Meds and psychiatrists
Like Robert Whitaker, a journalist who wrote the breakthrough book,
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, I think we need a very radical restructuring and reform of the American medical system with regard to treating mental illness.
Psychiatrists have sold their souls for profit. While best practice would indicate the need for patients to have not just medication, but counseling and therapy, this combination of treatments is now the exception rather than the rule.
Furthermore, patients who would like to do without medication or at least try going without medication, there are few doctors who even know how to help with this option.
Yes, this is in part the result of insurance requirements and the ease of collecting fees for services. But also the doctors are forgetting their oath to "First, do no harm." They rarely adhere to provide for informed consent, so patients are now brainwashed by the propaganda of those who push medication and ignore need for a holistic approach to treating persons diagnosed with mental illness.
Robert Whitaker says this is the scientific query at the heart of his book:
“During the past fifty years, when investigators looked at how psychiatric drugs affected long-term outcomes, what did they find? Did they discover that the drugs help people stay well? Function better? Enjoy good physical health?
Or did they find that these medications, for some paradoxical reason, increase the likelihood that people will become chronically ill, less able to function well, more prone to physical illness…”
While it has almost become a mantra of some advocates to say mental illness3w are caused by “chemical imbalance(s)" and are the same as any other physical ailment, hard research data to back up these assertions is difficult (if not impossible) to come by.
As Dr. Nortin Hadler of the University of NC points out in his book, The Citizen Patient (2013), a large part of the problems of over-medicalization of our society results from conflict of financial interests—especially those of doctors and pharmaceutical companies.
Dr. Hadler writes:
“I am saddened to have to write this…But this is an era in medicine when ethical failing is not idiosyncratic. We are not talking about the occasional rotten apple; we are talking about the blight on the crop.”
It is disturbing to me how dependent psychiatrists are on drug marketing reps for their information. I myself was prescribed a drug that was very harmful to me, and it was only after I myself learned of a major lawsuit involving the drug and told my own doctor about it that she knew of the problems associated with a drug she had prescribed for over 3 years. When I tell other fellow patients about my experience, I often hear of their own similar experiences with their psychiatrists and their prescribing habits.