Drug corruption: a rough guide

[firemonkey]

Drug corruption:a rough guide

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22237

I am not anti meds but i am against meds being over hyped and for that matter non meds alternatives NB the hyperbole surrounding CBT.

It is all too easy for a psychiatrist to point the blame at a client/patient when medication doesn't work as well as the glowing testimonials for it suggest it will,ie the client is awkward,troublesome,character disordered and to be potentially disengaged from,rather than to say "Hold on a minute.Maybe that med isn't the universal magic bullet that the drug company makes it out to be"

 

[saffron]

i agree they do tend to be quick to blame it on your lifestyle, and whilst that probalbly does have a bearing it is too easy to mis changes in your behaviour if is gradual and not associate it with the drugs at all. it can be really hard to recognise it in yourself sometimes but isnt that the psychiatrists job?
although the article was more to do with back handers because these drugs are worth a lot of money. would the psychiatrist go as far as to want to keep you on certain drugs longer cos they get a cut or something in the sales, who knows?
Good thread

S

 

[nickh]

Excellent article thanks. As much as the stories of the misrepresentation of the efficacy of drugs were shocking they, sadly, failed to surprise me as much as the revelations about the DSM and how ...

>>Given its importance, you might think that the DSM represents the authoritative distillation of a large body of scientific evidence. But Lane, using unpublished records from the archives of the American Psychiatric Association and interviews with the princi-pals, shows that it is instead the product of a complex of academic politics, personal ambition, ideology, and, perhaps most important, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry<<

This goes to the heart of how (and what) 'mental illness' is defined and it is DSM measures which are used in the UK too to evaluate people (I am pretty sure they are what the Government bases its 'fitness' tests on as well).

Nick.