to the efficacy of an individual’s recovery.
I haven’t given drugs up. But I have recently read the works of Linus Pauling (Vitamin C Therapy) – a past Nobel Prize recipient and the works of Abram Hoffer (Niacin therapy) and am now three weeks into mega dosing with said vitamins. Do I feel better? Yeah I think I do. Is it a miracle? No! Its still a day to day path forward.
Cheers,
Joanne
Hey there…
Love the blog……
I am 46 and just yesterday was given the diagnosis of Bipolar II. That’s not to say that I haven’t been given many diagnosis over the years. I began showing signs of a problem at the age of 10. I never followed thru on anything, never continued any treatment long enough to see if it worked or not…bounced all over the place making bad decisions and acting wrecklessly.
Now I have a hunger to be better. I’m tired of it all. I want to get off the rollercoaster. I want to succeed at something. I want my two daughters to be proud of me, not embarrassed. It will be interesting to see what the doctor finds to put me on, you see, I am in stage 4 kidney failure. I have to be very careful what I put in my body…and that means absolutely no lithium. Thank goodness there are so many other meds out there that I know will help me and I can’t wait to be released from my own personal prison. I have spent far too many years wasting away laying in bed or sitting on the couch because I have no energy. I am so tired of not having money because when I do have money I spend it wrecklessly. I want my parents, when they pass, to pass knowing that I will be somewhat able to take care of myself. I for one am thankful for the companies that DO make the meds that CAN make mine and anyone who wants to, a better life…because I know for 30 years at least I have been in true hell and I can’t do it anymore.
I got bored of that b.s. about meds being useless and counterproductive about a quarter of the way through. I owe my life to psych meds… not just the fact that I’m still alive but also the fact that I am able to live a mostly “normal” (whatever normal means) life!
Another great post Natasha! As for me, it took many years of being a guinea pig (like many others), many different hospital stays, and many different concoctions of medications before I found my right mix. Now, thank God, I am finally on one that keeps me stable for the most part. I have also found that taking my medication on a schedule along with 4000mg of Nordic Naturals Ultimate Omega fish oil capsules (every day) has helped me tremendously. I can actually say I am no longer suicidal for once in my life and I feel stable and dare I say it… Happy! I have tried so many different homeopathic and eastern medicine practices it’s not even funny and none of them have ever worked as well as medication, at least for me. Looking back, every time I tried to get off my meds and go “holistic” it landed me in the psych hospital because of extreme mania, extreme depression, or a suicide attempt. Of course this is only my opinion and my story. However, it has worked so I’m sticking to it. For more tips on a routine of getting yourself stable feel free to check out my website and it will give you a rundown of yoga practices, vitamins, minerals, therapies, and other things that have helped my medication work better for me. That is only if you would like =).
I love your site and will always be a fan of your work!
Kimmy
I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder that I found my way to it via the ADD highway. For 16 yrs I suffered both physically and mentally until my doctor finally told me the truth one day. I spent nearly 2 years weaning off of all the drugs I was on, and have been completely drug free for the last 3 yrs. The first thing my doctor told me to do was read the book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker. Knowing the truth has changed my life for the better, forever, and I will never go back to the torture that I endured for those 16 yrs. He also recommended Psychiatrist Peter Breggin’s books and the book Confessions of an Rx drug pusher by former best selling drug rep Gwen Olsen. I could have never imagined myself ever feeling better than I do now knowing the truth, that my brain is not broken, that what I feel are real, normal, human emotions.
I absolutely believed the common wisdom that psychiatric drugs actually had improved things and that they had totally revolutionized how we treated mental illness. People used to be locked away forever, and now maybe things weren’t great, but they were a lot better. It was a story of progress.
That story of progress was fraudulent. Just as with torturous psychiatric practices such as electroshock, lobotomy, insulin coma, psychiatrists told the public that these drugs “cured” psychosis or balanced the chemistry of the brain.
But, in reality, the common thread in all these different treatments was the attempt to suppress “mental illness” by deliberately damaging the higher functions of the brain. The stunning truth is that, behind closed doors, the psychiatric establishment itself labeled these treatments as “brain-damaging therapeutics.”
The first generation of antipsychotic drugs created a drug-induced brain pathology by blocking the neurotransmitter dopamine and essentially shutting down many higher brain functions. In fact, when antipsychotics such as Thorazine and Haldol were first introduced, psychiatrists themselves said that these neuroleptic drugs were virtually indistinguishable from a “chemical lobotomy.”
In recent years, the media have heralded the arrival of so-called designer drugs like Prozac, Paxil and Zyprexa that are supposed to be superior and have fewer side effects than the old tricyclic antidepressants and the first antipsychotics. Millions of Americans have believed this story and have enriched drug companies like Eli Lilly by spending billions of dollars annually to purchase these new medications.
Research into the tragic cases of disease, suffering and early deaths caused by these drugs shows that millions of consumers have been misled by a massive campaign of lies, distortions, and bought-and-paid-for drug trials. Eminent medical researchers who have tried to warn us of the perils of these drugs have been silenced, intimidated and defamed. In the process, the Food and Drug Administration has become the lapdog of the giant pharmaceutical industry, not its watchdog.
Research indicates that there has been an enormous rise in the incidence of mental illness in the United States, despite the seeming advances in a new generation of psychiatric drugs.
Even people like the psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey (world’s most prominent advocate of forced psychiatric incarceration, and full use of all “tools” that have ever been in psychiatry’s toolbox) wrote a book recently in which he said it looks like we’re having an epidemic of mental illness. When the National Institute of Mental Health publishes its figures on the incidence of mental illness, you see these rising numbers of disabled mentally ill people. Some recent reports even say that 20 percent of Americans now are disabled mentally ill.
Part of this rise in the number of people said to be mentally ill is just definitional. We draw a big wide boundary today and we throw all sorts of people into that category of mentally ill. So children who are not sitting neatly enough in their school rooms are said to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and we created a new disorder called social anxiety disorder.This increases psychiatry’s clients, and it also increases the number of people that giant pharmaceutical companies can sell their psychiatric drugs to.
So part of what we’re seeing is nothing more than the creation of a larger market for drugs. If you think about it, as long as we draw as big a circle as possible, and expand the boundaries of mental illness, psychiatry can have more clients and sell more drugs. So there’s a built-in economic incentive to define mental illness in as broad of terms as possible, and to find ordinary, distressing emotions or behaviors that some people may not like and label them as mental illness. Research also shows that there is a real increase in people who have a severe mental disorder.
By 1903, roughly 1 out of every 500 people in the United States was hospitalized for mental illness. By 1955, at the start of the modern era of psychiatric drugs, roughly one out of every 300 people was disabled by mental illness. Now, let’s go to 1987, the end of the first generation of antipsychotic drugs; and from 1987 forward we get the modern psychiatric drugs. From 1955 to 1987, during this first era of psychiatric drugs — the antipsychotic drugs Thorazine and Haldol and the tricyclic antidepressants (such as Elavil and Anafranil) — we saw the number of disabled mentally ill increase four-fold, to the point where roughly one out of every 75 persons are deemed disabled mentally ill.
Now, there was a shift in how we cared for the disabled mentally ill between 1955 and 1987. In 1955, we were hospitalizing them. Then, by 1987, we had gone through social change, and we were now placing people in shelters, nursing homes, and some sort of community care, and gave them either SSI or SSDI payments for mental disability. In 1987, we started getting these supposedly better, second-generation psychiatric drugs like Prozac and the other selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants. Shortly after that, we get the new, atypical antipsychotic drugs like Zyprexa (olanzapine), Clozaril and Risperdal.
What’s happened since 1987? Well, the disability rate due to mental illness has continued to increase until it’s now one in every 50 Americans. Think about that: One in every 50 Americans disabled by mental illness today. And it’s still increasing. The number of mentally disabled people in the United States has been increasing at the rate of 150,000 people per year since 1987. That’s an increase every day over the last 17 years of 410 people per day newly disabled by mental illness.
So that leads to the obvious question. If psychiatry has introduced these so-called wonder drugs like Prozac and Zoloft and Zyprexa, why is the incidence of mental illness going up dramatically? This is a scientific question. We have a form of care where we’re using these drugs in an ever more expansive manner, and supposedly we have better drugs and they’re the cornerstone of our care, so we should see decreasing disability rates. That’s what your expectation would be.
Instead, from 1987 until the present, we saw an increase in the number of disabled mentally ill people from 3.3 million people to 5.7 million people in the United States. In that time, our spending on psychiatric drugs increased to an amazing degree. Combined spending on antipsychotic drugs and antidepressants jumped from around $500 million in 1986 to nearly $40 billion today. Is the use of these drugs somehow actually fueling this increase in the number of the disabled mentally ill?
When you look at the research literature, you find a clear pattern of outcomes with all these drugs — you see it with the antipsychotics, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety drugs and the stimulants like Ritalin used to treat ADHD. All these drugs may curb a target symptom slightly more effectively than a placebo does for a short period of time, say six weeks. An antidepressant may ameliorate the symptoms of depression better than a placebo over the short term. What you find with every class of these psychiatric drugs is a worsening of the target symptom of depression or psychosis or anxiety over the long term, compared to placebo-treated patients. So even on the target symptoms, there’s greater chronicity and greater severity of symptoms. And you see a fairly significant percentage of patients where new and more severe psychiatric symptoms are triggered by the drug itself.
The most obvious case is with the antidepressants. A certain percentage of people placed on the SSRIs because they have some form of depression will suffer either a manic or psychotic attack — drug-induced. This is well recognized. So now, instead of just dealing with depression, they’re dealing with mania or psychotic symptoms. And once they have a drug-induced manic episode, what happens? They go to an emergency room, and at that point they’re newly diagnosed. They’re now said to be bipolar and they’re given an antipsychotic to go along with the antidepressant; and, at that point, they’re moving down the path to chronic disability.
Modern psychiatry claims that these psychiatric drugs correct pathological brain chemistry. Is there any evidence to back up their claim that abnormal brain chemistry is the culprit in schizophrenia and depression? This is the key thing everyone needs to understand. It really is the answer that unlocks this mystery of why the drugs would have this long-term problematic effect. Start with schizophrenia. They hypothesize that these drugs work by correcting an imbalance of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.
The theory was that people with schizophrenia had overactive dopamine systems; and these drugs, by blocking dopamine in the brain, fixed that chemical imbalance. Therefore, you get the metaphor that they’re like insulin is for diabetes; they’re fixing an abnormality. With the antidepressants, the theory was that people with depression had too low levels of serotonin; the drugs upped the levels of serotonin in the brain and therefore they’re balancing the brain chemistry.
First of all, those theories never arose from investigations into what was actually happening to people. Rather, they found out that antipsychotics blocked dopamine and so they theorized that people had overactive dopamine systems. Same with the antidepressants. They found that antidepressants upped the levels of serotonin; therefore, they theorized that people with depression must have low levels of serotonin; entirely backwards logic.
But here is the thing that one wishes all of America would know and wishes all of psychiatry would come clean on: They’ve never been able to find that people with schizophrenia have overactive dopamine systems. They’ve never been able to find that people with depression have underactive serotonin systems. They’ve never found that any of these disorders are associated with any chemical imbalance in the brain. The story that people with mental disorders have known chemical imbalances — that’s a lie. We don’t know that at all. It’s just something that they say to help sell the drugs and help sell the biological model of mental disorders.
But the kicker is this. We do know, in fact, that these drugs perturb how these chemical messengers work in the brain. The real paradigm is: People diagnosed with mental disorders have no known problem with their neurotransmitter systems; and these drugs perturb the normal function of neurotransmitters. So rather than fixing a chemical imbalance, these widely prescribed drugs distort the brain chemistry and make it pathological.
Stephen Hyman, a well-known neuroscientist and the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, wrote a paper in 1996 that looked at how psychiatric drugs effect the brain. He wrote that all these drugs create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions. And he notes that the brain, in response to this drug from the outside, alters its normal functions and goes through a series of compensatory adaptations.
In other words, it tries to adapt to the fact that an antipsychotic drug is blocking normal dopamine functions. Or in the case of antidepressants, it tries to compensate for the fact that you’re blocking a normal reuptake of serotonin. The way it does this is to adapt in the opposite way. So, if you’re blocking dopamine in the brain, the brain tries to put out more dopamine and it actually increases the number of dopamine receptors. So a person placed on antipsychotic drugs will end up with an abnormally high number of dopamine receptors in the brain.
If you give someone an antidepressant, and that tries to keep serotonin levels too high in the brain, it does exactly the opposite. It stops producing as much serotonin as it normally does and it reduces the number of serotonin receptors in the brain. So someone who is on an antidepressant, after a time ends up with an abnormally low level of serotonin receptors in the brain. And here’s what Hyman concluded about this: After these changes happened, the patient’s brain is functioning in a way that is “qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.” So what Stephen Hyman, former head of the NIMH, has done is present a paradigm for how these drugs effect the brain that shows that they’re inducing a pathological state.
Yes, these drugs disrupt normal brain chemistry. That’s the real paradox here. And the real tragedy is, that even as we peddle these drugs as chemical balancers, chemical fixers, in truth we’re doing precisely the opposite. We’re taking a brain that has no known abnormal brain chemistry, and by placing people on the drugs, we’re perturbing that normal chemistry. Here’s how Barry Jacobs, a Princeton neuroscientist, describes what happens to a person given an SSRI antidepressant. “These drugs,” he said, “alter the level of synaptic transmission beyond the physiologic range achieved under normal environmental biological conditions. Thus, any behavioral or physiologic change produced under these conditions might more appropriately be considered pathologic rather than reflective of the normal biological role of serotonin.”
One of the SSRI antidepressants that’s widely believed to be a wonder drug is Prozac. Yet research has found that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received more adverse reports about Prozac than any other drug. What sort of ill effects are people reporting?
First of all, with Prozac and the SSRIs that followed, their level of efficacy was always of a very minor sort. In all the clinical trials of the antidepressants, roughly 41 percent of the patients got better in the short term versus 31 percent of the patients on placebo. Now just one other caveat on that. If you use an active placebo in these trials — an active placebo causes a physiologic change with no benefit (side effects), like a dry mouth, so participants cannot break blind and recognize that they are taking an active drug and not a placebo — any difference in outcome between the antidepressant and placebo disappears.
What happened with Prozac is a fascinating story. Right from the beginning, they noticed only very marginal efficacy over placebo; and they noticed that they had some problems with suicide. There were increased suicidal responses compared to placebo. In other words, the drug was agitating people and making people suicidal who hadn’t been suicidal before. They were getting manic responses in people who hadn’t been manic before. They were getting psychotic episodes in people who hadn’t been psychotic before. So you were seeing these very problematic side effects even at the same time that you were seeing very modest efficacy, if any, over placebo in ameliorating depression.
Basically, what Eli Lilly (Prozac’s manufacturer) had to do was cover up the psychosis, cover up the mania; and, in that manner, it was able to get these drugs approved. One FDA reviewer even warned that Prozac appeared to be a dangerous drug, but it was approved anyway. We’re seemingly finding all this out only now: “Oh, Prozac can cause suicidal impulses and all these SSRIs may increase the risk of suicide.” The point is, this isn’t anything new. That data was there from the very first trial. You had people in the United States, Germany, and England saying, “I think this is a dangerous drug.” Even back in the early 1980s, before Prozac was approved, they already knew.
Basically what Eli Lilly had to do was cover up that risk of mania and psychosis, cover up that some people were becoming suicidal because they were getting this nervous agitation from Prozac. That’s the only way it got approved.
There were various ways they did the cover-up. One was just to simply remove reports of psychosis from some of the data. They also went back and recoded some of the trial results. Let’s say someone had a manic episode or a psychotic episode; instead of putting that down, they would just put down a return of depression, and that sort of thing. So there was a basic need to hide these risks right from the beginning, and that’s what was done.
So Prozac gets approved in 1987, and it’s launched in this amazing PR campaign. The pill itself is featured on the cover of several magazines. It’s like the Pill of the Year! And it’s said to be so much safer: a wonder drug. We have doctors saying, “Oh, the real problem with this drug is that we can now create whatever personality we want. We’re just so skilled with these drugs that if you want to be happy all the time, take your pill!”
That was complete nonsense. The drugs were barely better than placebo at alleviating depressive symptoms over the short term. You had all these problems; yet we were touting these drugs, saying, “Oh, the powers of psychiatry are such that we can give you the mind you want — a designer personality!” It was absolutely obscene. Meanwhile, which drug, after being launched, quickly became the most complained about drug in America? Prozac!
What were the level of complaints when Prozac hit the market? In this county, we have Medwatch, a reporting system in which we report adverse events about psychiatric drugs to the FDA. By the way, the FDA tries to keep these adverse reports from the public. So, instead of the FDA making these easily available to the public so you can know about the dangers of the drugs, it’s very hard to get these reports.
Within one decade, there were 39,000 adverse reports about Prozac that were sent to Medwatch. The number of adverse events sent to Medwatch is said by the FDA to represent only one percent of the actual number of such events. So, if we get 39,000 adverse event reports about Prozac, the number of people who have actually suffered such problems is estimated to be 100 times as many, or roughly four million people. This makes Prozac the most complained about drug in America, by far. There were more adverse event reports received about Prozac in its first two years on the market than had been reported on the leading tricyclic antidepressant in 20 years.
Remember, Prozac is pitched to the American public as this wonderfully safe drug, and yet what are people complaining about? Mania, psychotic depression, nervousness, anxiety, agitation, hostility, hallucinations, memory loss, tremors, impotence, convulsions, insomnia, nausea, suicidal impulses. It’s a wide range of serious symptoms. And here’s the kicker. It wasn’t just Prozac. Once we got the other SSRIs on the market, like Zoloft and Paxil, by 1994, four SSRI antidepressants were among the top 20 most complained about drugs on the FDA’s Medwatch list. In other words, every one of these drugs brought to market started triggering this range of adverse events. And these were not minor things. When you talk about mania, hallucinations, psychotic depression, these are serious adverse events.
Prozac was pitched to the American public as a wonder drug. It was featured on the covers of magazines as so safe, and as a sign of our wonderful ability to effect the brain just as we want it. In truth, the reports were showing it could trigger a lot of dangerous events, including suicide and psychosis.
The FDA was being warned about this. They were getting a flood of adverse event reports, and the public was never told about this for the longest period of time. It took a decade for the FDA to begin to acknowledge the increased suicides and the violence it can trigger in some people. It just shows how the FDA betrayed the American people. This is a classic example. They betrayed their responsibility to act as a watchdog for the American people. Instead they acted as an agency that covered up harm and risk with these drugs.
The children’s story is unbelievably tragic. Prozac comes to market in 1987. By the early 1990s, the pharmaceutical companies making these drugs are saying, “How do we expand the market for antidepressants?” Because that’s what drug companies do — they want to get to an ever-larger number of people. They saw they had an untapped market in kids. So let’s start peddling the drugs to kids. And they were successful. Since 1990, the use of antidepressants in kids went up seven-fold.
Now, whenever they did pediatric trials of antidepressants, they found that the drugs were no more effective on the target symptom of depression than placebo. This happened again and again in the pediatric drug trials of antidepressants. So, what that tells you is there is no real therapeutic rationale for the drugs because in this population of kids, the drugs don’t even curb the target symptoms over the short term any better than placebo; and yet they were causing all sorts of adverse events.
For example, in one trial, 75 percent of youth treated with antidepressants suffered an adverse event of some kind. In one study by the University of Pittsburgh, 23 percent of children treated with an SSRI developed mania or manic-like symptoms; an additional 19 percent developed drug-induced hostility. The clinical results were telling you that you didn’t get any benefit on depression; and you could cause all sorts of real problems in kids — mania, hostility, psychosis, and suicide. In other words, don’t use these drugs, right? It was absolutely covered up.
We had psychiatrists — some of those obviously getting money from the drug companies — saying the kids are under-treated and they’re at risk of suicide and how could we possibly treat kids without these pills and what a tragedy it would be if we couldn’t use these antidepressants.
Finally, a prominent researcher in England, David Healy, started doing his own research on the ability of these drugs to stir suicide. He also managed to get access to some of the trial results and he blew the whistle. He first blew the whistle in England and he presented this data to the review authorities there. And they saw that it looks like these drugs are increasing the risk of suicide and there are really no signs of benefits on the target symptoms of depression. So they began to move there to warn doctors not to prescribe these drugs to youth.
What happens in the United States? Well, it’s only after there’s a lot of pressure put on the FDA that they even hold a hearing. The FDA downplays the risk of these drugs. They’re slow to even put black box warnings on them. Why? Aren’t kids lives worth protecting? If we know that we have a scientifically shown risk that these drugs increase suicide, shouldn’t you at least warn about it? But the FDA was even digging in its heels about putting that black box warning on the drugs.
If Prozac is the nation’s most complained about drug, if Paxil is shown to be a suicide risk for youth, how do these antidepressants continue to have a reputation as near-magic cures for depression? And why did the FDA fail to warn us about Paxil and Prozac for such a long time?
There’s a couple reasons for that. The FDA’s funding changed in the 1990s. An act was passed in which a lot of the FDA’s funding came from the drug industry: the PDUFA Act, or Prescription Drug User Fee Act. Basically, when drug companies applied for FDA approval they had to pay a fee. Those fees became what is funding a large portion of the FDA’s review of drug applications.
So all of a sudden, the funding is coming from the drug industry; it’s no longer coming from the people. As that act comes up for renewal, basically the drug lobbyists are telling the FDA that their job is no longer to be critically analyzing drugs, but to approve drugs quickly. And that was part of Newt Gingrich’s thing: Your job is to get these drugs to market. Start partnering with the drug industry and facilitating drug development. We lost this idea that the FDA had a watchdog role.
Also, in a human way, a lot of people who work for the FDA leave there and end up going to work for the drug companies. The old joke is that the FDA is sort of like a showcase for a future job in the drug industry. You go there, you work a while, then you go off into the drug industry. Well, if that’s the progression that people make, in essence they’re making good old boy network connections, so they’re not going to be so harsh on the drug companies. So, that’s what really happened in the 1990s. The FDA was given new marching orders. The orders were: “Facilitate getting drugs to market. Don’t be too critical. And, in fact, if you want to keep your funding, which is now coming from the drug industry, make sure you take these lessons to heart.”
The FDA, in essence, was kneecapped in the early 1990s, and we really saw it with the psychiatric drugs. The FDA became a lapdog for the pharmaceutical industry, not a watchdog. It’s only now that this has become common knowledge. We have Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, write a book in which she says that the FDA became a lapdog. It’s basically now well recognized that you had this decline and fall. As the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, the most prestigious medical journal we have, Marcia Angell is someone who was at the very heart of American medicine, and she concluded that the FDA let down the American people. And she lost her job at the New England Journal of Medicine for starting to criticize pharmaceutical companies.
She was the editor of the journal in the late 1990s and there was a corresponding doctor named Thomas Bodenheimer who decided to write an article about how you couldn’t even trust what was published in the medical journals anymore because of all the spinning of results. So they did an investigation about how the pharmaceutical companies are funding all the research and spinning the trial results, so you can no longer really trust what you read in scientific journals. They pointed out that when they tried to get an expert to review the scientific literature related to antidepressants, they basically couldn’t find someone who hadn’t taken money from the drug companies.
Now, the New England Journal of Medicine is published by the Massachusetts Medical Society which publishes a lot of other journals, and they get a lot of pharmaceutical advertising. So what happens after that article appears by Thomas Bodenheimer and an accompanying editorial by Marcia Angell about the sorry state of American medicine because of this? They both lose their jobs! She’s gone and so is Thomas Bodenheimer. Think about this. We have the leading medical journal firing people, letting them go, because they dared to criticize the dishonest science and the dishonest process that was poisoning the scientific literature.
So we have the FDA that’s acting as lapdogs. You can’t trust the scientific literature. All this shows how the American public was betrayed and didn’t know about all the problems with these drugs and why it was kept from them. It has to do with money, prestige and old boy networks. It also has to do with the silencing of critics. Eli Lilly uses the media to trumpet Prozac’s benefits and gives perks to doctors to attend conferences to hear about its benefits, and buys off researchers.
An example is Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a psychiatrist who also works for Harvard University Health Services, and who wrote a book called Prozac Backlash to warn about the dangers of Prozac. He’s finding that the drugs are being overused and cause severe side effects. He even raises questions about long-term memory problems with the drugs and cognitive dysfunction. Well, Eli Lilly then mounted a public relations campaign to try to discredit him. They sent out notices to the media questioning his affiliation with Harvard Medical School, etc. It was all about silencing the critics.
If you sing the tune that the drug companies want, at the very top levels, you get paid a lot of money to fly around and give presentations about the wonders of the drugs. And those who come, and don’t ask any embarrassing questions, get the lobster dinners and maybe they get a little honorarium for attending this educational meeting. So if you want to be part of this gravy train, you can. You sing the wonders of the drug, and you don’t talk about their nasty side effects, and you can get a nice payment as one of their guest speakers, as one of their experts.
But if you’re one of the ones saying, “What about the mania, what about the psychosis?” — they do silence you. Look at what happened to David Healy. Healy is even the best example. David Healy has this sterling reputation in England. He’s written several books on the history of psychopharmacology. He’s like the former Secretary of the Psychopharmacology Association over there. He gets offered a job at the University of Toronto to head up their psychiatry department. So while he’s waiting to assume that position at the University of Toronto, he goes to Toronto and delivers a talk on the elevated risk of suicide with Prozac and some of the other SSRIs. By the time he’s back home, the job offer has been rescinded. Now does Eli Lilly donate some money to the University of Toronto? Absolutely.
Then there is the secret settlement between Eli Lilly and the survivors who sued the company after Joseph Wesbecker shot 20 coworkers after being put on Prozac. During this trial in which Eli Lilly was being sued, the judge was going to allow some very damaging evidence showing wrongdoing by Eli Lilly in a previous instance. The judge said, “Go ahead and introduce this at the trial.” But next thing you know, they don’t introduce this; and in fact, all of a sudden, the plaintiffs no longer are presenting very damaging evidence to make their case. So the judge wonders why they are not presenting their best case anymore. He smells a rat. He suspects Eli Lilly has settled with the plaintiffs secretly and the deal is that, as part of this settlement, the plaintiffs will go ahead with a sham trial so that Eli Lilly will win the trial. Then Eli Lilly can claim, “See our drug doesn’t cause people to become violent.”
And, indeed, that’s what happened. Eli Lilly felt it was going to lose this trial. They went to the plaintiffs and said they would give them a lot of money. They agreed to go ahead and settle the case, but had the plaintiffs go ahead with the trial. That way Eli Lilly can publicly claim that they won the trial and Prozac doesn’t cause harm.
We would never have known about this except for two things. One, believe it or not, the judge, in essence, appealed the decision in his own court. He said, “I smell a rat.” And through that, he found out that there was this secret settlement and that it was a sham proceeding that continued on. He said it was one of the worst violations of the integrity of the legal process that he’d ever seen. And second, an English journalist named John Cornwell wrote a book called Power to Harm: Mind, Medicine, and Murder on Trial. He wrote about this case, and yet in the United States, we got almost no news about this secret settlement and this whole perversion of the legal process. It was an English journalist who was exposing this story.
My point here is this: They silence people like Marcia Angell. They pervert the scientific process. They pervert the legal process. They pervert the FDA drug review process. It’s everywhere! And that’s how we as a society end up believing in these psychiatric drugs. “Why do we still believe in Prozac?” One of the reasons is that the story about Prozac is, in effect, maintained. It’s publicly maintained because we do all this silencing along all these lines.
Let’s now move from the antidepressants like Prozac to consider another new group of supposed wonder drugs — the new antipsychotic drugs. Long-term use of antipsychotic drugs — both the original neuroleptic drugs like Thorazine and Haldol and the newer atypicals like Zyprexa and Risperdal — cause pathological changes in the brain that can lead to a worsening of the symptoms of mental illness. Changes in brain chemistry result from the antipsychotics, that lead to chronic mental illness.
This is a line of research that goes across 40 years. This problem of chronic illness shows up time and time again in the research literature. This biological mechanism is welll understood now. The antipsychotics profoundly block dopamine receptors. They block 70-90 percent of the dopamine receptors in the brain. In return, the brain sprouts about 50 percent extra dopamine receptors. It tries to become extra sensitive. So you’ve created an imbalance in the dopamine system in the brain.
It’s almost like, on one hand, you’ve got the accelerator down (the brain attempting to compensate for the presence of the drug and fix itself) — that’s the extra dopamine receptors. And the drug is the brake trying to block this. But if you release that brake, if you abruptly go off the drugs, you now do have a dopamine system that’s overactive. You have too many dopamine receptors. And what happens? People that go abruptly off of the drug, do tend to have severe withdrawal reactions that are labeled as relapses. So people that have been treated with these antipsychotic drugs have a far greater tendency to “relapse”, and have new episodes of mental illness, as opposed to people who have had other kinds of non-drug therapies, but these are nothing more than mislabeled withdrawal reactions.
This was understood by 1979, that you were actually increasing the underlying biological vulnerability to psychosis. And we also understood that if you muck with the dopamine system, that you could cause some symptoms of psychosis with amphetamines. So if you give someone amphetamines enough, they’re at increased risk of psychosis. This is well known. And what do amphetamines do? They release dopamine. So there is a biological reason why, if you’re mucking up the dopamine system, you’re increasing the risk of psychosis. That’s in essence what these antipsychotic drugs do, they muck up the dopamine system.
Here’s just one real powerful study on this: Researchers with the University of Pittsburgh in the 1990s took people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia, and they started taking MRI pictures of the brains of these people. So we get a picture of their brains at the moment of diagnosis, and then we prepare pictures over the next 18 months to see how those brains change. Now during this 18 months, they are being prescribed antipsychotic medications, and what did the researchers report? They reported that, over this 18-month period, the drugs caused an enlargement of the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that uses dopamine, and shrinking of the frontal lobes. In other words, it creates a visible change in morphology, a change in the size of an area of the brain, and that’s abnormal. That’s number one. So we have an antipsychotic drug causing an abnormality in the brain.
Now here’s the kicker. They found that as that enlargement of the basal ganglia occurred, it was associated with a worsening of the psychotic symptoms, a worsening of negative symptoms. So here you actually have, with modern technology, a very powerful study. By imaging the brain, we see how an outside agent comes in, disrupts normal chemistry, causes an abnormal enlargement of the basal ganglia and shrinking of the frontal lobes, and that causes a worsening of the very symptoms it’s supposed to treat. Now that’s actually a story of a disease process — an outside agent causes abnormality, causes symptoms… But in this case, the outside agent that triggers the disease process is the supposed cure for the disease! The psychiatric drug is the disease-causing agent.
That’s exactly right. It’s a stunning, damning finding. It’s the sort of finding you would say, “Oh Christ, we should be doing something different.” Do you know what those researchers got new grants for, after they reported that? You’d guess they got funding to carry out these same studies on other classes of psychiatric drugs.
They got a grant to develop an implant, a brain implant, that would deliver drugs like Haldol on a continual basis! A grant to develop a drug delivery implant so you could implant this in the brains of people with schizophrenia and then they wouldn’t even have a chance not to take the drugs! Unbelievable. Designing an implant to provide a constant dose of a drug that they had just discovered causes brain damage.
They had just found that they’re causing a worsening of symptoms! So why would you go on to a design a permanent implant? Because that’s where the money is. And no one wanted to deal with this horrible finding of an enlargement of the basal ganglia and shrinking of the frontal lobes caused by the drugs, and that is associated with the worsening of symptoms. No one wanted to deal with the fact that when you look at people medicated on antipsychotics, you start to see brain damage.
What other side effects are caused by prolonged use of these antipsychotic drugs? Oh, you get tardive dyskinesia, a permanent brain dysfunction that causes Parkinson’s like involuntary movements; and akathisia, which is this incredible nervous agitation. You’re just never comfortable. You want to sit but you can’t sit. It’s like you’re crawling out of your own skin. And it’s associated with violence, suicide and all sorts of horrible things.
Those kinds of side-effects were notorious with the first generation of antipsychotic drugs, like Thorazine, Haldol and Stelazine. But, just as with Prozac, so many people are still touting the new generation of atypical antipsychotics — Zyprexa, Clozaril and Risperdal — as wonder drugs that control mental illness with far fewer side effects.
It’s just complete nonsense. In fact, the newer drugs will eventually be seen as more dangerous than the old drugs, if that’s possible. The standard neuroleptics like Thorazine and Haldol have had quite a litany of harm with the tardive dyskinesia and all. So when we got the new atypical drugs, they were touted as so much safer. But with these new atypicals, you get all sorts of metabolic dysfunctions.
Let’s talk about Zyprexa. It has a different profile. So it may not cause as much tardive dyskinesia. It may not cause as many Parkinsonian symptoms. But it causes a whole range of new symptoms. So, for example, it’s more likely to cause diabetes. It’s more likely to cause pancreatic disorders. It’s more likely to cause obesity and appetite-disregulation disorders.
In fact, researchers in Ireland reported in 2003 that since the introduction of the atypical antipsychotics, the death rate among people with schizophrenia had doubled. They have done death rates of people treated with standard neuroleptics and then they compare that with death rates of people treated with atypical antipsychotics, and it doubles. It doubles! It didn’t reduce harm. In fact, in their seven-year study, 25 of the 72 patients died. It is now known that overall, people who take any psychiatric drugs long term for the rest of their life, die on average 25 years sooner than people who don’t.
What were the causes of death? All sorts of physical illnesses, and that’s part of the point. You’re getting respiratory problems, you’re getting people dying of incredibly high cholesterol counts, heart problems, diabetes. With olanzapine (Zyprexa), one of the problems is that you’re really screwing up the core metabolic system. That’s why you get these huge weight gains, and you get the diabetes. Zyprexa basically disrupts the machine that we are that processes food and extracts energy from that food. So this very fundamental thing that we humans do is disrupted, and at some point you see all these pancreatic problems, faulty glucose regulation, diabetes, etc. That’s really a sign that you’re mucking with something very fundamental to life.
There’s an alarming increase in mental illness being diagnosed in children. Millions are diagnosed with depression, bipolar and psychotic symptoms, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and social anxiety disorder. Is this explosive new prevalence of mental illness among children a real increase, or is it a marketing campaign that enriches the psychiatric drug industry, a bonanza for the pharmaceutical corporations? There’s something now that is a tragic scandal of monumental proportions. You cannot believe the percentage of youth who have been told they were mentally ill as kids, that something was wrong with them. It’s absolutely phenomenal. It’s absolutely cruel to be telling kids that they have these broken brains and mental illnesses.
There’s two things that are happening here. One, of course, is that it’s complete nonsense. As you remember as a kid, you have too much energy or you behave sometimes in not altogether appropriate ways, and you do have these extremes of emotions, especially during your teenage years. Both children and teenagers can be very emotional. So one thing that’s going on is that they take childhood behaviors and start defining behaviors they don’t like as pathological. They start defining emotions that are uncomfortable as pathological. So part of what we’re doing is pathologizing childhood with straight-out definition stuff. We’re pathologizing poverty among kids.
For example, if you’re a foster kid, and maybe you drew a bad straw in the lottery of life and are born into a dysfunctional family and you get put into foster care, do you know what happens today? You pretty likely are going to get diagnosed with a mental disorder, and you’re going to be placed on a psychiatric drug. In Massachusetts, it’s something like 60 to 70 percent of kids in foster care are now on psychiatric drugs. These kids aren’t mentally ill! They got a raw deal in life. They ended up in a foster home, which means they were in a bad family situation, and what does our society do? They say: “You have a defective brain.” It’s not that society was bad and you didn’t get a fair deal. No, the kid has a defective brain and has to be put on this drug. It’s absolutely criminal.
Let’s talk about bipolar disorder among kids. As one doctor said, that used to be so rare as to be almost nonexistent. Now we’re seeing it all over. Bipolar is exploding among kids. Well, partly you could say that we’re just slapping that label on kids more often; but in fact, there is something real going on. Here’s what’s happening. You take kids and put them on an antidepressant — which we never used to do — or you put them on a stimulant like Ritalin. Stimulants can cause mania; stimulants can cause psychosis, and antidepressants can also cause mania and psychosis.
So the kid ends up with a drug-induced manic or psychotic episode. Once they have that, the doctor at the emergency room doesn’t say, “Oh, he’s suffering from a drug-induced episode.” He says he’s bipolar. Then they give him a whole new drug for the mental disorder caused by the first drug. They give him an antipsychotic drug; and now he’s on a cocktail of drugs, and he’s on a path to becoming disabled for life. That’s an example of how we’re absolutely making kids sick. Society and their schools are trying to make them manageable and they end up putting them on a chemical roller coaster against their will. There’s is also now proof that the vast majority of these kids are the youngest kids in their class and probably should have been held back. They aren’t sick, they are immature.
There’s an astonishing number of kids being given Ritalin to cure hyperactivity. But what 10-year-old boy in a confined school setting isn’t hyperactive? The effect of Ritalin on the dopamine system is very similar to cocaine and amphetamines. Ritalin is methylphenidate. Methylphenidate affects the brain in exactly the same way as cocaine. They both block a molecule that is involved in the reuptake of dopamine, so they both increase the dopamine levels in the brain, and they do it with a similar degree of potency. So methylphenidate is very similar to cocaine. Now, one difference is whether you’re snorting it or if it’s in a pill. That partly changes how quickly it’s metabolized. But still, it basically effects the brain in the same way. Methylphenidate was used in research studies to deliberately stir psychosis in schizophrenics. Because they knew that you could take a person with a tendency towards psychosis, give them methylphenidate, and cause psychosis. We also knew that amphetamines, like methylphenidate, could cause psychosis in people who had never been psychotic before.
So think about this. We’re giving a drug to kids that is known to have the possibility of stirring psychosis. Now, the odd thing about methylphenidate and amphetamines is that, in kids, they sort of have a counterintuitive effect. What does speed do in adults? It makes them more jittery and hyperactive. For whatever reasons, in kids amphetamines will actually still their movements; it will actually keep them in their chairs and make them more focused. So you’ve got kids in boring schools. The boys are not paying attention and they’re diagnosed with ADHD and put on a drug that is known to stir psychosis. The next thing you know, a fair number of them are not doing well by the time they’re 15, 16, 17. Some of those kids talk about how when you’re on these drugs for the long term, you start feeling like a zombie; you don’t feel like yourself. Hollowed-out, blunted emotions. And this is being done to millions of kids.
Think about what we’re doing. We’re robbing kids of their right to be kids, their right to grow, their right to experience their full range of emotions, and their right to experience the world in its full hue of colors. That’s what growing up is, that’s what being alive is! And we’re robbing kids of their right to be. It’s criminal. And we’re talking about millions of kids who have been affected this way. There are some colleges where something like 40 to 50 percent of the kids arrive with a psychiatric prescription.
It creates customers for the drugs, and hopefully lifelong customers. That’s what they’re told. They’re told they are going to be on these drugs for life. And next thing they know, they’re on two or three or four drugs. It’s brilliant from the capitalist point of view. It does serve some social-control function. But you take a kid, and you turn them into a customer, and hopefully a lifelong customer. It’s brilliant.
We now spend more on antidepressants in this country than the Gross National Product of mid-sized countries like Jordan. It’s just amazing amounts of money. The amount of money we spend on psychiatric drugs in this country is more than the Gross National Product of two-thirds of the world’s countries. It’s just this incredibly lucrative paradigm of the mind that you can fix chemical imbalances in the brain with these drugs. It works so well from a capitalistic point of view for Eli Lilly. When Prozac came to market, Eli Lilly’s value on Wall Street, its capitalization, was around 2 billion dollars. By the year 2000, the time when Prozac was its number-one drug, its capitalization reached 80 billion dollars — a forty-fold increase.
So that ‘s what you really have to look at if you want to see why drug companies have pursued this vision with such determination. It brings billions of dollars in wealth in terms of increased stock prices to the owners and managers of those companies. It also benefits the psychiatric establishment that gets behind the drugs; they do well by this. There’s a lot of money flowing in the direction of those that will embrace this form of care. There’s advertisements that enrich the media. It’s all a big gravy train.
Unfortunately, the cost is dishonesty in our scientific literature, the corruption of the FDA, and the absolute harm done to children in this country drawn into this system, and an increase of 150,000 newly disabled people every year in the United States for the last 17 years. That’s an incredible record of harm done.
Everyone gets rich — the drug companies, the psychiatrists, the researchers, the advertising agencies — and the clients get drugged out of their minds and damaged for life.
And you know what’s interesting? No one says that the mental health of the American people is getting better. Instead, everyone says we have this increasing problem. They blame it on the stresses of modern life or something like that, and they don’t want to look at the fact that we’re creating mental illness. The feelings and distress are real, the claim of disorder/illness and reported cause and subsequent paradigm of treatment is not.
In case anyone is wondering, no, my doctor did not give up on me, and I still have visits with him to this day every 3 months.
On another note, I am also Instrumentalcase. I like the pseudonym better. :D
This is a very long paranoid rant that has nothing to do with science.
Since neuropsychiatry is a science, and neuroscientists use the scientific method to create theories that stand on their own based on evidence and logic, I would expect that a rebuttal of neuropsychiatry’s assertions would be scientific as well. This is not. Here’s what it’s missing:
1. One or more studies of the effects of psych meds on laboratory animals, carried out using reliable methodologies, showing that they are harmful or have no effect.
2. Results and methodologies of these studies published in a peer-reviewed publication.
3. Citations, so I can refer to the author’s sources and determine whether they are credible (i.e., carrying on studies using reliable methodologies with results preferably published in peer-reviewed publications).
What it isn’t missing is falsifiable assertions. A researcher could set up an experiment to test any number of assertions made by the author. One that comes to mind is finding out if a dopaminergic psych med actually shuts down higher brain functions. I think that it wouldn’t be extremely difficult to determine whether a dopaminergic drug essentially shuts down the human brain by asking a test subject to solve a math problem, then giving the drug to the subject (pick one that the FDA has already determined is safe for adult humans, not bath salts or research chemicals) and waiting for a few hours, then asking them to solve a similar math problem. Or memory test. Or spatial perception test. You get the point. And assertion falsified without even getting out of my chair.
When the anti-psych med folks can create theories in the usual way scientists create theories, and make falsifiable assertions that hold up under scrutiny and that are logical, then they will start building credibility instead of alienating. But nothing short of pulling out the full-blown scientific method is going to convince me that psych meds are harmful or not effective.
Thanks, Kris
Damn, dude! Maybe you should have your own blog.
That was a huge wall-o-text full of your opinions (I got about halfway through that anti-psychiatry, “it’s a conspiracy!” screed before my eyes started to glaze over and didn’t finish). You can live without meds; good for you. Some of us *can’t.* We’ve tried it, gotten sick again and more often had a longer climb back to the point of having a healthy mind again.
How dare you claim to know better than those of us who’ve found something that WORKS?
Oh, and one more thing:
Constant racing thoughts, homicidal rage and enduring days, weeks, months or years of contemplating suicide are hardly “real, normal, human emotions,” when no amount of psychotherapy helps alleviate them.
Your OPINIONS present a danger to people who are actually ill and decide to stop their treatment against doctor’s orders because of some half-baked conspiracy theories.
I’m sorry Rox1SMF, but when you’ve been abused as a child, and bullied your whole life, yes, those things are normal. I would be much more concerned about the well-being of the person who can endure all that and not have those things happen. Causing harm to anyone is the last thing I want to do, but I’m sorry, the drugs didn’t and never will help me. What did help me was finally having a doctor who had the conscience and the guts to stand up and tell me the truth. You know what else helped me? Realizing that all that rage, psychotic depression and 4 suicide attempts, weeks on end getting no more than 2 hours of sleep here and there and multiple hospitalizations didn’t happen so much when I stopped running and faced my abuser. They still happen once in a while, cause I’ll never fully be able to get that stuff out of my head, but they don’t last as long anymore and aren’t destructive anymore. I would have never done that while I was drugged to the point of sitting in a rocking chair virtually catatonic all day long drooling on myself. It was impossible. Maybe I’m just an extreme case, maybe it all was supposed to happen the way it did, I don’t know, but I’m alive today because of my doctor’s empathy and compassion, and my family’s willingness to listen to him with an open mind. For you to tell me that I shouldn’t have been obsessed with thoughts of killing my abuser, back and forth with thoughts of suicide, thinking I deserved it, was not normal is frightening to me.
For the person who wanted the studies, here you go. All of this imformation has been well known for nearly 10 yrs now and reported in the mainstream media. Maybe if everyone wasn’t so closed off all the time, we might notice it once in a while. I shouldn’t have to be providing it at this point. A couple I posted in another blog post here, in case you didn’t read it, here they are again.
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=211084
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57380893/treating-depression-is-there-a-placebo-effect/?tag=contentMain%3BcontentBody
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21459521
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020392
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001190
Food for thought, and have a good day.
Sorry, I forgot to add one thing at the end of my last reply. For those of you who have found peace with the drugs, outstanding. I am really happy for you. If there are any people here who haven’t, DO NOT STOP TAKING YOUR DRUGS ABRUPTLY. I REPEAT, DO NOT STOP TAKING YOUR DRUGS ABRUPTLY. Always see your doctor and discuss it with them first. Stopping drugs takes along time, and that is just one part of it. You also have to have a doctor that knows how to do it, and what to do afterwards. It is not easy and it is something that took me years to accomplish.
Have a good day.
Thank you for your comment Adam. I actually felt the original article or blog, was a bit empty on facts and packed with a lot personal opinion. I appreciate your long “rant” about the negative affects of drugs and couldn’t agree more due to personal experience, and thank you for the links.
I was fine until they put me on fluoxetine (prozac), then I wasn’t functioning. For a writer/fine artist, that was a death sentence. Going off the prozac I slit my wrist. I believe the only way to overcome depression is to understand we never can to some degree. We will always have things in the world that make us feel bad, at least to some degree, that is called “living” – sometimes I wonder how many people just want to not tackle what really hurts them. I also wonder why it’s easier to get anti depressants than some personal one on one therapy. Still, we can learn necessary skills to cope with what angers us, take vitamins, which seem to help me personally, and exercise – these things have changed my negative mind frame considerably. Sometimes accomplishing goals that we set for ourselves ups our value toourselves. We can also confront and take responsibility for some of what angers us. I have seen relatively normal people (that I know personally) deal with some mood swings or hormonal issues, be placed on antidepressants, and change considerably – the changes made them less of a personality, more snippy, more fickle, and in the end as they were trying to adjust, much more depressed. Anymore people think it’s the normal to function with drugs in their system, to be half of what they were, but it’s unnatural to me. I have never felt better than when I followed my own conscience, got into therapy and took responsibility for myself, facing the world head on with some fear, not to mention whole lot of courage and the truth that I was being absolutely true to my own mind.
One of the most ridiculous things anyone said to me was this:
“Everybody is on something, that’s how the world functions.” Really?
I don’t know how, but this website discussion ended up in my email. Naturally I read it and feel compelled to answer. (I haven’t even taken the time to read the entirety, like I said, it just appeared in my email….strange). In any case, I was NEVER so happy as when I was diagnosed with bi-polar. Since 13 years old (am now 52, diagnosed at 49) I KNEW something wasn’t right. To have struggled for SO many years, literally on my own, and to have finally landed on a (costly) psychologist who gave me a battery of tests, end result being diagnosed as bi-polar. I literally said “Finally I can put a name to the demons that have been dodging me”. She also diagnosed me as Borderline Personality Disorder – now THAT one I have to disagree with. I am able to maintain family, friend and intimate relationships. Perhaps I’ve got a bit of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Doesn’t matter. I’m me, I now know my limits, my triggers, what situations to avoid, which foods to avoid and most importantly – AVOID ALCOHOL.
Ok that’s my two cents,
Joanne
Great commentary — in my opinion, society needs to PUSH push PUSH psychotherapy on all of us……modern life is full of challenges, and our media almost force feeds us b.s. Psychotherapy comes in a variety of styles, and when a person’s OWN mental health is challenging them to cope / survive, reaching for help is TRULY a good idea. As mentioned in your post, short term help is often a good solution and continued treatment MAY be unnecessary yet not for everyone. MONEY money MONEY is also a factor to consider both for the patient and obviously for BigPharma and the doctors and the hospitals, etc. I enjoyed reading the book “WHEN SOCIETY BECOMES AN ADDICT.” It describes how ALL of us are effected by those surrounding us and those we watch (like in the media). Psychiatry isn’t all guesswork, and hopefully soon new treatments will become available. Some people feel that their medication(s) saved their lives – others took their lives because the medication(s) failed them. The individuals thought system usually needs addressing. Just my opinion. Again, great commentary even if some of it I don’t agree with — I love it that you wrote it.
Hi Betsy,
I get your point but I don’t think “pushing” psychotherapy on people would work as when people don’t want to be in therapy, it’s very unlikely to have a positive effect. I am a fan of therapy though and do think people should try it, probably multiple variants.
– Natasha Tracy
Not only are you wrong, you are a boring storyteller too.
I was referring to the long-winded one, not Natasha.
But a lot of these studies are rigged. And there are studies showing meds are no more effective than placebo… so there is what you chose to view as truth, versus what others chose to percieve as such.
And no, it don’t work for everybody and that is a fact… maybe for some it’s a waste to spend years looking for magic combo, as opposed to admiting science failed them and that there are other solutions…. as much as it’s immoral to tell everybody to get off meds NOW, it’s immoral to feed people hope that magic combo exist for everybody. It doesn’t. For some getting out of their place, finding new purpose, etc… is what works.
And yes, some drugs “work” but for what price? I met few people who robotically said “X drugs saved my life” but they didn’t get much life to be honest and probably repeated what doctors told them. When they got off or reduced their dosage… they realized how much fun can have with healthy sex drive. How much more can do with life if you don’t sleep for 14 hours (and spend the remaining 10 hours as drowsy zombie).
To me not wanting to kill yourself doesn’t mean you want to live. And sometimes there miracle drugs remover will to really LIVE too. You just are… and it’s not really enough, I think.
My problem with Psychiatry is that it often is reduced to “take your pills and STFU”. No way we could have reason to be depressed because world effing sucks and we feel uprooted… Shrink who diagnosed me thought “going to Eastern Europe for vacation” was a symptom… Other shrink wanted me on meds when I was ten and my father died… :/ Yeah, maybe these drugs would “work” and I would not care and I would not feel sad after years and years and years… but maybe I would not be where I am today either, because… I would not care for the good either.
Hi VenusH,
Well, I don’t agree that “a lot of these studies are rigged” and there is no study that I’m aware of that says that drugs are no better than placebos except in specific populations, as I mentioned above. I look at the preponderance of evidence.
As for your personal experience, only you know what the right one is for you and if it’s with changes other than meds, then that’s what it is. I’ve written about getting off meds many times and it’s something that some people want to do.
And while living an imperfect life due to drug side effects is imperfect, it’s often a lot better than the alternative.
– Natasha Tracy
Tracy, I agree that the side effects can be better than the alternative. I spent the last two weeks off my medication because I was led to believe that psychiatric medications were more harmful than good. Yesterday I ended up in the ER getting my meds because for the last two weeks I have been closer to the edge than I ever was before. I learned the hard way that I am on meds for the rest of my life and I will not be ashamed.
Hi Debra,
I’m sorry you’ve been through that. I’m sure it was awful, but maybe it will propel you to never be ashamed – a good long-term result. Good on you for realizing that and for getting back on the medication you need.
(Oh, and by the way, it’s Natasha :)
– Natasha Tracy
The last point I want to make for the anti-psych med folks is:
PERFORM YOUR OWN SCIENTIFIC STUDIES USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD, HAVE A BUNCH OF QUALIFIED SCIENTISTS LOOK AT YOUR RESULTS AND METHODOLOGY, SO WE CAN ALL FIND OUT IF YOU DID GOOD SCIENCE AND SHOULD GIVE YOU MORE THAN 15 MINS TO EXPLAIN HOW SCIENCE WORKS AND THEN IGNORE YOU.
You too can “do science.” So do some.
If your findings and testing methodology hold up under the scrutiny of the scientific community, then let’s talk.
Thanks,
Kris
Fact: I would be dead without my medication. Period.
I know there are a lot of diverging views on the value of medication. Keep in mind with bipolar, they don’t know exactly what is happening, so no medicine is perfect. Fortunately, I (we) have found some meds that are relatively effective when I have acute issues (anxiety) and a pretty good top-down that keeps my irritability under control. The depression/fatigue combo, which is what I deal with 85% of the time, we are still working on.
I think this is a good post by Natosha because it does encourage people to work with their doctors and their meds, but for me nothing has worked perfectly and I still suffer a lot. The most effective part of my treatment is the cognitive aspect by far. Just being able to detach myself from what is going on and not ride the tidal waves (mostly low) of what I am feeling. I think that when people become too positive about their meds, they leave they tend to leave the cognitive aspect out. I can honestly tell you that the more I practice it, the easier it has become living with bipolar. Good luck to everyone.
Great article Natasha. I remember being hestitant to take any medication for my depression when I was first diagnosed with it. I thought, “There is no way a little pill is going to take these thoughts away from me.” Roughly two weeks after starting on an antidepressant I was walking down the street, and I stopped thinking. For years my brain was on overdrive every single day. Thinking about hoplessness, my worthlessness, and suicidal ideas. To go from thinking those thoughts constantly to barely having them anymore has been one of the great successes of my life.
I think a post on the importance of staying on properly prescribed medication would make a nice followup to this article. I went off my meds three different times. And each time I crashed hard. After the third time I was in a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt. To say that I’ve learned the importance of staying on my meds is an understatement.
Sometimes it takes some time on different drugs. It likwas like hit or miss and then finally after about 14 months one combination worked. I can understand the commenters frustration. Hopefully commenter will not give up. I know my life got better with meds. I was fortunate to have someone stick with me even though i know it was hard on them. I will always be grateful sfor that. I feel better eating meals and sleeping. On a schedule.
I second you Tash. My opinion is based on fact. The fact that when I was given the correct medication, I got better.
Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
Sounds to me like that commenter was either misdiagnosed or gave up before finding the right meds. Yes, we’re “guinea pigs” until exactly the proper course of treatment for our UNIQUE cases is determined.
She also gave some crappy and dangerous advice about stopping your meds. NEVER “just stop!” – getting off of your meds should be done according to your doctor’s advice, not some random anti-psychiatry/anti-medication person who’s got a chip on their shoulder and doesn’t know what the hell s/he’s talking about.
My “wonder drug,” the one that finally got me stabilized, was Remeron (mirtazipine). It replaced an anti-depressant and a sleeping pill (the anti-d gave me insomnia) The difference is unbelievable. I’ve lived too many years in hell, pre-diagnosis and when I couldn’t afford treatment because I didn’t have health insurance, to even entertain the notion of not taking medication. I never want to go through that again, or put my loved ones through it.
Keep doing what you do, Natasha!
Hi Roxanne,
Thanks.
Yes, I have felt like a Guinea pig and Petri dish more times than I can count. I have said it, I have written about it and I have lamented on it. But like you said, we are all individuals, and that does pretty much make us all our own case study. And there’s just very little that can be done about that. It’s not that doctors aren’t trying, it’s just that there are limits as to what they know and what they can do.
– Natasha Tracy
Hi :) Another thing to be thankful for is how far psyvh meds have come. When I was 16 in ’86 I was hospitalized for approximately 2 years. I did not respond well to haldol or thorazine, tricyclic antideps. So it took some time to straighten stuff up. This was before the prozac era and the atypical antipsychotics ( of which seroquel xr (at least for now is my life line.) It really hurts knowing people attack the mentally ill not just for a disorder, but how the disorder is treated as well. Thanx for listening
Scott
I am still in the process of finding the exact combo of medications that work for me. I have been diagnosed with Bipolar II. I’ve tried several different combos, but even though I haven’t found exactly the right combo and right now I am in the middle of major depression, I know if I was not on medication right now – I would be dead. At least with medications and therapy, I am at the point that I can tell someone when I am feeling suicidal. In the past, I would have just done it without saying anything to anyone.
Hi Norelle,
I think that’s a very important point. Sometimes medication doesn’t get us all the way to “good” but it gets us to a place where we can take care of ourselves and strive for good. I understand it must suck to be where you are now, but it’s great to see you appreciate the progress so far. That attitude will help in your recovery.
– Natasha Tracy
without Seroquel I would be dead….
Hi Pam,
Yes, as I said to one Twitter follower who said something similar, “join the club.” So many of us would be dead or completely without lives if not for medication. And I hate to think of others who might be in the same boat as me pre-medication, because others spread the word that medication “doesn’t work.”
– Natasha Tracy
Natasha, I agree with you. But we’re in the minority of people. Here in India, a land of 1.2 billion people (give or take), opinions are generally based on religion, or tradition, or cultural history. I know I’m right that they’re more likely to die if they cram four people on a little motorbike without helmets. But to them, death is a matter of karma. Statistics, logic, have nothing to do with it.
Medications are greatly feared in here. Western medicines go against the traditional way of doing things. So people find peace through yoga, homeopathy, and even voodoo. They may, or may not be effective. But belief is a powerful thing.
Hi Sarah,
Well, we might be in the minority in India, but we’re in the majority in North America. Belief in anything _is_ cultural, and I understand that. It might be frustrating for some of us, but I can’t claim to truly understand a culture that I’m not part of and haven’t studied, so all I can say is, what works for others, works for them, I suppose. At least, hopefully.
– Natasha Tracy
Yes, hopefully being the key word. I was actually talking about a global minority rather than a country minority; i.e., there are more people in the world against medication rather than for it. Some of this thinking is bound to leak into places like the US. But with it comes some great strategies such as mindfulness meditation. I think we are better off when we take the best of both worlds on board.
Hi Nataha,
as always great to read your opinion on any subject. People have the right to there own opinion on anything but experience the turmoil of life without medication then you will know the difference.
I believed that antidepressants were pseudo drugs, when you look at names like efexor it does create that doubt within anyones mind. I personally had been treated for depression with no results for a few years and gave them up because they did nothing for me. Once I was properly diagnosed ith Bipolar and given the right kind of drugs the affects have been eye opening to say the least.
I guess I have been lucky so far that my first drug cocktail for my disorder has made a huge improvement in myself. I still find it amazing that drugs could of had an effect after the lack of effect from just antidepressants. If anything anti-depressants made it worse for me thus the recognition finally of the real problem.
So anyway, anyone can have there own views or opinions but unless you have been in the depths of the darkness of depression or been with someone who has. You would not truely be able to know the affects such drugs do have on people.
I do know people with depression that there meds do work on and do know of others with depression and sure you could give them a sugar pill and it would have the same pyschological affect. Everyone is different. Some peoples mental illness could be a pyschological issue, while others with a chemical embalance do need the intervention of chemical assistance.
Which brings me to a question….My Pychologists says most people with Bipolar or Schizophrenia have to be really carefully if they go off there meds because of the chemical embalance, it could cause a relapse so to speak.so in saying that most would have to remain on their medication for the rest of there life? I know everyone is different and some can cope without meds but some would find the meds keep that chemical balance right so they shouldn’t change that? would these statements/ questions be true?
Hi Travis,
I agree that personal experience is a very strong driver of opinion but I like to take into account actual scientific facts because many people who feel that “antidepressants don’t work” do so because of their _own_ experiences, and my point is that isn’t enough to make a rational determination.
I used to feel that antidepressants were nonsense too – until I needed them. And your experience with antidepressants making you worse because you actually have bipolar disorder is not unique. It’s unfortunate you were incorrectly diagnosed for so long, but that is a common problem among the bipolar – particularly bipolar II because it can be difficult to spot, clinically.
As to your questions…
First off, the concept of a “chemical imbalance” isn’t correct and it’s just something that some professionals say to communicate that there’s something “broken” in the brain. In fact, we know that it’s much more than a chemical imbalance so I would be careful about using that term. (Lots of people do even though it isn’t correct but this tends to feed the fire of antipsychiatrists.)
And yes, if you are, say, bipolar, and choose to go off your meds there is a very good chance to relapse. In fact, in most people, relapse is imminent as they do need the drugs to correct that “broken” parts of their brain forever.
That being said, there are a very small number of people who have managed to successfully wean off medication. This doesn’t generally happen with bipolar but can happen for people with depression – quite regularly actually. In cases where people experience only one mood disturbance in their life, they can often turn things around with medication and therapy and then get off the meds in between 6-12 months later. This is also seen with some people that experience only one psychosis in their lifetime. Diseases that present themselves over and over generally don’t work this way.
My perspective is that if you have a disorder that has been repeatedly showing itself, or have had a mood disturbance for a long period of time (say, a year) and then you become stabilized on meds – don’t fix what ain’t broken. Most doctors would agree with that.
If, on the other hand, as I say, you a single, brief disturbance and you want to get off of the meds, then you might be a good candidate.
Does that clear things up?
– Natasha Tracy
Hi Travis,
To answer your question about going off meds, I have bipolar, and going off meds suddenly caused a manic episode and hospitalization. Always be careful with meds and be gentle on your mind and body. Changes should be gradual.
Great post. I don’t know why people make a decision to believe something and then dismiss all evidence to the contrary. It’s weird.
I’d be very interested to read experience sampling studies on the efficacy of psychiatric medications – have you read any??
-Sara
Hi Sara,
Well, one might argue I dismiss evidence to the contrary too, but, personally, I feel that I consider the preponderance of evidence, but that’s me.
I’m not sure what you mean by a study of people’s experience. Wouldn’t that just be a collection of anecdotes? What scientific value would that have? Sorry if I’m not understanding quite what you’re saying.
– Natasha Tracy
Thank you Natasha for once again pointing out the difference between opinion and fact. There are many people who “believe” that psychiatry and medicine in general are unhealthy because they are not “natural” or because there is nt “religion” involved. It is my opinion they are incorrect because I have tried these and still things did not improve.
What I do know for a fact is that psychiatric meds are what have kept me able to function after years of not knowing what was happening to me. I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 year ago, at age 48, and if not for the psych meds I would be dead or otherwise unable to have even a simple existence.
As long as I keep to a good routine, eat healthy food, get plenty of good sleep, take my meds at the appropriate times and doses and get some exercise, I know I will do reasonably well.
Ernie Richards
Hi Ernie,
Sheesh. Natural. Those people kill me. Lithium is as natural as it gets, being that it’s just a salt, so perhaps they should all chomp down some of that? Nonsense. And religion? Well, that’s some people’s bag but it’s hardly the way I would recommend handling illness.
I’m glad to hear you have found a treatment and a routine that works for you. And after only a year. Believe it or not, that’s pretty amazing. Keep up the good work :)
– Natasha Tracy
Simply, people who don’t believe that medication works are ridiculous!
From the holly mess that I was before to the person I am today…Night & Day!!
Hi Annie,
Yes, that would be my assessment too, but if you saw the vehemence with which they hold to their convictions on places like Facebook. Sheesh.
– Natasha Tracy