Nice doctors achieve better depression outcomes

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Psychiatric Times has published a discussion of the research comparing the effectiveness of antidepressant medications under different conditions. “First, there seem to be no significant differences among [different antidepressants],” states author Dr. Steve Balt. “Second, and somewhat surprisingly, antidepressant effectiveness is quite low.” When discussing the significance of the placebo effect, Balt cites research suggesting that “the quality of the therapeutic alliance between prescriber and patient is sometimes a better predictor of patient outcome than which drugs are prescribed. One study found that “effective” prescribers obtained better outcomes with placebos than “less effective” prescribers with active antidepressants.”

Assessing and Enhancing the Effectiveness of Antidepressants (Psychiatric Times, June 13, 2014)

 

2 COMMENTS

  1. I just read this article and don’t agree that one could conclude that “nice doctors” have better results with useless, toxic SSRI drugs already exposed in Kirsch’s studies and book, The Emperor’s New Drugs.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperors-New-Drugs-Antidepressant/dp/0465022006rugs that suspiciously is not mentioned in this article.

    Though I give Steve Balt credit for acknowledging the low efficacy of SSRI’s, I am saddened to see how far he has gone in selling out to the lies of main stream psychiatry given his previous acknowledgement of the bogus claims of biopsychiatry on the Carlat blog, Thought Broadcast, and at MIA.

    I think when considering critical psychiatry articles one has to look at the big picture and message and discern if the overall message is helpful or harmful to would be psychiatric survivors.

    One horrible message that Balt sneaks into this seemingly helpful, honest article is that so called “treatment resistant” depression may be caused by the fact that the problem is really bipolar needing other so called treatment. This is the nasty Nassir Ghaemi agenda to stigmatize just about everyone on the planet with bipolar to push lethal neuroleptics, lithium and epileptic drugs fraudulently named “mood stabilizers” by Big Pharma for a discredited theory that bipolar is similar to epilepsy. Also, most SSRI drugs are coming off patent while the other toxic neuroleptics like the new Latuda and those especially in injectionable form and so called mood stabilizers are still on patent and all too lucrative still. Nassir Ghaemi has been a paid consultant for Latuda and he is pushing for the elimination of the depression diagnosis so it can be subsumed in the bogus bipolar world takeover agenda with his cohorts in crime. Ghaemi is also annexing PTSD, borderline personality disorder, anxiety and other all too normal reactions to social/environmental/relationship stressors into his concentration camp of bipolar inmates.

    Thus, though one might initially be impressed with Balt’s great honesty about the general lack of efficacy of SSRI’s, I believe he has sold out and has the above hidden agenda to discredit the depression diagnosis in favor of the bipolar fad fraud while giving lip service to trauma better served by therapy when he has to be all too well aware that the so called treatment for trauma or anything else biopsychiatry encounters is more toxic neuroleptic and other drugs as is obvious with our veterans in the military. Balt’s talk of therapy is a joke given the current psychiatric stigmatizing and drugging agenda with therapy a very rare option today and if done it all only very short term therapy is approved.

    Finally, the article doesn’t speak of “nice” psychiatrists, but rather “effective” ones. Who are the effective ones? It appears Balt has given the bogus company line throughout the article by pretending to consider many different possibilities and remedies for the “patient’s” so called suffering while actually discrediting each one of them. The only obvious one he mentions that will really solve the problem is to see that the issue was never the useless, toxic SSRI drugs at all, but rather, to see that the “patient” really had bipolar all along, so of course, the SSRI’s wouldn’t work. Instead, they need a life destroying bipolar stigma the current lethal cocktails including new antipsychotics like Latuda if one is to be an “effective” doctor!

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