Mad in america

Of course there will be successes. There is a difference between saying the system is fundamentally broken and saying it has no value at all. How many people are sent home to die because chemo/radiation/surgery cannot help, and because the system gives the patient no other options? How many people die from the treatment itself? Please tell me where we can find accurate and truthful information about these outcomes. Both my parents had cancer, received conventional treatment, survived for a while, then both died at relatively young ages. Not saying the treatment did them in, but I do see connections.

No I'm saying first we try to establish precisely how bad is the corruption in the mainstream system, so that we know what we're dealing with. And stop trusting implicitly what we are told by mainstream sources.

Testing, yes. Attract dishonest people, yes for sure. But I do think far less. Not clear why criticism of mainstream medicine has to necessarily involve a defense of "alt" med.

By insanity I meant that the very foundation of the mainstream medical narrative, peer reviewed research, now seems to be too fraudulent to trust… and yet it is what the system continues to point to justify its existence and preeminence.

Not sure if you have this seen this quote:
“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.”
–Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime editor-in-chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ)

I'm saying the absence of lab testing (or any objective measure) to validate the theory that mental disorders stem from simple brain imbalances is a sign that the theory might be unsupported by evidence.

Lessening suffering from things like depression would seem to require that the discussion around causes have at least some connection to reality. For instance if we are going to put half the world on psych drugs, we should have some understanding about whether the drugs are correcting some imbalance, or creating one. I know of no evidence for the correcting concept, and in fact I think the biz itself has known this for decades, it is not even controversial.

So then we can move and talk about other possible causes. That would help us all.

How can a therapist or other professional treat depression or anxiety without knowing the cause? Is the anxiety due to trauma or magnesium deficiency? Is the depression from chronic brain inflammation or situational factors?

If you tell a therapist you have anxiety, and they diagnose you with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, they have told you absolutely nothing.

If you went to a doctor with chronic headache, and they diagnosed you with Generalized Headache Disorder, you would laugh and then walk out.

Originally Posted by Singer47
I believe you, but I cannot understand why you are open about it. If you are a doctor that implies ethical responsibility. You, to some degree, push only one side of the medication approach, and that is that you don't like them. Is that an ethical view that suits all the members here? As a patient you can say such things, but from a medical doctor may be we expect some sort of neutrality in such a forum.

I mean anyone can come here and claim that they are a medical doctor and then proclaim that they are against this or that.

I do not mean to be rude, but it felt very unnatural to me to meet a medical doctor here hiding behind a nick name. All sorts of people can become depressed from the the cleaning staff to the president, so of course medical doctors as well. In my view it would have been better if you hadn't disclosed your professional identity.

The main purpose of PC is support - to give and be given support. I feel very sorry for those coming here young and new and so have to get the impression that they perhaps cannot trust their P-docs or GP-s.

I hope you will see this as a friendly reminder to reflect upon, and not as anything else.

What sort of evidence do you expect? The facial expression of a depressed person tells something and so does the body language and the tone of the voice. Knowledge about the patients sleep-awake circle tells something. So do knowledge about appetite, energy, loss of interests and more ...

Who has said that half the world is going to be put on "pcyck drugs"? Is that an aim presented by the World's Health Organization?

Different theories have different approaches to treatment. The Cognitive Behavior Therapy, as an example, says that one doesn't have to know the cause, only the patients different thoughts in different situations.

Anxiety may have many courses. A responsible doctor will examine the patient for magnesium deficit (bloodtest), so no-one should have to worry about that.

Patients don't come and tell that they have anxiety. They will talk about vague symptoms like dizziness, heart beat, nausea and other sorts of sufferings. It's the doctors plight to take blood tests to rule out any physical diseases. When that is done she will ask the patient questions to conform or detest if it can be anxiety. After that the doctor will ask specific questions that will give her the answers if it is generalized anxiety disorder or if it is a simple fobia.

The GAD is a diagnose that has to fulfill specific criteria, just as a heart attack has to do to fulfill the diagnose.

I thought little turtle was retired, maybe I am wrong. If he/she is suffering from panic and depression, why not come to this forum and look for answers? I respect that, mixing it up with us laypeople.

47----I am a very old retired medical doctor....I am a person who has suffered for 65 years with a depressive disorder....I went into medicine to help others after a serious breakdown....there is mental illness in my family...
I don't like STIGMA and I don't like BS...I am not rich and famous....
I have come here to help me and others with suffering...so step aside..
I am not here to just support and hold hands and not talk about prevention...
and what could possibly have given you the idea that I don't like medicines...
what I don't like is people getting screwed because someone else wants to make some money from their suffering...you have helped me today..
because I have learned that I need to be right here talking to you about reality..

Funnily enough, I suffer with Chronic Cluster Headaches - arguably the most painful condition known to Medicine. There is no known cause, and I met my dx with relief because I could start preventative meds after years of daily suffering. Oh, this condition is diagnosed on symptoms alone.

Dave.

Sorry to hear that. I'm having some fairly bad headaches lately myself. Mercola article has some info:
CoQ10 or Ubiquinol: Drug-Free Solution for Migraine and Headache

I still stand by my main point, that mental diagnoses are often nothing but symptoms packaged together into some invented "disorder". Or are just a single symptom labeled as a disorder. Anxiety becomes GAD, Depression is MDD, etc. And the boundary between "normal" and "pathological" is arbitrary, decided by consensus rather than science or objective measure.

So have you! I'll drop this "potato"!

my patients used to call me dr rugrat...I was their friend and doctor...I was not above or below anyone...

I have answered this in post 156 in this thread.

Your questions seem to imply that you don't understand the concept "Generalized Anxiety disorder". Simple fobia means that a person gets her anxiety in some situations and not in others. To be afraid of sitting on a bus is an example. To be frightened for spiders is another example. There are plenty of examples.

GAD, on the other hand is, if it thorough interviewes have been known that the person has no specific (simple) situation she is afraid of, but may feel the symptoms out of nowhere both here and there and there. The anxiety is general (even if not constant) instead of specific related to only the same situation again and again and again.

GAD needs another treatment approach then the simple fobias.

By the way. We don't have a disorder called "Generalized Headache Disorder". It is called Headache and it is specified in the journal were it is seated (forehead or other places). The intensity and form will be decribed as well ...

It is the same method as in diagnosing anxiety. The patient with the headace is interviewed until the doctor is sure about what it is. The doctor might perhaps want to know more about the headache to find the right treatment. She can find out by as an example blood tests, referring to an EEG, Computer Tomography, or may be to an eye specialist if the hypothesis the GP has made for herself during the interview or/and palpation is that the headache is connected to the eyes.

So it will might be with anxiety as well. If there is not enough information from the interview to set a diagnose, testing will be used.

(I have in the other post told that physical diagnoses must be ruled out first).

"I have in the other post told that physical diagnoses must be ruled out first"--------------------this is VITAL

I don't feel that my GP is above or below me. The GP is just the GP, the one with the knowledge I perhaps don't have. My GP listens to knowledge that I have that perhaps he has not. My GP is friendly, but not among my friends. I'm satisfied with that and is well cared for.

The "above" or "below" topics probably were more in use in former times, when doctors were looked upon as some sort of gods. It may still be so some places, but that will hopefully disappear as time pass.

I'm sure you made your patients comfortable and relaxed in a time when many feared their GP-s.

and I also want to make clear here that I have come to this forum to help and BE HELPED....also I need to say that I was a very good psychiatrist who knows a lot about stigma and the importance of supporting anyone with problems...

Joseph Mercola is a leading anti-vaccine campaigner. Vaccines have been proven safe and effective in an enormous amount of research. He has published lies, his articles are deceptive. Are you sure about your support for Mercola and his supplements?
Vaccine News and Information from Dr. Joseph Mercola

And yet the New England Journal of Medicine published research as outlined here. You can pay for it if you like.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/1...evented/?_r=2&

But the data is available here:
http://www.tycho.pitt.edu/

Vaccines are one of the most researched areas out of all of medicine.

That seems to me to be painting with a very broad brush and abandoning the whole scientific method, evidence based medicine, and every doctor and researcher involved as being totally corrupted. To me that is absurd and sounds like Breggin.

Scientists as Liars: From Global Warming to Biological Psychiatry
From Breggin
I ran across this today speaking of modern medical science. A very good friend of mine died of ALS last year.

Remarkable New Therapy Stops ALS Development In Mice | IFLScience

Copper delivery to the CNS by CuATSM effectively treats motor neuron disease in SODG93A mice co-expressing the copper-chaperone-for-SOD

^^^ Agreed.

Here is what judges have said of Dr Breggin and those apparent legal cases he was involved in.

Magistrate Judge B Waugh in Liam versus the Upjohn company:
"This court finds that the evidence of Peter Breggin, as a purported expert, fails nearly all particulars under the standard set" and then "Simply put, the Court believes that Dr. Breggin's opinions do not rise to the level of an opinion based on "good science." The motion to exclude his testimony as an expert witness should be granted."

http://www.casewatch.org/civil/breggin/breggin3.pdf

Judge James W Rice in Schellinger v Schellinger
"Dr. Breggin's observations are totally without credibility. I can almost declare him, I guess from statements that floor me, to say the he's a fraud or at least approaching that He has made some outrageous statements and written outrageous books and which he says he has now withdrawn and his thinking is different. He's untrained. He's a member of no hospital staff. He has not since medical school participated in any studies to support his conclusions except maybe one. . . . I can't place any credence or credibility in what he has to recommend in this case"

http://www.casewatch.org/civil/breggin/breggin1.pdf

Judge Hilary J Caplan in Lightner v Alessi
"The court believes not only is this gentleman unqualified to render the opinions that he did, I believe that his bias in this case is blinding" "was not only unprepared, he was mistaken in a lot of the factual basis for which he expressed his opinion" "The court is going to strike the testimony of Dr. Breggin, finding that it has no rational basis"

http://www.casewatch.org/civil/breggin/breggin2.pdf

I don't want to start a vaccine debate, as that is a rat hole of mammoth proportions. For me the central thing with respect to vaccines, pharma meds, and the institution of modern allopathic medicine generally is that there are f***ing enormous sums of money involved.

Pharma has THE largest lobbying budget of any industry on earth. That means more political influence than perhaps any other human entity.

The system has shown itself to harbor festering corruption, greed, and fraud. It's not even controversial to say that. Pharma has been compared to organized crime.

So for me the prudent default position is to believe NOTHING from mainstream sources. Assume it is lies and look elsewhere for the truth.

And that most certainly applies to vaccines. I don't trust Mercola implicitly, but I will listen to him over Paul Offitt for example.

What? Anxiety can be general or have specific triggers, yea that is pretty basic stuff that I do in fact understand.

If the patient complains of general anxiety and the Dr says they have GAD, what has been accomplished?

If the patient complains of anxiety in social situations and the Dr says they have SAD, what has been accomplished?

In both cases the answer is nothing.

Also anxiety is part of being alive. Accepting arbitrary boundaries between what is "normal" and what is a "disorder" is great for selling drugs, but problematic for the rest of us.

Not the method, the application of it and the reality of it.

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” *
–*Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet – considered to be one of the most well respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world.

I think we need to talk about depression...
how about Robert whitaker...his book.... anatomy of an epidemic..do we have an epidemic.....what is he saying about depression...what problems does he talk about that are caused by drugs.....is there anything there that we should worry about...I am worried about anti-depressants causing suicide ....I personally have been helped and hurt by meds....my experience has been mixed...

Depression as a burden is increasing but it does not meet the definition of an epidemic. The definition includes a rapid increase or spread in the occurrence of something or a disease that is extremely prevalent or widespread. Epidemiological studies show that the lifetime prevalence of depression is 10 to 15% and that the current rate of major depression stands at around 3.4%.

I think that awareness of depression and other mental health conditions was lacking and that increased awareness and then people seeking help for their mood accounts for the apparent increase. Depression is discussed in the media and the internet is available to look up information. And as more people talk about it more people seek help.

Part of his book argues that medication itself increases or causes depression. It is based on a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of some research. Our brains are pattern seeking; more people are taking anti depressants and more people are depressed therefore the medications are causing the problem. But correlation does not equal causation.

good...how much of that depression is the kind that requires lifetime medication...how long should people stay on meds....what are the docs saying...