This week on MIA Radio we interview Dr. Stuart Shipko. Dr. Shipko is a psychiatrist in private practice in Pasadena, California and author of the books Surviving Panic Disorder, Xanax Withdrawal and Dr. Shipko’s Informed Consent for SSRI Antidepressants.
Stuart has over 30 years’ experience as a psychiatrist and an extensive background in the psychotherapies. He writes for Mad in America on issues relating to SSRI withdrawal and he has a particular interest in the side effects and withdrawal effects of antidepressants and benzodiazepines and the need for informed consent when prescribing.
The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the audio of the interview here.
James Moore: Dr. Shipko, welcome. I wanted to ask about you and your background and what it was that led to your 30 year plus career as a psychiatrist?
Stuart Shipko: All I wanted to do when I was a kid is to go into medicine. I went into emergency medicine and family medicine first. Then I went into psychiatry in order to continue pursuing research that I did on psychosomatic medicine when I was in medical school. I actually didn’t intend to be a practicing psychiatrist.
Moore: When we spoke previously, you mentioned that you’d had experiences with humanistic or shamanistic practice. I haven’t spoken with many psychiatrists that have that on their CV. So I was interested to explore that part of your medical practice.
Shipko: It’s not a part of my medical practice, I have to say. I suppose it was integrated, but I don’t hold myself out as a shamanic healer. I did an internship and then went into practice, you could do that in those days, 43 years ago. I was interested in knowing about healing, not just drugs and cutting but what goes on in the nature of healing. We didn’t have the internet then, so I hired a secretary to find people who were healers and contacted them, usually over the phone. I was just curious.
The one place where I really began to get cracking was in my own building in Boston. There was a woman named Ann Wigmore who was healing people through giving them natural foods. She was growing them in her apartment. I got to know her pretty well. I watched her healing style and so I drew a couple of conclusions. One was that the person who wanted to be healed came to the healer and asked for the healing. The second part was the healer pretty confidently responded: “Oh yes”. I was thinking to myself, how do you know you’re going to heal them? But that was part of the deal, you’ve just got to do something with authority.
I eventually started doing it with real patients. It was very interesting because they would ask for the healing. I’d say, “yes, I can do it”. But then as to what happened next, I didn’t have any plan, it was different each time, it was spontaneous. I had a fair number of interesting experiences. You know, it defied logic.
I explored it, but it wasn’t something I wanted to have on my résumé. I didn’t think that was possible. That moment after you say I can do it, you don’t want to be tied in by some sort of contract. So I don’t even do that kind of stuff anymore, but I had a whole section of my early career where I did that kind of work. I think I drew my personal identity from that more than other things, because when you see what happens. What transpires in a healing relationship, that’s the highest form of medical practice, even if it isn’t medical practice. That’s where I began to get my identity as a clinician.
Moore: Was there any conflict between what you were observing in healing practices with what you’d been taught about biomedical psychiatry and if there were conflicts, how did you reconcile them?
Shipko: No, actually they were different things, so they weren’t really conflictual. Not only did I have no conflict, doctors when they asked me to see somebody had no problems with anything either. So no, I didn’t have conflicts. It was just something totally different, something doctors didn’t generally do it. It was a lay-people thing.
Moore: You’ve become known over time for your interest in helping and advising people who might be having a difficult time getting off various psychotropic drugs. Was there a particular time that you started to notice that people were having difficulty? When did the penny drop for you or was it a gradual realization?
Shipko: Just to clarify, my real expertise is with SSRI antidepressants, not getting people off of all medicines. You have to go back in time and realize, when there were the tricyclic antidepressants, there was a lot of debate about how quickly you should take people off of them. Immediately after they got better, maybe give them a month. But depression was defined as a time-limited condition that typically would go on its own, even if you didn’t treat it. The idea of keeping somebody on maintenance medicine forever, it was done, but it wasn’t talked about it. It was just sloppy. You took people off.
So the SSRI’s came out. I never prescribed them in the beginning. I like to watch and wait and see what’s going to happen, but patients were on them and they’d come in and they were all way better. And that’s okay, now it’s time to come off the antidepressant and they really couldn’t and wouldn’t, it was a mess. The second part about that is in my work on panic disorder. I posted something on my website about when you start taking an SSRI for panic. Patients are reporting that they are having the worst panic attacks of their life. And I just let people know if this is happening.
There were a huge number of people who not only had this problem happening but all kinds of other problems. Hundreds of them contacted me and showed up and I became a clearing house. They realized I might not be able to do anything for them, all they wanted was to be validated. They weren’t like this before the drug they were afterwards. They want somebody to say, “yeah, that sounds like a drug side effect”. And then the more people who came in, the more I knew and the more I was able to identify.
So that’s where it all started. Taking people off of medicines was what was done at that time. It wasn’t until after the serotonin reuptake inhibitors came out, they relabelled depression as a chronic, relapsing disease and I guess I didn’t get the memo. So that’s kind of where it all started and then, over the years, that has been a part of my practice.
Moore: I wondered what you felt about the lack of general awareness about withdrawal and dependence? Is that just an accidental thing or is there intent behind it to perhaps keep people on the drugs or to not frighten them, is it a paternalistic thing? Why don’t more doctors know about withdrawal and are equipped to help their patients come off?
Shipko: That’s a really good question. Because it’s visible. You see all these statistics and numbers, these problems are something that you look at. Then for whatever reason, rather than calling it a withdrawal reaction, they label it as a new condition. Is it that they are afraid of malpractice and secretly are hiding it? I imagine that’s a part of it, but my explanation is a quote by Sinclair Lewis, ‘it’s difficult to get somebody to understand something if their livelihood depends on them not understanding it’.
I have to say that some of my worst experiences were just trying to speak with other psychiatrists about these matters. As opposed to the shamanic healing approach, talking about Paxil dependency made another psychiatrist raise his voice at me. I think that everyone jumped on the serotonin bandwagon and felt they had to.
One interesting thing in that regard, there was a young man who had severe akathisia, really severe, suicidal road rage. This guy wasn’t going to last, he was already on a lot of benzodiazepines. I put him on even more, that did calm him down but because I felt uncomfortable about what I had been doing, I asked him to get a second opinion as well. Which he did and that doctor agreed with me that this was a medication side effect and that this was the proper treatment. Interestingly, his father was also a psychiatrist and his father confessed and said: “I know that these are real problems, but I dare not say anything.”
In 2001, I was scheduled to give a lecture for grand rounds at a local hospital on adverse effects of antidepressants. The audience was seated with agitators that wouldn’t let me speak, they stood up and they screamed and they yelled. So this has been a problem. You know, what else is a problem? I lost friends who felt like if they went on these drugs, somehow I would be judging them or angry with them. I’m not that way but people felt uncomfortable. That’s why we didn’t have this conversation sooner.
Moore: What you spoke about there leads nicely onto the next question, which is about informed consent. You’ve written a book specifically about providing informed consent when prescribing, so could you say a little bit about how you approach providing informed consent to someone seeking help, what are the key issues to cover and, in your experience, what is the result of that honest discussion with patients?
Shipko: Actually, that book was more written for informed consent for people going off of drugs, but it covers some really big things. So, the first thing I tell the person is that you may never be able to get off this drug once you started. Even if you take it for a very short period of time, these are things I’ve seen. I tell them that they may get sexual dysfunction that can be permanent. I tell them they may gain a lot of weight that they may not be able to take off and I tell them that the drug can make them suicidal. I also add that if it does make them suicidal, don’t take another pill. You don’t even have to call me, it’ll go away. Those are the three big ones: this may be a lifetime experience and you may not be able to get off it. Side effects may include huge weight gain and loss of sexual functioning. I start there and add the suicide risk. I add that it can make you more depressed, it can make you manic.
What happens is, 80 to 90% of the people, they kind of chuckle and say “I’d rather not do that”. Then you get maybe one out of 10 who has been on the medicine before and had a good experience and wants it again. Or somebody who’s suffering and they’re desperate and they want you to try something. Now I know the audience is going to say ‘well, try psychotherapy’. Medicine is filled with bad decisions and this is a tough decision sometimes you have to make and the medications, for people who are emotionally overwrought, it can make a big difference and provide comfort.
I also tell them that the number needed to treat is six or seven. I don’t pull any punches but sometimes you have to make a tough decision. They’ve had therapy, they can’t stop crying, you try to alleviate that. So with conflict, I will prescribe to somebody who says they’re really suffering, even after informed consent, they still want the medication.
Moore: What is your view about those situations where informed consent isn’t really given?
Shipko: The doctors must give informed consent, merely giving the drug and saying ‘here, take this’ the medical board and the state of California doesn’t think that’s okay. So I think the doctors have to give informed consent, even just a few things, it only takes you a few minutes. If nothing else tell them that the drug can make you have suicidal thoughts. So if that happens, you know to stop it. So I think for the most part that the drugs are being overprescribed and misprescribed and I don’t think anyone’s giving informed consent but me frankly.
Moore: That chimes very much with my experience. I think that informed consent discussion is so vitally important because I think it could be the route away from polypharmacy for a lot of people.
Shipko: Well, with informed consent it would be the end of psychiatry as we know it, there would be no business for anyone. If a child psychiatrist told every parent that there is no known literature to support the use of medication for your child’s depression, they’d say “thank you very much” and leave and that’s the end of the money you make off of them, which I think is a large part of it too.
You know, back in the old days, a lot of these psychiatrists were starving before the SSRI’s came out or even in the early phases of it. Managed care changed everything because suddenly you could only go to people who were contracted. You couldn’t just ask ‘who’s the best in town?’ and so people got used to going to the guy on my plan. So a lot of the worst psychiatrists ended up with huge practices, giving everybody medicine, getting on all these panels. A lot of these are very weak doctors who are not very thoughtful. There are doctors out there who are really looking out for what’s best for a human being. They are out there, but they’re outnumbered by those who don’t give informed consent. It’s a problem, they don’t even know what to say for informed consent.
Moore: In your book on informed consent, you write about the words used to describe the experience of coming off antidepressants. In particular, you note that using the term ‘withdrawal’ might not be correct because we tend to think of withdrawal as a short-lived set of problems related to the amount of substance in someone’s bloodstream. So the longer-term difficulty seems to have more in common with alcohol exposure and its effects on the body. So is there a better way of describing these difficulties than withdrawal or discontinuation?
Shipko: I feel like it’s a toxic phenomena, that there’s been some sort of damage to the nerve. It’s not a receptor resetting, it’s something structurally rebuilding looking at the time course it takes. So when you lump it in with withdrawal it makes it seem like you should go to a chemical dependency unit to get off of it or something and it’s not the case. It’s a different type of phenomena.
Moore: In a recent blog you wrote for MIA, you discuss the length of time that people take to withdraw. Because there aren’t any studies, because there isn’t really ever any evidence there is a kind of mythology out there that the longer you take to withdraw, the more it will reduce symptoms at the end of the procedure. Has that been what you have observed?
Shipko: It’s half of the equation and I’m the master of the super slow taper, it took seven years to get one guy off but some people can’t get off and even a low dosage reduction is too difficult. But for those who are able to tolerate small reductions, they’d have fewer symptoms as they’re going off the medicine and have fewer symptoms right when they stop the medicine. That is true, but what that does not prevent is the recurrence of serious withdrawal symptoms at three, six or nine months and those are so severe that they can be disabling. They are often disabling if untreated. People are highly suicidal due to the discomfort.
So even if you do a really slow taper and a person has an easy ride off a drug that does not seem to prevent what might happen later. One of the commonest things people do when they would show up in my office, having gone off the drug and having maybe read on Mad in America about this, the commonest complaint was shame. ‘Oh I should have known better, I tapered too fast’ and they blame themselves. We can help everyone listening that the long-term outcome is not really affected by going off rapidly.
Moore: What kind of approach would you take if somebody turned up and they were three, six or nine months off, and saying ‘I suddenly have these unbearable symptoms that seemed to come out of nowhere’. Is there anything that can be done to help?
Shipko: Basically you have three options. You can try and wait it out if it’s tolerable. You can try to slowly or quickly reinstate the medication or you can try and dampen the symptoms down with a benzodiazepine. If it’s not too bad you can get away with doing that intermittently and avoid dependency but sometimes you do have to give it regularly otherwise it’s just intolerably uncomfortable.
So you got those three options and it’s up to the individual what they want to do. For some people taking another pill of that poison that caused this problem is unacceptable. For other people, they’re raising a family or they have to get back to work, their situation is unacceptable. So it’s a preference. I would give them the three options and see what they want to do. I always talk about healthy living, eating regular, people really feel that exercise helps, something spiritual helps. So I talk about those things, but I find that in terms of the basic core symptoms, those three options are what you’re looking at.
Moore: In your most recent blog you write about tardive akathisia. That’s sometimes described as an excruciating compulsion to move or an inner or outer restlessness that people can describe as a living hell. I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about what you found about the relationship between tapering and this delayed onset akathisia.
Shipko: Well, that it can show up. It can show up at any time during the use of these medicines. It shows up in people on stable long-term doses of the medicine. But it’s much more likely to show up after stopping it. Then at three, six or nine months after the last dose, this will emerge fairly suddenly, usually as if it’s an overreaction to a stressor. It’s almost like an alarm goes off in their brain or that a switch has changed. So it’s a very rapid onset.
Moore: Is there anything that we can say about the prognosis for people experiencing this?
Shipko: Well, for the people who decide to do nothing, it can be a slow, gradual process, it could take months, it could take years. The duration is totally unknown. The best prognosis, if you need to get rid of the symptoms, reinstating the medication. Usually, you want to give a smaller test dose because occasionally it backfires and when you reinstate it makes things worse, but that’s not very common. The prognosis, in my opinion, if you reinstate, the prognosis is about 90% of the people are going to get back to baseline. Another thing I want to mention is that sometimes people get back to baseline on reinstatement right away and sometimes for people it’s going to take a couple of weeks or months.
Occasionally you need to give more medication than they were on previously to get them back to baseline. But the prognosis, if you need to get rid of the symptoms, most people are going to be able to feel significantly better by reinstating.
Moore: I’ve talked about this issue with people who have told their doctor that they appear to be suffering from akathisia related to a prescribed drug. But the doctor’s response is ‘no, it can’t possibly be the drug, it’s another condition, it’s parkinsonism or it’s a movement disorder of some kind’. Then the person ends up medicated for some other problem. So is there any way we can advise people to broach the subject of akathisia with their doctor?
Shipko: Well, I just want to tell you that there is increasing awareness, believe it or not. Physicians are increasingly aware of akathisia as a side effect of all the psychiatric medications. So that’s changing a little bit, but it’s never easy to go to your doctor and tell them what you think your diagnosis is. They get offended. I think maybe suggesting ‘I read about something like this, I wonder if this could be it’. I guess you have to approach them in a very deferential way.
Moore: I recall a quite well-known doctor saying to me that antidepressants never ever result in akathisia, it’s only dopamine antagonists. Yet I’ve had people explain to me that it came from taking an SSRI.
Shipko: It’s also in the manufacturer’s information from early on, it’s not hidden. What’s hidden is that it can come on months after stopping.
I want to mention another thing about reinstating for people listening. The longer you wait to reinstate, the more likely there are to be problems. Usually, there’s no problem if you’re reinstating within weeks or a couple of months. The longest out was a person who had been suffering for two years before reinstatement ended okay. On the internet, I’ve read about people who have done that and it’s not worked out okay. So I’m concerned about people who are not getting physician support on how to stop. They’re just going on their own. I’m afraid something like this might give people the idea that I’m advising them to go off the medicine. I’m not, it’s a risky proposition.
Moore: Absolutely. We are very clear that discussions on this should be between the person and their prescriber. But as you know, there is a gray area where people do have to self-support because their prescriber won’t listen or is adamant that the drugs are ‘for life’ and there really is no reason to come off. I think if a person is empowered enough to make that decision, they should be supported in their choice, but unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
Shipko: Yeah, I mean, what happened? We used to take people off of drugs. Now we don’t take them off. It’s not just psychiatry, but psychiatry is particularly bad.
Moore: I have a number of friends who started with an antidepressant now it’s led to a proton pump inhibitor and they might need a tablet to help them sleep and they get on this prescribing cascade. The discussion then is how should we modify your dosages to get you in the right place? It’s hardly ever a case of ‘let’s go back to basics, where did this all start?’
Shipko: And that can also often be so simple. A lot of times, people have a discernible conflict in their life. The media has made people wonder whether they have a chemical imbalance. So if they’re feeling sad and unhappy, they may go to the doctor wondering ‘is this that chemical imbalance?’ And the doctor will probably give them something.
Moore: We have been talking quite a lot about various issues with antidepressants. So if you take into account the fact that they are not the most efficacious of drugs, the possibility of adverse effects, the potential for difficult withdrawal, particularly after long-term use. What can we conclude about the use of antidepressants for mental health problems? Is taking them worth the risk, do you think?
Shipko: In general, no. In general, it’s not worth the risk. The effect on our society as a whole is a negative one. There may be some individuals whose life experience is more enjoyable because of the medicine, but on the whole, I think there’s more going in the other direction, particularly as people are on them more and more years.
The pills are themselves neither good nor bad. But informed consent has to be given. Just to end about that informed consent book, the pharmaceutical companies put out a ton of false data and then they force people of honor to show that their data is invalid. They’re always leading the waltz and you’re dancing with them. So I decided I wasn’t going to do that. Surviving Panic Disorder was the same way. I just felt that ‘I’m not going to sit down and try and be another fool presenting numbers’. I am going to use my voice as a clinician, this is my experience. My feeling is that is so much more powerful than trying to play around with numbers. This is what I see, take it or leave it. I’m very happy with those little books. I think that they pack a lot into a small space.
Moore: Stuart, it’s been so good to get to chat today. I have so much respect and admiration for your efforts to help educate on important things like withdrawal effects and informed consent. I am so grateful for your writing on MIA, but I think what I’m most grateful for is your honesty. I feel we need much more honesty at the point of prescribing of these drugs. Thank you.
Shipko: You’re very welcome. I’m glad you’re doing this and I think that these efforts are actually having an effect.
Hi James and thank you for the interview.
I will be brave here and call it as I see it with this quote.
“Moore: I wondered what you felt about the lack of general awareness about withdrawal and dependence? Is that just an accidental thing or is there intent behind it to perhaps keep people on the drugs or to not frighten them, is it a paternalistic thing? Why don’t more doctors know about withdrawal and are equipped to help their patients come off?’
I think quotes like the above lead right into what psychiatry wants. And it makes the public believe something that is absolutely untrue.
Within that quote/question, there is a suggestion that possibly, they might be “unaware” of what they are doing and what the drugs are.
Like the young roadrage man whose father the psychiatrist “dare not say anything, even though he knows”…..psychiatrists DO know. They are completely aware. Their patients tell them. That is enough awareness. If I tell you I have a headache and that it is a result of being in the sun, and you simply deny that I have one, or where it came from, that is blatant lying. But with licence, you can in fact represent me as not having a headache, and that the non existent headache is not from the sun exposure.
The question remains, should any of these poisons be given out even with “informed consent”? Perhaps like tobacco? Or do physicians think tobacco and alcohol or heroin, morphine are “bad” things? And why do they think those are “bad” things? The politicians allow products that are addictive. Does it make them good things? Should then doctors start prescribing tobacco? Why not?
It seems rather simple. Put warning labels on the psych drugs and sell them over the counter. Like tobacco. They are safer sold over the counter with all the actual information and “informed consent”. Is it ever really informed consent even if a shrink said a few “side effects” of the drug, but then kind of leaves it pretentiously in the subjects domain? They should never ever be represented as having “side effects”. That is misrepresentation. That alone ropes the subject in.
And what really ropes the subject in is to tell them that they are sick and have an “illness”, “disorder”.
They are never told that shitty lives are indeed possible and that science does not have an answer.
Indeed there is complete awareness by psychiatry. It is about a pretend liability issue, which they are coached in from the getgo.
There is no liability in the damage resulting from the drugs. So obviously liability is a non issue.
As long as anyone is in the power of prescribing a known poison, I’m not sure how they reconcile that with “informed consent”. It should really be cause for great conflict. I guess psychiatrists are happy to get old enough to retire so they can ditch the “prescription pads” altogether.
I know a few MD’s that are happy to leave their jobs after years of crappy science making crappy drugs. They can finally breathe.
Report comment
Thanks James and Stuart for an interview filled with a boatload of important information to digest regarding the short term and long term risks and toxic effects of SSRI drugs.
Stuart, I do not want to come off as nitpicking after such an important discussion. But you have clearly stated that the risks of SSRI drugs far outweigh their benfits, and you have been down in the trenches with hundreds of people who have suffered from these mind altering drugs.
So my question is as follows: why after ALL THIS would you still want to acquiesce with Medical Model thinking and continue to refer to SSRI drugs as, “medicine?”
Wouldn’t we all better serve potential victims in society, by breaking from the Medical Model and calling SSRI’s what they truly are – a mind altering psychiatric drug.
And by referring to SSRI’s as “drugs” instead of “medicine,” wouldn’t you be FAR MORE consistent with your perspective on the science and morality of true “informed consent.”
Richard
Report comment
I agree. Although, I wonder if ‘chemical’ is even better than ‘drug’. But that’s another shift into the unaccustomed. In the mean time, drug is more important than medicine in many contexts. In a college Drugs & Society class, we learned that ‘drug’ is anything that could enter the body and change it physiologically. So foods & beverages could be drugs. This complicates the picture. So we get into complexes, or something, of drug(s) or chemical(s). What do we call a drug that consists of dozens or hundreds of compounds together?
I’m trying to think how this relates to psychiatry other than drug ‘cocktail’ or ‘combination’.
Report comment
I think informed consent is absolutely crucial. I see so many “mental health awareness” posts that are all about taking the stigma out of taking medications and that mental disorders, in general, are biologic and it makes me want to scream. I hate misinformation and I absolutely loathe disinformation. But that’s what we’re presented with.
I found MIA the website when I was prescribed both Zyprexa and Risperdal for OCD. I’m glad that I got the information about the potential side effects and discontinuation effects because it prevented me from starting more drugs. The most recent psychiatrist I saw managed to get me on Anafranil to “help with the OCD.”
Ironically, what helped me the most with OCD is my change in mindset from that it’s something biological and wrong with my brain to it’s rooted in unresolved trauma in my childhood and controlling small things was the only power I had in my life.
Right now I’m on about 10 different medications, all of them for so-called “functional disorders” like IBS, acid reflux, and myofascial pain syndrome (it’s like fibromyalgia but without the more neurological side effects). It’s definitely a prescription cascade, but I have no idea which medication to come off of first because it’s like a cruel pill Jenga game.
I just wish someone had sat my parents down in the early 2000s when they first put me on Paxil and Trazadone and explained to them that there really isn’t any data showing SSRIs are beneficial for children and that Paxil, in particular, has some really nasty side effects and is dangerous for kids.
Report comment
Here’s the thing about “informed consent”: Once you’ve been competently informed about the physical and psychic effects of these drugs the only way you would consent is if you were a masochist or “acting out” self-destructively — both of which are contrary to the stated mission of psychiatry.
Report comment
I’m just sore because I wasn’t the one who consented and put this whole disaster into motion — my parents did. Had I been a teen or an adult, I wouldn’t have gone on them.
What gets me is that I had come off of them at one point when I was a child, but when my school caught wind that I wasn’t taking Paxil anymore I was forced back onto them because they were “worried about me” while I was grieving the loss of both my grandparents. So they wouldn’t let me back into school unless I was drugged again.
Report comment
So the “informed” part was irrelevant anyway in your case.
Report comment
This makes me so angry. “We are concerned about you to the point where we just need to trample on all your rights as a person”.
Report comment
We’re ruining your life because we CARE!
Report comment
Those familiar with the Vietnam War era might recall the quote, “We had to destroy the village to save it.”
Report comment
30-watt lightbulb, I would find a new doctor, and ask to be weaned off the drugs. I’m guessing you’re not actually a 30-watt lightbulb, and most of your problems stem from those initial Paxil and Trazadone prescriptions.
But no doubt, your change in mindset about the “unresolved trauma in my childhood” is relevant, since covering up child abuse is the number one reason people are prescribed the psych drugs in the first place. As the mother of a child abuse survivor, who had to work really hard to prevent “mental health” workers from poisoning my child, my heart breaks for all survivors of child abuse.
I recommend you put all the drugs you’re on into the drugs.com drug interaction checker.
https://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html
I recommend you print out the “professional” interaction checker report. Read it, google/bing/duckduckgo any medical terminology that you do not understand, so you can at least understand them to some extent, and take the report to your new doctor.
By the way, I’d recommend you find a new doctor who is higher in the medical caste system than your current doctor, because he/she may be a more self confident and self respecting doctor, who may actually want to help his/her clients. As opposed to being a doctor who merely wants to throw more drugs at a person, to cover up prior malpractice, and child abuse.
I do not recommend psychiatrists or psychologists, in general, since their primary actual function is covering up child abuse, according to their own medical research and history.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/01/23/18820633.php?fbclid=IwAR2-cgZPcEvbz7yFqMuUwneIuaqGleGiOzackY4N2sPeVXolwmEga5iKxdo
It’s likely wise to wean the drugs that have major and moderate drug interactions first, I believe. But, since I’m not a doctor, just a long term medical researcher, I recommend you find a doctor you feel is trustworthy, and get that doctor to help you work on weaning from the drugs.
By the way, I agree with old head, too. But I do also know doctors didn’t even bother to get “informed consent” / truthful information about the common adverse and withdrawal effects of the psych drugs, in the early 2000s.
Report comment
Trust me, I’ve looked up the interactions and according to the interactions, I should be dead. I’m on enough medications that are central nervous system depressants that it’s a wonder I can get out of bed.
And, for what it’s worth, my doctor has been trying to get me to come off of at least some of the medication. It’s largely a situation where I don’t want to slide down and away from the functioning I have at the moment, so I remain on the medications and do a lot of testing to make sure everything is working (relatively speaking).
My most pressing problem is IBS. I’ve gotten it all checked out and all of the components are in working order. It came on suddenly seven years ago and has been constant since then. I have it “managed” right now with medication
I think that most of my problems are caused by my body holding on to my past trauma, but at this point in life, I can’t get away from that source of trauma to begin the healing process.
I have sought professional help independently of my parents but somehow fell into a situation where the psychologist was terrible and made my situation that much worse. She told me that there was zero chance of me “getting better” and that I would have to be put in an institution for months, if not a year or more, and drugged with benzos and antipsychotics.
That was before she suddenly dumped me as a client and cut off contact. Her receptionist showed more compassion and understanding than she did.
And I took it because everything I read told me that “getting over” OCD is *supposed* to be hard and traumatic and that once my body habituated to the panic, then I would stop being worried. So I just thought that her cold and uncaring behavior was just “logical” and part of the process.
It really is a case where so many different professionals have failed me during my lifetime that I have *zero* idea who the hell I can trust.
Report comment
30-watt, I relate to this last comment, and other things mentioned here.
Report comment
Someone Else,
Hhm, what does it say that that disclaimer was removed from the dsm? Did the psychiatrists know that it was possible for psych drugs to create bipolar-looking “symptoms”, and then they didn’t know it anymore so they took that out? I wonder if the reason was that they worried about malpractice suits… because it sounds like an admission that the drugs can cause major problems, and the people prescribing the drugs know this, or should know it.
Report comment
I’m glad you are pointing out that the adverse withdrawal effects of the antidepressants can start months – or even years – after going off those drugs. That is absolutely true.
All my “mental health” workers and doctors believed the common symptoms of antidepressant withdrawal were “bipolar.” This is a systemic problem, especially since the psychiatrists subsequently took this disclaimer OUT of the DSM5:
“Note: Manic-like episodes that are clearly caused by somatic antidepressant treatment (e.g., medication, electroconvulsive therapy, light therapy) should not count toward a diagnosis of Bipolar I Disorder.”
The ADHD drugs should have been added to that disclaimer, rather than that disclaimer being taken out of the DSM5, after Whitiker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic” was published instead. The psychiatrists are absolutely corrupt.
Especially given the fact that all doctors were taught in med school that both their antidepressants and antipsychotics can create “psychosis,” via anticholinergic toxidrome. As well as the fact the doctors were all taught in medical school that the antipsychotics can also create the negative symptoms of “schizophrenia,” via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome.
Report comment
Someone Else,
Hhm, what does it say that that disclaimer was removed from the dsm? Did the psychiatrists know that it was possible for psych drugs to create bipolar-looking “symptoms”, and then they didn’t know it anymore so they took that out? I wonder if the reason was that they worried about malpractice suits… because it sounds like an admission that the drugs can cause major problems, and the people prescribing the drugs know this, or should know it.
Report comment
It’s so painful to read this and know, this is what happened to me, to my life, why I’ve lost my whole family, my ability to work, and any friend I ever had, because I was labeled and drugged for decades (leaving out the ECT), was never provided with informed consent, and never believed. I finally learned the term akathisia on my own, after years of hell, still no one in real life believes me. The message is “get over it” or, “if you really feel that bad, go to the doctor”. For what? More blame and invalidation? More labels? Another trip to the psych ward? And an entire profession that maybe is unaware or maybe is aware but dares not say anything.
Where does that leave me and the thousands of others who are suffering in a way that is long term, chronic and soul killing because they committed the “crime” of asking for help, of putting their trust in doctors?
Report comment
KateL, I second that.
Report comment
Obviously I am glad to see that people like Stuart make an effort to provide care. I do not consider psychiatry on the whole as being care, nor do I consider the practitioners as “caring”, although you might wonder how I could say that when I have not met them all.
And I have no doubt that perhaps they care about someone somewhere, though it might not be a subject. I am simply going by all the people who I know personally who have dealt with a “caring system” that prescribes invented labels and drugs. I don’t know of one that was not prescribed drugs, nor had a holistic psychiatrist.
“Moore: “We have been talking quite a lot about various issues with antidepressants. So if you take into account the fact that they are not the most efficacious of drugs, the possibility of adverse effects, the potential for difficult withdrawal, particularly after long-term use. What can we conclude about the use of antidepressants for mental health problems? Is taking them worth the risk, do you think?”
Shipko: “In general, no. In general, it’s not worth the risk. The effect on our society as a whole is a negative one. There may be some individuals whose life experience is more enjoyable because of the medicine, but on the whole, I think there’s more going in the other direction, particularly as people are on them more and more years.”
“The pills are themselves neither good nor bad.”
If it’s not worth the risk, and on the whole a negative effect, I think it best to just put that message out there, BEFORE people ever give psychiatry the chance to give their version of “informed consent”.
One can give “informed consent” in a very sneaky manner so that subjects are absolutely NOT informed at all.
Now if the psychiatrist said “on the whole, a negative effect and not worth the risk”, that would be much more the reality than talking about “side effects”
Report comment
Sam, good point. I always wonder how to form a judgment that relates to ‘well, 5-15% of people will benefit in some form, but (let’s say) 50-75% will be harmed, and the rest nothing.” In many cases, it seems a potential disability or adverse effect is being chosen over the originally perceived disfunction, in a kind of ‘risk/benefit’ scenario. A great deal would happen if the mental health system became EFFECTIVE, in whatever ways that really means. Holism is relevant in that regard.
Report comment
Imagine if the prescribers did that and performed honest informed consent. “The corporate clinical trials found antidepressants causes a 1.5 point increase in a 54 point scale in the short term. In this scale you changing your mind and agreeing you are mentally ill is registered as a larger benefit than the benefit the drug provides. 87 people out of 100 taking the drug will not see any improvement from the drug. The drug is addicting and it increases all cause death rates by 25-75%.”
How many people would take that drug?
Report comment
Absolutely Willowweed, How many indeed.
Report comment
“The pills are themselves neither good nor bad.”
This reminds me of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” (Which is true actually.)
Report comment
Or perhaps, “Some people use guns to kill people.”
Report comment
“I guess you have to approach (doctors) in a very deferential way”. Why I can’t/won’t see a doctor. Seeing a doctor and being deferential would be tantamount to lying. I’m not going to say the doctors know better than me, they have more information than I do. I’ve taken the drugs. I have first hand knowledge, in addition to having more book knowledge than most doctors I’ve met.
If doctors can’t handle the truth about what these drugs and this health care system have done to patients, that’s on them.
People got an idea from the media that maybe they have a chemical imbalance. The media did not come up with the idea of chemical imbalance. Where did the media get the idea from?
Report comment
Seeing a doctor and being deferential would be tantamount to lying.
Touche!
Taking some of what you describe to a collective/political level, some people still hope that liberation will come when finally, after 50 years, some reporter finally “blows the lid” on psychiatric fraud. Actually RW already has done that to some extent, except no one notices because MIA is blacklisted from corporate media attention. (Also because he doesn’t frame his conclusions that way.)
As for those front page headlines in the New York Times (or Boston Globe) highlighting how the entire concept of “mental illness” has been deconstructed and proven fraudulent, along with the “chemical imbalance” hypothesis and other psychiatric narratives — we’re still waiting on them. Getting back to your point about “approaching doctors [or reporters] in a deferential way” (my brackets): It is ironic to me how, after 50 years of being ignored by the media, movement people still blame themselves for this rather than understanding that the role of the mass media is to disinform and confuse — they think if they had only phrased this or that point more clearly the reporter might have made the essential connection and written that big story that would have started the ball of yarn unraveling once and for all.
So either the movement is (and always has been) collectively inarticulate and we should all start taking remedial English, or there’s a bigger issue involved in our historic lack of “good press.”
I guess your last question was rhetorical, as is mine: “Who owns the media?”
Report comment
Thanks, Oldhead. I think I have to agree with your point about the media – the lid has been blown; the fraud of psychiatry has been uncovered and written and spoken about in ways that are easy to understand, so it must be something else. It must be that the media doesn’t want this story and in fact wants to continue to perpetuate a false narrative about “mental illness”.
I guess I just wanted to believe in something. I had a somewhat romantic idea of “the free press” and loved the slogans – Democracy Dies in Darkness, All the news that’s fit to print/ the “paper of record”. I loved the idea of investigative journalism. And I thought that even though they were late to the party with other stories (like the story of how the pharmaceutical companies were in large part to blame for the opiate epidemic and the FDA let it happen and a bunch of doctors became drug dealers), they did get there eventually, and I thought they might just be late to the party with this one too but…it appears not.
Report comment
Psychiatry cannot be reformed, it must be abolished. There is no “better” psychiatry. People should not take poison to alter their attitudes on life via brain chemistry.
Is there anything else obvious I left out? If not, most of the rest of the discussion here seems like more of the same old to me. Just stay away from the shit, and if you need to get off it make sure you are advised by someone who has confidence in your ability to do so.
Maybe such services could be a form of reparations once psychiatry has been abolished.
Report comment
Dr. Shipko, I applaud the work you are doing. We need more psychiatrists like you! I suffer from Recurrent Major Depressive episodes since age 17 and had never been placed on medication until my first “nervous breakdown” at age 21 yrs. Through the 4 decades of treatment since then, I do not recall being given Informed Consent EVER except prior to ECT, which I really didn’t want but my family convinced me would help me. (it didn’t). After my first handful of episodes, I would be placed on antidepressants until I got better. After I was stabilized for many months, I would be weaned off. This worked out in my early-mid 20’s, then by my late 20’s. the methodology changed since I had had so many episodes at that point, and this was around the time the “chemical imbalanc” theory was being pushed. I was told I had to take my meds for the rest of my life “the same way a diabetic needs insulin”. By the year 2000, after many more episodes and hospitalizations, they tried me on the “new improved medications” that came out. I was tried on Zyprexa, Depakote & Risperdal at different points in time and became psychotic, hearing voices that told me to kill myself. This has NEVER happened to me before. I knew it was the medicine but, of course, the doctors felt it was only proof I was getting “sicker”. They labeled me Bipolar at that point and put me on Lithium. Through the years my diagnosis has changed so many times, I never believef anything they said anyway. My psychiatrist recommended me for Full Disability after the Zyprexa & Depakote destroyed me to the point where I couldn’t function anymore. Somehow, through the years, I was finally stabilized on a “cocktail” of 2 antidepressants and one mood stabilizer (to prevent a hypomanic episode from happening) which “maintained me” for many years. But I did desire to be medication free like before, if I could. My first attempt to wean off my meds, I used an acupuncturist/Chinese M.D. coworker but this ultimately failed. The second time I tried to wean off my meds, I used a very competent Nutritionist who had been in practice for decades and again did so gradually, yet this failed too. The third and final time I was under the guidance of my psychiatrist, tapered off somewhat gradually as per his instructions and not only failed miserably, but ruined my life financially, socially, educationally, occupationally and alienated my family. I also lost my Housing and began to live out of my car. My judgment and stability were dangerously off but I was determined to succeed. In the end, I became suicidal, my family hospitalized me and, of course, I was placed immediately back on my meds as “I was sick again”. There was never a discussion about withdrawal symptoms and when I attempted to address it, it was always that “I was sick again”. It was infuriating. But one thing I did know. After failing 3 times and ruining my life so horribly, I was not going to ever risk the stability I had in my life again, even if I’m not happy with the meds and their side effects.
What struck me most was when you talked about “nerve damage”:
Moore: In your book on informed consent, you write about the words used to describe the experience of coming off antidepressants. In particular, you note that using the term ‘withdrawal’ might not be correct because we tend to think of withdrawal as a short-lived set of problems related to the amount of substance in someone’s bloodstream. So the longer-term difficulty seems to have more in common with alcohol exposure and its effects on the body. So is there a better way of describing these difficulties than withdrawal or discontinuation?
Shipko: I feel like it’s a toxic phenomena, that there’s been some sort of damage to the nerve. It’s not a receptor resetting, it’s something structurally rebuilding looking at the time course it takes. So when you lump it in with withdrawal it makes it seem like you should go to a chemical dependency unit to get off of it or something and it’s not the case. It’s a different type of phenomena.
I used to think if I had only had a place to go to Detox, I may have succeeded. But you are quite right. The withdrawal process is not a “chemical dependency” where you simply go somewhere and tough it out and then are eventually better. Because we know so little about the damage done to the nerves by these drugs, how do we possibly know what to do to repair this damage? And why is there NOT more research being done to learn about this? Most probably because any admission of nerve damage would be cause for liability and legal repercussions. Then why have those of us whose lives have been damaged not filed a Class Action Suit? I would love to see the day this happens.
Report comment
” Then why have those of us whose lives have been damaged not filed a Class Action Suit? I would love to see the day this happens.”
Because lawyers only defend what is against the law, and “medicine” has it’s own laws, they are immune from criminal laws, under the guise of science and psychiatry co-opted “medicine” and has actually ruined the “medicine” we used to know.
Report comment
I’m talking about taking a monumental class action suit…challenging the very premise of psychiatry’s arsenal. The false theories of “chemical imbalance”, the use of ECT and it’s proven harmfulness and the statistics of the actual failures of psychiatric medications to get people well over the long term (e.g., increased recidivism of hospitalizations and increase in number of psychiatric patients on Disability in recent decades). Granted, this would be litigation that would no doubt get tied up in court for years, if not decades, as Big Pharma would no doubt fund the opposition, but aren’t there enough people who have been damaged by psychiatry’s methods that we couldn’t find some Pro Bono attorneys to take on such a case?
Report comment
Trust me there are enough people, but not enough money. But perhaps money is not so much an issue, since it can never be enough. Becoming a constant reminder and finding like minded people, letting it grow, seems to be something valuable. It is really important to focus and not let up. It is really not at all impossible that one day we will see change. So it means keep going even though one is the last man standing.
Report comment