“Do Antidepressants Cure or Create Abnormal Brain States?”
A provocative article by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff and Dr. David Cohen, PLOS Medicine, June 5.
A provocative article by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff and Dr. David Cohen, PLOS Medicine, June 5.
The answer given by Dr. Joseph Britto, a pediatric intensive care physician, hits the nail on the head: "Unlike pilots, doctors don’t go down with their planes."
"Are we becoming patients for profit? That is the question knowledgeable observers are asking.
An OpEd in The New York Times (below) is trumpeting psychiatry’s latest “cure” for depression: it requires surgical implantation of electrodes in the brain, continued “maintenance” with powerful psychotropic drugs, and it costs $40,000.
"Biological psychiatrists have looked very closely for a serotonin imbalance or dysfunction in patients with depression or obsessive compulsive disorder and, to date, it has been elusive," says Dr. Wayne Goodman, Chair of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee.
The importance of debate in science cannot be overstated. Without the challenge of debate, science is dominated by "authorities" who provide only the veneer of science without substance supported by evidence. Correct url for power point: https://ahrp.org/children/teenscreen/debateNAS0206.ppt
Slide 2: I’ll begin with the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health[1] recommendation to screen the US population for mental illness – 52 million children first. In no other democratic country has the government adopted a policy to screen the population for presumed, undetected, mental illness. The rationale behind this mind-boggling Orwellian nightmare is not improving mental health, but rather increasing life-long consumers of psychoactive drugs and to control behavior. Two NFC recommendations are designed to do just that. TeenScreen is promoted as a suicide prevention model when it in fact, increases the number of children labeled suicidal and depressed.
"Serotonin and depression: A disconnect between the advertisements and the scientific literature."
"Some 19 million people in the U.S. suffer from depression in any given year. For many, SSRIs help little, if at all. To do better, we have to get the science right." Sharon Begley, Wall Street Journal
Tom Cruise re-ignited the debate about psychiatry–its false claims & drug hazards – Florida Medicaid restricts Fri, 01 Jul 2005 Tom Cruise “kicked off a debate over a subject that a lot of people don’t feel comfortable discussing: whether Americans are too quick to turn to prescription drugs and whether…
Complaint to FDA: Pfizer Failed to Disclose Zoloft Suicide Risk in NYT Adverstisement Mon, 1 Nov 2004 ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) Tel. 212-595-8974 142 West End Ave. Suite 28P Fax: 212-595-9086 New York, NY 10023 www.ahrp.org November 1, 2004 Thomas W. Abrams Director Office…
Psychiatrist Scolds the APA After Winning Distinguished Fellow Award/ NYC Sues 44 Pharma Companies Fri, 6 Aug 2004 After receiving a 50-year “distinguished fellow award” from the American Psychiatric Association in May, 2004, Alex Braiman, M.D. a practicing psychiatrist, wrote a letter acknowledging that the APA’s “advocacy of unsupported “biologic”…
Fast for Freedom: A debate (of sorts) about scientific evidence Sat, 23 Aug 2003 The Medical Director of the APA was unable to cite a single scientific study proving an underlying biochemical basis for any mental illness. An amazing exchange between Dr. James Scully and a panel of experts lays…