Psychiatrists Speak Out on Drugs
Medical doctors and psychiatrists share an ever growing concern for not only the exaggerated claims that psychiatric drugs will cure mental problems and conditions, and excessive prescribing of them but because of increasing evidence of their capacity to inflict irrevocable harm.
In the face of this evidence it is remarkable that pharmaceutical companies are still free to manufacture them and that doctors are either ignorant of the scientific research and evidence of the harmful potential to cause damage to the brain, nervous system and many physiological functions upon which good health depends. This situation is likely to change in the future, as litigation threatens to claim compensation for patients whose medication has caused them additional disease and pain in conditions being described as ‘iatrogenic’.
Dr Peter Breggin, M.D – Harvard trained psychiatrist – former full time consultant at NIMH – Private practice in Ithaca, NY – author of …
“Medication Madness: A psychiatrist exposes the dangers of mood-altering medications “ (2008)
“Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain” pub 1983
Breggin says in his book ‘Toxic Psychiatry’ Pg246 “… As with most psychiatric drugs, the use of the medication eventually causes an increase of the very symptoms that the drug is supposed to ameliorate”.
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Joyce G. Small, MD and Iver F. Small, M.D Professors of Psychiatry at Indiana University, are critical of colleagues who use “psychoactive medications that are known to have neurotoxic effects”.
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Lawrence Stevens, J.D. author of “Psychiatric Drugs: Cure or Quackery?”
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Dr. Andrew Stanway, British physician says in “Overcoming Depression”
“If anti-depressant drugs were really as effective as they are made out to be surely hospital admission rates for depression would have fallen over the twenty years they’ve been available. Alas, this has not happened…. Many trials have found that tricyclics are only marginally more effective than placebos, and some have even found that they are not as effective as dummy tablets.” (Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd, page 159-160) pub 1981
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Richard Abrams, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at Chicago Medical School, published a book in 1988 “Electroconvulsive therapy” shares the same opinion about the lack of effectiveness of psychotropic drugs.
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Newsweek, Feb 7 1994 the magazine says “Prozac… and its chemical cousins Zoloft and Paxil are no more effective than older treatments for depression.”
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Forced drugging of patients in mental institutions is well known and routinely followed in practice. Patients who resist are now being threatened with imprisonment. Regardless of the condition or health of each of the elderly in aged care facilities, drug medication is mandatory, and often an infringement of personal liberty and freedom of choice.
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We are indebted to Douglas A Smith’s commentary in Time magazine cover story “the Age of Ritalin” in drawing attention to the inconsistencies and the dangers of our present modern drug treatment system that is becoming inflicted upon American society to include the most recently targeted age group – our children.
There has been an ‘epidemic’ of diagnosed cases of mental illness of various kinds in the community, with depression as a major problem. But some doctors are in question regarding their professional integrity when young children, even infants are being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder and other conditions for which psychiatric drugs are prescribed. Medication of this nature is capable of causing permanent harm to the brains and to the psyches of our children.
We wonder how this situation has been allowed to develop.
Cynics offer the suggestion that those with powerful lobbying can influence our health systems and that an unlimited market potential in medicating children, offers benefits to the pharmaceutical giants who can calculate advances in sales by the millions.
Our trust in our doctors is being eroded.
The medical system that does not effectively improve the health of individuals, prevent or cure our diseases disappoints us.
We wonder if our fight to eradicate narcotic drugs should be extended to eliminate medical drugs that are doing so much harm.
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