Tag Archives: antidepressants

Depression? Don’t believe it —Big Pharma has gained an ever greater hold over our mental & emotional lives

Over the last 40 years the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the bible of the psychiatric professions – has spawned more and more diagnostic categories, “inventing” disorders along the way and radically reducing the range of what can be construed as normal or sane. Meanwhile Big Pharma, feeding its appetite for profits and ours for drugs, has gained an ever greater hold over our mental and emotional lives, medicalising normality.

Australian MP Claims 1 in 5 Federal Politicians Taking Antidepressants

“I do know that at least 20 per cent of the parliament are taking some sort of antidepressant medication,” he said. “I don’t know who they are, but I know they are. I certainly think for people who are under a lot of stress, like politicians or senior ministers, a lot thrive on that. But others who get a lot of stress, well that can cause a depressive condition.”

Mr Robb made the comments at the South Australian Press Club, where he spoke and answered questions about the challenges of managing depression and life in the Liberal Party.

How Did These Babies Die? Question unites grieving families

Matthew Schultz was only 2.5 hours old when he died on Feb. 21, 2009. A coroner’s report stated there was no anatomical or toxicological cause of death, which was deemed “natural”. Another baby, Greyson Rawkins, was only two months old when he died on March 23 of this year. A coroner’s report found Greyson died of sudden unexplained death in infancy and his death was ruled undetermined. However, the mothers of both babies were taking Effexor while carrying and believe the antidepressant drug may be connected to the deaths of their children. And, as KTW learned, there are widespread medical warnings about pregnant women taking antidepressants.

America conned: Psycho pharma drug pushing empire under fire

Is America truly stricken with widespread mental illness? Do tens of millions need mind-altering drugs? A recent flurry of media articles lead readers to a realization that Big Pharma and the “mental health” industry have deceived Americans on a grand scale.

The “New York Review of Books” two-part article by Dr. Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, summarizes it extremely well. She analyzes three books by authors Irving Kirsch, Robert Whitaker, and Daniel Carlat. Each deconstructs the apparent mental illness epidemic and theory that mental disorders stem from brain chemical imbalances which can be corrected by drugs.

Dr. Angell’s review has sparked a host of other journalists to applaud her and fuel the fire. An article in Forbes even concludes, “psychopharma is looking like an idea whose time has passed.”

Battling over happy pills

In this corner: Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, and frequent critic of the pharmaceutical industry. In the opposite corner: Dr. Peter Kramer, Brown University psychiatry professor and author of the mega-selling “Listening to Prozac,’’ a book that helped convince thousands of Americans to live better, chemically.

At issue: a two-part article by Angell, published in The New York Review of Books, that assails psychiatrists and their pharmaceutical helpmeets, mainly antidepressants, on several fronts.

Item: Angell, quoting, among others, Tufts University psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Carlat, attacks the widely held belief that depression and other mental disorders result from chemical imbalances in the brain. Item: Citing the research of British psychologist Irving Kirsch, Angell writes that some of the most widely used antidepressants, including Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, and Effexor, performed only marginally better than placeItem: Angell uses a book by journalist Robert Whitaker to suggest that newly minted antipsychotic drugs may be causing “an epidemic of brain dysfunction.’’