Council For Evidence-based Psychiatry Responds to Angry Lancet Commentary

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In July, The Lancet Psychiatry published a commentary attacking Peter Gotzsche and the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, suggesting their criticism of the lack of effectiveness of psychiatric drugs, and particularly of antidepressants, is “extreme” and “insulting” and “plumbs a new nadir in irrational polemic.” Leaders of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry respond in the same journal this month, writing that they are “tired of the intellectual malaise, corruption, and indifference” in some psychiatrists and “deeply concerned about the potentially devastating impact this blindness is having on the lives of millions of people who have been on the receiving end of a pharmaceutical revolution borne out of good marketing manipulating poor science.”

Both letters are available in full online.

Antipsychiatry and the antidepressants debate (Timimi, Sami et al. The Lancet Psychiatry, Volume 1, Issue 3, Page 174, August 2014. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(08)61345-8)

Attacks on antidepressants: signs of deep-seated stigma? (Nutt DJ et al. The Lancet Psychiatry, Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages 102 – 104, July 2014. doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(14)70232-9) Full text available here.

6 COMMENTS

  2. Kudos, and a sincere thank you, to the leaders of the Council on Evidence Based Medicine. “First do no harm” should be the medical industry’s goal. And the antidepressants do cause long run harm. I was first put on a “safe smoking cessation med” / dangerous antidepressant in 6.2000. Then taken off it because it did not aid in smoking cessation. This resulted in the withdrawal symptoms of “brain zaps,” powerful dreams, and odd sexual side effects. These adverse withdrawal effects were then misdiagnosed as “bipolar,” which, of course, resulted in a plethora of “Foul up[s].” None of the “bipolar” drugs or cocktails cure the adverse withdrawal effects of the antidepressants. And 14 years later, and drug free for the past seven, I still have the original antidepressant withdrawal symptoms.

    I pray the million plus children, and no doubt millions more adults, similarly misdiagnosed as “bipolar” (according to the DSM-TR-IV) will some day be weaned off the meds, too. Mainstream psychiatry’s almost unfathomable iatrogenic harm of millions is simply heartbreaking and criminal.

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    • Zyprexa – sleepiness bordering on narcolepsy, extreme hunger bouts leading to overeating, increased anxiety and panic attacks, restless leg syndrome
      Seroquel – aggression, suicidal ideation, zombification, RLS
      Abilify – severe nausea and vomiting
      Temesta (benzodiazepine) – anterograde amnesia, aggression, feeling high, fear of death
      Prozac – extreme anxiety
      That’s the list of side effects I alone have experienced on each of these meds (and these are all that I remember – I was also taking an SSRI which made me suicidal and other I don’t recall which also had intolerable side effects). Needles to say none of them has done anything to help my problems, if anything I got only more “unstable” on them. But hey, they’re safe and effective.

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  3. Criminal, yes. It really is. That is not just a figure of speech. Our movement should forcefully and persistently demand that these people be criminally prosecuted. Without this, such abuses will never stop, as there are no consequences for the criminals.

    I should mention that I am a lawyer, and know what a crime means.

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  4. Peter Gotzsche and the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry – thank you for the important critical voice in the world of “intellectual malaise, corruption, and indifference” (well put).

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