Posted on 11/21/2005 3:07:46 PM PST by Jenny Hatch
Ever since his coruscating book Mad in America was published in 2002, American Robert Whitaker has been a poster boy for the anti-psychiatry movement. In Mad in America (Perseus Books), he argued that the assumption of a physical cause for schizophrenia had given rise to many wrongheaded treatments, from ice-water immersion to today's antipsychotic drugs. These days, the Pulitzer Prize finalist makes a similar case against psychiatry over its approach to the treatment of depression.
No one knows for sure whether serotonin has a role in depression, let alone exactly what that role might be. But many doctors pretend they're sure, Whitaker says, because "psychiatry for a long time had a bit of an inferiority complex. It wanted magic bullets like everybody else." Trouble is, the magic bullets, including the SSRIs, don't work very well. By perturbing neurotransmitter activity they can make patients chronically ill, says the Boston-based author.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
The SSRIs, in his view, are a story of a "massively successful capitalistic enterprise" - and the idea that in countries like Australia there's still a multitude of people with undiagnosed depression should be considered in that context. These people are "not clinically depressed, anyway," he says. "The drug companies are setting forth an unrealistic vision of what it is to be human. They're defining normal stresses and worries as pathological, and the only reason they're doing it is that it leads to more business."
cha ching cha ching...
Jenny Hatch
Thomas Szasz is a well-known psychiatrist who has questioned many of the assumptions behind pshychiatry, saying that the phrase "mental illness" is basically a metaphor. People should look his stuff up.
Psychiatry apparently has many unfounded assumptions. I understand there is no scientific evidence that mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalance and that psychiatric drugs do not correct chemical imbalances. Psychiatry may be about as scientifically founded as sorcery.
Presumably this guy believes in some kind of talk therapy rather than medication.
The problem is that these treatments also "don't have the science behind it and they don't have the outcomes, either."
Actually psychiatrists are losing huge amounts of money with the move away from years of weekly $300 sessions discussing dream analysis, mother issues and penis envy (ala Freud). Now, many people feel better after simply getting a prescription from their primary care doc. It's unsurprising that some psychiatrists might not like this $$$ pool drying up.
Certainly, many medications are prescribed based on clinical findings, even before the science is fully understood -- this isn't at all uncommon. And with any medication there will be people for whom it doesn't work, or has ill effects. But there are a lot more people out there who find great success with these medicines -- only because they're the norm, they don't make the news.
"cha ching cha ching..."
You're going to upset the witchdoctors on FR.
"You're going to upset the witchdoctors on FR"
Been there, done that....
I'm just so excited this debate is finally in full swing. It is about 17 years overdue, and a couple million patients late....but hey, better late than never...
Jenny
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