The Epidemic of Mental Illness, or Why Psychiatrists and Pharmaceutical Companies are Pure Evil.
(That's my own headline. Below is a composite of my own thoughts, and that of 3 or different news and/or opinion articles.)
The well respected James Ridgeway (Washington correspondent for Mother Jones magazine - yes, I know it's a liberal magazine, and James Ridgeway is a liberal, but none of that politics comes into play here, and none of that changes the message in any way, shape or form) wrote an excellent article for Al Jazeera English:
Mass psychosis in the US
How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs.
I urge you to click the link and read the entire article, although a good bit of it is below. If nothing else, click and read this from the Palm Beach Post. It'll blow you mind (but don't ever go to a shrink and tell them about it).
Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. The numbers of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times in the 20 year period between 1987 and 2007, from 1-in-184 Americans in 1987, to 1-in-76 in in 2007.
For children, the rise is even more startling - a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades.
Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children, well ahead of physical disabilities like cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, for which the federal programs were created.
A large survey of randomly selected adults, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and conducted between 2001 and 2003, found that an astonishing 46 percent met criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for having had at least one mental illness within four broad categories at some time in their lives. Another survey in 2010 indicated an even more astounding 68% with mental illness. The categories were “anxiety disorders,” including, among other subcategories, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); “mood disorders,” including major depression and bipolar disorders; “substance use disorders,” including alcohol and drug abuse; “impulse-control disorders,” including various behavioral problems and one of the hot new ones for kids and adults alike - attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); Most met criteria for more than one diagnosis.
What in the world is going on here? Is the prevalence of mental illness really that high and still climbing? Particularly if these disorders are biologically determined and not a result of environmental influences, is it even remotely plausible to suppose that such an increase is real? Or are we learning to recognize and diagnose mental disorders that were always there?
Or, on the other hand, are we simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one? And what about the drugs that are now the mainstay of treatment? Do they work? If they do, shouldn’t we expect the prevalence of mental illness to be declining, instead of rising?
Of course, when you are diagnosed with a mental illness, there's a pill for that. More than 10% of Americans over the age of six routinely take antidepressants.
With over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotic drugs to treat psychosis, such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel, has replaced drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux as the top-selling class of drugs in the US. That is, ironically, insane.
Once upon a time antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses, you know, crazy people. Today it seems everyone is taking antipsychotics.
"Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics," writes James Ridgeway in his article linked below. "Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis."
That's right. If you have trouble sleeping, instead of warm milk, which actually works, take a Risperdal, which actually doesn't, but you think it does, so it does. <snort>
By now, just about everyone knows how the drug industry works to influence the minds of American doctors, plying them with gifts, junkets, ego-tripping awards, and research funding in exchange for endorsing or prescribing the latest and most lucrative drugs. According to Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, under the tutelage of Big Pharma, we are "simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one."
The explosion in antipsychotic use coincides with the pharmaceutical industry's development of a new class of medications known as "atypical antipsychotics." Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel in the 1990s, followed by Abilify in the early 2000s. Don't forget Prozac (and its other names, Sarafem and Fontex).
The atypical anti-psychotics were the bright new stars in the pharmaceutical industry's roster of psychotropic drugs - costly, patented medications that made people feel and behave better without any shaking or drooling of the older Haldol and Thorazine. Sales grew steadily, until by 2009 Seroquel and Abilify numbered 5th and 6th in annual drug sales, and prescriptions written for the top three atypical antipsychotics totaled more than 20 million. Suddenly, antipsychotics weren't just for psychotics any more.
What's especially troubling about the over-prescription of the new antipsychotics (the atypicals) is its prevalence among the very young and the very old - vulnerable groups who often do not make their own choices when it comes to what medications they take. Investigations into antipsychotic use suggests that their purpose, in these cases, may be to subdue and tranquilize rather than to treat any genuine psychosis.
Carl Elliott reports in Mother Jones magazine: "Once bipolar disorder could be treated with atypicals, rates of diagnoses rose dramatically, especially in children. According to a recent Columbia University study, the number of children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder rose 40-fold between 1994 and 2003." And according to another study, "one in five children who visited a psychiatrist came away with a prescription for an antipsychotic drug."
It's so bad and so over prescribed that, IMHO, if a doctor tells you that you need an antidepressant, you almost certainly do not.
People who go nuts and shoot up a shopping mall or whatever, almost all of them are on some kind of antidepressant. Antidepressants are also known as psychotropic, psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical - a chemical that crosses the blood-brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior. These drugs can turn an otherwise relatively normal human being into a psychotic mess, whether they are prescribed for ADHD or insomnia.
If you or someone you love are on antidepressants, proceed with caution. Make sure it's actually needed, and not something that Big Pharma wants to you have.
(That's my own headline. Below is a composite of my own thoughts, and that of 3 or different news and/or opinion articles.)
The well respected James Ridgeway (Washington correspondent for Mother Jones magazine - yes, I know it's a liberal magazine, and James Ridgeway is a liberal, but none of that politics comes into play here, and none of that changes the message in any way, shape or form) wrote an excellent article for Al Jazeera English:
Mass psychosis in the US
How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs.
I urge you to click the link and read the entire article, although a good bit of it is below. If nothing else, click and read this from the Palm Beach Post. It'll blow you mind (but don't ever go to a shrink and tell them about it).
Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. The numbers of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times in the 20 year period between 1987 and 2007, from 1-in-184 Americans in 1987, to 1-in-76 in in 2007.
For children, the rise is even more startling - a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades.
Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children, well ahead of physical disabilities like cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, for which the federal programs were created.
A large survey of randomly selected adults, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and conducted between 2001 and 2003, found that an astonishing 46 percent met criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for having had at least one mental illness within four broad categories at some time in their lives. Another survey in 2010 indicated an even more astounding 68% with mental illness. The categories were “anxiety disorders,” including, among other subcategories, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); “mood disorders,” including major depression and bipolar disorders; “substance use disorders,” including alcohol and drug abuse; “impulse-control disorders,” including various behavioral problems and one of the hot new ones for kids and adults alike - attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); Most met criteria for more than one diagnosis.
What in the world is going on here? Is the prevalence of mental illness really that high and still climbing? Particularly if these disorders are biologically determined and not a result of environmental influences, is it even remotely plausible to suppose that such an increase is real? Or are we learning to recognize and diagnose mental disorders that were always there?
Or, on the other hand, are we simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one? And what about the drugs that are now the mainstay of treatment? Do they work? If they do, shouldn’t we expect the prevalence of mental illness to be declining, instead of rising?
Of course, when you are diagnosed with a mental illness, there's a pill for that. More than 10% of Americans over the age of six routinely take antidepressants.
With over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotic drugs to treat psychosis, such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel, has replaced drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux as the top-selling class of drugs in the US. That is, ironically, insane.
Once upon a time antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses, you know, crazy people. Today it seems everyone is taking antipsychotics.
"Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics," writes James Ridgeway in his article linked below. "Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis."
That's right. If you have trouble sleeping, instead of warm milk, which actually works, take a Risperdal, which actually doesn't, but you think it does, so it does. <snort>
By now, just about everyone knows how the drug industry works to influence the minds of American doctors, plying them with gifts, junkets, ego-tripping awards, and research funding in exchange for endorsing or prescribing the latest and most lucrative drugs. According to Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, under the tutelage of Big Pharma, we are "simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one."
The explosion in antipsychotic use coincides with the pharmaceutical industry's development of a new class of medications known as "atypical antipsychotics." Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel in the 1990s, followed by Abilify in the early 2000s. Don't forget Prozac (and its other names, Sarafem and Fontex).
The atypical anti-psychotics were the bright new stars in the pharmaceutical industry's roster of psychotropic drugs - costly, patented medications that made people feel and behave better without any shaking or drooling of the older Haldol and Thorazine. Sales grew steadily, until by 2009 Seroquel and Abilify numbered 5th and 6th in annual drug sales, and prescriptions written for the top three atypical antipsychotics totaled more than 20 million. Suddenly, antipsychotics weren't just for psychotics any more.
What's especially troubling about the over-prescription of the new antipsychotics (the atypicals) is its prevalence among the very young and the very old - vulnerable groups who often do not make their own choices when it comes to what medications they take. Investigations into antipsychotic use suggests that their purpose, in these cases, may be to subdue and tranquilize rather than to treat any genuine psychosis.
Carl Elliott reports in Mother Jones magazine: "Once bipolar disorder could be treated with atypicals, rates of diagnoses rose dramatically, especially in children. According to a recent Columbia University study, the number of children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder rose 40-fold between 1994 and 2003." And according to another study, "one in five children who visited a psychiatrist came away with a prescription for an antipsychotic drug."
It's so bad and so over prescribed that, IMHO, if a doctor tells you that you need an antidepressant, you almost certainly do not.
People who go nuts and shoot up a shopping mall or whatever, almost all of them are on some kind of antidepressant. Antidepressants are also known as psychotropic, psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical - a chemical that crosses the blood-brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior. These drugs can turn an otherwise relatively normal human being into a psychotic mess, whether they are prescribed for ADHD or insomnia.
If you or someone you love are on antidepressants, proceed with caution. Make sure it's actually needed, and not something that Big Pharma wants to you have.
