The Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry has published the text of a speech by the Earl of Sandwich in the British House of Lords. The Earl criticizes physicians and the government for not recognizing or helping people who are suffering long-term harms from psychiatric medications or who have become unwittingly addicted to certain psychotropics by following their doctors recommendations.
“(W)hile huge resources are rightly devoted to criminality, virtually nothing is spent on prescribed drug addiction because it appears that no harm is caused to society; it is society that is causing the harm,” states the Earl. “Yet a mere handful of charities are coping with increasing numbers of desperate people who become dependent and cannot easily withdraw. Despite the — I am afraid — feeble efforts of the Department of Health and a few exceptions among primary care trusts, the devolved NHS and three successive health Ministers have virtually ignored the problem, having shown a lot of enthusiasm to begin with.”
The Earl hopes that an upcoming report from the British Medical Association on involuntary dependence on prescribed medicine will help bring about policy changes.
Earl of Sandwich speaks on prescribed drug harms in the House of Lords (Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, June 10, 2015)
