Psychiatric drugs

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"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 alobar's Lj.)

Comments

[catskillmarina.livejournal.com]

In the many disability cases i have been involved in, it was next to impossible to get disability without being diagnosed with some mental illness. One friend of mine who has
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.