Deep Sleep "Therapy" in Australia in the 1960's and 70's. Could Something Like This Happen Today?

Here’s an interesting story from Australia, recently back in the spotlight. From 1962 to 1979, psychiatrist Harry Bailey, MD, serving as chief psychiatrist at Chelmsford Private Hospital in New South Wales, practiced “deep sleep therapy”, which involved keeping people in barbiturate-induced comas for days or even weeks. Twenty-four of the individuals who received this “treatment” died while still in the hospital. Many more died or showed permanent brain damage after discharge. ...

August 27, 2020 · PhilHickeyPhD

Allen Frances and the Increasing Use of Antidepressants

On May 16, 2018, the prestigious and venerable psychiatrist Allen Frances, MD, gave an interview to Christiane Amanpour on CNN. You can see the video here. It’s titled How Antidepressant Withdrawal “Can Trap People”. Here’s how the interview opened: CA: "So you know, I just wanted to start by saying that who knew that antidepressants were addictive. It's not what you associate with things like antidepressants. You think of pain-killers, obviously, and drugs and alcohol, and cigarettes." ...

October 30, 2018 · PhilHickeyPhD

Pharma Responds:  Antidepressants Really Work.  Really?

On July 25, 2017, Fredrik Hieronymus et al published a meta-analysis in Molecular Psychiatry. The study is titled Efficacy of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in the absence of side effects: a mega-analysis of citalopram and paroxetine in adult depression. Elias Eriksson, PhD, Head of the Department of Pharmacology, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, is the principal author, but as Fredrik Hieronymus is the first author listed, I will refer to the article as Hieronymus et al. ...

September 7, 2017 · PhilHickeyPhD

SSRIs:  Minimal Effectiveness and High Risk

Last month (February 2017), the journal BMC Psychiatry published a study by James Christian Jakobsen et al. The study is titled Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors versus placebo in patients with major depressive disorder. A systematic review with meta-analysis and Trial Sequential Analysis. The research was a meta-analysis – i.e. it combined the findings from several earlier studies. Here are the authors’ conclusions: "SSRIs might have statistically significant effects on depressive symptoms, but all trials were at high risk of bias and the clinical significance seems questionable. SSRIs significantly increase the risk of both serious and non-serious adverse events. The potential small beneficial effects seem to be outweighed by harmful effects." ...

March 9, 2017 · PhilHickeyPhD

Allen Frances:  Still Blaming Everyone But Himself

On May 7, Allen Frances, MD, posted an article on the HuffPost site. The piece was titled Antidepressants Work, But Only For Really Depressed People. Superficially, the article presents itself as a call to limit the prescribing of the so-called antidepressant drugs to severe cases; but the piece can, I suggest, be more accurately characterized as Dr. Frances’s latest attempt to distance himself, and psychiatry in general, from the pill-peddling frenzy that has characterized the profession for the past thirty or forty years ...

May 24, 2016 · PhilHickeyPhD

Klonopin and prozac withdrawal

It’s been almost 3 months since I have ingested any antidepressants or benzos. Almost died after drinking a large amount of vodka with the daily does of pills. Went to a rehab for a month and have been clean since. This is after over 27 years of benzos and prozac. I am 60 years old and am finally coming a awake. The Withdrawals, notably the restless leg and horrible cramping have been horrid at night, but I am totally committed to staying off the evil pills! Thanks for listening! ...

April 25, 2016 · A reader

The Germanwings Crash:  Flying Under the Influence

On March 24, 2015, a twenty-seven-year-old German pilot named Andreas Lubitz flew an Airbus A 320 into a French mountainside, killing himself and the 149 other people on board. Mr. Lubitz was co-piloting the flight, and he caused the aircraft to crash by locking the pilot out of the flight deck and setting the autopilot to descend to 100 feet. During the descent, he was contacted by civilian and military traffic controllers, and by the crew of another aircraft, but he made no response. He also ignored repeated and increasingly urgent requests from the captain to be readmitted to the flight deck. ...

April 5, 2016 · PhilHickeyPhD

Exploiting The Placebo Effect:  Deceiving People For Their Own Good?

Readers may remember that a few weeks ago I became involved in an online debate with the very eminent and scholarly psychiatrist Ronald Pies, MD. That exchange was initiated by a post I wrote concerning a paper on the chemical imbalance theory that Jeffrey Lacasse, PhD, and Jonathan Leo, PhD, had published in the Behavior Therapist in October 2015. In that paper, Drs. Lacasse and Leo had drawn attention to certain aspects of Dr. Pies’ work, but they had also focused some attention on Daniel Carlat, MD, psychiatrist, and author of Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry - A Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis. ...

February 16, 2016 · PhilHickeyPhD

The Link Between Psychiatric Drugs and Violence

One of psychiatry’s most obvious vulnerabilities is the fact that various so-called antidepressant drugs induce homicidal and suicidal feelings and actions in some people, especially late adolescents and young adults. This fact is not in dispute, but psychiatry routinely downplays the risk, and insists that the benefits of these drugs outweigh any risks of actual violence that might exist. There are two research studies that indicate a link between SSRI’s and violence, but both studies have limitations that make it difficult to draw firm conclusions. The studies are: ...

October 13, 2015 · PhilHickeyPhD

Antidepressants:  Drugs, Not Medication

On April 7, John Read, PhD, a psychologist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, published a short article on Mad in America. The title is: Largest Survey of Antidepressants Finds High Rates of Adverse Emotional and Interpersonal Effects. The article presents the results of a survey conducted in New Zealand and published online in February, 2014 in Psychiatry Research. The survey involved 1,827 individuals who were taking antidepressants. Dr. Read is widely published. ...

April 13, 2015 · PhilHickeyPhD