Thank you. I am a little surprised to see at FR so much bashing of doctors and the pharmaceutical companies. In spite of the difficulty with my sister’s condition, I thank God every day for good doctors and modern day pharmaceuticals.
I choose not to "bash" pharmaceutical companies - they provide a great service and they are favorite whipping boy of the Left.
The Liberals contend they are 'evil' because they stand to make a profit. Big deal - I would say "welcome to Capitalism."
The article has this to say about drug treatment for the mentally ill:
We are talking about human beings who have somehow developed a secret inner life dominated by exceedingly dark thoughts and compulsions. Wild mood swings. Horrible, consuming resentment teetering on the edge of violent frenzy. Paranoid delusions fueled by intense emotion. Satanic visitations and inner voices that torment people mercilessly, sometimes for years, commanding them to commit murder or suicide – or both. Does this really sound to you like a physiological problem in need of drugs? Sound like a disease? A biochemical imbalance in the brain? Neurotransmitter activity that's too sluggish? Or does it possibly sound like something much more mental-emotional, even spiritual, in origin? The truth is, if we think we can solve problems like these with pills, we might be just as delusional as the people we're trying to help. Before we go on, let's state the obvious: There are genuine, organic brain diseases that may benefit from drug therapy – but these are relatively rare. And there are also instances where an individual is so psychotic as to pose a direct danger to him/herself and others, where sedation might be appropriate. But what I'm writing about here is the overwhelming majority of cases where psychiatric drugs are unwisely relied on to fix Americans' mental-emotional-spiritual problems.
My complaint is against the many Psychiatrists who really don't know what they are doing.
In the article he also says this:
The truth is, most mental-health pill-dispensing practitioners don't really understand why people become "clinically depressed" or why some women experience "postpartum depression" and the like. Go search WebMD and five or 10 other websites on postpartum depression (or most any other psychiatric condition for that matter). You'll be stunned at the lack of real substance and insight with regard to what causes it. Instead, you'll read something like, "The causes haven't been pinpointed yet," along with reams of authoritative-sounding data on symptoms and predisposing factors and what drugs to take and how valuable it is to have a support group and what vitamins help in recovery and so on. But no one will tell you what on earth would make a woman want to kill herself after she gives birth to her child. They don't know.