Posts

There’s an article in Science Daily (April 29, 2013) titled “Antidepressants Linked with Increased Risks After Surgery,” which I found courtesy of Monica on Twitter. You can see it here. The article is a report of a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. You can see an abstract of the study here. The study was conducted by Andrew Auerbach MD et al, and involved examining the records of 530,416 patients who had undergone major surgery between January 2006 and December 2008 at 375 US hospitals. ...

I don’t have precise figures, but I would guess that psychiatrists constitute less than 5% of the professional staff in the mental health system The other 95% are psychologists, counselors, social workers, case managers, behavior analysts, case aides, art therapists, occupational therapists, job coaches, etc., etc… All of these other professions have specialized training, both theoretical and practical, and it is reasonable to suppose that they bring to their jobs a wide range of conceptual orientations, and an equally wide range of practical skills. ...

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;" ...

We’ve all known for a long time that neuroleptic drugs damage brain cells. But now it seems clear that they also increase the risk of osteoporosis and consequently bone fractures. There’s an article about this in the International Journal of Endocrinology, dated March 2013. It’s titled Osteoporosis Associated with Antipsychotic Treatment in Schizophrenia, and was written by Haishan Wu et al, from the Central South University in Changsha, China. I came upon the article through Robert Whitaker’s site Mad in America. ...

Thank you to Tallaght Trialogue for drawing my attention to Blue Horizon Stem Cells (you can see their website here) and a recent article they’ve written titled Mood Disorder (here). The article contains a very brief discussion of the term mood disorder, including a mention of “major depressive disorder” and “bipolar disorder.” It then goes on to say: "To find out more about how you may benefit from stem cell therapy, please complete our Contact Us form and one of our physicians will reach out to you for a private consultation." ...

I recently wrote a post on postpartum depression which has generated a certain amount of negative comment. For this reason, I thought it might be helpful to clarify some points. DEFINITION AND EXPLANATIONS The DSM makes no mention of postpartum depression as such. The closest it comes is major depressive disorder with postpartum onset. In other words, the APA conceptualizes postpartum depression as ordinary major depression (which can incidentally range in severity from mild to severe) which happens to occur in the postpartum period. This is in marked contrast to the popular notion that postpartum depression is somehow a function of the postpartum woman’s hormones, and is fundamentally different from other forms of depression. ...

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. ...

The DSM-5 drafting committee considered including Internet addiction in the upcoming revision, but eventually backed off, at least for now. Apparently they decided to put it in the category “requiring further study.” So it’ll be in DSM-6. Meanwhile, people are being given the “diagnosis” anyway – and of course, the “treatment.” AN ILLUSTRATIVE CASE I’m grateful to Tallaght Trialogue for sending me a link to a recent article in the UK’s MailOnline. It was written by Rebecca Seales and Eleanor Harding. You can see it here. ...

BACKGROUND The “diagnosis” of separation anxiety disorder has been around since DSM-III. In DSM-IV it is defined as “…excessive anxiety concerning separation from the home or from those to whom the person is attached.” (DSM-IV-TR p 121). The APA’s prevalence estimate is 4%. This “diagnosis” is listed under the heading: “Other Disorders of Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence.” One of the criteria is that the problem must begin before age 18, and in practice the “diagnosis” was generally confined to children under the age of 10 or so. ...