are more psychiatrists speaking a similar message, that medication has
created an industry that isn't healthy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/making-a-market-in-antips_b_720861.html
"
Remember not so long ago when Prozac became the world's largest selling
medication of any kind, and then for years how Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft
took over many of the top 10 spots? Remember the explanations at the
time--that they were wonder drugs and that 15-50 percent or more of
Americans would need them some time in their lives? To many people this
seemed like a scientific breakthrough when in reality it was ... a
triumph of marketing. Some studies suggest that the antidepressants are
little or no more effective than a sugar pill and a lot more dangerous.
Recent research examined all antidepressant studies submitted in recent
years to FDA in regard to antidepressant efficacy and found that the
drug performed no better than placebo except in "severely depressed
patients," reaching "clinical significance" only "at the upper end of
the very severely depressed category." Even then, the difference between
the antidepressant and the placebo was "relatively small."
In addition to being largely ineffective, the antidepressants can be
very distressing to withdraw from, which keeps the market artificially
inflated by people who would desperately like to stop but find the
process too emotionally or physically painful. Often these individuals
fail to realize that they are undergoing withdrawal and instead
mistakenly conclude that they "need" the medication to control their
original psychiatric problems.
Now look what have become the new top selling drugs in the world:
antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal, Zyprexa, Abilify, Seroquel, Geodon
and Invega. Although the FDA has been expanding the approved use of some
of these drugs to some cases of autism, Tourettes and a variety of other
problems, their original purpose and their main use in psychiatry until
now has been largely confined to psychosis and acute mania. Psychosis
and acute mania afflict a very small portion of the the population. Yet
these drugs are now at the top of the list of most widely prescribed
medications worldwide. How did these incredibly toxic chemicals become
daily pharmacological mainstays for so many millions of children and
adults? It's time to face the truth that the prescription of psychiatric
drugs is driven by marketing trends--and now for the first time by
something even more dreadful and insidious than mere marketing.
To begin their market campaigns for the newer antipsychotic agents, the
drug companies created the myth that these products were not as
dangerous as the old antipsychotic drugs, which were becoming recognized
as highly toxic. Especially hard to ignore, it was demonstrated that the
old antipsychotics cause tardive dyskinesia, a disfiguring and sometimes
disabling array of abnormal movements in 5-8 percent per year cumulative
of otherwise healthy patients and more than 20 percent of older
patients. But even the unproven and ultimately false claim that the
newer drugs were safer could not make a huge market for them. Even if
these were wonder drugs, they were wonderful for a relatively tiny
percent of the population. The drug companies had to create a new
patient population market and that market became "bipolar disorder."
Once much rarer than schizophrenia, bipolar disorder would soon become
one of the most common diagnoses made in medicine and psychiatry.
Indeed, while ordinary folks used to talk about their biochemical
imbalances and depression, now they've upgraded to having bipolar disorder.
Lithium, once the magic bullet without side effects for bipolar
disorder--then called manic-depressive disorder--had turned out to be a
severe central nervous system toxin that over the years ruins mental
function while also producing thyroid disorders, kidney failure and a
host of other serious problems. The discrediting of lithium created a
new niche for antipsychotic drugs--to be used as "mood stabilizers" for
people with severe ups and downs. But it was a relatively smalll niche
to begin with.
Where would all the new bipolar patients come from? Many of them would
come from the fertile imagination of drug company sponsored
psychiatrists who found bipolar disorder in everything from toddlers
with temper tantrums to adults with bursts of energy followed by a
natural period of feeling fatigued. Leaders in child psychiatry like
Harvard's Joseph Biederman were literally paid under the table to push
antipsychotic medications for bipolar disorder in children. A recent
study showed that children labeled bipolar actually receive more adult
antipsychotic drugs than adults labeled bipolar . Another recent study
covering 2000-2002 showed that 18 percent of child visits to a
psychiatrist included antipsychotic treatment, and 92 percent of those
were for the newer so-called second generation drugs. It took a great
deal of marketing to convince physicians that these relatively untried
and highly toxic antipsychotic drugs are that safe and effective in
children.
But even marketing bipolar disorder to the professions and the public
was insufficient to create a huge enough market to satisfy the drug
companies. Here's where the irony of ironies came into play. The newer
antidepressants--once the leading drugs in the world--frequently cause
mania. They do so in millions of patients, children and adults alike,
every year. These once most popular drugs in the world by causing mania
made and continue to make the market for the next wave of most popular
drugs--the antipsychotic drugs being used as mood stabilizers.
How common is antidepressant-induced mania? Very common. Several studies
have found that 6 to 8 percent of patients exposed to antidepressants
will develop a manic disorder. One research study, for example, found in
a retrospective study that Paxil produced mania in 8.6 percent of
patients exposed. Other studies find the rates as high as 17 percent And
if a person has already shown a manic tendency or has experienced a
manic-like episode, antidepressants will push one-quarter to one-third
into new manias (For a review, see P. Breggin, Brain-Disabling
Treatments in Psychiatry, 2008, pp. 157-165) . Yet misguided
psychiatrists commonly give antidepressants to patients diagnosed with
bipolar disorder. The result? Millions of people suffer from
medication-induced mania and other expressions of what I call
"medication madness."
When I took my psychiatric residency at Harvard in Boston and at SUNY in
Syracuse in the early 1960s, we never saw or diagnosed bipolar disorder
in children. In my four years of training, I saw one 19-year-old in a
manic state and a few adults. When a person was admitted in a manic
condition talking a mile a minute, imagining grand things about
themselves, making outrageous plans, bursting with anger and energy,
unable to sleep and otherwise euphoric, the condition was so unusual
that we would hold grand rounds, a medical show-and-tell, to discuss the
patient.
Now psychiatric wards are filled with patients having their second and
third or umpteenth manic episode and every psychiatrist's day is filled
with patients diagnosed bipolar. It's mostly about
antidepressant-induced mania. Every single child I have evaluated who
has suffered what looks like a manic episode has been taking stimulants
or antidepressants, both of which cause mania. At least 9 out of 10
adults I've seen in the last two decades who have suffered emotional
episodes that could be diagnosed as mania had them in direct response to
stimulants or antidepressants--mostly the newer antidepressants starting
with Prozac.
In the official diagnostic system, these are not cases of bipolar mania
but cases of medication induced mood disorder with manic features; but
they are almost always mistakenly called bipolar disorder in order to
avoid identifying the drug and the prescriber as the causative agents.
For those who want further details, I have reviewed all the studies
mentioned in this report in my medical book, "Brain-Disabling Treatments
in Psychiatry, Second Edition" (2008). In my popular book, "Medication
Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and
Crime" (2008), I have provided dozens of in-depth illustrations of lives
ruined by psychiatric drugs, especially the newer antidepressants.
Never before in the history of civilization has this occurred. Drugs are
marketed and become bestsellers when their most notable effect is to
cause a severe disorder that paves the way for the next generation of
bestsellers--and nobody's noticed. Was this done intentionally? Not
likely. Is this unfortunate situation being covered up and used to their
advantage by the drug companies and those who advocate their products?
Definitely.
Well, it's been noticed. It is time to stop ignoring the havoc created
by psychiatric drugs. The drug companies and organized medicine and
psychiatry must be stopped from benefiting from the creation of lifelong
patients suffering from chronic medication-induced madness.
"
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