Upon the U.K. Launch of Psychiatry and the Business of Madness: A Reflection

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This is a study of psychiatry. It is a study of an area officially a branch of medicine and overwhelmingly seen as legitimate, benign, progressive, and effective. But what if society had it wrong? What if this were not legitimate medicine? Dare we imagine a world where helping is not professionalized, where caring is not commodified. Where, in the spirit of community, we go about the business of life together?

Krazy Kiwi Kids

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The New Zealand government has just published research showing the numbers of children aged 2-14 years being diagnosed with mental disorders has doubled in the last five years with the key driver being an increase in anxiety disorders.

Shire Pharmaceuticals & the MEP – A Case Study in Manipulation?

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My last blog raised issues about the involvement of Shire Pharmaceuticals in lobbying for the inclusion of mandatory screening of children for ADHD in...

Ask Your Doctor

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What if your doctor told you about data collected on antidepressants AFTER they had been released on the market. New Zealand data that shows aggression and death are as common as dizziness in reports from doctors about adverse reactions to antidepressants. That suicidal ideation and suicide attempt are as common as insomnia. Imagine you were told that while being exposed to these risks, the data showed that the most likely adverse reaction you would experience would be that the drug didn't work or stopped working. How might your decision on this particular treatment option be affected?

Study 329: 50 Shades of Gray

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Access to data is more important than access to information about conflicts of interest. It is only when there is access to the data that we can see if interests are conflicting and take that into account. Problems don’t get solved unless someone is motivated for some reason. We need the bias that pharmaceutical companies bring to bear in their defense of a product, along with the bias of those who might have been injured by a treatment. Both of these biases can distort the picture but it’s when people with differing points of view agree on what is right in front of their noses that we can begin to have some confidence about what we have.

Antidepressants & The Undead

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Several of us involved in RxISK.org monitor other groups setting up to offer information on medicines. Some of these, like eHealthMe, offer useful information. As ever, though, pharmaceutical companies are in there early. The Brintellix website is a masterclass in how to appear patient-centered, and patient-friendly. How to move with the times and make the new way of doing things yours.

Mylan Pharmaceuticals Admits their Drug is the Probable Cause of My Son’s Suicide

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A couple of days ago, after two years of fighting, I received Mylan Pharmaceuticals assessment of the causal link between their drug Fluox and my son's suicide. Their conclusion is identical to that of the New Zealand drug regulator Medsafe, that the SSRI antidepressant Fluoxetine is the probable cause of Toran's death. The rating of 'probable' includes an assessment that Toran's suicide was 'unlikely to be attributed to disease or other drugs.'

Psychiatric Language: Perception, Reality, & Breakfast

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There are terms in psychiatry that are designed to portray violent and distressing events as benign, and normal human rights, feelings and behaviours as threatening – things I think we need to name for what they are. The term ‘antidepressant’, for instance, shapes the way we think of these drugs. It renders the fact that they can worsen depression and cause suicidal thinking and behavior counter-intuitive, and makes people skeptical of claims they don’t work and make distressed people feel worse.

Why Did 158+ People Attend an Antipsychiatry Book Launch? (A Reflection)

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There is a hunger out there for a foundational critique of psychiatry—something that pulls no punches, minces no words. That is, there is a hunger for a reasoned antipsychiatry position. Something that explains how we ended up here, provides solid evidence that psychiatry should be abandoned, and begins theorizing what we might do instead.

Doctor Munchausen and Sense about Science

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In June this year the BMJ published an article supposedly about how the Black Box Warning that antidepressants cause suicide had led to a drop in the use of the same antidepressants and an increase in suicides. The message was widely trumpeted in daily newspapers and other news outlets as well as the press office of Harvard University and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In fact there had been no drop in the use of antidepressants and no increase in suicide rates or suicide act rates. The letters sent to the BMJ in response to the article wondering how such a shoddy piece of work could possibly have been published are worth reading – rarely is academic contempt so scathing.

It’s Not Easy Being “Clean”

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I think I have underestimated just how hard it can be for people to approach mental health problems from a psychological and social perspective. The longer I work with people who are experiencing severe psychological distress, the more they teach me about the difficulties involved in breaking away from an “illness” mindset. Medications, by and large, are still the mainstay of helping people with psychological troubles despite an increasingly widespread acceptance that psychological problems are not medical problems. Mental illness is an “illness” only in the same way that love-sickness is an illness.

Study 329: Minions no Longer

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Good Pharma is the story of the Mario Negri Institute. Mario Negri was a wealthy patron who on his death in 1960 bequeathed a large sum of money to support independent pharmaceutical research to an upcoming researcher Silvio Garattini. Garattini and Alfredo Leonardi set about building an Institute centred on the new drugs and new techniques. They continue to grow without ever having patented any of their many discoveries or concealing any of the data from experiments that didn’t work out or accommodating any of their trials to industry’s wishes.