solemole
War Child
There’s a lot of “mentally ill” people in America--the depressed, the bipolar, the anxious, the phobic, the "schizo*"—and there always have been. And the statistical probability and likelihood that the violence akin to Oklahoma City, Columbine, V-Tech, Aurora, and Newtown, will increase, I suspect, is unlikely. But no excuse, blame, debate, nor answer can speak for the lives lost in these unspeakable tragedies. The impact of such violence will never cease to shock us as a nation.
Recently, there has been a growing movement in the mental healthcare world, questioning the safety and effectiveness of psychiatric medication. “Safety” does not only ask whether a patient would suffer aberrant violent behavior, but views the health and longevity of those taking psychiatric medication. The quiet controversy concerning psychiatric medication concerns anyone who takes them for whatever reason. (According to Wikipedia, “More than half of US children diagnosed with ASD are prescribed psychoactive drugs or anticonvulsants, with the most common drug classes being antidepressants, stimulants, and antipsychotics.”)
So the question in this thread, is not whether people with mental disorders, illness (e.g. depression) or disability (e.g. autism) (distinction used here is arbitrary; those with depression or autism can be on disability), but whether and how psychiatric medication may play a role in unexpected, senseless violence.
Therefore, I ask FYMers here to have an open mind and have their presumptions challenged and critically think about whether everything you think you know about mental illness is right.
For those who are viscerally disagree with these ideas, I kindly ask that you take some adequate time to do some comprehensive research yourself and bring back your own conclusions.
WARNING: PEOPLE TAKING MEDICATION SHOULD NOT STOP ON THEIR OWN. PSYCHIATRIC DRUG WITHDRAWAL IS VERY DANGEROUS. FOR INSIGHT, GETTING OFF XANAX IS TOUGHER THAN HEROIN.
http://wh.gov/RUS0
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
launch a federal investigation in to the relationship between school shootings and psychiatric drugs.
Whereas 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of hostility, violence homicidal ideas, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use;
Whereas at least fourteen recent school shootings were committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 109 wounded and 58 killed;
Between 2004 and 2011, there have been over 11,000 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system of psychiatric drug side effects related to violence;
We the people of the United States demand a formal and public investigation into the relationship between the FDA, the Pharmaceutical industry, psychiatric drugs and treatments, and the violent actions of the shooters for the last 20 years.
Created: Dec 14, 2012
Recently, there has been a growing movement in the mental healthcare world, questioning the safety and effectiveness of psychiatric medication. “Safety” does not only ask whether a patient would suffer aberrant violent behavior, but views the health and longevity of those taking psychiatric medication. The quiet controversy concerning psychiatric medication concerns anyone who takes them for whatever reason. (According to Wikipedia, “More than half of US children diagnosed with ASD are prescribed psychoactive drugs or anticonvulsants, with the most common drug classes being antidepressants, stimulants, and antipsychotics.”)
So the question in this thread, is not whether people with mental disorders, illness (e.g. depression) or disability (e.g. autism) (distinction used here is arbitrary; those with depression or autism can be on disability), but whether and how psychiatric medication may play a role in unexpected, senseless violence.
Therefore, I ask FYMers here to have an open mind and have their presumptions challenged and critically think about whether everything you think you know about mental illness is right.
The idea of “chemical imbalance” rooted in the public conscience over the past 30 years is a fallacy. It has become a catch-all-phrase for pharmaceutical industry and marketing. To date, no doctor can answer the author Whitaker’s primary two questions, quoted in the beginning: Why is mental illness not cured? and Why is mental illness increasing in numbers?Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whitaker
But if we uncover a history of a different sort—a history that shows that the biological causes of mental disorders remain to be discovered and that psychiatric drugs are in fact fueling the epidemic of disabling mental illness—what then? We will have documented a history that tells of a society led horribly astray and, one might say, betrayed.
--Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whitaker (2010)
[None of the psychiatric drugs] had been developed after scientists had identified any disease process on the brain abnormality that might have been causing these symptoms. (54)
[By] 1970 two possible histories were unfolding. One possibility is that psychiatry, in a remarkably fortuitous turn of events, had stumbled on several types of drugs that, although they produced abnormal behaviors in animals, nevertheless fixed various abnormalities in the brain chemistry of those who were mentally ill. If so, then a true revolution was indeed under way, and we can expect that when we review the long-term outcomes produced by these drugs, we will find that they help people get well and stay well. The other possibility is that psychiatry, eager to have its own magic pills and eager to take its place in mainstream medicine, turned the drugs into something they were not. These first-generation drugs were simply agents that perturbed normal brain function in some way, which is what the animal research had shown, and if that is so, then it stands to reason that the long-term outcomes produced by the drugs might be problematic in kind. (65)
Antipsychotics, antidepressants, and other psychotropic drugs, [Steve Hyman, recent provost of Harvard University, neuroscientist, NIMH director from 1996-2001] wrote, “create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions.” … In each instance, the brain is trying to nullify the drug’s effects. “These adaptations,” Hyman explained, “are rooted in homeostatic mechanisms that exist, presumably, to permit cells to maintain their equilibrium in the face of alterations in the environment or changes in the internal milieu.” (83)
Prior to treatment, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, and other psychiatric disorders do not suffer from any known “chemical imbalance.” However, once a person is put on a psychiatric medication, which, in one manner or another, throws a wrench into the usual mechanics of a neuronal pathway, his or her brain begins to function, as Hyman observes, abnormally. (84)
[Studies conducted by the NIMH in the 1950s, before the arrival of Thorazine] provide a rather startling view of schizophrenia outcomes during this time. According to the conventional wisdom, it was Thorazine that made it possible for people with schizophrenia to live in the community. But what we find is that the majority of people admitted for a first episode of schizophrenia during the late 1940s and early 1950s recoveredto the point within the first twelve months, they could return to the community…. Moreover, those returning to the community weren’t living in shelters and group homes, as facilities of that sort didn’t exist yet. They were not receiving federal disability payments, as SSI and SSDI programs had yet to be established.... All in all, there was reason for people diagnosed with schizophrenia during postwar period to be optimistic that they could get better and function fairly well in community. (92-93)
“Drug-treated patients tend to have longer periods of hospitalization…. The untreated patients consistently show a somewhat lower retention rate.” (93)
WHY HAVE THE NUMBERS OF DISABLED MENTALLY ILL SOARED OVER THE PAST FIFTY YEARS [?] …. “In the later [medicated] era, none chose a career, although many held various jobs, and none married or even had lasting relationships.” …. Today, there are an estimated 2.4 million people receiving SSI or SSDI because they are ill with schizophrenia (or some other psychotic disorder), a disability rate of one in every 125 Americans. Since the arrival of Thorazine, the disability rate due to psychotic illness has increased fourfold in our society. (119-120)
If they stop taking the medication, they are at high risk of relapsing. But if they stay on the drugs, they will also likely to suffer recurrent episodes of depression, and this chronicity increases the risk that they will become disabled. The SSRIs, to a certain extent, act like a trap in the same way that neuroleptics [aka anti-psychotics] do. (170)
Antidepressants […] can cause manic switches and turn patients into “rapid cyclers,” and may increase the amount of time they spend in depressive episodes…. “The number of episodes, and it’s a very rich literature [documenting this], is associated with more cognitive deficits,” he said. “We are building more episodes, more treatment resistance, more cognitive dysfunction, and there is data showing that if you have four depressive episodes, unipolar or bipolar, it doubles your late-life risk of dementia. And guess what? That isn’t even the half of it…. In the United States, people with depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia are losing twelve to twenty years in life expectancy compared to those not in the mental health system.” (175-76)
Given what the scientific literature revealed about the long-term outcomes of medicated schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression, it stood to reason that the DRUG COCKTAILS used to treat bipolar illness were NOT going to produce good long-term results. The increased chronicity, the functional decline, the cognitive impairment, and the physical illness—all these can be expected to show up in people treated with a COCKTAIL that often includes an antidepressant, an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a benzodiazepine, and perhaps a stimulant, too. (177)
Antidepressants have also led many people into the bipolar camp. (180)
Psychiatrists regularly saw that their drugs were effective. They gave them to their distressed patients, and their symptoms often abated. If their patients stopped taking the drugs, their symptoms frequently returned. This clinical course—initial symptom reduction and relapse upon drug withdrawal—also gave patients reason to say: “I need my medication. I can’t do well without it.” (THE GOTCHA) (206)
Rather than fix chemical imbalances in the brain, the drugs create them. We then combed through the outcomes literature, and we found that these pills worsen long-term outcomes, at least in the aggregate. (207)
The seriously mentally ill are now dying fifteen to twenty-five years earlier than normal, with this problem of early death having become much more pronounced in the past fifteen years. They are dying from cardiovascular ailments, respiratory problems, metabolic illnesses, diabetes, kidney failure, and so forth—the physical ailments tend to pile up as people stay on antipsychotics (or drug cocktails) for years on end. (211)
Jasmine’s Story (248-251)
"It was not surprising that medical students accepted the dogma of biomedical reductionism in psychiatry uncritically; they had no time to read and analyze the original literature. What took me a while to understand, as I moved through my residency, was that psychiatrists rarely do the critical reading either." -- Colin Ross, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Southwest Medical Center in Dallas, Texas (1995)
THE CATCH 22: No competent person would refuse “medically sound treatment,” and thus courts consistently order patients to be medicated. (356)
For those who are viscerally disagree with these ideas, I kindly ask that you take some adequate time to do some comprehensive research yourself and bring back your own conclusions.
WARNING: PEOPLE TAKING MEDICATION SHOULD NOT STOP ON THEIR OWN. PSYCHIATRIC DRUG WITHDRAWAL IS VERY DANGEROUS. FOR INSIGHT, GETTING OFF XANAX IS TOUGHER THAN HEROIN.
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