Pharmaceutical Industry

There has been a great deal of discussion on this topic in recent years. Families of suicide victims tend to blame the pills; the pharma companies blame the depression for which the pills were prescribed. Personally, I’ve read and heard a good many reports from people who have taken the pills and shortly afterwards experienced fairly strong suicidal urges pretty much out of the blue. The frequency and similarity of these accounts is – at the very least – cause for concern. ...

I recently came across Thinking About Mental Health: Myths, treatment risks & alternatives. You can find it here. It’s written by Mick Bramham, from Dorset, England. Here are some quotes: From the post Depression: Serotonin Imbalance? "The whole idea of antidepressants supposedly correcting chemical imbalances has more to do with drug company marketing than evidence-based science." "Unfortunately, drug companies are known to exaggerate the benefits of their products and to play down the risks;" ...

BACKGROUND The primary purpose of the bio-psychiatric-pharma faction is to expand turf and sell more drugs. This is a multi-faceted endeavor, one component of which is disease mongering. This consists of using marketing techniques to persuade large numbers of people that they have an illness which needs to be treated with drugs. With regards to postpartum depression, it is an obvious fact that some mothers do indeed experience a measure of depression in the period after giving birth. The term postpartum depression has in the past been generally understood to mean that the problem had something to do with hormones. Today brain chemicals are blamed. ...

I recently wrote a post called: Do Major Tranquilizers Make Things Worse? The post was based on a study by Drs. Harrow and Jobe in which they speculated that the high relapse rate of “schizophrenics” who stop taking their drugs may have more to do with drug withdrawal than the supposed drug efficacy. Monica, at BeyondMeds, pointed out that these drugs should not be called tranquilizers because some of their effects (e.g. akathisia, tardive dyskinesia, etc.) are anything but tranquil. And this, of course, is a good point. ...

It is easy to vilify psychiatrists. Their spurious conceptual framework, toxic “treatments’ and blatantly corrupt links to pharma make them easy targets. Their destructive activities, to which they resolutely cling, invite criticism which they steadfastly ignore. Any thoughts that perhaps they had seen the errors of their ways have been dashed by the soon-to-be published DSM-5, which promises to be business as usual, only more so. HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY? ...

Psychiatrists, when challenged about the massive increase in psychotropic drug prescriptions, sometimes point out that the bulk of this prescribing is done – not by them – but by primary care doctors (GPs). Although the psychiatrists’ claim in this regards may be true, it is also somewhat misleading. The “illnesses” for which these drugs are being prescribed were invented by psychiatrists, and it is these inventions that legitimize the prescribing activity. And, of course, as the psychiatrists invent more illnesses, the prescription rates increase proportionately. Without the perceived legitimacy of the DSM, GPs simply couldn’t dish out antidepressants, anxiolytics, and stimulants on the scale seen today, if for no other reason than the fear of lawsuits. ...

In the old days, which I well remember, misbehavior in school was considered a disciplinary problem. This included not paying attention, fidgeting, not applying oneself to one’s work, talking, interrupting the teacher, etc., etc., etc… Then the APA decided that these various activities were really symptoms of a mental illness, and thereby created the ever-burgeoning market for Ritalin and other drugs which, we are falsely told, correct the “chemical imbalance” in these children’s brains. ...

There’s a nice article at Involuntary Transformation on this topic. The author, Nathan, poses a very interesting question: since drugs cause damage to children and there are many better alternatives, why do so many parents choose the drug option? Nathan goes on to suggest that the reason lies in the effort that the pharmaceutical industry invests in marketing, and he calls for “…complete and total transparency in all Mental Health Services.” ...

It is a central theme of this website that there are no mental illnesses/disorders, and that the psychiatric medicalization of ordinary human problems is arbitrary, spurious, and destructive. The widespread acceptance of ADHD as a mental illness/chemical imbalance has no scientific underpinning, but rather is based on marketing and promotion. The ADHD “diagnosis” is particularly destructive, in that it targets children, and serves as the justification for “treating” these children with dangerous drugs. ...

I’ve come across an article by Lisa Cosgrove et al entitled Conflicts of interest and the quality of recommendations in clinical guidelines. It was published in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice in December of last year. As everyone knows, the APA publishes the DSM, but they also publish “Clinical Practice Guidelines” for various “diagnoses,” including the condition known as major depression. Dr. Cosgrove and her colleagues examined the guidelines for major depression to see if the authors had financial or intellectual conflicts of interest. An example of a financial conflict of interest would be recommending drug treatment when one is on the payroll of a drug company. An example of an intellectual conflict of interest would be relying on and citing a poor quality study in support of a position in which one had a stake. ...