Editor’s note: These letters are selected from an exchange that Dr. Foster and Robert Whitaker have had since he read Anatomy of an Epidemic. They describe his interactions with his patients, and his changing thoughts about the prescribing of psychiatric medications. In all of these letters, the specific patient situations he describes are real, but all identifying characteristics have been changed, or permission has been given, in order to protect patient privacy.
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Absolutely! The five different psychiatrists my son saw during his 8 months illness were all well-meaning. The only problem with them was that they didn’t listen to what I was trying to tell them. They also seemed to be ignorant of the fact that one could get psychosis from a horribly infected toe. They put him on olazapine and diagnosed him “mentally ill”. He developed NMS from it. We were told that you could not get NMS from olanzapine and they didn’t check on him in hospital during the night when he was in the grip of fever. He discharged himself from the hospital and I personally saw what the olanzapine was doing to him. He tried to get off the olazapine and could not. We tried to get help but our Gp didn’t know how to and the psychiatrists refused because they were sure he was suffering from schizophrenia. So we had to go it alone. At the end he tried to kill himself because he could not stop walking day and night and he could not sleep. It was horrendous! The thing is: I am certain that all those doctors would have been able to help if they only had listened to what we were trying to tell them. Instead of listening they treated me like the poor old deluded mother unable to accept that her son was “mentally ill”. Eventually I found Dr Breggin’s books. My son has been off medication for 3 years now but he is still shaken and scarred by what happened to him.
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If someone were to do an in depth and very honest review of psychiatric care they would find that “lacking insight” and “grandiose” are too often synonymous with the “narcissistic wound” so many mental health professionals feel when a patient disagrees with them and challenges their authority.
That so many of them are neurotically and judgmentally obsessed with every little aspect of a patient’s affect while they themselves wear disgust, fear, and feelings of smug superiority like a badge is just too precious.
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In the new system the difference between a drug and a medicine needs to be discussed and explained to the patient , before the patient consumes the chemical.
A drug being a luxury someone doesn’t truly need to live, but can get from a doctor to ease ones suffering.
A medicine being a necessary treatment for a physical disease (outside force) that is actively harming the human body.
A medicine has a start and finish date ( the disease is killed), a drug does not have a finish date. -
Hey Mark,
Well, as a funny aside, here is a youtube video that addresses just that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc
Seriously though, I put more responsibility on the doctors than you do. They are phoning it in, not doing their best. Not sufficiently engaged to truly care. That’s not ok with me. When you have this large an impact on people’s lives, make as good a living as the doctors do, then that also bestows a lot of responsibility. A responsibility they are not living up to. This man you mentioned above had several of his years lampooned by doctors who does not care enough. Maybe this is an example of the negatives of doctors who are taught to keep a rather large “professional distance” between themselves and their patients. The doctors who prescribed and destroyed several years of this mans life doesn’t even get one sleepless night as a result of their irresponsible actions. Again, not ok.
Sorry, this isn’t just a thing of “we are doing our best in this difficult wicked world”. That abdicates the very real responsibility that comes with the title, the education and the income.
Anyways, hope the youtube link brings a smile to someone’s face. It is pretty funny.
Malene