Psychiatric Times – Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
“The proposed DSM5 would be a giant step backwards for psychiatry. American psychiatrists should petition the APA to drop this ill-conceived and badly executed project.”
“The proposed DSM5 would be a giant step backwards for psychiatry. American psychiatrists should petition the APA to drop this ill-conceived and badly executed project.”
Andrew Tighman, writing in the Marine Corps Times, recently described the investigation of Fred A. Baughman Jr., M.D. into the deaths of military personnel taking multiple psychotropic medications. Baughman was alerted to a series of soldier deaths upon reading a May 2008 article in the Charleston [WV] Gazette titled “Vets Taking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Drugs Die in Sleep.” Baughman, a retired neurologist known previously for his criticism of medication treatments of ADHD and other mental health disorders, suspected that the reported cases could be part of a much larger problem.
An excellent Newsweek cover story today brings the sad news that antidepressants depressingly don’t work. Which is sad, because – among other reasons – a lot of people use them. What’s even worse, however, is that they work less than placebos.
It has been a routine week in my clinical and forensic practice. I evaluated a malpractice case involving a woman on the West Coast whose family doctor from a decade earlier kept prescribing Prozac to her for ten years without ever seeing her again. When she ran into emotional difficulty, she called this doctor who simply raised the dose and added a new drug, still without seeing her for a decade.
Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD today announced the results of his research into the “series” of veterans’ deaths acknowledged by the Surgeon General of the Army. Upon reading the May 24, 2008, Charleston (WV) Gazette article “Vets Taking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Drugs Die in Sleep,” Baughman began to investigate why these reported deaths were “different.” And, why they were likely, the “tip of an iceberg.”
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