Tag: serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
Giovanni Fava – A Different Psychiatry is Possible
In this podcast, we hear from the renowned clinician and researcher Dr. Giovanni Fava about his latest book entitled āDiscontinuing Antidepressant Medicationsā.
Study Finds SSRIs Associated with Increased Risk for Violent Crime
Study finds an apparent connection between SSRIs, the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressant, and increased risk of violent crime.
Is Society or Psychiatry to Blame for the āSeriously Mentally Illā...
Adults in the U.S. diagnosed with āserious mental illnessā die on average 25 years earlier than others. This is not controversial, as establishment psychiatry and its critics agree. What is controversial is who is to blame?
Rising Rates of Suicide: Are Pills the Problem?
If youāve read recent reports that state āUS suicide rates surge to a 30 year high,ā you might first justify the reality with the fact that things feel very wrong in our world today. On a personal, national, and planetary level, people are suffering to survive and the distress is coming from all sides ā medical to economic to existential. But you probably also wonder why more people are choosing this permanent and self-destructive path, and feel compelled to submit to seemingly logical appeals to provide these individuals more help and greater access to treatment. Surprise: that may be the last thing our population of hopeless and helpless needs. Lifeās inevitable challenges are not the problem. Itās the drugs we use that are fueling suicide.
Who Will Guard the Guardians of Psychiatry?
The assertion that the so-called antidepressants are being over-prescribed implies that there is a correct and appropriate level of prescribing and that depression is a chronic illness (just like diabetes). It has been an integral part of psychiatry's message that although depression might have been triggered by an external event, it is essentially an illness residing within the person's neurochemistry. The issue is not whether people should or shouldn't take pills. The issue is psychiatry pushing these dangerous serotonin-disruptive chemicals on people, under the pretense that they have an illness.
Depressed, Anxious, or Substance-Abusing? But Donāt Buy You Are āDefectiveā?
Depressed, anxious, and substance-abusing people can beat themselves up for being defective. And psychiatrists and psychologists routinely validate and intensify their sense of defectiveness by telling them that they have, for example, a chemical-imbalance defect, a genetic defect, or a cognitive-behavioral defect. For some of these people, it feels better to believe that they are essentially defective. But the ādefect/medical model of mental illnessā is counterproductive for many other peopleāespecially those āuntalentedā in denial and self-deceptionāfor whom there is another model and path that works much better.
Exploiting The Placebo Effect:Ā Deceiving People For Their Own Good?
There is an enormous irony in a psychiatrist using the epithet "thought police" to express censure, when it is psychiatry itself that routinely incarcerates and forcibly drugs and shocks people on the grounds that their thoughts and speech don't conform to psychiatry's standards of normality.
āIs It Her Hormones?ā A Case of Psychiatry Missing the Mark
The case of āBethā depicts, almost innocently, the trials and tribulations of a well-adjusted, talented 15-year-old who developed depression, paranoia, panic attacks, and self-injurious and homicidal behavior, and ābipolar disorderā after being prescribed antidepressants, and then antipsychotics. After Beth decided - on her own - to discontinue psychotropic medications in favor of hormone therapy, she remained free of psychiatric symptoms.
Further Evidence of the Adverse Effects of Antidepressants, and Why These...
When the idea that selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) might make people feel suicidal first started to be discussed, I admit I was sceptical. It didnāt seem to me the drugs had much effect at all, and I couldnāt understand how a chemical substance could produce a specific thought. Because these effects did not show up in randomised controlled trials, they were dismissed and few efforts were made to study them properly. Then some large meta-analyses started to find an association between the use of modern antidepressants and suicidal thoughts and actions, especially in children.
Why Screening Everyone for Depression is a Terrible Idea
Too many people have come to view themselves as defective and powerless to change their life situations, when this may not be the case. Conversely, individual treatment with drugs or psychotherapy may cause individuals to reframe their problems in terms of neurochemistry or thinking styles ā internalizing a belief that they are the problem, when their problems exist in a wider sociopolitical milieu.
Largest Meta-Analysis of Antidepressants Finds Doubled Risk of Suicide in Youth
The largest-ever meta-analysis of antidepressant trials appeared yesterday in the British Medical Journal. Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 70 trials (involving 18,526 subjects), to find that - counter to the initially-reported findings - antidepressants doubled the risk of suicide and aggression in subjects under 18. This risk had been misrepresented in the original study reports, the authors say, and suggest that the risks to adults may be similarly under-reported.
What Disability Benefit Trends Tell Us About Psychiatric Treatments and the...
If antidepressants are effective, and people with depression are more likely to be prescribed them, then you would expect the consequences of depression to start to lessen. One of those consequences, according to government statistics, is being out of work. But what we see is quite the opposite: Increasing use of antidepressants correlates with increased numbers of people with depression who are out of work and claiming benefits, and increasingly on a long-term basis. And this is at a time when disability due to other medical conditions has fallen.
Antidepressants Associated with Increased Risk for Manic Symptoms
An analysis of medical records in the UK reveals that the use of certain antidepressants for depression is linked to a heightened risk for mania and bipolar disorder. The research, published this week in BMJ Open, found the strongest effect for serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and the antidepressant venlafaxine.