hahahaha Thank you! I thought I was not getting. lol
Yes. “Perhaps it signals a shift in the field of psychiatry if others follow Murrayâs lead”
It always amazes me that whenever one of these psychiatrists state any “wrongdoing” people believe that a change will come.
I remember that during DSM-5 discussions two of them Robert Spitzer and Allen Frances made numerous critics and proposed that DSM should end.
DSM-5 is alive and kicking.
We need a revolution in medicine as a whole and in psychiatry… start from scratch.
What about listening to patients?
That would be a great start. How can DSM be done – it is all about statistics, isn’t it – when the word of the patient is “anecdote evidence”?
This stats are made based on what?
On the clinical practice described by doctors? Oh, the word of the doctor is also anecdotal evidence… Hmm…
How can the fourth phase of clinical trials – surveillance after the drug is on the market – can be done without listening to patients?
lol
It would be funny if the consequences were not that tragic.
Great article!
When I was a teenager a person who had been in the battlefield was diagnosed “war neurotic” and everybody understood.
S/he needed therapy, psychoanalysis at that time.
They changed for PTSD. People get confused and what is the treatment? An antidepressant, a mood stabilizer and something else just in the beginning.
There has been a pill that “erases bad memories” advertised I don’t know what happened with this treatment.
The more they make diagnoses confused the better for them.
It is absurd that a psychiatrists change the diagnosis from time to time.
What a great science medicine is following!
A pill for every ill.
Could you explain more about your experience?
What kind of methodology this psychoanalyst used? Where did s/he received his license?
As I said real psychoanalysis is not available in the vast majority of countries.
I would like to have an idea about what is happening.
Do you know the work of Bruce Levine?
You did therapy with a psychiatrist?
What kind of therapy was that?
“Shifting the focus to positive events and positive goals lifts depression faster than trying to discover the original source of a person’s bad feeling….”
This is not what a good psychoanalysis is. There is not a an “original source”. This is bad therapy, quackery. Psychiatrists are not good therapists. I don’t even like this word”therapy” because there are so many methodologies under this label that made things very difficult.
This is intentional: back in the seventies and eighties people who had been on the battlefield were “war neurotics” now they suffer PTSD because this way pills are the solution.
“Constantly picking and probing for psychic scabs does nothing to cure a person and can make their symptoms far worse. ”
Psychoanalysis is not about “curing” anyone. Is easing the pain and making the person live better inspite of what happened to him/her.
The psychoanalyst is not the one who conduct: the patient work with the him/her.
Unfortunately real psychoanalysis is no longer being done in most countries for psychiatry took over.
I’m Brazilian and I’m glad we still have good psychoanalysts. In Argentine and France too.
But in America things are pretty strange. A pill for every ill.
It is the same here but we still have good, and also terrible professionals, psychoanalysts.
I did it and unfortunately my psychoanalyst passed away last May.
She was not only a very good professional but a great human being.
I fear what is going to happen in the next twenty years.
Maybe we’ll also lose these great professionals who dedicated their lives to help people – and don’t even mention that they care that much about money. Leave all the thousands of dollars and the cents to the psychiatrists.
I know people who had a very bad experience too. Most of them searched for psychologists of even these psychiatrists who become therapists.
We know pretty well that they are not good in listening to people during a meeting to prescribe.
Listening is a key word when we talk about psychoanalysis.
It is extremely dangerous to make such an intervention. What if the symptoms of the trauma persist but the person doesn’t know where does it come from.
They keep blaming the brain and the brain only but they know too little of the brain’s complexity and it’s relation to the whole body.
What about those people who receive the heart of someone and all of a sudden start having feeling of the donor?
I would never do anything like this.
I’m glad that Robin did choose his destiny.
R.I.P. great actor, comedian and human being.
What kind of suicide do you want?
One choice you decide that you want to end your life and the other you take a drug that has as side effect violent behavior that can lead you to kill others or self.
I rather kill myself because it was my choice.
The number of soldiers that commit suicide increased because they are taking antidepressants SSRIs.
As these drugs makes people have no sex drive and erases sexual fantasies – a condition that is known as PSSD – they are “treating” sexual offenders with antidepressants SSRIs.
I consider prescription of SSRIs as crime against humanity.
Wow! You’re being too dramatic and harsh.
I did read a lot, seen a lot – people taking all the SSRIs available and going to have ECT – and experienced a lot.
When someone takes her/his life due to these drugs it is not a suicide: it is a murder.
Ted,
It is very important because drug-induce suicidal ideation is a very serious problem.
Only those who experience it can say how REAL suicidal ideation is completely different from drug-induce suicidal ideation.
In groups the work to prevent suicide the issue is never raised and when someone is feeling the “urge” to kill himself/herself even knowing that “it is withdrawal, it is withdrawal” something makes him or her keep going..
But Robin’s wife finally could speak:
Some people will be very sad that Robinâs wife gave this statement and no antidepressant is revealed:
âRobinâs sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinsonâs Disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly.â
Iâm appalled that mental health advocates are so eager to put a celebrity in the Hall of Antidepressantâs death.
Quite unethical and⊠makes me sad and angry. Mainstream is making people behave like vultures.
Some people will be very sad that Robin’s wife gave this statement and no antidepressant is revealed:
“Robinâs sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinsonâs Disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly.”
I’m appalled that mental health advocates are so eager to put a celebrity in the Hall of Antidepressant’s death.
Quite unethical and… makes me sad and angry. Mainstream is making people behave like vultures.
I didn’t find where it is said that Robin Williams was taking antidepressants.
I just did read he was fighting depression and also that in July he went to rehab. I know what drug-induced suicidal ideation is and I have been trying to raise awareness about it.
Suicide prevention never raised this issue.
But as far as Robin Williams is concerned all I know is that he committed suicide. I don’t know in what circumstances he did it.
Phrenology is back and neuroimaging is it’s new tool.
I copied some links with literature about new phrenologists at the link above.
I just wanted to add that there is a group of psychoanalysts who are always questioning the methodology.
Joel Birman is one of them and he started asking that if a period like the one we’re living, Freud would go crazy, he said, the psychoanalyst mus remains silent most of the time.
There are numerous people in France, Argentina and Brazil questioning and rethinking.
I’m glad that in US it is being done too as this article shows.
These stories are told in Hysterical, oops, Historical Channel. I agree that bad therapy can harm but as I said before: therapy is done “WITH” the therapist. It is a process of the both.
I heard many people complaining about psychologists who wanted to tell her the they should act. This is not therapy.
Implanting memories can be done not only by therapists. It is outrageous that this charlatans keep with their licence.
I was lucky to have found the right person in the first attempt.
I tried two after her because she was of town for a while and it was a disaster.
One woman was extremely rude and the man I did manipulated him all the time.
I visited him for six months and heard all I wanted him to say.
I met one person who did therapy(?) with him for a period and he said that he slept during a session.
I have numerous stories of people who told me how they psychologists worked.
It is sad to have such people working in such an important field.
One has to be very careful and search for the right person.
I was going to raise this issue but you did it very properly.
I’m Brazilian an we still have psychoanalysis as in Argentina and France. There are great professionals and, of course, charlatans too.
But it is easy to have a reference for a good psychoanalyst. I did it for 20 years. No, I’m not more crazy than someone who did 3, 4 or 10 years. This was the amount of time my experience needed. Time is different for each person in what psychoanalysis is concerned.
We have psychologists and most people who try are let down and don’t want to search for another one which is very sad because sometimes the person found the wrong professional or a bad professional.
It makes me very sad seeing a methodology which is different for each “patient” and has a very broad kind of approaches being described in generalizations such as Oedipus complex and the money – in same cases it is even therapeutic that the person doesn’t pay – and all these clichĂȘs.
Psychoanalysis happens when the two are together and is done by the two. The psychoanalyst doesn’t “guide” like some people think.
I’m studying to be a psychoanalyst since I have acquired some knowledge without planning. If I’m thrilled following this path?
Nope, I’m scared, extremely scared. đ
I can’t picture someone in this situation: !Yippee Yippee! I’m going to be a psychoanalyst.”
I guess I have changed the subject.
I rather say that that person is a “war neurotic” than “is diagnosed PTSD”.
When I was a teenager we had a teacher that was a “war neurotic” and we all understoos what this man has been through.
“The teacher is diagnosed PTSD.” I don’t know how children see it.
All I know is that for ‘neurosis’ we went to the therapist. Neurosis disappeared.
Everybody is either bipolar or has PTSD.
A pill, or a cocktail of pills is the answer.
In US it seems that CBT is indicated for everything. This is no good.
In clinical trials placebo beats the drugs:
Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.
“Before I routinely prescribed antidepressants, I would do more psychotherapy for mildly depressed patients,” says the veteran of hundreds of drug trials. “Today we would say I was trying to engage components of the placebo responseâand those patients got better. To really do the best for your patients, you want the best placebo response plus the best drug response.”
“ronically, Big Pharma’s attempt to dominate the central nervous system has ended up revealing how powerful the brain really is. The placebo response doesn’t care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapist, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better. That’s potent medicine.”
“The ad hominem comment ânow youâll never search for any helpâŠthis is sadâ paints a rather piteous picture”
THis is my comment:
“This is very sad that you havenât found a good one.
Now youâll never search for any help.
Iâve seen it happening to some people.
This is sad.”
My error was infer that you would follow the steps of those who were assisted by bad pros.
I was not talking about you alone. There are numerous psychological methods and also in psychoanalysis a lot of approaches.
I’m sorry but I don’t know what kind of therapy you’re mentioning.
All you’re reporting is done by charlatans not by serious and ethical pros.
Therapy is not about one person -the therapist- telling the other – the client – this or that.
It is a work of two people together.
Once a therapist starts ruling you have better stop and search for a real good one.
I also had two experiences but I stopped because they were not good. Each for a reason.
This is very sad that you haven’t found a good one.
Now you’ll never search for any help.
I’ve seen it happening to some people.
This is sad.
Please, those who are in therapy or searching, trust your instincts when you feel you’re not in good hands.
I don’t know what kind of therapy you’re talking about.
There is not one “Therapy”
There is psychoanalysis, numerous psychological therapies and numerous bad therapies.
They do not put diplomas on the wall. There are no labels either.
Funny that American government is expert in creating tragic events in order to promote numerous cathartic events that generate fear and insecurity among Americans and the rest of the world to justify criminal actions in US and interventions in other countries: 9/11; Sandy Hook; Ghouta Attack…
Everyday in front of the TV people identify themselves with celebrities and watch violent scenes in the most extreme aristotelian cathartic way.
“The Bachelor”; The Kardashians…
What a sick society! Sick era.
Hi,
I’m very sad you had such a terrible experience with these therapists.
What kind of therapy did they do?
By “Life Expert” do you mean this group: http://www.lifexpert.com/techniques/ ?
OMG! If so it is clearly a quick-fix strategy that has nothing to do with real therapy.
There are numerous pros who can really harm people but this is not serious or ethical people.
They take advantage of those who are more vulnerable.
Catharsis was used by Breuer and Freud worked with him for a brief period of time.
But Freud stopped using this technique when he created the talk therapy that has nothing to do with catharsys.
If Freud had not abandoned the cathartic mambo-jambo there would be no talk therapy.
This is lesson 1 for those who are starting to study psychoanalysis or psychology.
When choosing a therapist one has to be careful.
Thank you for this input.
It is very strange that those who have light, mild and severe depression take the same drug.
We could infer that those who have major depression would lack more serotonin than those who are not.
Serotonin is responsible for numerous things like the sense of temperature and so on…
As I said at the other comment there are four neurotransmitters that are known among millions of others that are not known.
What SSRIs are doing, and there are numerous experts explaining in books, articles, blogs, site… is causing a lot of changes in the body and mind of people.
There is a group at Yahoo that are discussing PSSD. Those who have quitted a SSRI and could never regain their sexual lives.
One of the most appalling things I did read there is that they claim they have their sexial fantasies “erased”.
That is why SSRIs were considered to “treat” sexual offenders.
What about that?
I’m very sorry but with all the evidences believing in the “chemical imbalance” – what expression to name a theory – is out of the planet for me.
But this is me.
I respect those who believe it but I’m convinced after reading experts and the testimonies of patients that it should not even be an hypothesis. But it is a “theory”. Well, the scientific methodology is a joke.
Peer-reviewed… đ
This is what they wrote at the review.
“linked” meaning “caused”.
I didn’t understand what do you mean with genetics here.
I’m sorry.
If the theory it about the serotonin it means nothing for the “chemical imbalance” theory is not true.
Comparing anything to Prozac is good for nothing since Prozac, as all SSRIs antidepressants, reuptakes serotonin on the presynaptic gap and it makes a lot of harm. 5% of this serotonin remains in the brain while 95% travels around the body.
This is nonsense.
Can anybody give me the scientific evidence that depression is due to a “chemical imbalance”?
“Chemical imbalance” is a very vague expression but if it is real it is not understandable how a test to measure each patient is not available.
They blame serotonin but also prescribe drugs that deals with dopamine and the other two neurotransmitters they know.
There are millions of neurotransmitters that are not known. I believe in chemical imbalance: this is what happens to the brain after being exposed to medicines such as antidepressants SSRIs and other drugs. It creates a disaster in the the complex chemistry of the brain.
Too little is known about the brain and they behave as if they knew a lot. Oh please!
This article talks about the Hamilton scale but they don’t say anything about the curcumin.
What have they really found about curcumin?
That it is safe and efficacious as Prozac.
“This study provides first clinical evidence that curcumin may be used as an effective and safe modality for treatment in patients with MDD without concurrent suicidal ideation or other psychotic disorders.”
Without suicidal ideation? They are clearly saying here that it is NOT Prozac that causes the suicidal ideation. It is the disease.
Point to… Prozac.
Same old, same old.
English Parliament 2005:
5. Problems with Seroxat and other SSRIs
Prozac and Seroxat are the best-known examples of SSRI and related antidepressants, but others are widely used. The introduction of SSRIs led to a threefold increase in antidepressant prescriptions between 1990 and 2000. Prescriptions for antidepressants now match those of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers at their peak, 25 years ago.
Almost from the outset, there was concern about two main problems with SSRIs. First, there was suspicion (initially centred on Prozac) that these drugs could induce suicidal and violent behaviour â infrequently, but independently of the suicidal thoughts that are linked to depression itself. There was also concern (centred on Seroxat*) about a risk of dependence; some users. p.85
“And the World Health Organization in 1999, ranked depression as the worldâs most devastating illness, projecting depression would climb to second place by 2020.”
I would like to know how this prediction is done and what are the factors that they take into consideration to achieve this number.
Do they count those who will be depressed because they were prescribed a drug which has as side effect depression?
Can we rely on WHO?
Thank you.
As always an inspiration. It is comforting watching people like Jim.
“The biggest obstacle in my mind is the lack of legal resources to challenge the status quo.”
You’re so right Jim!
We are dealing with crimes. We need lawyers that are aware of what is happening in the psychiatric kingdom and also in other branches of medicine.
I admire your work. My father is a prosecutor – retired – and I ran from laws. đ
Now I know what I could have done if I had followed his steps.
đ
Yes. Once in a mental institution one is no longer a human being.
“…the fact that there is no scientific evidence that âestablishes there is such a concept as âmental disorder,â especially itâs synonym, âmental âillness.ââ
Try to convince those who write the DSM and all the psychiatric kingdom that the concept of mental disorder has no scientific data.
We’ll all join you.
In reality there is not a double bind for those who are the rulers.
“Animal studies established that âthe cortical neurons or receptor sites affected by anti-psychotics actually grew more receptor âsites when administered anti-psychotics. Thus the argument that most of the behavior of âmany individuals prescribed anti-psychotics is, in fact, iatrogenic. In Faithâs case when she âwas given olonzapine and respiridone, her problems exacerbated another iatrogenic âcondition. The initial FDA trials leading to approval of respiridone was about 6-8 weeks.”
“when Faith was obviously erroneously diagnosed and placed on paxil, it âappears clear that it was the research-demonstrated effects of paxil that exacerbated her âpsychotic symptoms, another iatrogenic cause of her difficulties. I would like to have seen âthat addressed by expert testimony on Faithâs behalf.”
This is the story of maybe 70% of all psychiatric patients. Do you really believe that a psychiatrist is going to say: “Yes, she was misdiagnosed and Paxil was the reason for X, y and z;
Another iatrogenic condition was caused by ……. that she took in…
Do you have an idea of how many drugs patients take? They keep switching the drugs and in the end of one years the patient experimented more than fifteen drugs.
In the end people don’t know anymore what is the disease, side effect or withdrawal symptoms and psychiatrists never help patients in identifying.
They don’t even ask when the patient took for the first time a drug to check if the anxiety the person is feeling is iatrogenic.
On the contrary. They usually say: “No. It is not side effect.” “It is all in your head.”
“The aspect of the âclinical gaze,â first referenced by Foucault, or what I âreferred to in my book as the delusion of psychiatry and psychology…”
Wow! Congratulations! You created a better expression. Foucault was never good with words. His writings are very poorly written and the concepts he created… Poor man!
Joanna,
” …feel them if attach themselves to my body or they attack me. Also internally where they can move under my skin or change the shape/size of body parts typically hands/face.”
Oh dear! It is not easy.
I have already heard about the colors – ” two colourâs which can take any form i.e. street/shop sign…” – but only reading description of “symptoms” so too little was explained.
Back in 1989 I took Halcion and I had some hallucinations as side effect.
I don’t remember clearly but I felt things in my body too. I remember once when I felt as if my body was turning inside out.
Very disturbing sensations and I got very scared. Psychiatrist said: “Will change the drug and it will go away.”
Oh really? Some of the sensations took a long time to stop but I don’t know if I was really feeling them or if it was due to the traumatic experience.
But now I don’t remember them. I believe I left them all at my psychoanalyst room. đ
That is very good that talking to friends to try to help you works sometimes.
How I wish that people was aware of what is going on in the mental health kingdom.
“I canât accept my voices are emanating from me, but I accept their existence.”
Sure!
Love,
Ana
In the article “Living Mindfully with Voices” Rufus May wrote what I think should be done:
Changing how as Communities We Relate to Voices
“At the moment as a society we do not accept voices. Instead we try to remove them from conscious awareness or control them through the use of sedating drugs and distraction strategies. A different approach is to support people who hear voices to become more present to their lives, if their voices are persistently seeking to be heard we need to find ways to listen to them from a place of grounded awareness. As friends and supporters of people who hear challenging voices we also need to learn to live mindfully with voices and listen to their deeper meanings. In this way of deep listening to peopleâs voices we are likely to learn truths about hidden parts of our communities and become wiser and more aware because of it. Therefore welcoming voices into our communities, whilst also setting boundaries with them is likely to lead to healthier ways to relate to ourselves and each other. One modern example of this welcoming approach is on the internet where some people who hear voices have given their voices Facebook and Twitter accounts and are interacting with people and other voices across the world (an example of this can be seen on the Intervoice Facebook group).”
Great article Rufus! Thank you for answering some of my doubts. đ
Yes! Acceptance is of great help for many emotional issues.
Joanna,
You say “my visual voices”.
I never had the guts to ask a person who hears voices about their experience because I don’t know how to do so.
I fear entering a part of their intimacy that they don’t wanna share or that they just want to talk about it to those who experience it.
One of the things I think strange about this avatar “therapy” is exactly putting an image to a experience that is, at least this is what I think, not related to anything visual.
I remember when I did read Merleau-Ponty explaining that a patient said that her bed has a powder.
They did put a powder on her bed and she said: “No! It is not the powder I see.”
Another patient saw the silhouette of a person in front of his window. They did put a real silhouette: Same response: “No! It is not him.”
At the explanation of the experiment:
“… study that created computer generated images -avatars â designed to look like each personâs voice. The therapist sat in another room and said aggressive things via the avatar and the person was encouraged to stand up to their voice and gradually the avatar voice became more friendly. ”
I still didn’t understand how it can help.
I ask myself if when someone is hearing voices it would of any help if s/he could tell to a friend “I’m hearing this and that.”
I don’t know but I would love to listen from those who hear voices what is the best way to help, how can others be part of their experience to make it more bearable.
I believe that if a good campaign “Yes, some people hear voices and this is not that crazy, it is not contagious, they are not going to take over the world, they do not hear voices 24/7 and are human beings just…”… Hmmm… wishful thinking.
“The well-known World Health Organization collaborative International Study of Schizophrenia found, for example, that persons in poor countries diagnosed with schizophrenia enjoyed significantly better outcomes in a broad variety of domains including symptoms, disability and social functioning.”
I believe that WHO forgot to make a research in Brazil or maybe the organization doesn’t include Brazil as a poor country.
The treatment that those with schizophrenia receive in Brazil is the same Americans do.
All the drugs sold in US are being used in Brazil.
Clinical trials are done in mental institutions but they “forget” to tell the patients that they are taking part on a clinical trial.
The regulation we have in Brazil is based on FDA with the exception of advertisements. We don’t have ads at the TV.
The corruption is the same.
I wonder why NAMI don’t invite psychiatrists such as Peter Breggin, David Healy, Bruce Levine and people like Jim Gottstein… all these great people who have been work hard to show what these drugs are really doing.
The number of people is huge but they are not invited.
Why NAMI? Why?
You are so right!
This is the experience of numerous people here in Brazil. Half the population of Rio de Janeiro are hooked to Klonopin the most difficult benzodiazepine to withdraw.
The withdrawal symptom is terrible and psychiatrists start giving other drugs such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers or antipsychotics.
People end up having numerous side effects that are “diagnosed” as mental illness.
This is happening since 1989 when they come up with the idea that diazepam is not “strong enough”.
One of the side effects of Klonopin, clonazepan, is panic attack.
Numerous people are having panic attacks due to clonazepam.
This is criminal and NAMI, FDA and all of those who are involved in this crimes are quiet aware that they are not drugging only a nation, America, they are drugging the world.
I met a Japanese dermatologist who claimed he was prescribing Paxil to heal acne because stress is not good for the skin.
I told him about the heinous side-effects and guess what he said?
“This drug is helping millions of people.”
This is the Big Pharma phrase to end any discussion.
What about the fourth phase of clinicals trials?
Surveillance after the drug is on the market.
They would have to listen to… the patients, don’t they?
This is not “scientific”. The word of the patient is… anecdotal evidence.
This is surreal! Unfortunately destroying people’s body, mind and soul.
I would be rich if I gained a buck every time I did read: “This drug destroyed my life.”
Always great comments. Love you Joanna.
” Itâs reported that that the reason 10 did not complete the course is because they were bullied by the voices into stopping.”
What? There were 26 and 10 have left the experiment because they were bullied by the voices?
I’m sorry but this is enough evidence for me to close the case and try another approach.
They will try it again with 142 participants using 1.3 million pounds.
I wonder how much will this therapy cost.
“Be nice to me, go away…” OK!
“Aggressive voices are often protecting terrifying memories the person has dissociated from. So when the person learns to confront the voices they then often need to confront difficult emotions and memories. We need to give people the opportunity to do this integrative work and very often it needs significant time and space. Itâs well worth doing because it can take people out of a dis-empowered and passive role in their lives. However; resources are needed that are not just âbrief therapy interventionsâ if we want to make the psychological benefits sustainable.”
Right Rufus, that’s the core of the problem.
I wonder if “silencing the voices” is the real goal. It is not.
What about visual hallucinations?
Why don’t they make a virtual image of them?
PLEASE: We need a “BACK TO TOP” button here in the end.
Great article!
Is it me or schizophrenia is a word that puts in the same basket different experiences?
Anyhow… hearing voices:
“In our culture there is a massive fear of hearing voices other people canât hear.”
Wow! People fear the voices the other people are listening. This is so strange!
Whenever I say I have friends that are schizophrenics… “OMG! They are dangerous.” LOL
I answer: “You know… go to a mental institution and speak to them. You’ll see that those who are left there without a single visit will be so happy to talk to you and receive a little attention. They need tenderness… that is all.”
“However many voices appear to be more complicated parts of consciousness, with their own personalities, and in my view we should not try to get rid of them. Rather we should seek to set boundaries with them (as the study does) but also, if they persist, it is often very helpful to dialogue with them.”
I also don’t think that the aim is to make them disappear. It is not like that.
What amazes me me about how they always approach clinical trials, new therapies and so on is the total lack of emphasis on those who are being treated.
They usually talk, and talk, and talk, and talk… and we keep confused because there is only one or two testimonies of participants.
So they used 26 voice hearer. Where are their testimonies?
Who are they?
Where is the detailed report of the whole clinical trial?
That’s why I’m always suspicious about what psychiatrists do: they speak too much about their work, their experiences, their thoughts, how wonderful their ideas are, how they want to help, how they, they, they… they… and they ad nauseam.
I would love to know more about the finger puppets experience.
Yes. It is not scientific appealing but I’m sure it is more interesting.
I’m glad you wrote it Steve.
I’m also concerned with Alex. I don’t see things this way maybe because I spent two years, 2008 and 2009, commenting on some sites and… OMG!
You have no idea how far some people go Alex.
The comments I did read here are those of people who are trying to dialogue.
I learned not to pay attention on those who are just wanting to leave a comment without any responsability.
If I did something that have you consider harmful I’m sorry.
This is a subject I would gladly forget… but I can’t .
It would be easier for me to let it be. I believe that most people who are here feel the same: “how I wish I know nothing about it!”
But we do. And we have a lot to share.
In your article “Psychiatry Is Not the Only Branch of Medicine to Lose Its Soul to Pharma”
“The end result is that even when physicians want to provide the best of care, they are limited by corruption of the sources from which they derive their information.”
Physicians have their clinical experience and one of the mysteries is why don’t they use it? Why do they keep denying side effects, withdrawal symptoms when patients talk to them?
“No, it is all in your head.” “My other patients didn’t have sexual dysfunction because of antidepressants.” “No. It is not withdrawal.”
You forgot to mention that Senator Charles Grassley was not only after FDA and all it’s tactics to help Big Pharma. Evergreenig one of them.
Chuck is known for going after Charles Nemeroff and Joe Biederman both Harvard physicians who made million receiving from labs being Biederman the creator of the “bipolar child” diagnose.
I noticed that your Master is on Biology (Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry and has been working on the “links between, disease, and immune system… as well as on the efficacy of antidepressants.
I did read your article “Commentary on the National Comorbidity Survey Replication”
“However, the FDA blackbox warning for suicidal ideation on antidepressants implies that pharmacological treatment may indeed be a causal factor in the elevated rates of suicidal behavior exhibited by adolescents in the U.S. With regard to another interesting finding from the study, Nock et al. also reported that adolescents whose parents had not gone to college were less likely to have contemplated suicide.”
I wonder why someone with your experience still have to use the “may”. he English parliament 2005 review “The Influence of Pharmaceutical Industry”, everybody knows it, is more elucidative claiming
5. Problems with Seroxat* and other SSRIs
Prozac and Seroxat are the best-known examples of SSRI and related antidepressants, but others are widely used. The introduction of SSRIs led to a threefold increase in antidepressant prescriptions between 1990 and 2000. Prescriptions for antidepressants now match those of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers at their peak, 25 years ago.
Almost from the outset, there was concern about two main problems with SSRIs. First, there was suspicion (initially centred on Prozac) that these drugs could induce suicidal and violent behaviour â infrequently, but independently of the suicidal thoughts that are linked to depression itself. There was also concern (centred on Seroxat) about a risk of dependence; some users. p.85
*Paxil in US
As far as clinical trials are concerned it is always good the remember that the Phase 4 is not being done since the word of patients are considered “anecdote evidence”.
With all the data written in books, written at sites, blogs and the clinical experience of physicians using a “may” when talking about drug=induced violent behavior is out of the planet for me. But this is me.
I’ll try to find something about your research related to medications and diagnoses.
At the moment I’m reading a lot about DSM-5 but I’ll search your articles when I finish it.
Best regards,
Ana
“I just wanted to bring everyoneâs attention to the newer consensus conclusions about the undesirable effects of catharsis.”
Consensus? Can you give us more explanation about this consensus? The research by APS?
Why did the title of is this article is “Talk Therapy Can Cause Harm, Too” and not “Catharsis can be harmful, too”?
Catharsis helps groups that were submitted to the same traumatic experiences. In the movies, drama it helps a lot.
In psychology, at least those theoreticians I did read and know, catharsis is not even a subject of discussion.
It is funny how APS, and why not, APA is so concerned with this subject when there are so many to discuss to help people.
Art critics, especially those who work with drama, have been studying it since the Greeks.
You didn’t answer all the others that made good comments because of few “Verbal abuse”? I didn’t read any of these comments
If a therapist plays the “poor-baby” with the client s/he is a charlatan.
I’m sorry Jill but you didn’t answer any of the bright comments many left here at this thread and even use the tangential exit.
“âstop feeling sorry for yourself,â” It is not the work of a therapist to say it. It is a phrase relatives and friends use but not, under any circumstance is the job of a therapist.
David,
Take a look at this article by Raymond Tallis:
Does anybody have any news about Jill?
Just asking.
đ
For those who are lost: Jill is the author of the article that made us all connect to each other and make a virtual friendship.
Mission accomplish Jill!
Thank you.
No. You’re not alone. There are many like us.
đ
Thank you Joanna. I watched the video and I’m touched. I’ll publish it in my blog. What a great woman!
“each day I work I can look out into this courtyard and observe people that I met in Admissions who were vibrant and alive, who could walk and talk and who are passionate, even though they might see or hear things that I didnât. I have to watch them go downhill and deteriorate, to the point that all they can do in that courtyard is sit and stare and try to keep the saliva from running down the front of their shirts or blouses.”
Stephen
Can you see it psychiatrists? Do you have any idea that this is the result of your work?
(“Yes, I know I do that. But I go online and check my bank accounts, take a look at my stock and I forget all pf this.)
Joanna and Stephen,
You should start a blog and share your thoughts and what you have been witnessing.
This thread is full of people who are bright and learned what medicine did to their bodies, mind and soul searching by themselves.
This wisdom is so valuable!
Stephen, I live in front of two mental institutions and in one of them they do clinical trials without informing the patient; use electroshock in depressed people after giving them all antidepressants on the market; keep inmates without any activity and numerous atrocities.
I can imagine how you feel working in a place like this.
I started my blog in 2008 and now I only publish one post a month just to remind people that I’m still there.
I started a second blog because blogging about the harms of psychiatry made me angry and sad.
I don’t trust any physician. Recently I had a problem and I had to walk caring a cane and I felt dizzy, I felt as if there where a fire on my feet… it was hell.
I went to four doctors. Four different diagnoses…
to make a long story short: I gave up on searching for their help. I have a herniated disc on my back and I attributed these problems to it.
I started doing exercises, I walked when I could, used ice to relief the pain, took the only medicine that that doesn’t make a lot of harm due to side effects… blah blah blah… and I forgot I had a problem.
Everything went away. I can’t hardly believe I could not climb a stair and cried when watched someone walking or running because I thought I would never do it again.
My dog was diagnose cancer in 2008. Vets are at the same boat.
I only let them remove her mammals and in 2010 a tumor that was on her head.
She is great!. She is 15 years-old and people say she doesn’t look this age.
I believe that one way out would be creating groups of patients who have been through the same and exchanging knowledges.
I can’t trust people who prescribe pills they know that can be lethal, can make their patients kill others or him/herself to make money.
Of course that all psychiatrists have lost at least one patient for one of the drugs they prescribed.
They don’t care and they don’t eve think about it.
As I said I was lucky to find the first psychiatrist.
At that time in one session, he didn’t diagnosed me in fifteen minutes, I asked him about I don’t remember exactly what and he talked about Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth using his work for the Nazis and numerous philosophical issues.
In the end he said: “…but this is politics and I have to take care of my patients.”
He was an old man and died. He didn’t give me any diagnose and even said: “I don’t know if you are depressed.”
He said I needed therapy. This man had a psychiatric clinic.
I’m sure that the way I was feeling if he wanted to make money he could have me in that clinic and… OMG! I don’t know what could have happened to me.
Being three days without sleeping causes a lot of stress and make us vulnerable.
At this mental institution that is in front of my house one of the psychiatrists wanted me there… this is another story.
It makes me so angry that I rather stop for the moment.
Thank you all for all these great comments. We need to know we are not alone.
Joanna,
I took a glimpse at the site of The Tavistock but it was too quick. I have to read more. The site is The Tavistock and Portman and it is said the Tavistock deals with neurotics while Portman with psychosis.
Psychoanalysis was meant to treat neurotics but some thinkers like Deleuze and Guattari and even R.D. Laing, no, not the anti psychiatrist, please, the psychiatrist who worked hard to understand and get in touch with schizophrenics. He was one of a kind. He went so close!
One of his books “The Self and the Other” helped me a lot understanding the messages my mom used to send me. Laing uses Bateson’s double bind concept and it helped me see what she was doing.
But little by little. I started reading the book when I was nineteen and only in the middle of the therapy I could understand it.
This is one of the myths people have about therapy: the therapist will have a breakthrough and everything makes sense than you’re healed! lol
As I said I was lucky and found the right person for me at once. There are numerous bad psychoanalysts here too.
This flyers you mentioned is crippy! My ex-husband is bipolar… yes… it was sad watching him suffering depression for one years and devastating when he had to be hospitalized during his first maniac crisis.
He does therapy and I think it helps him. I don’t know how he’s doing now because one of the things that bipolarity brought was the end of our relationship.
Therapeutic communities? Wow! The way you described I would run away from this place.
Justify to the community? Compulsory group therapy?
No way!
The silence of the therapist… it never bothered me. Something very interesting happened to me. I was not very talkative. On the contrary. The three first sections of therapy I spoke, and I spoke, and I spoke.
Sometimes on my way to therapy I thought I had nothing to say but when I sat, I could never lay down, I started talking.
What is amazing is that all that was said during therapy acquired another sense. It is very hard to explain. I can tell the same story to a friend but when I did it at that place… seriously, I don’t know how to explain how things change.
This is my experience. Same here now: few people do psychoanalisys and I belive that it will also end in the next two decades.
This woman you describe is a great human being. These are the re helpers.
Psychiatrists don’t have the skill to work as therapists.
The vast majority I’ve encountered are incapable of empathy and they don’t listen to their patients.
The don’t listen. They diagnose and prescribe in fifteen minutes! When a patient says “I’m having as side effect…”: “No. It is not because of the medicine.” “My other patients are not having this kind of side effect.” “It is psychological.” “It is all in your head!”…
We all know how they behave. They are culturally illiterate and to be a good psychologist, psychoanalyst, therapist or whatever one has to learn many aspects of human condition and only human sciences can help. Philosophy, literature, social sciences and even art has more to do with human condition than the DSM-5 or those labs propaganda flyers they receive and read with attention.
Read Dostoevsky.
Psychiatrists of the world: Cura te ipsum: Heal thyself; a Latin injunction, urging physicians to care for and heal themselves first, before dealing with patients.
Yes, they don’t express emotions. They look at us as if they have their mind blank. How cold they all look. I met many and they are all like this.
The only one that shows emotion quitted and is doing something else.
I hope I didn’t digress too much and answered you.
Sorry for writing too much but this is a highly important subject.
I don’t have any problem with the expression “mental masturbation”. I don’t see it as derogatory but we use this expression colloquially in Portuguese.
Richard is asking for Jill to take seriously what people wrote here.
And she should because her attack to talking therapy was done without any valid argument. The therapies explained at this article are not talking therapies.
To be a good psychoanalyst requires a lot of work and one cannot open an office after four or five years in college.
One of the requisites is having done the psychoanalytic process.
The only reason why this article received so many comments is because there is a duality that, at least to my knowledge, doesn’t happen in talking therapy:
exposing the patient to trauma x emphasizing the positive aspects of daily life.
This is a reductionism and it has nothing to do with talking therapy. It has to do with techniques like CBT and those numerous others that are being creating.
There is not only one kind of talking therapy and unfortunately many people are taking advantage on the fact that “therapy” became a kind of practice that any person can create a method: EMDR was created in 1987.
All of these focus on some symptoms of diseases. There is no quick fix for emotional or mental distress and an ethical therapist has to study a lot and learn a lot from their practices.
Articles like this do more harm than good because it helps creating more and more misunderstanding and those who are in search for therapy are finding it harder and harder to find help with therapists.
Maybe a pill will do the job this person might think.
It took me twenty years to find my way out of a disturbing childhood and a family that is quite complicated. Could I do it in a little space of time?
No. I see women that are married and have children still coping with the trauma of having been sexually abused when they were a child.
There are lots of blogs where they share their experiences with therapists.
What about those who are borderliners?
A quick fix? Showing the bright side of the world or putting them to traumatic events?
This is not what Freud had in mind.
I don’t even understand why Freud is quoted in this article.
Talking therapy is something you do with your psychoanalyst.
You are the person who knows the time you can handle some facts and events that are hard to face.
There are numerous myths that hollywood helped creating about talking therapy. That is sad.
This last paragraph:
“A final note on this issue. Since catharsis frequently prolongs emotional upset, and is frequently utilized, harm is being done. Yet we all believe in the first principle of doing no harm. Hopefully, disabusing the mental health community of the idea that catharsis is generally a good thing, may help us to follow the widely approved maxim: do no harm. Confusion on this topic should no longer be tolerated.”
Oh! What is happening to talking therapy in America? Therapists are putting patients in emotional distress? Freudian connection with the therapist is based on love.
Lacan was the one who used hate.
And this last paragraph:
“Confusion on this topic should no longer be tolerate.” I didn’t understand which confusion is Jill stressing.
I totally agree with Richard and Joanna.
The title of the article is already strange with the “Too” after commas.
How can it be that talking therapy – I rather use “psychoanalysis” because we still have it here in Brazil with good and bad professionals – that has been helping many people be attacked with an article like this one?
Psychiatry put an end in psychoanalysis. Back in the seventies and beginning of the eighties people with emotional or mental distress went straight to a therapist and it was the therapist who decided if it was a problem that needed a psychiatric intervention.
Of course not in the case of a person who was in a maniac state.
Psychologists are putting a lot of effort in fighting for the right to prescribe.
Why? Is it because they want the best for their patients? I want to believe that this is the reason but I think it is a wishful thinking.
One of the first things my psychoanalyst said was “I don’t work with drugs.”
I was fortunate because I was first attended by a psychiatrist and he was bright enough to tell me that I needed therapy. His only mistake was the prescription of clonazepam because all the other benzos made me more anxious. I needed diazepam. They claim that diazepam is too light but this is the drug that some ERs use to calm down a person who is a maniac crisis when Haldol is not available.
Another great thing was finding the right therapist at once.
I understand when people have bad experiences with therapists and give up because I went to two when mine was having problems and it was a disaster.
One of them was easily manipulated and I made him say to me whatever I wanted. The other was a woman who all of a sudden looked at me and in a very strange tone gave me “pearls from my inconscient”… lol or used a phrase that she taught was the expression of the truth and would solve all my problems.
As I said I ended psychoanalysis in 2008. Sometimes I “visit” her.
I’m sure that for some patients she is not the right person and might have even made some people give up.
Therapy is not an exact science and as far as science is concerned it is becoming more and more difficult to trust it since scientists receive money from… you all know about it.
Ant the scientific methodology? Peer-review?
“Positive affect is just as important for well-being as an absence of negative emotion.”
Can anyone live without negative emotion? Absence of negative emotion. I can’t believe it. The more I read the more I feel that some of these people far from connecting with human condition. Just like psychiatrists.
Barbara Fredrickson:
“Barbâs scientific contributions have influenced scholars and practitioners worldwide, in disciplines ranging from business to healthcare and beyond. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, CNN, NPR, PBS, U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere. She has twice been invited to brief His Holiness the Dalai Lama on her research.”
– See more at: http://www.positivityresonance.com/author.html#sthash.ER6gs0w8.dpuf
Impressive work. Mainstream media loves her. Isn’t it great that all these people work “scientifically”?
Even Freud rejected the cathartic methodology. I’m amazed by this article.
Psychoanalysts have already other thinkers and they dialog with philosophers and other branches of human sciences.
“Depression is partly defined by, and largely maintained by, self-focus. Changing to an external focus will help. Helen Mayberg has achieved recognition for deep brain stimulation of Brodmanâs area 25 to relieve symptoms of depression. ”
Wow! Brain stimulation. Good!
Defining depression according to one of it’s symptoms is very strange.
Self-focus is depression? This is how those who have biology as paradigm claims. Timothy Smith, a psychiatrist, wrote a book about it.
In practice it is the old “Why don’t you take a walk to feel better?” when the depressed person simply cannot do it.
As a matter of fact the depressed person suffers of a huge amount of guilty because s/he would like to do everything people say but it is simply impossible.
OMG! The more psychiatry enters the mind kingdom the more harm is done.
This is not a way to deal with people who are in need of a kind of help that has nothing to do with these ridiculous therapies and this criminal approach psychiatry is doing by giving pills
that “do more harm than good” as Dr. David Healy has already proven.
Do you remember how vets were diagnosed? “War neurotics”, ergo, psychoanalysis, the real thing.
Psychoanalysts are those who are raising awareness about the harm of medicalization down here.
Bruce Levine is a great American psychologists whose work I truly admire.
This is what happens when neuroscience and biology is introduced in a realm that belongs to other fields.
Here in Brazil we still have real psychoanalysts and I did 20 years of psychoanalysis. It ended, or we put a stop mark in 2008.
All these examples Jill gives has nothing to do with real talking therapy.
It is also amazing that someone that is so connected to psychiatric and the biological paradigm is here at MIA.
“I attended the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). APS was founded twenty years ago by psychologists and neuroscientists who were dismayed by trends in the American Psychological Association (APA)”
psychological science + neuroscience= something other than talking therapy.
Neurosis! Does anybody remember this word? Psychiatry took it out of circulation because no pill can fix it.
Vets are now diagnosed as having PTSD and not war neurotic. PTSD is treated with antidepressants, mood stabilizers and benzo.
Neurosis requires psychoanalysis.
All these interventions done explained on the article has nothing to do with real talking therapy.
Catharsis? Give me a break. This is the Greek term used to a very specific processus that has nothing to do with therapy.
Real talking therapy is related to Human Sciences and never to the so called Exact ones.
Poor Americans that have lost all the real talking therapies techniques.
It’s great to have your permission to post this video I just don’t know the embed code.
Thank you for sharing your story. I’m sure you help many that has been torture for not being compliant with what people consider to be “normal”. That boring life of going to work they hate and going back home to watch TV and sleep.
Creating our own subjectivity is a crime.
I’ve seen you at Mindfreedom. đ
I would like to publish it at my blog.
How can I have permission?
This is a very important message.
What about the other side effects? Will they also have a test?
Funny because suicide is under âViolent behaviorâ that can turn against others or self.
Will they test for genetic testing for: drug-induced homicides; birth defects â the mom would test if the child has a genetic possibility of having any problems; addiction â the body cannot reuptake serotonin in the presynaptic gap without the antidepressant; sexual problems that can persist after quitting the drug â PSST;⊠you all know the list of side effects.
ANd what about the withdrawal? A test to check if the genes of the person will make it harder to withdraw?
It seems that most people cannot stop antidepressants SSRIs like they aspirin.
ANtidepressants SSRIs donât help even those who are clinically depressed.
Did we forgot that? That the chemical imbalance theory is not valid?
Usually those who are clinically depressed starts with one antidepressant that works for a while and stop helping. It is changed for another antidepressant, and another and another and⊠ad infinitum.
Some patients end up with . electrodes attached at their heads to the ECT.
What about 5, 6 7, 8 years of treatment and nothing helps?
The real issue is: for how long will antidepressants be at the market?
Antidepressants: âmore lives taken than savedâ claims Dr. David Healy
âIsoniazid, reserpine, imipramine, atropine, stimulants, benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, fluoxetine*, ketamine â all have antidepressant credentials. The word coined by Max Lurie has lost meaning; itâs a basket for acronyms. Psychiatry was the first branch of medicine to have specialist hospitals and journals, the first to adopt controlled trials, rating scales, and guidelines. The antidepressants beckoned us toward clinical neuroscience but have led to myth, hidden data, ghostwriting, more lives taken than saved, womb to tomb consumption, and an increased incidence of âdepressionâ from 1 per 1,000 to 1 in 5 of us.
Knowing when not to prescribe is the greatest art in medicine.â
Amitriptyline, one of the first antidepressants tricyclic, is prescribed for poor people.
They are lucky!
What happened to the question: “Have anyone in your family committed suicide?”
I like your arguments and it helps me not feeling a lunatic.
I have no reason to believe is anhy ot these especially when medicine is in a crossroad: adding genetic “treatments” to the existing. In the future they want everything to be treated with genetical approach.
They are already helping couples to choose what kind of children they want to have and it is not only the color of eyes and hair.
It seems to me that it is very difficult to some people to lose faith in doctors and their intentions.
So we are in a Stockholm syndrome situation because with all that has been published showing how… dear Lord, receiving money from the Pharma to prescribe?7
Having patients who kill themselves because of drugs they prescribed…
It’s me. I’m too pessimist.
I’m done with these subject.
I get too angry and sad. That is one of the reason it is so hard to raise awareness. Some people trust Big Pharma.
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME PEOPLE.
Thank you very much for your comment Morias Enkomion.
I totally agree.
What strikes me is that the lessons were not learned.
Many ethical physicians and researchers are fighting the âgenetic euphoriaâ some people are promoting.
According to the new genetic-panacea whores we are all saved not only because the numerous incredible treatments already available and about to appear but also because of the tests.
âDoctors and genetic counselors interviewed by CNN say that Myriad Genetics in Utah is doing something very similar with tests that determine if a woman has a potentially dangerous genetic abnormality linked to breast cancers.
Most breast cancers do not seem to be genetic. Instead, theyâre the result of cells gone wild for no apparent reason. However, some women get breast cancer because a bad gene runs in their families. When testing shows that a woman carries such a gene, she has a much higher chance of getting breast cancer. These women usually then get more frequent MRIs, ultrasounds and mammograms to detect a cancer, and sometimes even choose to remove their breasts to prevent a cancer from growing in the first place.
Myriad owns the patent on breast cancer genes and so is the only company that can test for them. It offers one test that catches most, but not all, abnormalities, and then charges nearly all patients $700 for a second test that catches the rest.
If a woman canât afford the $700 fee, she may miss an abnormality, which could mean the difference between life and death.
âWhat Myriadâs doing â charging extra for this test â is really sleazy,â Matloff says. âTheyâre collecting blood money off my patients.â
Myriad defends the $700 charge for its second test, called BART, even though many patients canât afford it and insurance wonât pay for it..â
The âA pill for every illâ is over,
They are not even searching for new drugs the way they did,
Cant you see that the genetics is the new industry?
I really do not understand how those who learned a lot from the evils these people can do for money DONâT SEE that those who are in charge of the genetic treatments, screening⊠all the panacea ARE THE SAME!
I left this comment at another blog where a long discussion about this test took place.
I’m appalled that some people can trust these people.
Please! They don’t care about health. They want MONEY.
The research I did about the the way medicine is being done. some aspects are at my first blog, justAna, was enough.
Fortunately I never received an e-mail from any of these bastards.
Isn’t it strange that they are asking for those who are raising awareness about the harms of SSRIs to say that these tests are state of the art science?
Science? No, there is no real science behind any of the available treatments or screening tests.
I would not be surprised if genetic tests become mandatory to a prescription. How much does the test cost?
Don’t we have to make numerous tests to some medical specialities?
Why not a test for psychiatry?
Wow! They will make a lot of money because it will be worldwide.
Eric Harris was not on Prozac. He was on Zoloft and told his parents he was feeling strange. The psychiatrist changed to Luvox.
I can assure that antidepressants SSRIs can induce violent behavior towards others or self.
I experienced it. The British Parliament at “The Influence of Pharmaceutical Industry”:
5. Problems with Seroxat and other SSRIs
Prozac and Seroxat are the best-known examples of SSRI and related antidepressants, but others are widely used. The introduction of SSRIs led to a threefold increase in antidepressant prescriptions between 1990 and 2000. Prescriptions for antidepressants now match those of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers at their peak, 25 years ago.
Almost from the outset, there was concern about two main problems with SSRIs. First, there was suspicion (initially centred on Prozac) that these drugs could induce suicidal and violent behaviour â infrequently, but independently of the suicidal thoughts that are linked to depression itself. There was also concern (centred on Seroxat) about a risk of dependence; some users. p.85
Seroxat is sold as Paxil in US and Aropax in Australia.
Seroxat/Paxil/Aropax= paroxetine
The influence of pharmaceutical industry
hahahaha Thank you! I thought I was not getting. lol
Yes. “Perhaps it signals a shift in the field of psychiatry if others follow Murrayâs lead”
It always amazes me that whenever one of these psychiatrists state any “wrongdoing” people believe that a change will come.
I remember that during DSM-5 discussions two of them Robert Spitzer and Allen Frances made numerous critics and proposed that DSM should end.
DSM-5 is alive and kicking.
We need a revolution in medicine as a whole and in psychiatry… start from scratch.
What about listening to patients?
That would be a great start. How can DSM be done – it is all about statistics, isn’t it – when the word of the patient is “anecdote evidence”?
This stats are made based on what?
On the clinical practice described by doctors? Oh, the word of the doctor is also anecdotal evidence… Hmm…
How can the fourth phase of clinical trials – surveillance after the drug is on the market – can be done without listening to patients?
lol
It would be funny if the consequences were not that tragic.
Great article!
When I was a teenager a person who had been in the battlefield was diagnosed “war neurotic” and everybody understood.
S/he needed therapy, psychoanalysis at that time.
They changed for PTSD. People get confused and what is the treatment? An antidepressant, a mood stabilizer and something else just in the beginning.
There has been a pill that “erases bad memories” advertised I don’t know what happened with this treatment.
The more they make diagnoses confused the better for them.
It is absurd that a psychiatrists change the diagnosis from time to time.
What a great science medicine is following!
A pill for every ill.
Could you explain more about your experience?
What kind of methodology this psychoanalyst used? Where did s/he received his license?
As I said real psychoanalysis is not available in the vast majority of countries.
I would like to have an idea about what is happening.
Do you know the work of Bruce Levine?
You did therapy with a psychiatrist?
What kind of therapy was that?
“Shifting the focus to positive events and positive goals lifts depression faster than trying to discover the original source of a person’s bad feeling….”
This is not what a good psychoanalysis is. There is not a an “original source”. This is bad therapy, quackery. Psychiatrists are not good therapists. I don’t even like this word”therapy” because there are so many methodologies under this label that made things very difficult.
This is intentional: back in the seventies and eighties people who had been on the battlefield were “war neurotics” now they suffer PTSD because this way pills are the solution.
“Constantly picking and probing for psychic scabs does nothing to cure a person and can make their symptoms far worse. ”
Psychoanalysis is not about “curing” anyone. Is easing the pain and making the person live better inspite of what happened to him/her.
The psychoanalyst is not the one who conduct: the patient work with the him/her.
Unfortunately real psychoanalysis is no longer being done in most countries for psychiatry took over.
I’m Brazilian and I’m glad we still have good psychoanalysts. In Argentine and France too.
But in America things are pretty strange. A pill for every ill.
It is the same here but we still have good, and also terrible professionals, psychoanalysts.
I did it and unfortunately my psychoanalyst passed away last May.
She was not only a very good professional but a great human being.
I fear what is going to happen in the next twenty years.
Maybe we’ll also lose these great professionals who dedicated their lives to help people – and don’t even mention that they care that much about money. Leave all the thousands of dollars and the cents to the psychiatrists.
I know people who had a very bad experience too. Most of them searched for psychologists of even these psychiatrists who become therapists.
We know pretty well that they are not good in listening to people during a meeting to prescribe.
Listening is a key word when we talk about psychoanalysis.
They have been working on a pill to erase memory:
http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(13)01589-4
It is extremely dangerous to make such an intervention. What if the symptoms of the trauma persist but the person doesn’t know where does it come from.
They keep blaming the brain and the brain only but they know too little of the brain’s complexity and it’s relation to the whole body.
What about those people who receive the heart of someone and all of a sudden start having feeling of the donor?
I would never do anything like this.
I’m glad that Robin did choose his destiny.
R.I.P. great actor, comedian and human being.
What kind of suicide do you want?
One choice you decide that you want to end your life and the other you take a drug that has as side effect violent behavior that can lead you to kill others or self.
I rather kill myself because it was my choice.
The number of soldiers that commit suicide increased because they are taking antidepressants SSRIs.
As these drugs makes people have no sex drive and erases sexual fantasies – a condition that is known as PSSD – they are “treating” sexual offenders with antidepressants SSRIs.
I consider prescription of SSRIs as crime against humanity.
Wow! You’re being too dramatic and harsh.
I did read a lot, seen a lot – people taking all the SSRIs available and going to have ECT – and experienced a lot.
When someone takes her/his life due to these drugs it is not a suicide: it is a murder.
Ted,
It is very important because drug-induce suicidal ideation is a very serious problem.
Only those who experience it can say how REAL suicidal ideation is completely different from drug-induce suicidal ideation.
In groups the work to prevent suicide the issue is never raised and when someone is feeling the “urge” to kill himself/herself even knowing that “it is withdrawal, it is withdrawal” something makes him or her keep going..
But Robin’s wife finally could speak:
Some people will be very sad that Robinâs wife gave this statement and no antidepressant is revealed:
âRobinâs sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinsonâs Disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly.â
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/14/robin-williams-parkinsons-disease
Iâm appalled that mental health advocates are so eager to put a celebrity in the Hall of Antidepressantâs death.
Quite unethical and⊠makes me sad and angry. Mainstream is making people behave like vultures.
Some people will be very sad that Robin’s wife gave this statement and no antidepressant is revealed:
“Robinâs sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinsonâs Disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly.”
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/14/robin-williams-parkinsons-disease
I’m appalled that mental health advocates are so eager to put a celebrity in the Hall of Antidepressant’s death.
Quite unethical and… makes me sad and angry. Mainstream is making people behave like vultures.
I didn’t find where it is said that Robin Williams was taking antidepressants.
I just did read he was fighting depression and also that in July he went to rehab. I know what drug-induced suicidal ideation is and I have been trying to raise awareness about it.
Suicide prevention never raised this issue.
But as far as Robin Williams is concerned all I know is that he committed suicide. I don’t know in what circumstances he did it.
Phrenology is back and neuroimaging is it’s new tool.
http://hellaheaven-ana.blogspot.com.br/2014/04/neuroscience-is-using-functional.html
I copied some links with literature about new phrenologists at the link above.
I just wanted to add that there is a group of psychoanalysts who are always questioning the methodology.
Joel Birman is one of them and he started asking that if a period like the one we’re living, Freud would go crazy, he said, the psychoanalyst mus remains silent most of the time.
There are numerous people in France, Argentina and Brazil questioning and rethinking.
I’m glad that in US it is being done too as this article shows.
These stories are told in Hysterical, oops, Historical Channel. I agree that bad therapy can harm but as I said before: therapy is done “WITH” the therapist. It is a process of the both.
I heard many people complaining about psychologists who wanted to tell her the they should act. This is not therapy.
Implanting memories can be done not only by therapists. It is outrageous that this charlatans keep with their licence.
I was lucky to have found the right person in the first attempt.
I tried two after her because she was of town for a while and it was a disaster.
One woman was extremely rude and the man I did manipulated him all the time.
I visited him for six months and heard all I wanted him to say.
I met one person who did therapy(?) with him for a period and he said that he slept during a session.
I have numerous stories of people who told me how they psychologists worked.
It is sad to have such people working in such an important field.
One has to be very careful and search for the right person.
I was going to raise this issue but you did it very properly.
I’m Brazilian an we still have psychoanalysis as in Argentina and France. There are great professionals and, of course, charlatans too.
But it is easy to have a reference for a good psychoanalyst. I did it for 20 years. No, I’m not more crazy than someone who did 3, 4 or 10 years. This was the amount of time my experience needed. Time is different for each person in what psychoanalysis is concerned.
We have psychologists and most people who try are let down and don’t want to search for another one which is very sad because sometimes the person found the wrong professional or a bad professional.
It makes me very sad seeing a methodology which is different for each “patient” and has a very broad kind of approaches being described in generalizations such as Oedipus complex and the money – in same cases it is even therapeutic that the person doesn’t pay – and all these clichĂȘs.
Psychoanalysis happens when the two are together and is done by the two. The psychoanalyst doesn’t “guide” like some people think.
I’m studying to be a psychoanalyst since I have acquired some knowledge without planning. If I’m thrilled following this path?
Nope, I’m scared, extremely scared. đ
I can’t picture someone in this situation: !Yippee Yippee! I’m going to be a psychoanalyst.”
I guess I have changed the subject.
I rather say that that person is a “war neurotic” than “is diagnosed PTSD”.
When I was a teenager we had a teacher that was a “war neurotic” and we all understoos what this man has been through.
“The teacher is diagnosed PTSD.” I don’t know how children see it.
All I know is that for ‘neurosis’ we went to the therapist. Neurosis disappeared.
Everybody is either bipolar or has PTSD.
A pill, or a cocktail of pills is the answer.
In US it seems that CBT is indicated for everything. This is no good.
In clinical trials placebo beats the drugs:
Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.
“Before I routinely prescribed antidepressants, I would do more psychotherapy for mildly depressed patients,” says the veteran of hundreds of drug trials. “Today we would say I was trying to engage components of the placebo responseâand those patients got better. To really do the best for your patients, you want the best placebo response plus the best drug response.”
“ronically, Big Pharma’s attempt to dominate the central nervous system has ended up revealing how powerful the brain really is. The placebo response doesn’t care if the catalyst for healing is a triumph of pharmacology, a compassionate therapist, or a syringe of salt water. All it requires is a reasonable expectation of getting better. That’s potent medicine.”
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all
Very good article”
“The ad hominem comment ânow youâll never search for any helpâŠthis is sadâ paints a rather piteous picture”
THis is my comment:
“This is very sad that you havenât found a good one.
Now youâll never search for any help.
Iâve seen it happening to some people.
This is sad.”
My error was infer that you would follow the steps of those who were assisted by bad pros.
I was not talking about you alone. There are numerous psychological methods and also in psychoanalysis a lot of approaches.
I’m sorry but I don’t know what kind of therapy you’re mentioning.
All you’re reporting is done by charlatans not by serious and ethical pros.
Therapy is not about one person -the therapist- telling the other – the client – this or that.
It is a work of two people together.
Once a therapist starts ruling you have better stop and search for a real good one.
I also had two experiences but I stopped because they were not good. Each for a reason.
This is very sad that you haven’t found a good one.
Now you’ll never search for any help.
I’ve seen it happening to some people.
This is sad.
Please, those who are in therapy or searching, trust your instincts when you feel you’re not in good hands.
I don’t know what kind of therapy you’re talking about.
There is not one “Therapy”
There is psychoanalysis, numerous psychological therapies and numerous bad therapies.
They do not put diplomas on the wall. There are no labels either.
Funny that American government is expert in creating tragic events in order to promote numerous cathartic events that generate fear and insecurity among Americans and the rest of the world to justify criminal actions in US and interventions in other countries: 9/11; Sandy Hook; Ghouta Attack…
Everyday in front of the TV people identify themselves with celebrities and watch violent scenes in the most extreme aristotelian cathartic way.
“The Bachelor”; The Kardashians…
What a sick society! Sick era.
Hi,
I’m very sad you had such a terrible experience with these therapists.
What kind of therapy did they do?
By “Life Expert” do you mean this group: http://www.lifexpert.com/techniques/ ?
OMG! If so it is clearly a quick-fix strategy that has nothing to do with real therapy.
There are numerous pros who can really harm people but this is not serious or ethical people.
They take advantage of those who are more vulnerable.
Catharsis was used by Breuer and Freud worked with him for a brief period of time.
But Freud stopped using this technique when he created the talk therapy that has nothing to do with catharsys.
If Freud had not abandoned the cathartic mambo-jambo there would be no talk therapy.
This is lesson 1 for those who are starting to study psychoanalysis or psychology.
When choosing a therapist one has to be careful.
Thank you for this input.
It is very strange that those who have light, mild and severe depression take the same drug.
We could infer that those who have major depression would lack more serotonin than those who are not.
Serotonin is responsible for numerous things like the sense of temperature and so on…
As I said at the other comment there are four neurotransmitters that are known among millions of others that are not known.
What SSRIs are doing, and there are numerous experts explaining in books, articles, blogs, site… is causing a lot of changes in the body and mind of people.
There is a group at Yahoo that are discussing PSSD. Those who have quitted a SSRI and could never regain their sexual lives.
One of the most appalling things I did read there is that they claim they have their sexial fantasies “erased”.
That is why SSRIs were considered to “treat” sexual offenders.
What about that?
I’m very sorry but with all the evidences believing in the “chemical imbalance” – what expression to name a theory – is out of the planet for me.
But this is me.
I respect those who believe it but I’m convinced after reading experts and the testimonies of patients that it should not even be an hypothesis. But it is a “theory”. Well, the scientific methodology is a joke.
Peer-reviewed… đ
This is what they wrote at the review.
“linked” meaning “caused”.
I didn’t understand what do you mean with genetics here.
I’m sorry.
If the theory it about the serotonin it means nothing for the “chemical imbalance” theory is not true.
Comparing anything to Prozac is good for nothing since Prozac, as all SSRIs antidepressants, reuptakes serotonin on the presynaptic gap and it makes a lot of harm. 5% of this serotonin remains in the brain while 95% travels around the body.
This is nonsense.
Can anybody give me the scientific evidence that depression is due to a “chemical imbalance”?
“Chemical imbalance” is a very vague expression but if it is real it is not understandable how a test to measure each patient is not available.
They blame serotonin but also prescribe drugs that deals with dopamine and the other two neurotransmitters they know.
There are millions of neurotransmitters that are not known. I believe in chemical imbalance: this is what happens to the brain after being exposed to medicines such as antidepressants SSRIs and other drugs. It creates a disaster in the the complex chemistry of the brain.
Too little is known about the brain and they behave as if they knew a lot. Oh please!
This article talks about the Hamilton scale but they don’t say anything about the curcumin.
What have they really found about curcumin?
That it is safe and efficacious as Prozac.
“This study provides first clinical evidence that curcumin may be used as an effective and safe modality for treatment in patients with MDD without concurrent suicidal ideation or other psychotic disorders.”
Without suicidal ideation? They are clearly saying here that it is NOT Prozac that causes the suicidal ideation. It is the disease.
Point to… Prozac.
Same old, same old.
English Parliament 2005:
5. Problems with Seroxat and other SSRIs
Prozac and Seroxat are the best-known examples of SSRI and related antidepressants, but others are widely used. The introduction of SSRIs led to a threefold increase in antidepressant prescriptions between 1990 and 2000. Prescriptions for antidepressants now match those of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers at their peak, 25 years ago.
Almost from the outset, there was concern about two main problems with SSRIs. First, there was suspicion (initially centred on Prozac) that these drugs could induce suicidal and violent behaviour â infrequently, but independently of the suicidal thoughts that are linked to depression itself. There was also concern (centred on Seroxat*) about a risk of dependence; some users. p.85
The influence of pharmaceutical industry
review done by the English Parliament
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
*Paxil in US and Aropax in Australia.
Hi Bruce,
Thank you for another great article.
I’ve been reading and now it is at the TV that:
“And the World Health Organization in 1999, ranked depression as the worldâs most devastating illness, projecting depression would climb to second place by 2020.”
I would like to know how this prediction is done and what are the factors that they take into consideration to achieve this number.
Do they count those who will be depressed because they were prescribed a drug which has as side effect depression?
Can we rely on WHO?
Thank you.
As always an inspiration. It is comforting watching people like Jim.
“The biggest obstacle in my mind is the lack of legal resources to challenge the status quo.”
You’re so right Jim!
We are dealing with crimes. We need lawyers that are aware of what is happening in the psychiatric kingdom and also in other branches of medicine.
I admire your work. My father is a prosecutor – retired – and I ran from laws. đ
Now I know what I could have done if I had followed his steps.
đ
Yes. Once in a mental institution one is no longer a human being.
“…the fact that there is no scientific evidence that âestablishes there is such a concept as âmental disorder,â especially itâs synonym, âmental âillness.ââ
Try to convince those who write the DSM and all the psychiatric kingdom that the concept of mental disorder has no scientific data.
We’ll all join you.
In reality there is not a double bind for those who are the rulers.
“Animal studies established that âthe cortical neurons or receptor sites affected by anti-psychotics actually grew more receptor âsites when administered anti-psychotics. Thus the argument that most of the behavior of âmany individuals prescribed anti-psychotics is, in fact, iatrogenic. In Faithâs case when she âwas given olonzapine and respiridone, her problems exacerbated another iatrogenic âcondition. The initial FDA trials leading to approval of respiridone was about 6-8 weeks.”
Funny that now you use FDA and the “scientific methodology” to defend your arguments.
It is very strange to me all these “long distance diagnosis”. Well, we see physicians “diagnosing” people like da Vinci, Michelangelo, CĂ©zanne, of course Van Gogh who must have already received all psychiatric labels and a little more.
“when Faith was obviously erroneously diagnosed and placed on paxil, it âappears clear that it was the research-demonstrated effects of paxil that exacerbated her âpsychotic symptoms, another iatrogenic cause of her difficulties. I would like to have seen âthat addressed by expert testimony on Faithâs behalf.”
This is the story of maybe 70% of all psychiatric patients. Do you really believe that a psychiatrist is going to say: “Yes, she was misdiagnosed and Paxil was the reason for X, y and z;
Another iatrogenic condition was caused by ……. that she took in…
Do you have an idea of how many drugs patients take? They keep switching the drugs and in the end of one years the patient experimented more than fifteen drugs.
In the end people don’t know anymore what is the disease, side effect or withdrawal symptoms and psychiatrists never help patients in identifying.
They don’t even ask when the patient took for the first time a drug to check if the anxiety the person is feeling is iatrogenic.
On the contrary. They usually say: “No. It is not side effect.” “It is all in your head.”
“The aspect of the âclinical gaze,â first referenced by Foucault, or what I âreferred to in my book as the delusion of psychiatry and psychology…”
Wow! Congratulations! You created a better expression. Foucault was never good with words. His writings are very poorly written and the concepts he created… Poor man!
Joanna,
” …feel them if attach themselves to my body or they attack me. Also internally where they can move under my skin or change the shape/size of body parts typically hands/face.”
Oh dear! It is not easy.
I have already heard about the colors – ” two colourâs which can take any form i.e. street/shop sign…” – but only reading description of “symptoms” so too little was explained.
Back in 1989 I took Halcion and I had some hallucinations as side effect.
I don’t remember clearly but I felt things in my body too. I remember once when I felt as if my body was turning inside out.
Very disturbing sensations and I got very scared. Psychiatrist said: “Will change the drug and it will go away.”
Oh really? Some of the sensations took a long time to stop but I don’t know if I was really feeling them or if it was due to the traumatic experience.
But now I don’t remember them. I believe I left them all at my psychoanalyst room. đ
That is very good that talking to friends to try to help you works sometimes.
How I wish that people was aware of what is going on in the mental health kingdom.
“I canât accept my voices are emanating from me, but I accept their existence.”
Sure!
Love,
Ana
In the article “Living Mindfully with Voices” Rufus May wrote what I think should be done:
Changing how as Communities We Relate to Voices
“At the moment as a society we do not accept voices. Instead we try to remove them from conscious awareness or control them through the use of sedating drugs and distraction strategies. A different approach is to support people who hear voices to become more present to their lives, if their voices are persistently seeking to be heard we need to find ways to listen to them from a place of grounded awareness. As friends and supporters of people who hear challenging voices we also need to learn to live mindfully with voices and listen to their deeper meanings. In this way of deep listening to peopleâs voices we are likely to learn truths about hidden parts of our communities and become wiser and more aware because of it. Therefore welcoming voices into our communities, whilst also setting boundaries with them is likely to lead to healthier ways to relate to ourselves and each other. One modern example of this welcoming approach is on the internet where some people who hear voices have given their voices Facebook and Twitter accounts and are interacting with people and other voices across the world (an example of this can be seen on the Intervoice Facebook group).”
http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/04/living-mindfully-with-voices/
Great article Rufus! Thank you for answering some of my doubts. đ
Yes! Acceptance is of great help for many emotional issues.
Joanna,
You say “my visual voices”.
I never had the guts to ask a person who hears voices about their experience because I don’t know how to do so.
I fear entering a part of their intimacy that they don’t wanna share or that they just want to talk about it to those who experience it.
One of the things I think strange about this avatar “therapy” is exactly putting an image to a experience that is, at least this is what I think, not related to anything visual.
I remember when I did read Merleau-Ponty explaining that a patient said that her bed has a powder.
They did put a powder on her bed and she said: “No! It is not the powder I see.”
Another patient saw the silhouette of a person in front of his window. They did put a real silhouette: Same response: “No! It is not him.”
At the explanation of the experiment:
“… study that created computer generated images -avatars â designed to look like each personâs voice. The therapist sat in another room and said aggressive things via the avatar and the person was encouraged to stand up to their voice and gradually the avatar voice became more friendly. ”
I still didn’t understand how it can help.
I ask myself if when someone is hearing voices it would of any help if s/he could tell to a friend “I’m hearing this and that.”
I don’t know but I would love to listen from those who hear voices what is the best way to help, how can others be part of their experience to make it more bearable.
I believe that if a good campaign “Yes, some people hear voices and this is not that crazy, it is not contagious, they are not going to take over the world, they do not hear voices 24/7 and are human beings just…”… Hmmm… wishful thinking.
“The well-known World Health Organization collaborative International Study of Schizophrenia found, for example, that persons in poor countries diagnosed with schizophrenia enjoyed significantly better outcomes in a broad variety of domains including symptoms, disability and social functioning.”
I believe that WHO forgot to make a research in Brazil or maybe the organization doesn’t include Brazil as a poor country.
The treatment that those with schizophrenia receive in Brazil is the same Americans do.
All the drugs sold in US are being used in Brazil.
Clinical trials are done in mental institutions but they “forget” to tell the patients that they are taking part on a clinical trial.
The regulation we have in Brazil is based on FDA with the exception of advertisements. We don’t have ads at the TV.
The corruption is the same.
I wonder why NAMI don’t invite psychiatrists such as Peter Breggin, David Healy, Bruce Levine and people like Jim Gottstein… all these great people who have been work hard to show what these drugs are really doing.
The number of people is huge but they are not invited.
Why NAMI? Why?
You are so right!
This is the experience of numerous people here in Brazil. Half the population of Rio de Janeiro are hooked to Klonopin the most difficult benzodiazepine to withdraw.
The withdrawal symptom is terrible and psychiatrists start giving other drugs such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers or antipsychotics.
People end up having numerous side effects that are “diagnosed” as mental illness.
This is happening since 1989 when they come up with the idea that diazepam is not “strong enough”.
One of the side effects of Klonopin, clonazepan, is panic attack.
Numerous people are having panic attacks due to clonazepam.
This is criminal and NAMI, FDA and all of those who are involved in this crimes are quiet aware that they are not drugging only a nation, America, they are drugging the world.
I met a Japanese dermatologist who claimed he was prescribing Paxil to heal acne because stress is not good for the skin.
I told him about the heinous side-effects and guess what he said?
“This drug is helping millions of people.”
This is the Big Pharma phrase to end any discussion.
What about the fourth phase of clinicals trials?
Surveillance after the drug is on the market.
They would have to listen to… the patients, don’t they?
This is not “scientific”. The word of the patient is… anecdotal evidence.
This is surreal! Unfortunately destroying people’s body, mind and soul.
I would be rich if I gained a buck every time I did read: “This drug destroyed my life.”
Always great comments. Love you Joanna.
” Itâs reported that that the reason 10 did not complete the course is because they were bullied by the voices into stopping.”
What? There were 26 and 10 have left the experiment because they were bullied by the voices?
I’m sorry but this is enough evidence for me to close the case and try another approach.
They will try it again with 142 participants using 1.3 million pounds.
I wonder how much will this therapy cost.
“Be nice to me, go away…” OK!
“Aggressive voices are often protecting terrifying memories the person has dissociated from. So when the person learns to confront the voices they then often need to confront difficult emotions and memories. We need to give people the opportunity to do this integrative work and very often it needs significant time and space. Itâs well worth doing because it can take people out of a dis-empowered and passive role in their lives. However; resources are needed that are not just âbrief therapy interventionsâ if we want to make the psychological benefits sustainable.”
Right Rufus, that’s the core of the problem.
I wonder if “silencing the voices” is the real goal. It is not.
What about visual hallucinations?
Why don’t they make a virtual image of them?
PLEASE: We need a “BACK TO TOP” button here in the end.
Great article!
Is it me or schizophrenia is a word that puts in the same basket different experiences?
Anyhow… hearing voices:
“In our culture there is a massive fear of hearing voices other people canât hear.”
Wow! People fear the voices the other people are listening. This is so strange!
Whenever I say I have friends that are schizophrenics… “OMG! They are dangerous.” LOL
I answer: “You know… go to a mental institution and speak to them. You’ll see that those who are left there without a single visit will be so happy to talk to you and receive a little attention. They need tenderness… that is all.”
“However many voices appear to be more complicated parts of consciousness, with their own personalities, and in my view we should not try to get rid of them. Rather we should seek to set boundaries with them (as the study does) but also, if they persist, it is often very helpful to dialogue with them.”
I also don’t think that the aim is to make them disappear. It is not like that.
What amazes me me about how they always approach clinical trials, new therapies and so on is the total lack of emphasis on those who are being treated.
They usually talk, and talk, and talk, and talk… and we keep confused because there is only one or two testimonies of participants.
So they used 26 voice hearer. Where are their testimonies?
Who are they?
Where is the detailed report of the whole clinical trial?
That’s why I’m always suspicious about what psychiatrists do: they speak too much about their work, their experiences, their thoughts, how wonderful their ideas are, how they want to help, how they, they, they… they… and they ad nauseam.
I would love to know more about the finger puppets experience.
Yes. It is not scientific appealing but I’m sure it is more interesting.
I’m glad you wrote it Steve.
I’m also concerned with Alex. I don’t see things this way maybe because I spent two years, 2008 and 2009, commenting on some sites and… OMG!
You have no idea how far some people go Alex.
The comments I did read here are those of people who are trying to dialogue.
I learned not to pay attention on those who are just wanting to leave a comment without any responsability.
If I did something that have you consider harmful I’m sorry.
This is a subject I would gladly forget… but I can’t .
It would be easier for me to let it be. I believe that most people who are here feel the same: “how I wish I know nothing about it!”
But we do. And we have a lot to share.
In your article “Psychiatry Is Not the Only Branch of Medicine to Lose Its Soul to Pharma”
“The end result is that even when physicians want to provide the best of care, they are limited by corruption of the sources from which they derive their information.”
Physicians have their clinical experience and one of the mysteries is why don’t they use it? Why do they keep denying side effects, withdrawal symptoms when patients talk to them?
“No, it is all in your head.” “My other patients didn’t have sexual dysfunction because of antidepressants.” “No. It is not withdrawal.”
You forgot to mention that Senator Charles Grassley was not only after FDA and all it’s tactics to help Big Pharma. Evergreenig one of them.
Chuck is known for going after Charles Nemeroff and Joe Biederman both Harvard physicians who made million receiving from labs being Biederman the creator of the “bipolar child” diagnose.
I noticed that your Master is on Biology (Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry and has been working on the “links between, disease, and immune system… as well as on the efficacy of antidepressants.
I did read your article “Commentary on the National Comorbidity Survey Replication”
“However, the FDA blackbox warning for suicidal ideation on antidepressants implies that pharmacological treatment may indeed be a causal factor in the elevated rates of suicidal behavior exhibited by adolescents in the U.S. With regard to another interesting finding from the study, Nock et al. also reported that adolescents whose parents had not gone to college were less likely to have contemplated suicide.”
I wonder why someone with your experience still have to use the “may”. he English parliament 2005 review “The Influence of Pharmaceutical Industry”, everybody knows it, is more elucidative claiming
5. Problems with Seroxat* and other SSRIs
Prozac and Seroxat are the best-known examples of SSRI and related antidepressants, but others are widely used. The introduction of SSRIs led to a threefold increase in antidepressant prescriptions between 1990 and 2000. Prescriptions for antidepressants now match those of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers at their peak, 25 years ago.
Almost from the outset, there was concern about two main problems with SSRIs. First, there was suspicion (initially centred on Prozac) that these drugs could induce suicidal and violent behaviour â infrequently, but independently of the suicidal thoughts that are linked to depression itself. There was also concern (centred on Seroxat) about a risk of dependence; some users. p.85
*Paxil in US
As far as clinical trials are concerned it is always good the remember that the Phase 4 is not being done since the word of patients are considered “anecdote evidence”.
With all the data written in books, written at sites, blogs and the clinical experience of physicians using a “may” when talking about drug=induced violent behavior is out of the planet for me. But this is me.
I’ll try to find something about your research related to medications and diagnoses.
At the moment I’m reading a lot about DSM-5 but I’ll search your articles when I finish it.
Best regards,
Ana
“I just wanted to bring everyoneâs attention to the newer consensus conclusions about the undesirable effects of catharsis.”
Consensus? Can you give us more explanation about this consensus? The research by APS?
Why did the title of is this article is “Talk Therapy Can Cause Harm, Too” and not “Catharsis can be harmful, too”?
Catharsis helps groups that were submitted to the same traumatic experiences. In the movies, drama it helps a lot.
In psychology, at least those theoreticians I did read and know, catharsis is not even a subject of discussion.
It is funny how APS, and why not, APA is so concerned with this subject when there are so many to discuss to help people.
Art critics, especially those who work with drama, have been studying it since the Greeks.
You didn’t answer all the others that made good comments because of few “Verbal abuse”? I didn’t read any of these comments
If a therapist plays the “poor-baby” with the client s/he is a charlatan.
I’m sorry Jill but you didn’t answer any of the bright comments many left here at this thread and even use the tangential exit.
“âstop feeling sorry for yourself,â” It is not the work of a therapist to say it. It is a phrase relatives and friends use but not, under any circumstance is the job of a therapist.
David,
Take a look at this article by Raymond Tallis:
http://hellaheaven-ana.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/what-neuroscience-cannot-tell-about.html
I don’t know why I think you’ll like it.
Does anybody have any news about Jill?
Just asking.
đ
For those who are lost: Jill is the author of the article that made us all connect to each other and make a virtual friendship.
Mission accomplish Jill!
Thank you.
No. You’re not alone. There are many like us.
đ
Thank you Joanna. I watched the video and I’m touched. I’ll publish it in my blog. What a great woman!
“each day I work I can look out into this courtyard and observe people that I met in Admissions who were vibrant and alive, who could walk and talk and who are passionate, even though they might see or hear things that I didnât. I have to watch them go downhill and deteriorate, to the point that all they can do in that courtyard is sit and stare and try to keep the saliva from running down the front of their shirts or blouses.”
Stephen
Can you see it psychiatrists? Do you have any idea that this is the result of your work?
(“Yes, I know I do that. But I go online and check my bank accounts, take a look at my stock and I forget all pf this.)
Joanna and Stephen,
You should start a blog and share your thoughts and what you have been witnessing.
This thread is full of people who are bright and learned what medicine did to their bodies, mind and soul searching by themselves.
This wisdom is so valuable!
Stephen, I live in front of two mental institutions and in one of them they do clinical trials without informing the patient; use electroshock in depressed people after giving them all antidepressants on the market; keep inmates without any activity and numerous atrocities.
I can imagine how you feel working in a place like this.
I started my blog in 2008 and now I only publish one post a month just to remind people that I’m still there.
I started a second blog because blogging about the harms of psychiatry made me angry and sad.
I don’t trust any physician. Recently I had a problem and I had to walk caring a cane and I felt dizzy, I felt as if there where a fire on my feet… it was hell.
I went to four doctors. Four different diagnoses…
to make a long story short: I gave up on searching for their help. I have a herniated disc on my back and I attributed these problems to it.
I started doing exercises, I walked when I could, used ice to relief the pain, took the only medicine that that doesn’t make a lot of harm due to side effects… blah blah blah… and I forgot I had a problem.
Everything went away. I can’t hardly believe I could not climb a stair and cried when watched someone walking or running because I thought I would never do it again.
My dog was diagnose cancer in 2008. Vets are at the same boat.
I only let them remove her mammals and in 2010 a tumor that was on her head.
She is great!. She is 15 years-old and people say she doesn’t look this age.
I believe that one way out would be creating groups of patients who have been through the same and exchanging knowledges.
I can’t trust people who prescribe pills they know that can be lethal, can make their patients kill others or him/herself to make money.
Of course that all psychiatrists have lost at least one patient for one of the drugs they prescribed.
They don’t care and they don’t eve think about it.
As I said I was lucky to find the first psychiatrist.
At that time in one session, he didn’t diagnosed me in fifteen minutes, I asked him about I don’t remember exactly what and he talked about Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth using his work for the Nazis and numerous philosophical issues.
In the end he said: “…but this is politics and I have to take care of my patients.”
He was an old man and died. He didn’t give me any diagnose and even said: “I don’t know if you are depressed.”
He said I needed therapy. This man had a psychiatric clinic.
I’m sure that the way I was feeling if he wanted to make money he could have me in that clinic and… OMG! I don’t know what could have happened to me.
Being three days without sleeping causes a lot of stress and make us vulnerable.
At this mental institution that is in front of my house one of the psychiatrists wanted me there… this is another story.
It makes me so angry that I rather stop for the moment.
Thank you all for all these great comments. We need to know we are not alone.
Joanna,
I took a glimpse at the site of The Tavistock but it was too quick. I have to read more. The site is The Tavistock and Portman and it is said the Tavistock deals with neurotics while Portman with psychosis.
Psychoanalysis was meant to treat neurotics but some thinkers like Deleuze and Guattari and even R.D. Laing, no, not the anti psychiatrist, please, the psychiatrist who worked hard to understand and get in touch with schizophrenics. He was one of a kind. He went so close!
One of his books “The Self and the Other” helped me a lot understanding the messages my mom used to send me. Laing uses Bateson’s double bind concept and it helped me see what she was doing.
But little by little. I started reading the book when I was nineteen and only in the middle of the therapy I could understand it.
This is one of the myths people have about therapy: the therapist will have a breakthrough and everything makes sense than you’re healed! lol
No, it is not like that. Psychotherapy is not about healing. As my therapist used to say: living in spite of, she used “malgrĂ©” because she lived in Paris and me too. I was lucky because I didn’t visit her in Paris because if I had it would not be possible to have her as therapist.
As I said I was lucky and found the right person for me at once. There are numerous bad psychoanalysts here too.
This flyers you mentioned is crippy! My ex-husband is bipolar… yes… it was sad watching him suffering depression for one years and devastating when he had to be hospitalized during his first maniac crisis.
He does therapy and I think it helps him. I don’t know how he’s doing now because one of the things that bipolarity brought was the end of our relationship.
Therapeutic communities? Wow! The way you described I would run away from this place.
Justify to the community? Compulsory group therapy?
No way!
The silence of the therapist… it never bothered me. Something very interesting happened to me. I was not very talkative. On the contrary. The three first sections of therapy I spoke, and I spoke, and I spoke.
Sometimes on my way to therapy I thought I had nothing to say but when I sat, I could never lay down, I started talking.
What is amazing is that all that was said during therapy acquired another sense. It is very hard to explain. I can tell the same story to a friend but when I did it at that place… seriously, I don’t know how to explain how things change.
This is my experience. Same here now: few people do psychoanalisys and I belive that it will also end in the next two decades.
This woman you describe is a great human being. These are the re helpers.
Psychiatrists don’t have the skill to work as therapists.
The vast majority I’ve encountered are incapable of empathy and they don’t listen to their patients.
The don’t listen. They diagnose and prescribe in fifteen minutes! When a patient says “I’m having as side effect…”: “No. It is not because of the medicine.” “My other patients are not having this kind of side effect.” “It is psychological.” “It is all in your head!”…
We all know how they behave. They are culturally illiterate and to be a good psychologist, psychoanalyst, therapist or whatever one has to learn many aspects of human condition and only human sciences can help. Philosophy, literature, social sciences and even art has more to do with human condition than the DSM-5 or those labs propaganda flyers they receive and read with attention.
Read Dostoevsky.
Psychiatrists of the world: Cura te ipsum: Heal thyself; a Latin injunction, urging physicians to care for and heal themselves first, before dealing with patients.
Yes, they don’t express emotions. They look at us as if they have their mind blank. How cold they all look. I met many and they are all like this.
The only one that shows emotion quitted and is doing something else.
I hope I didn’t digress too much and answered you.
Sorry for writing too much but this is a highly important subject.
I don’t have any problem with the expression “mental masturbation”. I don’t see it as derogatory but we use this expression colloquially in Portuguese.
Richard is asking for Jill to take seriously what people wrote here.
And she should because her attack to talking therapy was done without any valid argument. The therapies explained at this article are not talking therapies.
To be a good psychoanalyst requires a lot of work and one cannot open an office after four or five years in college.
One of the requisites is having done the psychoanalytic process.
The only reason why this article received so many comments is because there is a duality that, at least to my knowledge, doesn’t happen in talking therapy:
exposing the patient to trauma x emphasizing the positive aspects of daily life.
This is a reductionism and it has nothing to do with talking therapy. It has to do with techniques like CBT and those numerous others that are being creating.
There is not only one kind of talking therapy and unfortunately many people are taking advantage on the fact that “therapy” became a kind of practice that any person can create a method: EMDR was created in 1987.
All of these focus on some symptoms of diseases. There is no quick fix for emotional or mental distress and an ethical therapist has to study a lot and learn a lot from their practices.
Articles like this do more harm than good because it helps creating more and more misunderstanding and those who are in search for therapy are finding it harder and harder to find help with therapists.
Maybe a pill will do the job this person might think.
It took me twenty years to find my way out of a disturbing childhood and a family that is quite complicated. Could I do it in a little space of time?
No. I see women that are married and have children still coping with the trauma of having been sexually abused when they were a child.
There are lots of blogs where they share their experiences with therapists.
What about those who are borderliners?
A quick fix? Showing the bright side of the world or putting them to traumatic events?
This is not what Freud had in mind.
I don’t even understand why Freud is quoted in this article.
Talking therapy is something you do with your psychoanalyst.
You are the person who knows the time you can handle some facts and events that are hard to face.
There are numerous myths that hollywood helped creating about talking therapy. That is sad.
This last paragraph:
“A final note on this issue. Since catharsis frequently prolongs emotional upset, and is frequently utilized, harm is being done. Yet we all believe in the first principle of doing no harm. Hopefully, disabusing the mental health community of the idea that catharsis is generally a good thing, may help us to follow the widely approved maxim: do no harm. Confusion on this topic should no longer be tolerated.”
Oh! What is happening to talking therapy in America? Therapists are putting patients in emotional distress? Freudian connection with the therapist is based on love.
Lacan was the one who used hate.
And this last paragraph:
“Confusion on this topic should no longer be tolerate.” I didn’t understand which confusion is Jill stressing.
I totally agree with Richard and Joanna.
The title of the article is already strange with the “Too” after commas.
How can it be that talking therapy – I rather use “psychoanalysis” because we still have it here in Brazil with good and bad professionals – that has been helping many people be attacked with an article like this one?
Psychiatry put an end in psychoanalysis. Back in the seventies and beginning of the eighties people with emotional or mental distress went straight to a therapist and it was the therapist who decided if it was a problem that needed a psychiatric intervention.
Of course not in the case of a person who was in a maniac state.
Psychologists are putting a lot of effort in fighting for the right to prescribe.
Why? Is it because they want the best for their patients? I want to believe that this is the reason but I think it is a wishful thinking.
One of the first things my psychoanalyst said was “I don’t work with drugs.”
I was fortunate because I was first attended by a psychiatrist and he was bright enough to tell me that I needed therapy. His only mistake was the prescription of clonazepam because all the other benzos made me more anxious. I needed diazepam. They claim that diazepam is too light but this is the drug that some ERs use to calm down a person who is a maniac crisis when Haldol is not available.
Another great thing was finding the right therapist at once.
I understand when people have bad experiences with therapists and give up because I went to two when mine was having problems and it was a disaster.
One of them was easily manipulated and I made him say to me whatever I wanted. The other was a woman who all of a sudden looked at me and in a very strange tone gave me “pearls from my inconscient”… lol or used a phrase that she taught was the expression of the truth and would solve all my problems.
As I said I ended psychoanalysis in 2008. Sometimes I “visit” her.
I’m sure that for some patients she is not the right person and might have even made some people give up.
Therapy is not an exact science and as far as science is concerned it is becoming more and more difficult to trust it since scientists receive money from… you all know about it.
Ant the scientific methodology? Peer-review?
“Positive affect is just as important for well-being as an absence of negative emotion.”
Can anyone live without negative emotion? Absence of negative emotion. I can’t believe it. The more I read the more I feel that some of these people far from connecting with human condition. Just like psychiatrists.
Barbara Fredrickson:
“Barbâs scientific contributions have influenced scholars and practitioners worldwide, in disciplines ranging from business to healthcare and beyond. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, CNN, NPR, PBS, U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere. She has twice been invited to brief His Holiness the Dalai Lama on her research.”
– See more at: http://www.positivityresonance.com/author.html#sthash.ER6gs0w8.dpuf
Impressive work. Mainstream media loves her. Isn’t it great that all these people work “scientifically”?
Even Freud rejected the cathartic methodology. I’m amazed by this article.
Psychoanalysts have already other thinkers and they dialog with philosophers and other branches of human sciences.
“Depression is partly defined by, and largely maintained by, self-focus. Changing to an external focus will help. Helen Mayberg has achieved recognition for deep brain stimulation of Brodmanâs area 25 to relieve symptoms of depression. ”
Wow! Brain stimulation. Good!
Defining depression according to one of it’s symptoms is very strange.
Self-focus is depression? This is how those who have biology as paradigm claims. Timothy Smith, a psychiatrist, wrote a book about it.
In practice it is the old “Why don’t you take a walk to feel better?” when the depressed person simply cannot do it.
As a matter of fact the depressed person suffers of a huge amount of guilty because s/he would like to do everything people say but it is simply impossible.
OMG! The more psychiatry enters the mind kingdom the more harm is done.
This is not a way to deal with people who are in need of a kind of help that has nothing to do with these ridiculous therapies and this criminal approach psychiatry is doing by giving pills
that “do more harm than good” as Dr. David Healy has already proven.
Do you remember how vets were diagnosed? “War neurotics”, ergo, psychoanalysis, the real thing.
Psychoanalysts are those who are raising awareness about the harm of medicalization down here.
Bruce Levine is a great American psychologists whose work I truly admire.
This is what happens when neuroscience and biology is introduced in a realm that belongs to other fields.
Here in Brazil we still have real psychoanalysts and I did 20 years of psychoanalysis. It ended, or we put a stop mark in 2008.
All these examples Jill gives has nothing to do with real talking therapy.
It is also amazing that someone that is so connected to psychiatric and the biological paradigm is here at MIA.
“I attended the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). APS was founded twenty years ago by psychologists and neuroscientists who were dismayed by trends in the American Psychological Association (APA)”
psychological science + neuroscience= something other than talking therapy.
Neurosis! Does anybody remember this word? Psychiatry took it out of circulation because no pill can fix it.
Vets are now diagnosed as having PTSD and not war neurotic. PTSD is treated with antidepressants, mood stabilizers and benzo.
Neurosis requires psychoanalysis.
All these interventions done explained on the article has nothing to do with real talking therapy.
Catharsis? Give me a break. This is the Greek term used to a very specific processus that has nothing to do with therapy.
Real talking therapy is related to Human Sciences and never to the so called Exact ones.
Poor Americans that have lost all the real talking therapies techniques.
Hi Leonard,
Thank you for answering.
I did a post about you with and copied that text you describe what you’ve been through.
http://hellaheaven-ana.blogspot.com.br/2013/05/leonard-roy-frank-vegan-avid-reader.html
It’s great to have your permission to post this video I just don’t know the embed code.
Thank you for sharing your story. I’m sure you help many that has been torture for not being compliant with what people consider to be “normal”. That boring life of going to work they hate and going back home to watch TV and sleep.
Creating our own subjectivity is a crime.
I’ve seen you at Mindfreedom. đ
I would like to publish it at my blog.
How can I have permission?
This is a very important message.
What about the other side effects? Will they also have a test?
Funny because suicide is under âViolent behaviorâ that can turn against others or self.
Will they test for genetic testing for: drug-induced homicides; birth defects â the mom would test if the child has a genetic possibility of having any problems; addiction â the body cannot reuptake serotonin in the presynaptic gap without the antidepressant; sexual problems that can persist after quitting the drug â PSST;⊠you all know the list of side effects.
ANd what about the withdrawal? A test to check if the genes of the person will make it harder to withdraw?
It seems that most people cannot stop antidepressants SSRIs like they aspirin.
ANtidepressants SSRIs donât help even those who are clinically depressed.
Did we forgot that? That the chemical imbalance theory is not valid?
Usually those who are clinically depressed starts with one antidepressant that works for a while and stop helping. It is changed for another antidepressant, and another and another and⊠ad infinitum.
Some patients end up with . electrodes attached at their heads to the ECT.
What about 5, 6 7, 8 years of treatment and nothing helps?
The real issue is: for how long will antidepressants be at the market?
Antidepressants: âmore lives taken than savedâ claims Dr. David Healy
âIsoniazid, reserpine, imipramine, atropine, stimulants, benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, fluoxetine*, ketamine â all have antidepressant credentials. The word coined by Max Lurie has lost meaning; itâs a basket for acronyms. Psychiatry was the first branch of medicine to have specialist hospitals and journals, the first to adopt controlled trials, rating scales, and guidelines. The antidepressants beckoned us toward clinical neuroscience but have led to myth, hidden data, ghostwriting, more lives taken than saved, womb to tomb consumption, and an increased incidence of âdepressionâ from 1 per 1,000 to 1 in 5 of us.
Knowing when not to prescribe is the greatest art in medicine.â
âwomb to tomb consumptionâ
http://hellaheaven-ana.blogspot.com/2012/12/antidepressants-more-lives-taken-than.html
Amitriptyline, one of the first antidepressants tricyclic, is prescribed for poor people.
They are lucky!
What happened to the question: “Have anyone in your family committed suicide?”
I like your arguments and it helps me not feeling a lunatic.
I have no reason to believe is anhy ot these especially when medicine is in a crossroad: adding genetic “treatments” to the existing. In the future they want everything to be treated with genetical approach.
They are already helping couples to choose what kind of children they want to have and it is not only the color of eyes and hair.
It seems to me that it is very difficult to some people to lose faith in doctors and their intentions.
So we are in a Stockholm syndrome situation because with all that has been published showing how… dear Lord, receiving money from the Pharma to prescribe?7
Having patients who kill themselves because of drugs they prescribed…
It’s me. I’m too pessimist.
I’m done with these subject.
I get too angry and sad. That is one of the reason it is so hard to raise awareness. Some people trust Big Pharma.
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME PEOPLE.
Thank you very much for your comment Morias Enkomion.
I totally agree.
What strikes me is that the lessons were not learned.
Many ethical physicians and researchers are fighting the âgenetic euphoriaâ some people are promoting.
According to the new genetic-panacea whores we are all saved not only because the numerous incredible treatments already available and about to appear but also because of the tests.
I found this article at⊠OMY! CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/27/health/brca-genetic-testing-ep
Excerpt:
âDoctors and genetic counselors interviewed by CNN say that Myriad Genetics in Utah is doing something very similar with tests that determine if a woman has a potentially dangerous genetic abnormality linked to breast cancers.
Most breast cancers do not seem to be genetic. Instead, theyâre the result of cells gone wild for no apparent reason. However, some women get breast cancer because a bad gene runs in their families. When testing shows that a woman carries such a gene, she has a much higher chance of getting breast cancer. These women usually then get more frequent MRIs, ultrasounds and mammograms to detect a cancer, and sometimes even choose to remove their breasts to prevent a cancer from growing in the first place.
Myriad owns the patent on breast cancer genes and so is the only company that can test for them. It offers one test that catches most, but not all, abnormalities, and then charges nearly all patients $700 for a second test that catches the rest.
If a woman canât afford the $700 fee, she may miss an abnormality, which could mean the difference between life and death.
âWhat Myriadâs doing â charging extra for this test â is really sleazy,â Matloff says. âTheyâre collecting blood money off my patients.â
Myriad defends the $700 charge for its second test, called BART, even though many patients canât afford it and insurance wonât pay for it..â
The âA pill for every illâ is over,
They are not even searching for new drugs the way they did,
Cant you see that the genetics is the new industry?
I really do not understand how those who learned a lot from the evils these people can do for money DONâT SEE that those who are in charge of the genetic treatments, screening⊠all the panacea ARE THE SAME!
I left this comment at another blog where a long discussion about this test took place.
I’m appalled that some people can trust these people.
Please! They don’t care about health. They want MONEY.
The research I did about the the way medicine is being done. some aspects are at my first blog, justAna, was enough.
Fortunately I never received an e-mail from any of these bastards.
Isn’t it strange that they are asking for those who are raising awareness about the harms of SSRIs to say that these tests are state of the art science?
Science? No, there is no real science behind any of the available treatments or screening tests.
I would not be surprised if genetic tests become mandatory to a prescription. How much does the test cost?
Don’t we have to make numerous tests to some medical specialities?
Why not a test for psychiatry?
Wow! They will make a lot of money because it will be worldwide.
Eric Harris was not on Prozac. He was on Zoloft and told his parents he was feeling strange. The psychiatrist changed to Luvox.
I can assure that antidepressants SSRIs can induce violent behavior towards others or self.
I experienced it. The British Parliament at “The Influence of Pharmaceutical Industry”:
5. Problems with Seroxat and other SSRIs
Prozac and Seroxat are the best-known examples of SSRI and related antidepressants, but others are widely used. The introduction of SSRIs led to a threefold increase in antidepressant prescriptions between 1990 and 2000. Prescriptions for antidepressants now match those of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers at their peak, 25 years ago.
Almost from the outset, there was concern about two main problems with SSRIs. First, there was suspicion (initially centred on Prozac) that these drugs could induce suicidal and violent behaviour â infrequently, but independently of the suicidal thoughts that are linked to depression itself. There was also concern (centred on Seroxat) about a risk of dependence; some users. p.85
Seroxat is sold as Paxil in US and Aropax in Australia.
Seroxat/Paxil/Aropax= paroxetine
The influence of pharmaceutical industry
review done by the English Parliament
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf