Mad in america

Just because this has not been something (fortunately) you've experienced does not make it hyperbole. It happens. A lot.

Thank you.

Good to see proper references lol on which court and which judge made those remarks. Courts are public and the information is attainable. And good to see Barretts information on Breggen being attacked, because you know it would be just awful to get all personal. You would expect him to be in court doing what he does so why does the article on Breggen persist? It would be very easy to sue for damages if it was wrong and have the article removed at the very least. But it stays there. My cousin has adhd and thankyou Ritalin - one of the World Health Organisations essential medications for children, no less.

And the point about stopping meds is simple. You do realise you can't go back in time and get the people who did not take meds and then put the same people on meds and compare how they did? So the only thing you can do is compare different groups with the same diagnosis. One group that took medications and one that did not. Long story short is that Whitaker misrepresents or misunderstands the data. I wish he was right by the way.

That's it for me its getting into a debate and it isn't permitted here. Besides it isn't my job to educate anyone else, we all need to do that for ourselves.

This points to how health care in general is organized. We need more Psychiatrist and Psychologists so that more people can get the help they need. It is also important that the specialists have to grow with the scientific field and choose what is shown most effective as a first choice for their patients, but with the opportunity to chose another approach if the first approach doesn't work (documentation on why this or that approach is chosen has to become a must).

I don't buy the 15 minutes sessions with the GP as an excuse for choosing antidepressants as the first choice. When they have come to know that a patient suffer from depression, they have the opportunity to give the patient another appointment as a double session (if the patient don't feel for going to a specialist in the mental field), and another double session if needed. I don't mean that they shall ask all sorts of questions that they are not qualified to understand how to deal with, but that they shall get to know their patients a little better, build a working alliance that might at least make the patient feel understood. There is some relief in being understood.

47----yes/yes/yes-----being understood and working together with a doctor or therapist.....omg how important...

If the children's services knows about it (because neighbors calls and tell) they have lots of opportunities. They can talk to the parents and tell them that their behavior is not acceptable, teach them other ways to behave. As a last choice foster parents may be used to give the child a better environment to grow in, - to develop in healthy ways.

When it comes to grown ups, psychiatrists and psychologists have clinical significant methods to treat the worst wounds after such an upbringing.

Yes, if long term therapy is needed, the insurance companies have to be taught that so it is, and then have to cover it.

long term therapy is needed a lot to solve some of these problems...the insurance companies make it very difficult .....everybody is trying for the quick fix and its not working...

Therapists shall never be substitutes for parents. What you are telling makes me think that the American dream about being independent (as families in this case) is not always right. Early intervention is very important!!

This is important. One cannot go from one simplistic view to another (from antidepressants to herbs or similar) and forget about the complexity of factors working together.

A good therapist might be of help for you and others with similar experiences. Neither medications nor herbs take away terrible memories.

47--what do you have in mind

Singer47 little turtleWhen a therapist become the parent, the therapist has broken the frames for good therapy. If it is a part of psycho-dynamic therapy, that phase is only meant to be temporarily as the patients projection. The patients are expected to move on from this phase. May be your therapists died before the treatment was done ...

The American dream is among others about being independent. May be parents are allowed to do their Independence from outsiders a little too well. May be a foster home or adoption would have been appropriate in your case ...

singer47 said-----The American dream is among others about being independent. May be parents are allowed to do their Independence from outsiders a little too well. May be a foster home or adoption would have been appropriate in your case ...[/QUOTE]

little t said---
my parents were always fighting and separating when I was very young...
I was very afraid of being left alone....and I chose sides with my mother..
my trauma was not good but there are others who have had it much much worse....I had a friend whose mother tried to kill her more than once...I still want to complain about it....or at least talk about it...

It was the California Court of Appeals. April 22, 2003. The actual court records states that Barrett and the NCAHF (National Council Against Health Fraud): "were found to be biased and unworthy of credibility."

Have you read Whitaker's book about outcomes? Seems you are disagreeing on principle rather than on facts. The book speaks for itself. In the era of psych drugs mental health conditions have exploded exponentially in terms of numbers, severity, chronicity, and extent of disability.

Yes I read his book. I have it here on kindle. It is not comprehensive because the information he relied on is not what he says it is and because there is much that he left out. It is a waste of my time debating this with you.

I don't believe anyone lacks bias so it is best to check and double check what someone is saying. That is why having a good peer review system is so important. Check it provided it is important enough to you, you have enough hours in the day and provided references are even left. I cant find any references for what Breggen has written, it seems it is just his experience he is relying on.

In university level education you learn how to read and analyse a paper as well as check someone's claims, never just take anyone's claims as they are, that includes Barrett and your own claims above. Learning critical thinking is very important for all of us. The bigger the claim the more important it becomes to review.

If someone loses a court challenge to what is printed, then generally the court will order the statements be retracted, and they may assign damages to the plaintiff. If the claims are not true they don't just stay up on the website. Barrett references his writings, his statements regarding Breggen and the judges statements can be checked. Also have you considered Barret's age? He was born in 1933, perhaps that is why he is not practicing? Typing anything more and countering the rest of what you wrote is a waste of my time.

Just to be clear I am talking about original material. You have to get hold of the primary sources of information, read the studies or the court transcripts yourself. There is so much misinformation on every topic on the internet, for a variety of reasons. As was said earlier everyone is selling something. This my secondary source is better than yours is stupid. The best way is for people to publish transcripts or studies and have it critiqued by their peers.

Re the legal claims above. Quackwatch responded

A Response to Tim Bolen

No I meant what is YOUR source of information? Has the actual entire transcript been published or are you taking someone's word on that?

I have read the book and I agree with earlier statements that some people that take medications have worse outcomes. No idea what principle or what fact you are talking about. Books are an interpretation by the author, they do not speak for themselves.

Also correlation does not equal causation. As an example, children are immunized at an age where autism symptoms appear, but that doesn't mean that autism is caused by immunization.

' In the era of psych drugs mental health conditions have exploded exponentially in terms of numbers, severity, chronicity, and extent of disability.'

No I don't think so. It more that people were never diagnoised.
Years ago people just had to get on with it, there was no treatment anyway (apart from a straight jacket!

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How can you possibly back up such assertions?

The point of having investigative journalists like Whitaker is that he has the time, the access, the skills to analyze data and talk directly to sources. Doesn't mean I accept what he says without critical thinking. But I read the book. It presents a compelling case. To dismiss it out of hand, as you are doing, adds nothing to the discussion.

As for Breggin, I wonder who in the entire mental health world has as much credibility? See below. I believe he has almost 50 years of private practice clinical psychiatry to draw from. So yea, he is relying on experience. He's also a recognized expert on drug liability and harm and is frequently used as a court appointed medical expert and has testified before Congress.

-----------------
"Dr. Breggin's background includes Harvard College, Case Western Reserve Medical School, a one-year internship and a three-year residency in psychiatry, including a teaching fellowship at Harvard Medical School. After his training, he accepted a two-year staff appointment at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He has taught at several universities, including a faculty appointment to the Johns Hopkins University Department of Counseling.

Since 1964 Dr. Breggin has been publishing peer-reviewed articles and medical books in his subspecialty of clinical psychopharmacology. He is the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty professional books, many dealing with psychiatric medication, the FDA and drug approval processes, the evaluation of clinical trials, and standards of care in psychiatry."

California Superior Court Judge Rules on Quackbuster

Of course. Whitaker's book provides ample evidence of causation.

Ha read Quackwatch response to that.

Ah yes Whitaker says it all the antidepressants fault. As marmaduke says there are other reasons that account for the increases such as under diagnosis. When a new generation of drugs becomes available its apparently surprising that more people start taking them.

There was a WHO report that listed the suspected reasons. Those reasons included an aging population, under diagnosis and some of the things that were discussed in this thread such as the breakdown of social and family connection, community factors and various health factors. One of the biggest contributors was just that the population itself was increasing.

Are they being overprescribed? Yes, most likely. Doctors are often presented with someone grieving after an event that is traumatic or that hurts emotionally. It can result in a depressed mood (that is they complete a depression questionnaire and it says they are depressed) and then what can they do? The person has come in for help and they can either offer medications if they suspect it will help or not offer them. That is the system we have. The alternative is to get diet and exercise or psychological help. We don't go to see doctors for that kind of help. The fact is that something like a marriage break up for example can take 2 years if not even more to recover from and we have no real way to tell what is going to work best and we don't have much in place to help people. What do we do about this apart from complain? This is the job of policymakers. They can't be unaware of the problems we have, its just that it is hard to implement things that work.

This is different to my own situation where I am depressed with or without events in my life. I have always been depressed. The doctor and the medication for me was the best option by far and I have only ever got my life into the crap house when I haven't had medications working.

Do nothing. Most doctors are not trained to deal with depression in any real way. Have some integrity and tell the patient the truth instead of just giving them pills to mask the symptoms. Also why does a depressed mood necessarily need "treatment". One of the things Whitaker talks about is how previously depression was episodic and if allowed to run its course, would remain episodic rather than go chronic.

The system is broken and a mess. The way to change it or bring about its demise is to cease being a customer. Part of good health, IMO, means avoiding conventional medicine as much as possible. I think mainstream allopathic medicine should be reduced down to acute and emergency medicine and some other areas where the technology is an advantage. But for creating and maintaing true lasting health, other types of medicine -- naturopathic, functional, herbal -- seem to be much better.

Allopathic medicine could indeed use an overhaul. Or, at least enable holistic/alternative/integrative medicine to be readily available and accessible (go mainstream.) This would allow the consumers to have a real choice.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, this more "free market" approach would probably be revolutionary . . . consumers would gravitate to what really works. The best of allopathic and the best of alternative medicine would rise up, the weaknesses of each would fall away. At least, in theory. The realities of corruption of power, protectionism, greed and malfeasance would be an interference for sure. BUT, I'm liking the concept.

You are entitled to your opinions but opinions are not infallible. It would be interesting to see the huge array or opinions on who exactly is trained to deal with depression or what depression training should look like. Either way there is only medicine or treatments that work and those that do not. Treatments need to be subjected to scrutiny, just because someone believes treatment x works does not mean it really does. We need to test it as best we can and then incorporate what works.

I don't agree with Whitaker's assertion that the evidence shows depression was episodic and somehow that is all changed now. I agree with marmaduke there wasn't much by way of treatment so people just struggled with misery. I wonder how many people even knew what depression was and how many cared before drug treatments. I am not fooled by a romantic view of pre medication days just as I am not fooled by the drug companies claims.

As I said earlier it probably is the case for some people that antidepressants result in a worse outcome. But for me, my depressed mood was chronic well before I took any antidepressants and since I have taken them I have not been depressed for 4 years.

I can't speak for others but I needed treatment because I wanted to get rid of myself and I do not like my chances of survival without them. Perhaps depression requires treatment because the patient does not want to experience it? If something else works for someone else then I would say that is great I am happy for you.