DON'T BLINDLY TRUST PSYCHIATRISTS - the dark truth of antidepressants, psychotropic drugs, mental diseases, and the field of psychiatry

[nitrogen]

Greetings, mothafakas (coming from me means sweetie). Education time.



All this knowledge is useless to me now. Might as well dump it here, hopefully to help some folks make informed decisions when it comes to managing their mental health.

WHAT EXACTLY CAUSES DEPRESSION? NOBODY KNOWS.
Let's clear up a concept first. "Association" is not equal to "causation." Association is a promising step to proving causation, but there's a gap that requires more evidence and a deeper understanding of pathology to fill.

You'd find authors of scientific articles published in medical journals are very careful with suggesting causation. Even when scientists make major discoveries, they more often use the phrases "linked to" or "associated with" rather than "caused by."

You can say AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, anthrax is caused by Bacillus Anthracis bacteria, elephantiasis caused by filarial worms, etc, but you cannot say depression is caused by brain chemistry imbalance or some specific genetic defect - only associations. By the way, life stressors are risk factors and triggers but not direct causes; and feeling down or sad doesn't automatically point to clinical depression.

Cancer can be diagnosed by directly seeing the morphological characteristics of malignant cells. Diabetes can be diagnosed by measuring blood sugar levels.

How's depression diagnosed? Questionnaires alone. There are no lab tests to detect brain chemistry imbalance - there's no measurable physical abnormality to correct.

FDA APPROVED MEANS SAFE? BULLSHIT.
A historical anecdote first:
A true American hero - Frances Oldham Kelsey. There was a generation of children born with "seal limbs" in Canada, Great Britain, and West Germany as a direct result of their mothers taking thalidomide as a mild sleeping pill during pregnancy. The US narrowly escaped a similar tragedy because of this woman. As a medical reviewer at the FDA, Kelsey was one of three people charged with determining a drug's safety before it could be made available for mass marketing and public consumption. She blocked the release of thalidomide in the US, under tremendous pressure from pharmaceutical companies and stupid gullible bitches from the general public.

Before this thalidomide incident, the FDA medical reviewers only had 60 days to approve or reject a drug. If a decision hadn't been made by the end of the 60-day window, the drug would automatically go on the market.

After this thalidomide incident, Congress passed a bunch of new laws and the FDA has been more stringent on drug review, but the process is still rife with loopholes. Four phases of clinical trials are carried out to prove a drug's safety and effectiveness. Phases I, II, & III have to be completed for FDA approval. There are many ways to tweak and manipulate the design of these clinical trials and data. Just one out of the many ways I know: cover up side effects with additional drugs that are not part of the study.

Furthermore, extended studies are rarely done before a drug gains FDA approval (often only a few weeks), so medications can be around for a long time before anybody starts to get a clear picture of what can happen after years of continuous use. This leads to the question, when does Phase IV, post marketing surveillance, get completed? Well, that's done AFTER a drug is approved and released into the market. The general public becomes the unsuspecting guinea pigs of new drugs.

Besides the above-mentioned points, the FDA has conflict of interest:
The FDA allows scientists and docs with financial ties to drug companies to sit on the FDA drug evaluation panels which have the authority to approve or reject drugs. For example, every single psychiatrist on the FDA drug evaluation panel that approved Paxil (an SSRI antidepressant) either directly or indirectly received funding from pharmaceutical companies. Their identities are public record.

PDUFA act: A law passed by Congress to allow the FDA to collect hefty fees from drug manufacturers to speed up new drug approval process. PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) has been a strong supporter of this bill.

INVENTED MENTAL DISEASES
In the DSM (THE manual/bible that psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), many mental illnesses are obviously illnesses - you notice something is off right away when you see a person inflicted by one of those illnesses. On the other hand, there are also so-called mental illnesses that suspiciously look like invented diseases that label individual variations among humans and the inevitable ups and downs in life as diseases. To name a few, social anxiety disorder (shyness); separation anxiety (homesickness); narcissistic personality disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. The DSM has gone under several revisions over the years. The DSM-V contains tripled number of mental illnesses than the DSM-I.

How does a "mental disorder" end up in the DSM? A panel of psychiatrists take votes to decide what to include in the DSM - most have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

One example of drug mongering. After the Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, who had financial ties to over 20 drug companies, published articles all over the world about bipolar disorder in children and gave talks, there was a 4000% increase in the diagnosis of bipolar in children and spike in drugs being prescribed to children. Drug companies made huge profits. More than a decade later, he was exposed by a Congressional investigation for failing to report $1.6 million in drug money income.

A report from the CDC says almost half of the adults in the US will develop a mental illness in their lifetime. And a whole bunch of media and organizations cry out, " 20% of US adults currently have a mental health condition, and more than half of them do not receive treatment. Among youth, the rates of depression are rising, but 80 percent of children and adolescents get either insufficient treatment or none at all. More people need to get medicated!" This begs the question: are mental illnesses searching for drugs, or are drugs searching for "mental illnesses"? Who funded the reports and surveys?

PSYCHIATRISTS KNOW THEIR SHIT? HMM...
The bottom feeders in med school classes most often end up in...you guessed it...psychiatry and primary care. Most of those who can't get into U.S. med schools and instead attend Carribean med schools then practice in the US end up in…you guessed it...psychiatry and primary care.

To people outside the healthcare system, an MD is an MD; to other MDs, especially those in competitive specialties, psychiatrists are the "retarded little brothers" of MDs.

With all that unflattering stuff being said about psychiatrists, it's a stereotypical generalization.

On a separate but related subject, the more we know about the mechanism of action of a drug, the more predictable the clinical efficacy (aka, therapeutic effectiveness), toxicity, side effects, etc. Antibiotics are a good example of this.

The mechanisms of action of antidepressants, and many other psychotropic drugs, on the other hand, aren't well known. Science doesn't have that comprehensive and accurate understanding of the roles of all the neurotransmitters, how they interact, how affecting the concentration of one type of neurotransmitter disrupts delicate brain processes, how irritating nervous tissues generate conscious experiences.

For instance, the early generation antidepressants, TCAs and MAOIs, fell out of use because they activate too many unwanted sites/receptors in the brain. The new generations, SSRIs and a bunch of multi-receptor antidepressants are more selective, but their effects on patients are still varied and unpredictable. They can reduce anxiety in some patients, but can increase anxiety, induce psychosis and suicidal thoughts in others. The side effects range from mild to life-threatening. It's always been a trial and error approach - if this drug doesn't work, add another one or switch to another one.

SHRINKS' POOR TRACK RECORD OF TREATING MENTAL ILLNESSES:
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, promoted cocaine for all kinds of problems, including "masturbation to excess" which he believed was a mental illness and the root of all addictions.

Between the 1930s and 1950s, methamphetamine, under the brand name Norodin, was a top-line antidepressant. A drug that is so dangerous, addictive, with a long list of life-threatening side effects, was popular for as long as 20 years before a considerable number of people realized something about it definitely wasn't right.

Heroin was invented by a German pharmaceutical company and hit the market in 1898. It was promoted as a cutting-edge cough medicine, cure for morphine addiction, used as a mild sleep medicine for children. Doctors were quick to embrace and praise its benefits. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal even claimed there's no danger of acquiring a habit of using it. The company didn't stop manufacturing it until 1913, and it didn't get banned in the US until 1924 (on market for 26 yrs).

The notorious lobotomy - basically stabbing the brain with an icepick through the eye socket. John F. Kennedy's sister, Rosemary Kennedy, got a prefrontal lobotomy to reduce her mood swings, seizures, and erratic behaviors - it left her incapacitated for life. As one of the most prominent families in US history, they still fell for this gold standard procedure at that time. The doc who invented the procedure received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1949.

There are a bunch of other examples which I'm not gonna list here.

Conclusion: While it's not a good idea to trust everything your psychiatrist tells you or diligently take all the pills being thrown at you with no questions asked, don't automatically jump to conclusions and block them out, either, as they do work wonders on some people.

 

[OneBigBlur]

I agree, the only ones that I'd trust are the ones in Belgium or the Netherlands.

If anyone is interested I'd recommend reading some of Thomas Szasz's books. He is one of the few psychiatrists/psychologists that was humane, fought for peoples right to die, was against involuntary commitment, and considered "mental illness" to mostly be pseudoscience. Good people like this are very rare and it's a constant battle to have to remind myself that my therapists are not my friends and not on my side.

 

[bukowski]

 

[Science Is Scary]

It makes me happy when someone doesn't fall into the trap of seeing only the problems and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I've had bad experiences with psychiatry, and I recognize there is evidence it can work for other people. There's certainly no end to the problems that one can find with the profession and the systems surrounding it. Some of the problems with psychiatry seem to be problems with medicine in general.

Like all medicine, I think it's important to weigh the risks against the benefits. For example, if one's psychiatrist recommends a drug for an off-label use, there better be good evidence in the literature that it can treat one's particular problems. Otherwise, it might not be worth the risk of side effects.

One of my favorite books on evidence-based medicine covers this topic quite well I think. It goes over weighing the risks against the benefits for treatment and comparing with no treatment or other options.

 

[Deleted member 1465]

Well written. I believe psychs are too ready to diagnose a mental illness when sometimes a person's mental state is a very reasonable reaction to a specific situation.

 

[Misanthrope]

My thinking is too much mired in fog but, I wrote this elsewhere and it seems relevant to the topic. It is a bit disjointed but I wanted to contribute regardless.

They have also spun the chemical imbalance hypothesis to be presented like it is a fact. When it isn't. That more came out of marketing and misrepresenting findings on serotonin and the convenience of downplaying stigma. Also, everyone likes a quick fix to complicated problems.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f670/37b3c2ae7e17f211d399a18349fd6ae70a2b.pdf

If you don't have the energy to read much of that. It comes down this. If you are depressed and I give you chocolate and you report your mood is lifted. That is not proof that your depression is caused by a lack of chocolate or even cured by chocolate. Only that chocolate seemed to lift your mood.

SSRI's work on the same principle. Since depression is not at all understood in an objective manner like a disease may well be. Then the focus is on the reduction of symptomatology. This is not a great deal different to physical illness which is objectively understood but has no current cure. So the focus is on the reduction of symptomatology to provide a better quality of life and functionality until a cure is discovered one day... At least there though they can objectively measure improvement.

Sticking with the chocolate example. If you consistently eat chocolate at some point there are going to be ramifications. Maybe significant weight gain, even onset diabetes further down the line.

SSRI's are the same and the ramifications can be far more serious. Does that make them bad though? Well, only you can decide if rolling the dice on if a reduction in symptomology in the now vs potentially lasting consequences is worth it? Since biologically we are all different and comorbid conditions create even more variability. There is no certainty it will work for you, even if it works for someone else. Medicine is reliant on you being a guinea pig and simply seeing what happens. Then dealing with the outcome.

Where I have significant contention. Is to make an informed decision is to be informed of risks. To be provided truthful information even if that information is, "We don't know how or why it works for some but this is its efficacy versus placebo. This is the worst known potential outcome. Are you wanting to take that risk?" if even the physician is being lied to by not having all the data then how can anyone make an informed decision? Professional or otherwise?

What usually happens is you present with depression. They sip from their branded Zoloft mug aware they have a heavy caseload, and write you a prescription for Zoloft and tell you to come back in two weeks. Not even bothering to rule out physical issues. This behaviour increasingly seems to be becoming more common due to time constraints. Which is of major concern if you have a developing thyroid issue, onset diabetes or a tumour in the brain that is growing with every day wasted. Or a myriad of other potential issues that produce depressive symptoms as one of the first warning signs. This may well then get lost amidst the side effects now altering brain chemistry.

My other contention is that applying a purely biological reductionist approach to everyone as a first response. Is pretty dismissive of environmental factors that may be ruining your life. Taking an SSRI is not going to help you if you are still being molested by your uncle, or live in a toxic environment that is constantly tearing down your self-esteem. Or being bullied at school. Or job stress makes you want to stab your own eyes out on a regular basis. Or a host of other things that are logically damaging to well being.

Another contention is that leaving people to languish on things because if you are a zombie, you are not technically in distress or making a nuisance of yourself; even if your life is slipping you by one year at a time. Is both wrong and not a meaningful quality of life outcome at that point.

I think the problem is we are dealing with broken systems content to make us collateral if it serves the bottom line. That bottom line is best served by keeping people uninformed in the first place.

--

Mental illness really is a misnomer and convenient marketing term born out of misrepresenting the research on serotonin then aggressively marketed to you in a bastardised form the original researchers don't approve of. All moved into the public conscious by cartoon depression coats, banding around sciency phrases. Showing equally sciencey footage of neurons firing. Talking about chemical imbalances and serotonin. Like it is a correlated fact and easy as pulling a coat off to be cured, just pop this pill. Not much different to Granola being healthy while having similar sugar content to a pop tart. But those fields of oats touched up by Adobe, really sell it.

The ICD-10 refers to them as mental behaviours and disorders for a reason. Because they don't fit the clinical definition of disease as there is no way to measure as yet. All you are left with is the self-report of the individual. Stating something is wrong that is upsetting the balance in their life. Hence disorder not a disease. Currently, there is no blood test or way to measure biologically at all with any relevance. There are some interesting ghosts of patterns but much of that is in its infancy. Recently what we thought was known about memory in general has been turned on its head completely. Emotion itself is pretty abstract in of itself.

The current view is it likely a big mix of things and understanding of the brain and body is still ongoing. As mental disorder is a broad umbrella term to begin with. It does not have to be an all or nothing binary prospect. Between it is all environmental or all biological. The hereditary angle suggests one thing. If it is purely environmental down to trauma why is there a hereditary aspect at all? But if it is only Biological, why is one risk factor of depression listed as losing your job? I don't know of any understood disease models that have job loss as a risk factor?

Also if you ask some people why they are depressed. They can give you a solid reason for what their source of pain is.

But similarly you can ask another and they won't identify anything just what they feel. Their source of pain then is the depression itself disrupting what they had before.

That is why I am open to it being both. The transition to better understanding dementia is good example why. Much of it came down to advances in imaging technology. Still lack complete understanding but it is paving the way for a preventative.

I feel the environmental factor though is very much downplayed and being medicated seems to be the first response regardless if your reasons are blatantly environmental ones of being vilified for existing. If it wasn't society would have to examine its role in the toxic environment it has normalised. It is interesting to note that many of these drugs are derivatives of street drugs, chemically nudged and patented. Many still have street value, so that says enough to me why they 'work'. Discontinuation syndrome is just sanitised words meaning withdrawal. If you do heroin and feel good, that is not proof you have a lack of heroin imbalance.

Often your tax is involved in research funding. Yet you still wind up paying over the odds. It is all so bizarre. But we are consumer cattle and the law has enshrined legal lying. lobbying itself often plays out no differently to bribery.

If I could go back in time and be as informed as I am now. My first response would likely have been to try other avenues first and not rolled the dice straight away. I have pointed those other avenues out before but just got hostile responses. There was not a recovery section back then. So maybe I will try again.

 

[Nem]

big pharma is essentially crap, the fda has been caught accepting bribes from companies to get their drugs approved. Certainly wish I never took any goddamn ass raping meds
Peace/hugs

 

[Deleted member 1465]

My thinking is too much mired in fog but, I wrote this elsewhere and it seems relevant to the topic. It is a bit disjointed but I wanted to contribute regardless.

They have also spun the chemical imbalance hypothesis to be presented like it is a fact. When it isn't. That more came out of marketing and misrepresenting findings on serotonin and the convenience of downplaying stigma. Also, everyone likes a quick fix to complicated problems.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f670/37b3c2ae7e17f211d399a18349fd6ae70a2b.pdf

If you don't have the energy to read much of that. It comes down this. If you are depressed and I give you chocolate and you report your mood is lifted. That is not proof that your depression is caused by a lack of chocolate or even cured by chocolate. Only that chocolate seemed to lift your mood.

SSRI's work on the same principle. Since depression is not at all understood in an objective manner like a disease may well be. Then the focus is on the reduction of symptomatology. This is not a great deal different to physical illness which is objectively understood but has no current cure. So the focus is on the reduction of symptomatology to provide a better quality of life and functionality until a cure is discovered one day... At least there though they can objectively measure improvement.

Sticking with the chocolate example. If you consistently eat chocolate at some point there are going to be ramifications. Maybe significant weight gain, even onset diabetes further down the line.

SSRI's are the same and the ramifications can be far more serious. Does that make them bad though? Well, only you can decide if rolling the dice on if a reduction in symptomology in the now vs potentially lasting consequences is worth it? Since biologically we are all different and comorbid conditions create even more variability. There is no certainty it will work for you, even if it works for someone else. Medicine is reliant on you being a guinea pig and simply seeing what happens. Then dealing with the outcome.

Where I have significant contention. Is to make an informed decision is to be informed of risks. To be provided truthful information even if that information is, "We don't know how or why it works for some but this is its efficacy versus placebo. This is the worst known potential outcome. Are you wanting to take that risk?" if even the physician is being lied to by not having all the data then how can anyone make an informed decision? Professional or otherwise?

What usually happens is you present with depression. They sip from their branded Zoloft mug aware they have a heavy caseload, and write you a prescription for Zoloft and tell you to come back in two weeks. Not even bothering to rule out physical issues. This behaviour increasingly seems to be becoming more common due to time constraints. Which is of major concern if you have a developing thyroid issue, onset diabetes or a tumour in the brain that is growing with every day wasted. Or a myriad of other potential issues that produce depressive symptoms as one of the first warning signs. This may well then get lost amidst the side effects now altering brain chemistry.

My other contention is that applying a purely biological reductionist approach to everyone as a first response. Is pretty dismissive of environmental factors that may be ruining your life. Taking an SSRI is not going to help you if you are still being molested by your uncle, or live in a toxic environment that is constantly tearing down your self-esteem. Or being bullied at school. Or job stress makes you want to stab your own eyes out on a regular basis. Or a host of other things that are logically damaging to well being.

Another contention is that leaving people to languish on things because if you are a zombie, you are not technically in distress or making a nuisance of yourself; even if your life is slipping you by one year at a time. Is both wrong and not a meaningful quality of life outcome at that point.

I think the problem is we are dealing with broken systems content to make us collateral if it serves the bottom line. That bottom line is best served by keeping people uninformed in the first place.

--

Mental illness really is a misnomer and convenient marketing term born out of misrepresenting the research on serotonin then aggressively marketed to you in a bastardised form the original researchers don't approve of. All moved into the public conscious by cartoon depression coats, banding around sciency phrases. Showing equally sciencey footage of neurons firing. Talking about chemical imbalances and serotonin. Like it is a correlated fact and easy as pulling a coat off to be cured, just pop this pill. Not much different to Granola being healthy while having similar sugar content to a pop tart. But those fields of oats touched up by Adobe, really sell it.

The ICD-10 refers to them as mental behaviours and disorders for a reason. Because they don't fit the clinical definition of disease as there is no way to measure as yet. All you are left with is the self-report of the individual. Stating something is wrong that is upsetting the balance in their life. Hence disorder not a disease. Currently, there is no blood test or way to measure biologically at all with any relevance. There are some interesting ghosts of patterns but much of that is in its infancy. Recently what we thought was known about memory in general has been turned on its head completely. Emotion itself is pretty abstract in of itself.

The current view is it likely a big mix of things and understanding of the brain and body is still ongoing. As mental disorder is a broad umbrella term to begin with. It does not have to be an all or nothing binary prospect. Between it is all environmental or all biological. The hereditary angle suggests one thing. If it is purely environmental down to trauma why is there a hereditary aspect at all? But if it is only Biological, why is one risk factor of depression listed as losing your job? I don't know of any understood disease models that have job loss as a risk factor?

Also if you ask some people why they are depressed. They can give you a solid reason for what their source of pain is.

But similarly you can ask another and they won't identify anything just what they feel. Their source of pain then is the depression itself disrupting what they had before.

That is why I am open to it being both. The transition to better understanding dementia is good example why. Much of it came down to advances in imaging technology. Still lack complete understanding but it is paving the way for a preventative.

I feel the environmental factor though is very much downplayed and being medicated seems to be the first response regardless if your reasons are blatantly environmental ones of being vilified for existing. If it wasn't society would have to examine its role in the toxic environment it has normalised. It is interesting to note that many of these drugs are derivatives of street drugs, chemically nudged and patented. Many still have street value, so that says enough to me why they 'work'. Discontinuation syndrome is just sanitised words meaning withdrawal. If you do heroin and feel good, that is not proof you have a lack of heroin imbalance.

Often your tax is involved in research funding. Yet you still wind up paying over the odds. It is all so bizarre. But we are consumer cattle and the law has enshrined legal lying. lobbying itself often plays out no differently to bribery.

If I could go back in time and be as informed as I am now. My first response would likely have been to try other avenues first and not rolled the dice straight away. I have pointed those other avenues out before but just got hostile responses. There was not a recovery section back then. So maybe I will try again.

I tried it xplaining some of that to my caseworker today. Guess how that went down?

 

[Boonks]

OP @nitrogen I love you

Motherfucker!

 

[nitrogen]

the only ones that I'd trust are the ones in Belgium or the Netherlands

What's special about Belgium and the Netherlands compared to the U.S.? Please forgive my ignorance of other countries' systems.

Like all medicine, I think it's important to weigh the risks against the benefits.

This is a very good point. Even for the PDUFA Act I mentioned, the FDA has an incentive to rush drugs onto the market at the cost of the general public bearing high risk of suffering serious side effects. On the other hand, new drugs mean new hope, especially to those who've exhausted all conventional treatments and their progressing conditions don't allow them to wait long. Some desperate cancer patients are dying to (no pun intended) participate in chemotherapy clinical trials before those newly invented drugs or procedures get approved by the FDA.

Sticking with the chocolate example

I love your chocolate example. It's a brilliant and fitting comparison with SSRIs.

Which is of major concern if you have a developing thyroid issue, onset diabetes or a tumour in the brain that is growing with every day wasted. Or a myriad of other potential issues that produce depressive symptoms as one of the first warning signs. This may well then get lost amidst the side effects now altering brain chemistry.

I haven't thought of this! Super good point. It's definitely a major concern.

My other contention is that applying a purely biological reductionist approach to everyone as a first response. Is pretty dismissive of environmental factors that may be ruining your life.

Some research shows that the combo of medication and therapy work better than medication alone. Perhaps therapy can address some environmental factors. Unfortunately, many life problems don't come with solutions. All people can do is bearing the pain.

if even the physician is being lied to by not having all the data then how can anyone make an informed decision? Professional or otherwise?

Those drugs can't be sold without a prescription, so drug companies target the drug prescribers/docs to tout the benefits of the drugs and brainwash them. The sad part is, most docs and shrinks aren't aware that they may be sales agents for the pharmaceutical companies; many of them actually genuinely believe they're helping their patients. There are academic psychiatrists, especially key opinion leaders, who work and teach at medical schools, get paid by drug companies often in the form of grant rewards or research funding, to feed certain information to the med students and their peers. Med schools receive money from drug companies - not really a secret. For instance, the University of Michigan Depression Center is funded by Eli Lilly.

Nowadays, the majority of psychotropic drugs and antidepressants are prescribed by primary care physicians (yeah right, not even psychiatrists), who occupy the lowest rank of MDs and receive the least training.

What prompted me to start this thread is that a lot of people on this site say stuff like "damn, I'm taking 3 medications prescribed by my shrink but I still feel like shit and still want to die" as if they believe the more drugs they take they better they should feel. Also, somebody wrote to me that his psychiatrist prescribed him 9 medications and sexually assaulted him.

Hence disorder not a disease.

Very interesting. I didn't know that.

I have pointed those other avenues out before but just got hostile responses. There was not a recovery section back then.

Really? WTF. I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm not surprised. It's my educated guess that this site is disproportionately dominated by poverty-stricken, uneducated people - uneducated people tend to be closed-minded.

A study co-authored by a UCLA professor determined that suicide rates in the U.S. are closely correlated to poverty rates. A more recent study led by Ohio State University also finds a powerful link between suicide and economic deprivation — a measure that captures poverty, unemployment, low levels of education and reliance on government assistance. UC Davis Center for Poverty Research concluded that the less educated, the higher the poverty level.

I have the feeling that I'm gonna get called a condescending jerk. Well, whatever.

Guess how that went down?

How did it go down?

@Boonks


Here's a disturbing fact I forgot to mention: Pharmaceutical companies can secure an extra 6 months of protection for a drug's patent if they test the drug in children, under the Section 505A of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Longer patent means raking in more $. A few years back, a drug company's move to test a powerful addictive pain medication that belongs to the opioids family in children 1 yr before its original patent expiration date sparked controversy.

 

[OneBigBlur]

A post from reddit that I'd like to share related to the OP:

Yes, most therapists must receive post-graduate education and certification. The education they receive is functionally like that of a priest; e.g. they are taught to view things through a very particular scope - whereas the priest is taught the lens of their particular religion, the therapist-to-be is taught the lens of contemporary psychology and its endless pathologies. Therapy in-and-of itself, is like a confessional in a church, the therapist is the priest and the patient the confessor. The patient confesses their worries and problems much like a would-be blasphemer would confess their "sins".

The sad thing is, "just put your head in the sand" is probably a pretty common response to the OPs concerns not only at mental health resources across the world, but from peers and colleagues; the patient lives in a world where being open about such things in the dehumanized, hyperindividualized public sphere typically only invites scrutiny and further alienation (likely from individuals who are just as alienated and scared as them), which increases their reliance on the therapist as much as it increases their sense of cognitive dissonance, as though they are caught between two realities in a depersonalized limbo. Of course, there's only the one reality as far as we know, but to this patient their inner world has become an enigma and its workings thoroughly mystified by an industry that portends one must go through many years of schooling and certification before they can make sense of the human mind; which is as absurd and circular claim to make as "God works in mysterious ways." - as if that explains why your toaster catching on fire this morning and the delay that caused made you miss your train commute derailing, killing everyone on board. Likewise, it is just as circular to tell someone they have a disease called "depression", which can only be treated by "trained professionals" - trained, of course, in "psychology", an invention of the human mind as much as the phrase "mental illness" with all it's implicit meanings. But the backbone of the entire practice is to be a truthclaim, much like any religion - they suppose "mental illness" to be as sacrosanct as religions hold their Gods; that is, as self-evident and infallible as a physicist would consider thermodynamics.

Perhaps it would be too radical to admit "depression" is an entirely normal reaction to a world in which one exists as a dehumanized, chronically hollowed-out wage slave whose life has been reduced to a series of empty, mindless labor and emptier consumption rituals, comforted only by addictive drugs pushed on them at every turn, and vacuous social ties of similarly hollowed out wageslaves who only know how to monologue and compete; who breathes, eats and shits microplastic, pollution and pesticides, and can't remember the last time they felt somebody actually cared if they lived or died. It'd be far too radical to admit we're living through the slow-motion collapse of the living super organism we call 'civilization' and every case of "depression" is like one little support column showing signs of giving out under the weight of a monstrosity that has become too bloated and labyrinthine for its own good. Then we'd be engaging in reality, giving the "illness" the scope it deserves, and psychology cares not for this.

The reality is, contemporary psychology functions much like a religion or a cult does, in that what one receives from it depends very much on what one puts into it - the power wielded by such organizations are directly correlate to belief of their followers. This is the power of placebo, confirmation bias, and magical thinking. If one considers their reaction to, say, climate change to be "abnormal", they merely have to walk into a therapist's office and their belief will be confirmed - their conscious experience will become a list of "symptoms" of "illness", for which they'll receive "medication". The words, the labels, the pills, they're all momentarily comforting, but none actually deal with the original problem any more than popping an Aspirin cures a raging influenza infection. That's because the entire "mental health industry" is palliative at best - worse yet, it serves at the behest of the state, which benefits massively from an industry that teaches individuals to view their life's problems through a scope that is not only decidedly apolitical but atomized as well.

Take an issue like climate change and this scope fails almost entirely - its sufficiently large-scale enough that the therapist's individualizing lens has no real answer to it. One who is trained in end-of-life therapy may have some more substantial answers that verge into decidedly philosophical territory, but most "by the book" therapists will preach willful ignorance; their role is not to create independent-thinking individuals, community leaders, politically-minded citizens or would-be revolutionaries, because they don't operate in this paradigm; an office vending machine is more communalistic than a therapist's office could ever claim to be. No, their role is to keep people complicit and complacent in the consume/work false dichotomy lifestyle for they are part of the very same paradigm, this being their work as much as preaching is a priests'. The "mental health" industry is obliged to meet the absurdity of the world it exists in and profits off of, and so existential terror becomes "eco-anxiety", another cutesy label which can be "treated" with the right combination of benzodiazepines and willful ignorance, just as a village witch doctor may have once treated "spiritual possession" with a concoction of ayahuasca and a ceremony. Now this ceremony only takes 45 minutes and $200 a week and a monthly trip to the pharmacy. Who ever said capitalism wasn't efficient?!

What's special about Belgium and the Netherlands compared to the U.S.? Please forgive my ignorance of other countries' systems.

They allow euthanasia for the "mentally ill". I saw a user the other day mention how conversations between "patient" and psychiatrist is a two way street in the Netherlands where nothing is held back including his plans for suicide, I don't think it can get any more honest and trustworthy than that.

 

[Wayfaerer]

SSRI's work on the same principle. Since depression is not at all understood in an objective manner like a disease may well be. Then the focus is on the reduction of symptomatology. This is not a great deal different to physical illness which is objectively understood but has no current cure. So the focus is on the reduction of symptomatology to provide a better quality of life and functionality until a cure is discovered one day... At least there though they can objectively measure improvement.

There will never, ever be a cure even if it were possible. It's significantly more profitable to treat someone for life than cure them. They view us no differently than how Jimmy Dean views its livestock.

 

[nitrogen]

A post from reddit that I'd like to share related to the OP:

They allow euthanasia for the "mentally ill". I saw a user the other day mention how conversations between "patient" and psychiatrist is a two way street in the Netherlands where nothing is held back including his plans for suicide, I don't think it can get any more honest and trustworthy than that.

@OneBigBlur Thanks for sharing the reddit post. It's thought-provoking and elaborately written. The only thing I disagree with is "depression is a normal reaction to people being hollowed-out wage slaves."

I did some research on Belgium and Netherlands euthanization of the "mentally ill" this morning. It's encouraging to see non-terminally ill people with depression, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar having their requests approved and fulfilled, but the number of cases has stayed extremely small.

Although there are no lab tests to confirm whether somebody has a mental illness or not, the euthanized proved through ACTIONS that they had been suffering from severe mental illnesses for a long time - bouncing in and out of psych wards, documented multiple suicide attempts, etc.

People with a medical history that merely shows they were diagnosed with depression by taking a questionnaire and they've been on antidepressants for years will not get approved for euthanasia in Belgium or the Netherlands. Sigh....I got excited for a moment when I saw your post. It looks like I'd have to take it into my own hands after all.

Correct me if I'm wrong. You seem to have looked into this more extensively than I have.

 

[OneBigBlur]

@OneBigBlur Thanks for sharing the reddit post. It's thought-provoking and elaborately written. The only thing I disagree with is "depression is a normal reaction to people being hollowed-out wage slaves."

What he really meant was that our society has normalized a lot of behaviors such as the 40-60 hour work week and then society expects people to not be depressed or suicidal over such a thing. Here's another quote from him that would clear things up:

"Living happily" itself is a myth. Nobody on this floating rock is consistently "happy" every single day unless there is something seriously neurologically wrong with them that makes them that way. Life itself is inherently suffering - this isn't some edgy edict, it's the fundamental nature of the human condition; we are animals, and moreso social animals, which, not unlike elephants, zebras, dolphins, cows, or donkeys, are biologically wired and adapted to chasing short-term fulfillment, and avoiding pain and suffering - to the degree we experience and remember negative feelings and experiences far, far deeper and longer than we do positive experiences. This is the telltale sign of our inescapable animal nature - the hardwiring that makes suffering so inherently unavoidable, and pleasure seemingly so elusive.

Boiling the phenomena of NEETdom down to "mental health" is a reductionistic fairy tale that completely ignores the context of modern life in favor of hyperindividualizing the consequences of that context down to the individual and leaving it there. Speaking of context - the factors you mention are not as much of an immunological force as you imagine. Our society is one rife with celebrity suicides, who so many see as the "winners" of our silly game - they have money, prestige, recognition, fulfillment, endless fancy toys and achievements - and yet still cannot escape the call to the void - which, if anything, speaks to the fact we spend our lives chasing things that really do not make our lives all that worthwhile in the end. Sure, it's nice to be clock in to your 9-5 every day and pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you're doing the right thing like everyone else, but this is the life of an obedient somnambulant - one we are conditioned for in this society. You know the script - go to school, work until you're old, save and scrimp the whole way through, retire, and go rot in an old folks home using the money you've hoarded your whole life. This might be a fulfilling life for an inanimate machine part that cannot feel and is not alive, but for a social animal that needs environmental enrichment and belonging and meaning to feel any kind of consistent fulfilment, it is a slow death. This isn't to say NEETdom is some grand alternative - it is the final consequence of this meaningless life program - narcissized depression and almost total alienation, whereby one practically declares themselves dead to the outside world and escapes deeper and deeper inside themselves as a solace, until the crushing emptiness of isolation and loneliness destroys their ability to experience pleasure and often their will to live. This is typically because of the self-isolating shame that attaches itself to the status. As social animals, we need people in our lives to feel any degree of worthwhile. Interpersonal interaction injects our lives with a kind of meaning and fulfilment that all the technology, distractions and drugs cannot. Unemployment and NEETdom would not nearly be as bad if not for the immense social stigma, and if we could all expect to live in communities we felt a part of, or at the very least had friends who cared about us outside of our job title. Unfortunately, this is not the nature of our hyperindividualized, materialistic, and vain society whereby one increasingly derives their (narcissized) sense of self-worth and status from their ability to consume and brag about said consumption. Instead, we live in a time where over half of the population reports always feeling lonely and having few if any friends, 1/6 of us are on psychotropic drugs, and the suicide rate hasn't been this high in 30 years.

All the same - this doesn't make "successful" people failures. But it also doesn't make NEETs "failures", at least in any individual sense. The failure is society itself - in providing an insane sociocultural script that makes people incredibly sick; if I could call NEETdom anything, anything at all, I'd call it the canary in the coal mine for a society that is providing an age old lifescript that is no longer worthwhile, rewarding, or even meaningful in any sense - nor does it even guarantee the barest physical necessities for participation anymore; recall that wages have been stagnant for 40 years and we have wealth inequality levels that mimic those found prior to the Great Depression, what becomes all the more clear is that modern life is the new Great Depression. This is a dreadfully sick post-meaning society where mass shootings, panoptic surveillance, suicide, opiate abuse, loneliness, and alienation have become as commonplace as psychotropic drugs and psych diagnoses; which, if anything, says nothing more than that the very concept of "mental illness" is a desperate attempt by the system to hold on to it's collapsing validity by pointing at dissidents and shouting "they have some inherent biological illness that makes them this way!" As such, the realm of modern day psychology/psychiatry has become no more than another long arm of the corporatocratic, neoliberal police state, which has a part in allowing modern-day quality of life to continue it's decades long slow bleed to the sociopathic class - the wealthy and powerful.

We must think of NEETdom, depression, and a wide scope of psychological maladies as meaningful signals our bodies are sending us about the ways we conduct our lives nowadays, not as noise that is to be ignored and medicated away.

I did some research on Belgium and Netherlands euthanization of the "mentally ill" this morning. It's encouraging to see non-terminally ill people with depression, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar having their requests approved and fulfilled, but the number of cases has stayed extremely small.

Although there are no lab tests to confirm whether somebody has a mental illness or not, the euthanized proved through ACTIONS that they had been suffering from severe mental illnesses for a long time - bouncing in and out of psych wards, documented multiple suicide attempts, etc.

People with a medical history that merely shows they were diagnosed with depression by taking a questionnaire and they've been on antidepressants for years will not get approved for euthanasia in Belgium or the Netherlands. Sigh....I got excited for a moment when I saw your post. It looks like I'd have to take it into my own hands after all.

Correct me if I'm wrong. You seem to have looked into this more extensively than I have.

From what I remember you are required to be a citizen of that country and you need medical documentation of your "illnesses" proving how horrible they are. Belgium I believe is more lenient but I remember a story about a teenage girl wanting euthanasia in the Netherlands and she was denied because she didn't have enough evidence so she ended up starving herself to death.

 

[nitrogen]

Life itself is inherently suffering - this isn't some edgy edict, it's the fundamental nature of the human condition; we are animals, and moreso social animals, which, not unlike elephants, zebras, dolphins, cows, or donkeys, are biologically wired and adapted to chasing short-term fulfillment, and avoiding pain and suffering - to the degree we experience and remember negative feelings and experiences far, far deeper and longer than we do positive experiences. This is the telltale sign of our inescapable animal nature - the hardwiring that makes suffering so inherently unavoidable, and pleasure seemingly so elusive.

Presuming humans are just animals: The coded info contained in genes gets replicated and passed down generations after generations as if genes are immortal. Many genes found in the life forms currently living on earth are identical to what they were tens or even hundreds of million years ago. The genes that get passed down are the ones that are extremely good at controlling the processes of embryology, good at making mortal biological entities that have what it takes to preserve them and pass them on. So each individual organism is like a throwaway survival machine for the self-replicating genes, and the genes need to make sure the bodies survive long enough to pass them down and the bodies take good care of the passed down genes. I think this beautiful explains so-called survival instincts and maternal instincts. If that's the case, the survival machines' happiness most likely isn't high on genes' priority list; and avoiding negative experience gives more survival advantage than chasing after positive experience.

Presuming humans are more than animals: Well, there's the simulation hypothesis, brain in a jar hypothesis, the holographic universe hypothesis, the religion crap, etc. Inconclusive theories run wild.

they have money, prestige, recognition, fulfillment, endless fancy toys and achievements - and yet still cannot escape the call to the void - which, if anything, speaks to the fact we spend our lives chasing things that really do not make our lives all that worthwhile in the end.

I think many people's so-called depression can be cured by giving them those fancy toys and achievements. After all, there are more undepressed people than depressed people. However, there's one type of depression that none of the "toys" can cure - existential depression. I started a thread last month about my personal reflection on this topic, so I'm not gonna go into details here. Here's the link if you're interested: https://sanctioned-suicide.net/thre...rent-to-living-anyone-in-the-same-boat.25548/

From what I remember you are required to be a citizen of that country and you need medical documentation of your "illnesses" proving how horrible they are.

Yeah, unfortunately, only Switzerland allows foreigners physician-assisted suicide but they need to be able to drink the deadly cocktail by themselves, no active euthanasia legally permitted over there. Euthanasia tourism isn't allowed in Belgium and the Netherlands.

 

[nitrogen]

(2019 data not out yet) The diagnosis of depression, anxiety, bipolar, ADHD bring in big $$$ for pharmaceutical companies, which begs the questions: are those mental illnesses seeking out drugs or are drugs seeking out "mental illnesses"?

 

[Sk1n1M1n]

My ultimate opinion of mh is that it's symptoms that affect your every day life.and it's not about the problems, the problems are often secondary and medications can help someone whose in crisis but not much pain chronic problem. Also you gotta look at the c text of mh in your environment
if say the panic attacks at happening at 3am and expecting to rested the next morning for work/study, that would affect your productivity, so therefofd that's problem right.
but a person was sat home and they were in employment/study, didn't have an illness or condition. Who would care? that lucky sod can have lie in

 

[Mr2005]

It's too late for me not to blindly trust psychiatrists

 

[Sk1n1M1n]

For me I don't see them as being thr problem, it's the numbness in the drugs that's the problems, they need to be honest and say to us these drugs will numb you will be zombified you won't feel anything, you will stop feeling and being human so you no longer feel low, sad about anything neither do you feel happy about anything, they will make you feel so nuumb that simply living is difficult.

 

[Triangle]

How do you try to explain this to people who haven't had experiences with a psychiatrist, who trust them simply because "they're a doctor and you're mentally ill, therefore you're the problem"? I have had traumatic experiences with psychiatrists but not many common people would be willing to believe that a group of doctors was at fault.

Personally I believe that it is a major issue that psychiatry is so accepted by the general public. It creates an awful cycle:
-Many people want to spread mental health AWARENESS, but leave the task of actually aiding the mentally ill entirely to psychiatrists
-A vulnerable person experiencing mental health difficulties seeks psychiatry based on the standard advice
-Not every psychiatrist is bad, but it cannot be denied that there exist bad ones. The overwhelming faith in psychiatrists from both a patient and from society means that a bad psychiatrist has the power to greatly damage or even abuse a patient
-The patient is left worse off than when they began
-The patient is unable to express their experience because nobody is willing to accept that psychiatrists could have been at fault
-If the patient ctb's, it is seen as a failure on the part of the patient and the demand for psychiatrists rises

Additionally, someone who is not actually mentally ill (or is only mildly mentally ill) who has their flaws exaggerated by a psychiatrist is defenseless to prove their competence.

How can this be fixed?

 

[Final Escape]

It is mind control and a fraud although some of the drugs might make u feel nice at least in the short run.

 

[nitrogen]

Who's the most crucial market segment of selling psychotropic drugs? Well, they can't be sold to patients without a prescription. Psychiatrists! They're sorta like sales agents for the pharmaceutical companies. The sad part is, many of them are filling this role without realizing it, while genuinely believe they act in their patients' best interests.

How do psychiatrists get brainwashed? It starts early in their medical training.

For one, drug companies hire psychiatrists, especially the key opinion leaders, to promote drugs and feed information to their peers. There are academic psychiatrists (as professors, researchers) in med schools who receive grant awards from drug companies. Universities receive a lot of money from the pharmaceutical industry; for instance, the University of Michigan Depression Center receives hundreds of millions from Eli Lilly. Drug companies even strategically locate their buildings near med schools; for instance, Merck Research Laboratories is adjacent to Harvard Medical School.

For two, psychiatry residency programs focus on teaching future psychiatrists about how to administer drugs rather than talking to patients.

For three, drug companies do clinical trial studies passed off as scientific research gets published and planted in professional journals. Sometimes, drug companies ghostwrite the articles, pay key opinion leader psychiatrists to put their names on the articles to add authority. An average psychiatrist reads the journals and believes they're unbiased studies. Then you ask, why would reputable medical journals allow such shady practice? Well, you'd see pages upon pages of drug ads in those journals - the publishers rake in revenue from drug companies.

Then you have continuing medical education (docs are mandated to go through it), conferences, seminars funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

You see, when there are many players involved in making something happen and you can't tell their agenda, just follow the money. The world is driven by capital, not some elusive "good side of human nature".

Many people want to spread mental health AWARENESS

Unfortunately, "many people want to spread mental health awareness" is a result of drug company marketing. Direct to consumer advertising - TV ads, magazine ads, some under the disguise of public health education campaigns. Even some patient advocacy groups that claim to provide unbiased info on mental health issues are managed by psychiatrists, funded by drug companies.

How can this be fixed?

I think it's up to the patients to be vigilant.

 

[enjoy]

shit like this is why i'm getting a brain scan before going on meds. i want the proof to be in the pudding.

 

[listeningpost1379]

i know psychiatry/psychology is a scam to some level. never met anyone whose problems weren't rooted in real life, that eventually trace back to some deep issues with society from way back. the way western societies hyperfocus on "fixing" inner "issues" of the individual is... insane to me, a crowd control tactic.

there needs to be more research on neuroscience, an actual science.

 

[Generic]

An analysis of the clinical trial data submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows that about five out of ten test subjects given an SSRI improve over a couple of weeks on the depression rating scale. This at first seems like a fantastic outcome, until one considers the placebo group, those people in the trial who were given a sugar pill. On average, four out of ten patients taking a fake pill improve. Indeed, in many of the unpublished studies, SSRIs have failed to outperform placebos.

This means that only one in ten test subjects shows a positive response that can be attributed to the effect of the SSRI. This is hardly impressive, especially when one considers the fact that "improvement" doesn't mean that the depression goes away but often only indicates a change on a symptom rating scale.

The likelihood is that these drugs are ineffective in most patients, work well for a small percentage of patients, and spark suicidal thoughts or behaviors in another small segment. Two well-designed studies conducted fifteen years apart both point to this conclusion. In 1993 three researchers from the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard concluded that antidepressants, including the SSRI Prozac, likely lessened the chances of suicide in some patients while raising it in others. "These observations suggest that antidepressants may redistribute the risk, attenuating risk in some patients who respond well, while possibly enhancing risk in others who respond more poorly."

^ somewhat related stuff I recently read in a book (Crazy Like Us), which initially made me a bit scared of getting a prescription.

But I've been thinking about it, and wouldn't it still be wise to at least try going on antidepressants for a while, cause if you find out that they aren't really working out for you, then you could simply stop taking them? Or am I missing something here?

 

[nitrogen]

But I've been thinking about it, and wouldn't it still be wise to at least try going on antidepressants for a while, cause if you find out that they aren't really working out for you, then you could simply stop taking them? Or am I missing something here?

There have been stories of SS members being permanently "castrated" by a single dose or only a few doses of psychotropic drugs, here are just two examples:


Also, this is a very interesting thread:

https://sanctioned-suicide.net/thre...fects-withdrawals-of-their-medications.23047/

But it's up to you to weigh the potential benefits vs risks.

 

[Worthless loser]

What he really meant was that our society has normalized a lot of behaviors such as the 40-60 hour work week and then society expects people to not be depressed or suicidal over such a thing. Here's another quote from him that would clear things up:






From what I remember you are required to be a citizen of that country and you need medical documentation of your "illnesses" proving how horrible they are. Belgium I believe is more lenient but I remember a story about a teenage girl wanting euthanasia in the Netherlands and she was denied because she didn't have enough evidence so she ended up starving herself to death.

Can you tell me that person's username? I'd like to read more from them.