Antidepressant Nation

A serious conversation is under way in the United States on the subject of psychiatric drugs. The debate consists of three fundamental issues: first, whether antidepressants actually treat depression; second, the vast, growing body of evidence that psychotropic medications alter the brain permanently; and third, the pharmaceutical industry’s continuing, decades-old corruption of American psychiatrists, many of whom have been made by drug companies’ shenanigans into little more than handsomely paid industry shills.

“The Madness of Normality” – On why the DMS-5 is fundamentally wrong

The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the world widely recognized classificatory system of psychiatric disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It is currently under major revision; the release version DSM-5 is expected in May 2013. The “psychiatrist´s bible“ has overwhelming impact: Inclusion in the DSM carries weight far beyond the psychiatrist’s office. It has major influence on whether insurers will cover therapy for a condition, whether research will be pursued for a specific disease or whether the health technology assessment agencies will approve medications that can be marketed for it.

Harvard Medical School Professor Among Five Psychiatrists Accused of Ghostwriting

A complaint filed with the federal Office of Research Integrity alleged that a group of psychiatrists, including an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School, signed their names to an academic paper written by a communications firm hired by a major pharmaceutical company.

Gary S. Sachs, a researcher affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, is one of five doctors identified in the formal accusation filed July 8 by University of Pennsylvania professor Jay D. Amsterdam.

The psychiatrists allowed the medical communications company Scientific Therapeutics Information, hired by SmithKline Beecham, to draft a paper using their names, according to the complaint. The paper, according to Amsterdam, suggested that the antidepressant Paxil can help treat some cases of bipolar disorder.

Ex pharma sales rep Gwen Olsen says Big Pharma only interested in profits, not health

Gwen Olsen, an ex-pharmaceutical sales representative, is using her personal experience and insider knowledge to turn the tables on Big Pharma and tell people the disturbing and disheartening truth about the highly corrupt industry: it’s only after the money, not the health of its patients. Gwen, a 2007 Human Rights Award recipient, is a dedicated mental health activist, public speaker, and writer committed to child and mental health advocacy; her specialties include promoting the cessation of America’s over medication of its children and teens. It’s hard to imagine that this same woman was once a successful pharmaceutical sales rep for more than 15 years, working for many of the industry’s big name manufacturers. “We (were) being trained to misinform people,” said Gwen.

Now on a personal, passionate quest to wake up as many people as possible to the deception of the pharmaceutical industry, Gwen’s research emphasizes her concerns about the increasingly prevalent use of prescription drugs and the deadly effects that these drugs can have. “There is no such thing as a safe drug,” said Gwen

Mass psychosis in the US—How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs

Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses – primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. 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. 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.

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