Mad in America

Freedive Ireland

I appreciate this is a psychology forum but interested to hear peoples views on psychiatry in relation to its dominance in mental health in Ireland and the possibility of it holding back other therapies.

This is a long article of which a portion is spent telling us about the writers experience. I have copied and pasted some interesting paragraphs.

"The research findings were these. First, the World Health Organization had twice found that schizophrenia outcomes were much better in three “developing” countries than in the United States and other developed countries. Second, Harvard Medical School researchers had reported in 1994 that schizophrenia outcomes today were no better than they had been a century earlier. It was then that I asked myself a new question, one that could be said to have arisen from my schooling in “evidence based medicine” while I was director of publications at Harvard Medical School.

Was it possible that psychiatry, as an institution, was deluded about the merits of its therapies? The conventional history of psychiatry tells of how the introduction of Thorazine into asylum medicine kicked off a psychopharmacological revolution, a great leap forward in care. But if one dug into the “evidence,” both historical and scientific, did it support that conclusion?"

"In trials conducted by the NIMH and other governmental agencies, the atypical antipsychotics were not found to be superior to the first-generation antipsychotics, which led Lancet to pen this memorable editorial: “How is it that for nearly two decades we have, as some put it, been ‘beguiled’ into thinking they were superior?” Lancet wrote that in 2009, seven years after Mad in America was published."

"This type of spinning and obfuscation can be seen in many NIMH-funded stories. For instance, in the STAR*D study, which was touted as the largest antidepressant trial ever conducted, the investigators promoted the notion that two-thirds of the 4041 patients that entered the trial eventually remitted. If a patient’s first antidepressant didn’t work, try another, and eventually an antidepressant will be found that does work. However, nothing like that actually ever happened in the study. Only about 38% of the patients ever remitted (according to the criteria set forth in the protocol), and the graphic that presented the one-year outcomes defied being understood. It took years before an enterprising psychologist, Ed Pigott, figured out that graphic, which told of how only 108 of the 4041 patients had remitted, stayed well, and in the trial to its one-year end. Thus, the documented stay-well rate was 3%, which is a far cry from the 67% remission rate promoted to the public."
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/09/confessions-of-a-trespasser/

There was also a pretty damning report from the UN out this year.

I know people who say they would not be here if not for their meds so I am not anti medication, but lean to being anti so much of it, its domination etc.
Open dialogue seems to be having a huge impact elsewhere but we have one CMHT currently utilising it in Ireland afaik.

Interested in thoughts/opinions.

dar100

The "best" medical intervention from psychiatry at the present time, from their perspective, is to medicate the individual. In other words, hit them with a blunt object in order to relieve symptomatic experiences. And that's all medication does. Treating the mind in the same manner as you would treat a wound is not an answer.

Research from pharma etc has never been the most ethical, keep shovelling a psycho-active substance into a person, and youll eventually get the result you want, .i.e symptomatic improvement. They may call this remission, however, the underlying issues that cause the manifestation of symptoms are still there.

There is a reason why medication is used so widely, as off-label

JuliusCaesar

Free Dive, you might be interested in the Critical Voices Network Ireland. They're having a conference soon in Cork which is free of charge, specifically so that it can attract service users.

Jay Watts will be speaking at it. She writes quite a bit for Mad In America, and is active on Twitter.

Freedive Ireland

Cheers JC