On September 9, Mad in America published a lengthy report on the STAR*D scandal, describing how Ed Pigott and colleagues, in a series of publications dating back to 2010, had shown that the STAR*D authors violated the protocol in numerous ways to grossly inflate the announced remission rate in that study.
This past August, Pigott and colleagues delivered a final crushing blow. Having obtained patient-level data through the Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials (RIAT) initiative, they reported in BMJ Open that if the study protocol had been followed, the “cumulative remission rate” in the study, at the end of four steps of treatment, would have been 35% rather than the 67% the STAR*D investigators announced in their November 2006 article.
As Pigott and colleagues deconstructed the STAR*D study over this 13-year period, the STAR*D authors never publicly defended their work. When they published their RIAT reanalysis, the BMJ Open editors solicited a response from the STAR*D authors, but âthey declinedâ to do so, the journal reported.
In concert with our September 9 report, we set up a petition on change.org urging the American Journal of Psychiatry to retract the November 2006 article. The false 67% remission rate had been touted to the public for nearly two decades, regularly referred to in the media whenever the efficacy of antidepressants was questioned, and now that the scientific misconduct and research fraud by the STAR*D investigators had been so clearly established, our petition argued that the journal editors were obligated, under the standards for ethical science, to retract the study.
On October 10, I wrote the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Ned Kalin, notifying him of our petition, which had been signed by more than 1,800 people. Kalin did not respond to us, and so it seemed that silenceâfrom the STAR*D investigators and from the American Journal of Psychiatryâwould be their response.
However, on December 1, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a letter to the editor from John Rush and four of his STAR*D colleagues. While there is no mention of our petition, the letter clearly serves as a response to it. They titled their letter âThe STAR*D Data Remain Strong: Reply to Pigott et al.â
As the title indicates, they make no admission of error or of protocol violations. Theirs is a letter that seeks to defend the integrity of their research.
As we wrote in our MIA report, there was both peril and opportunity for the psychiatric profession once the research misconduct in the STAR*D trial had been so clearly documented. The publication of the fabricated remission rate of 67% had violated the public expectation that a medical discipline will be an honest relator of research findings, and it was easy to catalog how the promotion of that false outcome had done public harm. We framed the challenge to the profession in this way:
âThe harm [done] also extends to psychiatryâs reputation with the public. The STAR*D scandal, as it becomes known, fuels the public criticism of psychiatry that the field so resents.
Yet, and this may seem counterintuitive, there is now an opportunity for psychiatry to grasp. The American Psychiatric Association, and the international community of psychiatrists, could take a great step forward in regaining public trust if they spoke out about the STAR*D fraud and requested a retraction of the published articles. Doing so would be an action that told of a professionâs commitment, as it moves forward, to uphold research standards, and to provide the public with an honest accounting of the ‘evidence base’ for psychiatric drugs.
However, failing to do so will only deepen justified criticism of the field. It will be a continuance of the past 15 years, when psychiatry has shown, through its inaction, that research misconduct in this domain of medicineâmisconduct that rises to the level of scientific fraudâis acceptable practice, even though it may do great harm.â
The letter to the editor by Rush and colleagues makes it clear which of these two paths that psychiatry, as a profession and as the publisher of the American Journal of Psychiatry, has chosen.
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pure DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse victim and oppressor. in this case, reverse true scientists v fraud perpetrators.
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DARVO, for sure. First thought in my brain when reading this. The refuge of people caught red-handed: gaslighting. And public health will be the worse for it.
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Youâre so correct. I am so so so disappointed and frustrated that this is reality
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You’d think they’d have left it, dropped out, cause they didn’t like it-(the 931)if anything- seems like more of a fail, than a win. Well written, explained- like a rabbit hole of trickery, angles, and stories, to unravel, to get back to the scientific facts, nice job, thank you…
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I’m so glad you are an honest statistician, Mr. Whitaker. It is sad that both the psychologic and psychiatric industries are lying, attempting to steal from truth tellers (of which I do have legal proof), and most frightening to me (as the mother of a Phi Beta Kappa child), think that social workers should have the right to defame and neurotoxic poison the best and brightest American children … “to maintain the status quo.”
Leave the children alone, psychiatry, psychology, social workers, et al. Your “bible” was debunked as scientifically “invalid” and “BS” over a decade ago …. please wake up to reality. And we all should be on an awakening journey, not just trying to “maintain” an unjust, un-American, unsustainable, and truly disgusting, “status quo.”
https://www.amazon.com/Pedophilia-Empire-Chapter-Introduction-Disorder-ebook/dp/B0773QHGPT
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/01/23/18820633.php?fbclid=IwAR2-cgZPcEvbz7yFqMuUwneIuaqGleGiOzackY4N2sPeVXolwmEga5iKxdo
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXeAIxK7rY4
Thank you for all your truth telling, Mr. Whitaker. Pardon me for mentioning (part of) the “unmentionable,” but we need the truth to be told … not just a perpetuation of a paternalistic and sick “status quo.” We need to actually know the truth, in order to fix our society’s real problems.
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Your links are hilarious, deep-state-lips.
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Mr. Whitaker deserves the utmost respect and commendation for deconstructing the psychiatric guild’s false claims and exposing its corruption. But he’s fighting an uphill battle against a powerful entrenched system with hydra-like tentacles in the media, the medical community, academia, the educational system, so-called regulatory bodies, and other influential players. I feel great sorrow for the countless victims of this pervasive evil.
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This fraud cost me the better part of my life. I have been on antidepressants for decades, never realizing the damage being done until recently. I am still dealing with the consequences. I am considering the return to my career in nursing research as a way to further bring to light the ineffectiveness and DANGER of medications used to treat depression and anxiety.
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They aren’t “medications” (used to treat genuine physical illnesses) but neurotoxins (to suppress normal brain functioning). To refute psychiatric myths, one must begin by rejecting its misleading language.
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Thank you so much Robert Whitaker for this update on the STAR*D scandal and the very revealing deconstruction of the study by Pigott and his colleagues, and yourself. I signed the petition because it is of utmost importance that the true results of the STAR*D study become known to the public. STAR*D is, after all, the most extensive study of the long-term use of antidepressants conducted so far, making it almost impossible to ignore it when the pros and cons of these drugs are evaluated. The way that psychiatrists have reported on this study, as well as responded to the criticism against it, tells of a profession in deep crisis.
I am pleased that MIA has sought to retract the original STAR*D article in American Journal of Psychiatry, since it is a source of much misinformation and confusion. My only concern is that the main focus of the petition has been on the cumulative remission rate at the end of four steps of treatment; the true number being 35% instead of 67%. This is, indeed, significant but to me Pigottâs analysis of the final remission rate â the number that got better after one year of treatment with antidepressants – is even more telling; that is 2.7% or 108 out of 4041 participants. So why not focusing on this more telling outcome which would have hit harder and built an even stronger case?
Best regards from a snowy Sweden,
Jonas
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Jonas,
In our September 9 article on the scandal, we did note how the STAR*D authors hid this terrible one-year result. And I have written about this bottom-line results in a number of other articles. However, while they hid this result, there was a table in their Nov. 2006 article that did present this data (if you could make sense of the table), and so in that regard, the STAR*D authors didn’t inflate that result, or violate the protocol to produce an inflated result. That’s why the call for retraction focused on the protocol violations that were used to inflate the “cumulative remission rate” at the end of four steps of treatment.
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Did anyone from the BMJ ever respond directly to you Bob or the petition?
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No. No-one fro the BMJ or the American Journal of Psychiatry, or any of the study authors, ever responded to me or the petition. The standard ethical codes for editors of academic journals does state they should answer calls for retraction, and state what investigation they are pursuing. This wasn’t done here; just one more example of behavior by the AJP that flouts standards.
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Psychiatry avoiding accountability and responsibility for falsifying trial data that ended up drugging millions into disability and death. Let me pretend to be shocked.
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Wow. Well, I guess this response is not too surprising. Follow the money. The strategy of their response has the fingerprints of the pharmaceutical industry all over it. I can imagine the pencil pushers calculating the potential loss of revenue were their antidepressant scam to be exposed to the greater public. So they decided the best defense is to go on offense.
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Iâm gonna try my best not to make this political, so Iâm just going to leave out names, but the starD âinvestigatorsâ which is clearly not what they are, are taking essentially the play out of the handbook of certain politicians, who a repeat a lie over and over again, and eventually people will sing its praise, or at least believe it, and be double down and reverse attack and sadly my fears that people are going to hear their side, which obviously infuriates me so I shared the article with about 8000 people so hopefully out of those at least 8000 if not nine, some of them will read the entire article as I did and learn for the first time how corrupt this institution is but Iâve known for a long time, and I certainly canât say Iâm surprised whatsoever, but although I did laugh at times at the end of the article, I am pretty angry and I felt that I had to do something about it and although I have a platform, my fear is that people donât care or pay enough attention to some this important I mean for the last 20 years, the chemical imbalance has been disproved so what Iâve noticed is that the patient have taken the baton and the psychiatrist have shut up but now weâve got them coming out of the woodwork and pulling this absolute excuse me for my language, bullshit and after listening to precise, backed up, thoroughly explained, and non-biased research in hours of Robert Whitakerâs and company of fine ethical and scientific ethics that only care about the truth. They arenât out here making applies for the hell of it and good for them for writing this scathing and very much needed retort to such an attack by people who I feel should face criminal penalties and be held accountable in a court of law and allow a federal grand jury to at least sanction them for pretending to be members of a scientific evidence based inclusionary profession when clearly all theyâve done if anyone actually does the research which takes time and patience, but I mean this is just beyond and sadly you know, this kind of garbage is going to just create more harm for the people that donât get to hear this and realize who were the good guys and who were the bad guys because itâs very very clear that people who lie are the bad guys and people who tell the truth are the good guys I think we can all agree on that.
It just drives me crazy that the people that worked really hard to essentially showered the rooftops using maybe someone could argue boring, but it backed up with precise scientific data about why the roles of disability, which I am now a part of because of this nightmare have increased, and thereâs an obvious correlation there But itâs been over a decade and I am starting to feel like weâre living in the Nazi Germany version of propaganda information warfare and the holocaust is of course not as horrible but the ruining of lives became vilified by certain evil people that feared for their paycheck, that essentially in my opinion, comes at the expense of taking advantage of people, like the old me, who allowed this kind of nonsense to me into trying a medication for incense over and over again years apart, hoping for the same outcome, which is I think, as you know, the definition of insanity, which is basically what these investigators are pretending to be because we all know they know that theyâre being beyond disingenuous and beyond dishonest theyâre just putting their criminality on display knowing that far too many people are too ignorant to realize the extent of their hypocrisy, fraud, lies and shooting the messenger in the head metaphorically with words, but although I just said metaphor, letâs think about how many people commit suicide because of Anti-depressants by shooting themselves in the head so Iâm just gonna leave it there. Thank you.
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Thank you so much for your efforts. You are the one with the sword of truth. APA has a larger shield. I believe itâs time to bring forth a battering ram. You can start a petition to force Congress to stop ignoring this. There has been enough evidence to start a Big Tobacco style congressional hearings. Hopefully, sanity may return to DC. I think the best way to change psychiatryâs abuse is to drag out a marketing agent. Most of the attorneys here in DC work for the government, international companies, big corporate business, and civil rights attorneys. These civil rights attorneys would love to make a big name for themselves. If we go after BigPharma I donât believe would work. Too much money. However, I hope that one of these huge firms bring a suit against the APA for fraud, defamation, slander, intentional infliction of emotional abuse. This can be a federal case or can be brought in state court (I think?). Arguing with an abuser, which I truly believe is narcissistic profession, will go nowhere. Things change if people force change. I also believe that we can push local news media to cover this abuse. The civil rights movement started locally and blew up. The best weapon we have is the truth. Lying, gaslighting, projecting the problems on psychiatric patients and survivors. They control the narrative and are enabled by media and our own government. As the Republican Party is emploding we have the hope to make headway to stop this. Even now we have our congressional representatives and senators who have to have an office in their community and same for senators. People can contact these office in their local representatives office. As states are changing drug labels (I think there is a hope in state jurisdiction). NAMI needs to be discredited (in my opinion). I think Scientology may be busy elsewhere. We will never stop these narcissists by arguing with them. I donât remember any narcissist admit how horrible they are. I donât think we are so alone anymore. As more and more countries wake up from the poison apple they can influence the US as well. The US can ignore the UN/WHO paper. I understand that I have a manic view on this issue (blame the drugs) and that I donât know whatâs being done right now (isolation from BIND). I just see the crap that happens in DC everyday. The mantra of back fighting, lobby money, and being power hunger. The main media truly donât tell all of the truth. I just hope that we consider some of this. Please donât edit this. This rambling and in-cohesive or weird opinion is a result of the decline of my mental acuity that I have to face everyday. I hope you can see this article as how toxic these drugs and these lies are.
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Change.org and all other internet petitions are a relief valve designed to be ignored. Using them and expecting results shows a failure to understand their nature as a psychological tool to maintain social stability at the cost of social progress, by taking the wind out of concerns and reduce activism to clicktivism.
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Dear notsurprised,
While there may be some truth in what you say, I believe “he obstacle is the way,” and that all resistance to genuine, noble reform serves to intensify and strengthen the reformation:
“What you fight, you strenghten; what you resist, persists.”
Accordingly, rather than fight or resist archaic systems we may best transmute them by shining loving light on them and on how they evolved?
For instance, in the smoke of battle about the efficacy or otherwise of so-called antidepressansts, and the honesty or otherwise of reporting, we may lose sight of the fact that there can be no such disease or disorder as âdepression,â in the first place, and also that the term âantidepressantâ (like âantipsychoticâ) acts as a deceitful marketing device, so that every time we use it we may contribute to false marketing and help perpetuate the notion that âdepressionâ is a disease, and may be a drug deficiency (I mean rather than occasionally being a symptom of a deficiency of one or more vitamins, such as B6 or B12, or minerals, such as magnesium or iron).
“Depression” does not cause hopelessness. âDepressionâ is hopelessness.
If we fall for the lie that “clinical depression” causes feelings of hopelessness, we have already agreed that the emperor has clothes, even if they are absolutely invisible – to us.
There are always real reasons – other than âantidepressantâ deficiencies – for hopelessness.
There are always underlying causes, whether physical or psychic or both, if we care to search for them, and to listen for them. But searching and listening take more time than do labeling and prescribing, and not many medical providers or insurance companies, I believe, (yet) pay physicians/psychiatrists a salary or per hour, as Daniel points out about Min 44:57:
https://youtu.be/XOCM88LzCOY
“Sloth,” “despair,” “gluttony” etc., have been considered âsinsâ – manifestations of “evil,” of human âwickednessâ – wilful, deliberate defiance of “Godâ or of âGodâs willâ – or of one of Godâs wills, for, according to some lines of reasoning, âGodâ may have five or more wills (sovereign, command/preceptive, preferential/desiderative, directive, discernedâŚ). âThe Bible saysâŚâ
“Depression,” “anxiety,” “bulimia nervosa” etc., and various “personality disorders,” considered manifestations of the automatic machinations of the helpless, âdisorderedâ minds of hapless victims of “mental disorders” and/or of “personality disorders,” supposedly abnormal human natures or responses to lifeâs challenges rather than, like their accents, being 100% normal – for them. âThe DSM saysâŚâ
Are some of us miscreants, others not? Some saints, others sinners? Some normal, others disordered? Some of us who divide humanity in two, others who refuse to?
Long before Jung and Freud, there existed age-old teachings of humans who tried to explain that the great bulk of human suffering comes neither from âsinâ nor from âmental illnessâ but from a failure to understand how our “unconscious,” “subconscious” or “conditioned” minds, or “egos” (in the sense of unobserved thoughts and emotions) run our lives and cause our miseries, at least until we recognize that they do, begin to address the issue directly, and make the unconscious conscious.
Thankfully, human suffering is finite, it seems – at least according to those teachers. Our egos, being self-destructive by their very nature, bring about their own collapse. Likewise with egoic dictators, entities and organizations, be they political or religious, pharmaceutical or guild. Had revelations of clerical abuse not brought coldblooded cover-ups, too, then they could hardly have damaged the churches involved as much as they did.
One can understand why, with careers invested in the industry, however brilliant, sophisticated and educated they may be, those of us so “spiritually unconscious,” as not to even begin to recognize unconscious behavior for what it is might refuse to fess up and appear remorseless in their pursuit of the security which our conditioned minds might have us all pursue, and which our egos suggest only some of us should or can hope to share in this world?
My opinion is that we are all of us, without exception, absolutely equal, and all equally, without exception, on our own personal journeys towards enlightenment. I canât (yet) predict how enlightened or egoic I many be at any moment, or, in the words ofâ Jim Rockfordâ/James Garner, âhow much character I will have tomorrow,â but I know I do feel constantly uplifted and encouraged to witness the noble efforts of MIA to lift us all up and out of our drugged and drugging stupors, and to help us create a much, much better, braver and juster, more enlightened new world.
I find MIA’s relentlessly painstaking pursuit of the truth in these matters, coupled with a very conspicuous absence of bitterness, rancor, grudge or ego, even under intense pressure, to be absolutely heroic and inspiring, encouraging one to dream of the kinds of just and peaceful worlds we are surely ushering in through just such painstaking work, all evidence to the contrary, worldwide, notwithstanding.
Thank YOU from the bottom of my heart.
Comfort and joy!
Tom.
âWhen he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.â
From âEpitaph on a Tyrant,â by W.H Auden.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2622245.Lao_Tzu
Please donât let us lose sight of the fact that there can be no such disease or disorder as âdepression,â in the first place, and also that the very term âantidepressantâ (like âantipsychoticâ) acts as a deceitful marketing device, so that every time we use it we may contribute to false marketing and help perpetuate the notion that âdepressionâ is a disease, and may be a drug deficiency disease (I mean rather than occasionally being a symptom of a deficiency of one or more vitamins, such as B6 or B12, or minerals, such as magnesium or iron etc.).
“Depression” does not cause hopelessness. âDepressionâ is hopelessness.
If we fall for the lie that “clinical depression” causes feelings of hopelessness, we have already agreed that the emperor has clothes, even if they are absolutely invisible – to us.
There are always real reasons – other than âantidepressantâ deficiencies – for hopelessness.
There are always underlying causes, whether physical or psychic or both, if we care to search for them, and to listen for them. But searching and listening take more time than do labeling and prescribing, and not many medical providers or insurance companies, I believe, (yet) pay physicians/psychiatrists a salary or per hour, as Daniel points out about Min 44:57:
https://youtu.be/XOCM88LzCOY
“Sloth,” “despair,” “gluttony” etc., have been considered âsinsâ – manifestations of “evil,” of human âwickednessâ – wilful, deliberate defiance of “Godâ or of âGodâs willâ – or of one of Godâs wills, for, according to some lines of reasoning, âGodâ may have five or more wills (sovereign, command/preceptive, preferential/desiderative, directive, discernedâŚ). âThe Bible saysâŚâ
“Depression,” “anxiety,” “bulimia nervosa” etc., and various “personality disorders” are considered manifestations of the machinations of the helpless, âdisorderedâ minds of hapless victims of “mental disorders” and/or of “personality disorders,” supposedly abnormal human natures or responses to lifeâs challenges rather than, like their accents, being 100% normal – for them. âThe DSM saysâŚâ
Are we really miscreants and eucreants, saints and sinners, normal and deranged or disordered, good guys and bad guys? Really? If so, then prove it, please.
Long before Jung and Freud, there existed age-old teachings of humans who tried to explain that the great bulk of human suffering comes neither from âsinâ nor from âmental illnessâ but from a failure to understand how our “unconscious,” “subconscious” or “conditioned” minds, or “egos” (in the sense of unobserved thoughts and emotions) run our lives and cause our miseries, at least until we recognize that they do, begin to address the issue directly, and make the unconscious conscious.
Thankfully, human suffering is finite, it seems – at least according to those teachers. Our egos, being self-destructive by their very nature, bring about their own collapse. Likewise with egoic dictators, entities and organizations, be they political or religious, pharmaceutical or guild. Had revelations of clerical abuse not brought coldblooded cover-ups, too, then they could hardly have damaged the churches involved as much as they did.
One can understand why, with careers invested in the industry, however brilliant, sophisticated and educated they may be, those of us so “spiritually unconscious,” as not to even begin to recognize unconscious behavior for what it is might refuse to fess up and appear remorseless in their pursuit of the security which our conditioned minds might have us all pursue, and which our egos suggest only some of us should or can hope to share in this world?
My opinion is that we are all of us, without exception, absolutely equal, and all equally, without exception, on our own personal journeys towards enlightenment. I canât (yet) predict how enlightened or egoic I many be at any moment, or, in the words ofâ Jim Rockfordâ/James Garner, âhow much character I will have tomorrow,â but I know I do feel constantly uplifted and encouraged to witness the noble efforts of MIA to lift us all up and out of our drugged and drugging stupors, and to help us create a much, much better, braver and juster, more enlightened new world.
I find MIA’s relentlessly painstaking pursuit of the truth in these matters, coupled with a very conspicuous absence of bitterness, rancor, grudge or ego, even under intense pressure, to be absolutely heroic and inspiring, encouraging one to dream of the kinds of just and peaceful worlds we are surely ushering in through just such painstaking work, all evidence to the contrary, worldwide, notwithstanding.
Thank you, notsurprised, for your insights, and thank all at MIA from the bottom of my heart.
Comfort and joy!
Tom.
âWhen he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.â
From âEpitaph on a Tyrant,â by W.H Auden.
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There is some truth in what you write but combining the petition with these articles maybe why the study authors felt they needed to respond.
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Mr. Whitaker,
What are your thoughts on this tepid acknowledgement?
*STAR*D Dethroned?
Dec 12, 2023
By John J. Miller, MD
Publication
Article
*Psychiatric Times
Vol 40, Issue 12
Is this the tiniest crack in the wall?
(I read the industry pubs….”Know your enemy,…”)
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The author of ‘STAR*D Dethroned’ writes:
“For us in psychiatry, lf the BMJ authors are correct, this is a huge setback, as all of the publications and policy decisions based on the STAR*D findings that became clinical dogma since 2006 will need to be reviewed, revisited, and possibly retracted”.
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âThere is nothing more difficult than waking someone who is only pretending to be asleep.â
â Desmond Tutu.
But pretending to be asleep, itself, may be a form of…sleepiness?
Like one guy bringing down a political party singlehandely, to do a thorough job, I think it takes time…and the longer it takes for the APA et al to recant, denounce and apologize, the more surely this scandal must rock them and all of Coercive Psychiatry to its foundations.
Yay.
I dunno if you recall how men in the public eye gradually and painfully learned that the longer they denied a sex scandal before fessing up, the greater damage they did to their careersâŚand that Machiavelli wisely pointed out that a canny prince or ruler should feed out good news gradually, over time, but the bad stuff in one gulp?
When I asked one (perfect stranger) lady The Meaning of Life, she laughed and told me âThe lessons get harderâŚuntil we GET them!â
Can we make ourselves laugh, or do we need others to?
Why can none of us tickle ourselves to laughter?
Why can we writhe on the floor, laughing and dying in agony at the same time?
Perhaps, like those who accidentally auto-erogenously-asphyxiate, we are all sado-masochists by Nature, only to varying degreesâŚand we cannot tickle ourselves because 1. contrary to what mainstream medicine STILL believes and would have us believe – that we have pain-receptors everywhere except in our brains – we do not have any âpain-receptors,â except in our brains, and 2. pain needs fear, and we do not fear ourselves – at least, not in the same way we fear others?
Now, if only we could learn to crack ourselves up, againâŚ
A copy of “Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Robert Whitaker stands on the bookshelf behind Howard during this
https://youtu.be/vbjGWLXD6rU?si=dhwikVa8vt5ydrAA
interview (as does one of Dr John E. Sarno’s “The Divided Mind”), and I doubt Howard quibbles with any of it, at all. How could he?
I don’t know if Howard has been the subject of any MIA podcast yet. If ever he were, I would very much love to hear it.
About Min. 10:40 into this chat, Howard is asked about the fact that the pharmaceutical industry stands to make much more money from “managing than from curing” chronic pain, and, obviously, the same could be said for insomnia , chronic fatigue, âanxiety and depression,” and all âmental illnesses/disorders.”
At about Min. 11:18, Howard very decently and wisely refuses to impugn his colleagues or those involved, pointing out that they are (largely?) unaware of better (chronic pain- ETC.- relieving) methods than they have been taught.
I believe he is right, as usual, and that, to an extent, this applies to a majority of psychopharmacologists (or psycho pharmacologists, IF you insist), too – that they remain largely ignorant, very deeply in-denial, unaware and/or or “unconscious” of what causes and so of what alone can best relieve human suffering, and that, in that sense, that “they know not what they do,” and ought not be vilified, despised or hated for their ignorance OR for their cowardice as the truth and horror dawns on them.
How would YOU truly react? Speak out and risk your career, or abandon it? See patients for an hour rather than for 10-15 minutes for the very same fee? Really? Donât we all know that to relinquish our grasp on any core tenet of our faith shakes all that faith to its roots, or foundations? Ego as well as anticipation of loss of careerâŚ
I believe that most of those who produce, market and prescribe “antidepressants,” “antipsychotics” and so on would STILL(!) take them themselves, too, if they thought they “had depression,” “psychosis” etc. and/or advise family members to do so, too, all overwhelming evidence notwithstanding.
So I think it is about educating and enlightening the educators and Big Pharma personnel as well as “mental health” professionals and their consumers/victims.
I have yet to read either “unlearn your pain” or “unlearn your anxiety & depression,” both books by Howard Schubiner, but am reading John Sarnoâs excellent “The Divided Mind,” and, having watched maybe 30+ of Howard’s videos, I fully expect Howard’s own two books to be even better than John Sarno’s.
Howard has explained that an understanding of the neural pathways etc. underlying chronic pain tends to apply also to “anxiety/depression,â chronic fatigue and insomnia – that, when physical causes have been ruled out, SIMPLY understanding the psychic/emotional causes – making conscious the unconscious – and how these can and do create pain/”anxiety/depression”/insomnia/chronic fatigue – can abolish the problem.
Same podcast,
https://youtu.be/vbjGWLXD6rU?si=dhwikVa8vt5ydrAA
Minute 5:49 – 7:32
ââChronic painâ just means itâs existed for a lot more than three months and that itâs occurring, you know, most days out of the week or it, it keeps recurring and flaring up.
âMost of the people with chronic pain have had it for, you know, not only months, but years or even decades. and they have eluded effective medical treatment.
The medical – traditional medical – world is not very effective at treating chronic pain. The studies showing, you know, pain medications, injections, surgery for chronic pain, stimulators for chronic pain, kind of standard talk therapy for chronic pain, none of those has really shown to be – has been shown to be highly effective.
And so there’s millions and millions of people suffering year after year. And this is real pain. It’s not imaginary. It’s not that it’s all in their head, right. It’s not imaginary pain. It’s not that people are faking or they want to be.It’s not their fault.
Most chronic pain occurs because the brain is generating neural circuits that are causing real pain. And, like I say, itâs, itâs, it has nothing to do with an issue that these people are mental or crazy. Itâs because they are human, and thatâs how the human brain works. When people get in difficult situations, the brain is likely to turn on pain â OR ANXIETY, depression, fatigue or insomnia as an alarm signal. Itâs like a built-in smoke alarm system that we have.
And, you know, most doctors are really unaware of this – these – far-ranging and revolutionary concepts.â
There must be much better ways of raising awareness all round than we are yet aware of, and, when I call up, ?six thousand miles away, the funny farm I left almost 15 years ago, I try to keep it funny, and to remind them that there is nothing that listening cannot heal.
Tom.
“If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.” – George Bernard Shaw.
“If this world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.” – Yogi Berra.
âThe sooner you fall behind, the longer you have to catch up.â
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The STARD scandal, involving research misconduct and a fabricated remission rate of 67%, has raised ethical concerns in the psychiatric profession. Despite a petition urging retraction, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a letter from STARD authors defending their research, creating a debate on the integrity of the study and its impact on public trust in psychiatric research.
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