In a new study, a psychiatric diagnosis was found to be incorrect for more than two-thirds of those who experienced antidepressant withdrawal. Their withdrawal symptoms were misdiagnosed as DSM-5 psychiatric disorders like panic disorder and major depressive disorder.
The researchers write, “In 58 (78.4%) of the 74 cases, the DSM-5 diagnosis of current mental disorder was not confirmed when the DID-W1 was completed since patients’ symptoms corresponded to a diagnosis of current withdrawal syndrome.”
The study was led by Fiammetta Coscia at the University of Florence and Maastricht University, as well as Virginie-Anne Chouinard at McLean Hospital, and Guy Chouinard at the University of Montreal and McGill University. It was published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
The fact that the DSM does not include criteria for withdrawal symptoms is a barrier to accurate diagnosis and treatment, the authors write. While the DSM asks clinicians to differentiate “mental disorders” from drug-induced symptoms, it does not include drug withdrawal symptoms—from either recreational or prescribed drugs. Thus, they suggest supplementing diagnosis with their measure for identifying and categorizing withdrawal symptoms, the DID-W1.
“We propose that the clinical picture modified by SSRI and SNRI withdrawal be detected through the use of the DID-W1 and not DSM, because the DSM-5 does not include SSRI/SNRI in the list of drugs responsible for drug-induced disorders and the DSM-5 diagnostic algorithm does not include withdrawal syndromes due to decrease, discontinuation, or switch of SSRI/SNRI,” the researchers write.
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“the DSM-5 does not include SSRI/SNRI in the list of drugs responsible for drug-induced disorders”
Although all DSMs prior to the DSM5 did warn, “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.”
But “People are commonly misdiagnosed when withdrawing from antidepressants. Some symptoms of antidepressant withdrawal—like panic, anxiety, depression, and hallucinations—overlap with psychiatric diagnoses. However, many symptoms, such as brain zaps and nausea, are not shared with psychiatric disorders.”
Yet doctors have been misdiagnosing “brain zaps” as “bipolar,” out of ignorance, for decades. Doctors apparently didn’t even know “brain zaps” are a common symptom of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome until 2005.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247806326_'Brain_shivers'_From_chat_room_to_clinic
Can someone please tell me what is “professional” about arrogantly claiming ignorance, about the products one sells? … and in psychiatry’s and psychology’s case, forces and coerces onto innocent others.
And how is giving scientifically “invalid” aspects of the “medical” industry the right to unjustly play judge, jury, and executioner to anyone they want, for any reason – which is what the psychological and psychiatric industries have been given – acceptable in an actual free market society? It’s not.
All forced and coerced psychiatric and psychologic drugging, and any other forced or coerced drugging, should be illegal … at least in a supposedly free society.
Thank you, as always, Peter.
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Thank you, Someone Else.
“In a new study, a psychiatric diagnosis was found to be incorrect for more than” one hundred per cent of people. Their symptoms were “misdiagnosed as DSM-5 psychiatric disorders like panic disorder and major depressive disorder” by ignorant individuals who continue to foolishly believe that the DSM is a scientifically valid diagnostic instrument, despite negligible evidence.
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When we say antidepressant withdrawal commonly misdiagnosed as mental illness we already get lost in so many unreal concepts. The thing is the orderly functioning of my brain, mind, heart and body is not a mere concept and is not unreal, because it is the stuff of a real life and a real mind and a real consciousness, the only thing that is for me, but it is lost and subsumed underneath all of your unreal concepts. And your whole sense of self is the identification with these unreal social concepts, without which you would know what you are – exactly what I am. Absolutely nothing at all but what is, which is consciousness, the only thing that ever was or ever could be for conscious life. For if it is not, neither are we, and if it is, we are. We are the energies of consciousness, the life within consciousness, the energy of consciousness, and without us, it dies. And without it, we never live. That is the Mother and Father. We are both, but that which can say is the life, that which is aware of what is said is the awareness. Life and awareness, life and mind. In it they both sank for a graft of manifold eternities. We did it clean.
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