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multiplicity_archives2006-04-08 04:01 am
elenbarathi.livejournal.com) wrote in multiplicity_archives2006-04-08 04:01 am
Entry tags:
Psychiatric drugs
"From 1987 until the present, we saw an increase in the number of mentally disabled people from 3.3 million people to 5.7 million people in the United States. In that time, our spending on psychiatric drugs increased to an amazing degree. Combined spending on antipsychotic drugs and antidepressants jumped from around $500 million in 1986 to nearly $20 billion in 2004. So we raise the question: Is the use of these drugs somehow actually fueling this increase in the number of the disabled mentally ill?
When you look at the research literature, you find a clear pattern of outcomes with all these drugs -- you see it with the antipsychotics, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety drugs and the stimulants like Ritalin used to treat ADHD. All these drugs may curb a target symptom slightly more effectively than a placebo does for a short period of time, say six weeks. An antidepressant may ameliorate the symptoms of depression better than a placebo over the short term.
What you find with every class of these psychiatric drugs is a worsening of the target symptom of depression or psychosis or anxiety over the long term, compared to placebo-treated patients. So even on the target symptoms, there's greater chronicity and greater severity of symptoms. And you see a fairly significant percentage of patients where new and more severe psychiatric symptoms are triggered by the drug itself."
Read the entire interview
(Ganked with thanks from this post on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alobar's Lj.)
When you look at the research literature, you find a clear pattern of outcomes with all these drugs -- you see it with the antipsychotics, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety drugs and the stimulants like Ritalin used to treat ADHD. All these drugs may curb a target symptom slightly more effectively than a placebo does for a short period of time, say six weeks. An antidepressant may ameliorate the symptoms of depression better than a placebo over the short term.
What you find with every class of these psychiatric drugs is a worsening of the target symptom of depression or psychosis or anxiety over the long term, compared to placebo-treated patients. So even on the target symptoms, there's greater chronicity and greater severity of symptoms. And you see a fairly significant percentage of patients where new and more severe psychiatric symptoms are triggered by the drug itself."
Read the entire interview
(Ganked with thanks from this post on
alobar's Lj.)
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-Morgan
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-Morgan
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a major endocrine problem and autism fought for several years to get disability without
a mental diagnosis. In his case this may have saved his life because he is a major thorn
in the side of many authorities. If he had taken disability for skitzophrenia which i believe
he had been institutionalized for once these officials would have had an easy way to rid
them of a troublesome case. I've helped 3 people with disability cases.
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Presuming, of course, that it is disordered multiplicity which help is being sought for. Most ordered multiples I'm aware of wouldn't even consider their multiplicity to be an issue worth treating.
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issues of initiation, mourning and lifechanges. Some of the less industrialized societies
have ways of dealing with these issues. For example 'Borderline Personality' is far less
common in societies that have adult initiations. In our society one slides from being a
child to being an adult without anything truly marking them as a result they often feel
that they lack and identity. People like this, if they run into difficulties are often
labled 'Borderline'. Depression - especially in this Horrible example is the result of
a society that does not allow proper time for grieving. If one does not grieve properly
it comes back to haunt you years later. I posit that most less industrialized societies
understand this.
I would say that this society has sacrificed much of the neccesary heart-full rituals
to the expediant of the machine. Unlike many i do not find the use of most psychotropics
to be malicious, it is just the best that this society can offer. It is sad. Very sad
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For my friend, unfortunately when the chips were down, she reverted back to the sick standards of society that she'd been raised with, that said she was Bad and Weak for needing so much support while she grieved. Her own mother was pressuring her to take drugs because she wasn't 'over it' after only a month - one month, to be over the death of one's child! - and she bought into the whole "better to feel nothing" idea. It didn't help, though. She very effectively drugged herself into apathetic zombie-hood, couldn't work, finally had to sell her beautiful house and go live with relatives, and lost touch with all her friends, probably out of shame.
I do blame the doctors for that - they had no reason to think her depression was caused by hypothetical "chemical imbalances"; they knew perfectly well what was causing it, and yet they still pushed her into drug use. Maybe it wasn't malicious; maybe it was just negligent, but it was still wrong. And they do know better - hell, there's 20 years' worth of research, if they'd bother to look at it instead of just swallowing everything the drug-company reps tell them. As the interview makes clear, the bad effects of these drugs have been known all along.
I don't believe that drugs are the best this society can offer. The easiest, sure - toss the patient a prescription for the latest fix-everything pill, and if that doesn't fix anything, toss 'em a different prescription; it's much easier than trying to find out what's really wrong with them and what they need to really heal. Of course, it's also a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, but it doesn't seem like most doctors care too much about that any more.
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to keep functioning at my job. The sane thing to do is to leave, but i have a
companion who is disabled from several chronic illnesses and injuries.
I really have no one to fall back on, so i do what i have to do to keep on going.
It's not supposed to be this way.
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to the expediant of the machine. Unlike many i do not find the use of most psychotropics
to be malicious, it is just the best that this society can offer. It is sad. Very sad
That's pretty much how we feel, actually-- I mean, if someone walks into a therapist's office talking about anxiety because a family member is terminally ill and the response is to suggest Thorazine as a "mood stabilizer" (yes, this is a real example), that's a sign of something profoundly sick about the society that condones it. Where taking time off for grief is forbidden, because you have to get back into the rat race as soon as possible just to feed yourself and stay alive, and find some way to numb yourself out if that's what it takes to keep going; and get dismissed by a majority of society as a non-functional loser or a leech if you need someone else to help you along temporarily.
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told me to leave the corporate job that was killing me. We went to the mountains
and lived there for several wonderfull years.
Unfortunatly we had to leave those hills to go back to work. Again i want to
return to the mountains. Corporate life can be soul numbing. At my job it used
to be a custom to name servers after psych drugs - which tells a long sad story.
-- Catskillmarina
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I could stand maybe a month of corporate life before I was ready to gnaw my own foot off in order to escape from it. Seriously, I'd rather live in a box under a bridge and play pennywhistle for quarters than be in that kind of life - heh, not that they'd hire the likes of me anyway. So you have my fullest sympathy; it must be awfully hard.
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I don't mind that you asked; it was a reasonable question.
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nightmares with forced treatment.
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First, the number of mentally ill has not increased... at least not by that much. The stigma of mental illness has been dropped by our society, due in part to the drug companies advertising their wares. People are more willing to get help and tell someone what is going on...
But also, what works for some doesn't work for others... and all these meds are not cures for these problems. They don't all work for everyone. I take risperdal. Without it I am a mess. I have a friend who absolutely goes nuts when she takes it...
Thanks for sharing this with us:)
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is very very rarely the case. I would say many mental illnesses are the result
of workplace stress. Since the 80's the hours most jobs require have climbed
significantly. I would say that the level of mental illness probably follows
the amount and stressfullness of work in most cases.
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Actually, I think in some ways the stigma has been increased by modern psychiatric attitudes. Things like, for instance, portraying anyone who's suffered from depression as having a genetic or biological defect, and by not even permitting them to see if they can find alternate ways of coping. I know it certainly had a detrimental effect on our self-esteem when we were told by both doctors and 'support groups' that we were basically a faulty product.
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Still are. They've just prettied them up. As far as the laws, check out http://www.mindfreedom.org and keep in mind what Bush wants to do with that screening for babies (http://www.astraeasweb.net/politics/screening.html).
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An eligible child is one who has "been removed from child care, Head Start, or preschool for behavioral reasons or is at risk of being so removed" or "been exposed to parental depression or other mental illness."
Having worked in elementary schools I know enough about No Child Left Behind to know it is a Bad Idea. I had no idea it also included this gem. Because I have depression (managed, but still there) the government has the right to drug my children because they have been "exposed" to it? My partner is multiple (and a godsend), but the government has the right to drug my children because they have been "exposed" to it?
Every week I learn something new Bush and co. is up to and every week I like them less.
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This isn't paranoid fantasy, or "how things used to be back in the Dark Ages" - it's what actually happens to real people, and the older you get, the more likely it is to happen to you (http://www.stopshrinks.org/reading_room/re_shock/shocking_the_elderly.html). (Lots more documentation here (http://www.stopshrinks.org/reading_room/frame_docs/1st_idx_4th.html) if you want it.)
Bush & Co. didn't start any of this; it's what's been going on right along. All they've done is step up the pace a little.
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opinion it leads to sloppy work. If treatment is coerced there is no incentive to really
deal with the problems.
I am very concerned about the compulsory screening laws. It is my belief that if it comes
to pass it will be an excuse for soviet style psychiatric commitments. (and i have lived
behind the iron curtain in the 70's).
The result of this type of legislation is that people's real problems are never truly faced
and dealt with. I for many years would not see a therapist for my PTSD because i was
concerned with this type of nonsense.