Archive for June, 2010
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
Before It’s News
June 23, 2010
This study comes on the heels of ones showing these drugs cause birth defects. But even now, regulatory agencies aren’t taking action.
Medical powers-that-be are pressing to identify women “at risk” of depression during pregnancy—likely to push them into taking anti-depressants. Now, a study has shown that SSRI and SNRI antidepressants can increase miscarriages by 68 percent. These drugs have also been associated with birth defects. Now, that is truly depressing.
A study published in the online edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported a 68% increase in miscarriages in women who take modern antidepressants. Paroxetine, the SSRI sold as Paxil or Seroxat, and venlafaxine, the SNRI sold as Effexor, were especially risky, and taking more than one antidepressant was also particularly dangerous.
As previously documented in Babies of Women Taking Antidepressants Born With Deformities, Dr. Anick Bérard, PhD, one of the study’s authors, has also noted that antidepressants have been associated with birth defects. It shouldn’t, of course, come as any surprise that an agent guilty of causing birth defects would also result in miscarriages.
Overall, antidepressant use was found to increase the risk of miscarriage by 68%. Paroxetine increased the risk by 75% and venlafaxine more than doubled the risk to a 110% greater chance of spontaneous abortion.
In comparison, the increased risk of miscarriage due to untreated depression is 19 percent.
It’s obvious that increased miscarriage risks of 68 percent, 75 percent, and 110% with SSRI and SNRI treatment make a 19 percent increase in untreated pregnancy depression pale by comparison.
Read entire article: http://beforeitsnews.com/news/84/868/Antidepressants_Cause_Major_Increase_in_Miscarriages.html
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Tags: antidepressants, at risk, birth defects, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Deformities, depression, Dr. Anick Berard, effexor, increase the risk of miscarriage, miscarriages, paroxetine, Paxil, Pregnancy, pregnant, regulatory agencies, Seroxat, snri, ssri, venlafaxine
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Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
By CCHR International
June 23, 2010
A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect “brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk” in infants just a few weeks old. We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or brain abnormality to start with. There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one. So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the “associated with schizophrenia risk” amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.
For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, “researchers now believe” they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or “new evidence suggests” evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease. But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of “belief” —no evidence to support the theory. One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains. They’ve spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the “belief” in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science. As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, “There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” —Allen Frances (And Frances isn’t the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.)
The logical question the press should be asking is what are the American Journal of Psychiatry and “the Director of UNC Schizophrenic Research” really after? What is their goal?
As we have exposed in the article “Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global” there is a concerted push being headed by Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry and other pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists for the global implementation of a new mental health paradigm; preventative mental health, i.e., pre-diagnosing (diagnosing children before they develop a “mental disorder”) and pre-drugging children ( before they show “signs” of the mental disorder). There is an obvious push for the same pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging agenda with this latest study, which claims ”major cases of schizophrenia are usually not diagnosed until a person begins witnessing its related symptoms like delusions and hallucinations as a teenager or adult . However, by that time, the disease [notice the term disease despite no medical evidence of disease] crosses the stage of preliminary treatment and is difficult to treat.” In other words, if we wait to administer drugs to them it may be too late. That along with Gilmore’s statement, “It allows us to start thinking about how we can identify kids at risk for schizophrenia very early and whether there are things that we can do very early on to lessen the risk.” This is the pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging agenda being pushed and the new “preventative” model of mental health that is more akin to a Brave New World than anything previously witnessed. And this latest “study” tells us infants are also on the agenda.
And finally, to psychiatrist and lead study author John H. Gilmore, we think you should take a lesson from the former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Chief of the Center for Studies in Schizophrenia, the late Loren R. Mosher, M.D. who stated in his letter of resignation to the American Psychiatric Association, “The fact that there is no evidence confirming the brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to continue to support my membership…After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this is my belief I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization’s true identify requires no change in the acronym…”
To read more from Loren Mosher, including his two-year outcome study treating patients diagnosed “schizophrenic” without the use of drugs, his vehement stance against the biological psychiatric model of “disease” and more, click here.
To read the latest bogus psychiatric study, click here.
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Tags: Allen Frances, American Journal of Psychiatry, antipsychotic drugs, Australian, brain abnormalities, brain atrophy, brain images, CCHR Int, delusions, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, Doublespeak, dsm, DSM-IV, George Orwell, hallucinations, infants, John H. Gilmore, mental disorder, Patrick McGorry, pharma, physical cause, physical disease, pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging, preventative mental health, psychiatrist, Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry, research funds, schizophrenia, schizophrenia risk, scientific test, UNC Schizophrenia Research, X-rays
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Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
Scoop Independent News
By Evelyn Pringle
June 22, 2010
Non-Profit Advocacy Groups
As a main component of the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, the so-called “patient advocacy” organizations have become the leading force behind the American epidemic of mental illness over the past two decades.
Drug makers, and their foundations, funnel millions of dollars to these non-profits every year. In return, the leaders recruit their members as foot soldiers to carry out the latest marketing campaigns and to provide a fire-wall so that no money trail can be tracked back to the drug companies.
Gigantic Pyramid
The psychiatric front groups form a gigantic pyramid and once pharmaceutical money enters the system through a major organization, it gets channeled into a huge spider-web that weaves through many groups, making it nearly impossible to keep track of where it came from or where it all went. Often, when the grant reports of the drug companies list a large donation to one organization, the annual reports of the other groups will show smaller gifts from that same organization.
The “charity” groups are exempt from income tax and the “contributions” funneled through them are tax deductible. The money is used for disease mongering campaigns to both market disorders and pressure public health care programs and private insurers to pay for expensive treatments.
“Presenting themselves as patient advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership, many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press and the American public — for they have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent,” according to Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health watchdog group.
In a June 2, 2010, commentary titled, “Psychiatric Fads and Overdiagnosis,” on the Psychology Today website, Dr Allen Frances points out that it “is too bad that there is no advocacy group for normality that could effectively push back against all the forces aligned to expand the reach of mental disorders.”
The leaders of the supposedly “non-profits” earn outrageously high salaries, along with excellent benefit packages, while many of the patients they claim to represent are encouraged to seek federal disability payments of under $700 a month, and apply for public housing, food stamps, and Medicaid, to make ends meet. The top officials will often move from a leadership role in one organization to a higher position in another.
The drug makers rely on the front groups to do their bidding any time profits are threatened. For instance, if the FDA is considering adding a black box warning about a deadly side effect to a drug’s label, which may result in a drop in sales, representatives of front groups will show up at the FDA advisory panel hearings to testify against adding the warning.
They will also lobby FDA panels whenever there is a chance to increase profits, such as enlarging the drug customer base. In June 2009, the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee was set to meet to evaluate AstraZeneca’s Seroquel, Pfizer’s Geodon and Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa for use with 13 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with schizophrenia, and 10 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder.
On June 8, 2009, nine front groups issued a joint statement urging the panel to vote to approve all three drugs for kids. The groups signing the letter included the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association, Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Families for Depression Awareness, Mental Health America, National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.
Read entire article: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1006/S00162.htm
Also see: http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/
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Tags: Allen Frances, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association, APA, AstraZeneca, black box warning, CCHR, CHADD, Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, disease mongering, Drug companies, drug makers, Eli Lilly, Evelyn Pringle, Families for Depression Awareness, FDA, front groups, Geodon, Marketing, Medicaid, Mental Health America, mental illness, NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, overdiagnosis, patient advocacy, pediatric bipolar disorder, Pfizer, pharmaceutical money, private insurers, Profits, psychiatric front groups, Psycho Pharma, Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, schizophrenia, Seroquel, Zyprexa
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Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
The Huffington Post
By Dr. Ronald Ricker and Dr. Venus Nicolino
June 21, 2010
Adderall is abused mostly by college students and young adults. Estimates are that somewhere between 20-30 percent of college students regularly abuse Adderall.
Adderall has the dubious distinction of being the latest addition to the rogue’s gallery of lawful drugs that have made the transition to the black market. In recent years, abuse of Adderall and its imitators has increased by nearly 200 percent. Calling it an “upper” is like calling a hydrogen bomb a grenade. It is made of pure amphetamine, it’s already picked up its share of street monikers: Speed, Beans, Black Beauties, Christmas Trees, and Double Trouble, amongst others.
What are the pluses in this wonder-drug? In ordinary people it often but not always offers increased concentration. It also keeps people awake for more studying and lots more partying. It often offers a sense of euphoria and happiness and a lot better and more frequent sex, all fun at parties.
Between the glut of pop-psychology theories (often fraudulent) and the never-ending blitz of promotion by Big Pharma, people now believe they can diagnose themselves with something like ADHD as easily as ascertaining if they have a head cold and believe they have the ability to determine the correct medication for their condition. Sometimes they’re grandiosely right. Most of the time, however, they’re wrong on both counts. Even more of the time, diagnosis is irrelevant. The relevant question is where’s the “connection?” Sadly, that’s where many of us physicians fit in. We certainly don’t intend to, but often serve as the ‘connection’. Then, of course, there are those ‘patients’ and doctors that inhabit the bottom of the barrel: lying ‘patients’ and immoral doctors. Scripts can and are sold, for lots of money. Never mind the human cost, there’s money to be made and drugs to be copped. Take that prescription to the pharmacy. Or, take your money to a nearby local University. You’ll pay $30 to $40 dollars per pill for a very small amount of Adderall, usually sold to you by a student. Sales are usually student to student although the numbers of genuine drug dealers are growing rapidly in numbers, bringing with them all the problems of low-life, criminal drug dealers. Dealers recognize good business opportunities. Imagining little Johnny, having just finished Geography 1A, dealing with a real dealer chills the mind.
Illicit Adderall is taken in many ways. Most obviously, a pill can be swallowed. Pills can also be chewed, ground up and snorted, and ground up and injected (the most dangerous way of administration, by far). And then there’s ‘Stuffing’. This is accomplished by ‘stuffing’ Adderall in any orifice with a mucous membrane (anus, vagina, penis, mouth, etc.). Shooting gets the most immediate and strongest effect. Snorting is second, chewing third, and stuffing fourth. What ‘stuffing’ lacks in immediate ‘oomph’ and the loss of whatever dignity the person may retain, is made up by the length of effect and allows for the greatest amount of Adderall to be used at one time. The anus and vagina are big places and can hold a great deal of Adderall.
Sadly, there’s no free lunch.
1) Side effects are numerous. Some are minor, some serious, and some very serious. Most users have no clue as to negative side effects and usually don’t care. Ignorance, we suppose, is bliss. The most important and most negative side-effect is the Overdose. Overdose with Adderall is nasty. Results include Cardiac and/or pulmonary arrest, death, severe and lasting mental effects/defects. Which one happens to you is a matter of chance. If you’re in an Emergency Room and still alive your chances are relatively good. If you overdose at your apartment and are alone, the chance of your living is slim. If you Over Dose at a party, maybe a Frat Party, you’ve probably bought it. Drunken, high Frat boys are not known for their medical skills or even a modicum of clear thinking. Minor side effects include anxiety, and transient depression. More serious effects include heart palpitations, elevation of blood pressure, Tourette’s syndrome, seizures, stroke, and psychotic episodes or plain old psychosis.
Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-ronald-ricker-and-dr-venus-nicolino/adderall-the-most-abused_b_619549.html
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Tags: abuse, Adderall, ADHD, amphetamine, anxiety, Beans, big pharma, Black Beauties, Cardiac arrest, Christmas Trees, college students, death, depression, diagnose, Double Trouble, elevation of blood pressure, Emergency room visits, heart palpitations, overdose, pills, prescription drug use, psychosis, psychotic episodes, pulmonary arrest, Seizures, side effects, speed, stimulant, stroke, Tourette's syndrome, upper
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Monday, June 21st, 2010
The Huffington Post
By Dr. Peter Breggin
June 21, 2010
“I have a biochemical imbalance.”
“My kid is ADD.”
“I’m Bipolar.”
“I suffer from Clinical Depression.”
“I have Panic Disorder.”
Is there anything wrong with diagnosing ourselves or even accepting the mental health diagnoses of psychiatrists, family doctors, psychotherapists and other health professionals?
Psychiatric diagnoses are seductive. They seem to give us important information about ourselves and our emotional ills. They provide a key to what psychiatric drug we may need. It seems rational and scientific. In reality, psychiatric diagnosing is a kind of spiritual profiling that can destroy lives and frequently does.
First, there’s the obvious cookie cutter problem. People can’t be easily fit into the prefabricated labels contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from whence all official diagnoses emanate. Diagnoses frequently change, often in an effort to justify this or that drug. It’s not realistic, enlightening or empowering to reduce yourself or your child to one of these diagnoses. Psychiatric diagnoses are simplistic.
Consider this: Psychiatric diagnoses are always negative. There are no such diagnoses as “Exceptionally Able to Face Stress” or “Remarkably Resilient” or “Courageously Independent in the Face of Abuse.” That’s how I like to think about the people that I try to help–as heroes or potential heroes in their own life stories. I never want them to sum up, categorize or symbolize their lives in such a demeaning fashion as a psychiatric diagnosis.
But that’s only the beginning of the problem. These diagnoses imply that you or your children have a disease, especially an underlying biochemical imbalance. This can be discouraging and disempowering. Having a psychiatric diagnosis tends to make us feel helpless to transform our lives or the lives of our children for the better. It makes us feel less responsible for our own psychological and spiritual recovery and for that of our young and dependent children.
Medical diagnoses are real. When you learn you have pneumonia, diabetes or even cancer, you quickly discover that there are potential remedies. There are scientific tests and studies to diagnose the disease and to evaluate its treatment. Medical diagnoses don’t demean your mind and your soul, they describe your bodily impairments.
Psychiatric diagnoses are not genuinely medical; they are not based on biological defects or disorders. There are no objective tests. They are not about the body; they are about the mind and spirit. The medical aura that surrounds psychiatric diagnoses give them a false validity. Psychiatric diagnoses are not rooted in science but in opinion.
Psychiatric diagnoses take power and authority over your life, and the lives of your children, out of your hands. They place that power and authority in the hands of health professionals. Often it takes but a few minutes in an office to transform you or your child from a complex human being into a product on the psychiatric assembly line–and endless assembly line that can lead to a ruinous lifetime.
Perhaps worst of all, these diagnoses almost inevitably lead to the prescription of psychiatric medication to you or your child. Psychiatric drugs are toxins to the brain; they work by disabling the brain. None of them cure biochemical imbalances and all of them, every single one of them, cause severe biochemical imbalances in the brain. The adverse effects of these drugs on the brain and mind are stunning. In my recent scientific books and articles, including Medication Madness, I have demonstrated they cause medication spellbinding. Spellbound by psychoactive drugs we cannot adequately judge the impairments they create in our brain and too often we mistakenly feel “improved” when in fact our feelings have been dulled or artificially jacked up, and our judgment about ourselves and our lives have been impaired.
Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/mental-health-the-hazards_b_618507.html
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Tags: ADD, biochemical imbalance, biological defects, bipolar, children, depression, diagnoses, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, Dr. Peter Breggin, dsm, emotional ills, mental health, objective tests, opinion, panic disorder, psychiatric diagnoses, psychiatric drugs, psychiatric medication, psychiatrists, psychoactive drugs, psychological, psychotherapists, science, spiritual recovery, toxins
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Monday, June 21st, 2010
Tech Jackal
June 19, 2010
Not many people would be surprised to find that drug abuse is on the increase, but they may be surprised to find that the increase is not in illegal drug abuse but pharmaceutical drug abuse.
Emergency room visits have increased 110% over the last 5 years, due to prescription drug abuse. These visits are either for overdoses or excuses to get drugs refilled. Ten years ago, emergency room visits were for heroine abuse and other illegal drugs. Today, these visits are for Oxycodone, Hydrocodone and Hydrocodone abuse. There are also many other prescription drugs, such as antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs.
Today, it is a popular practice for children in high school and college to take prescription drugs to help them study and focus. Some of these prescriptions are for Addeall and Xanax. Some young people are having teeth pulled and wisdom teeth extracted just so they can get a pain prescription.
Read entire article: http://www.techjackal.net/other/2010/06/19/why-are-we-a-drug-obsessed-nation/
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Tags: Addeall, anti-anxiety drugs, antidepressants, college, drug abuse, drug abuse warning network, Drug-Obsessed Nation, Emergency room visits, feeling good, forgetting our problems, high school, pharmaceutical, prescription drug abuse, prescription drugs, stressed, unhappy, Xanax
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Sunday, June 20th, 2010
The Huffington Post
by Dr. Larry Dossey
June 18, 2010
You may think there is enough disease in the world already, and that no one would want to add to the diseases that we humans must deal with. But there is a powerful industry in our society that is working overtime to invent illnesses and to convince us we are suffering from them.
This effort is known as “disease mongering,” a term introduced by health-science writer Lynn Payer in her 1992 book Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick. Payer defined disease mongering as “trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill.” This strategy has also been called “the corporate construction of disease” by Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath and David Henry in the British Medical Journal. “There’s a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they’re sick,” they say. “Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers.”
Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/big-pharma-health-care-cr_b_613311.html
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Tags: ADHD, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, big pharma, bipolar disorder, British Medical Journal, disease, disease mongering, Drug companies, female sexual dysfunction, illnesses, mental disorders, mental illness, pharmaceutical companies, restless legs syndrome, social anxiety disorder, social phobia, social shyness, William James
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Friday, June 18th, 2010
Big Pharma says yes, but others aren’t so sure
The Globe and Mail
By Leah McLaren
June 18, 2010
“It’s all in your head” isn’t something a chronically depressed person likes to hear. In the age of Prozac, when adjusting your serotonin level is as normal as checking the oil in your car, it seems unhelpful to suggest that someone might think their way into – or out of – a disease of the mind.
And yet depression is all in our heads. Where else would it be? The real question, still hotly debated in the scientific community, is whether its cause is chemical and ultimately curable (good news for Big Pharma) or something far more complex (good news for poets and pot-smoking students of existential philosophy).
There is no doubt that depression exists. Inexplicable sadness – or “melancholia,” as it was historically known – has been with us since Hippocrates conceived his famous oath. But a groundbreaking new study has found that not only is depression affected by the way we think about it, so too is its cure.
Last week Irving Kirsch, a professor at the University of Hull in the U.K., presented a study that found Prozac and its ilk are no more effective than placebos in treating depression. In his view, there is no substantial link between serotonin – the brain chemical that antidepressants are supposed to regulate – and chronic depression.
It’s a controversial study – one that many members of the psychiatric community reject out of hand – but it also raises a nagging question about depression: How did it come to be recognized as a disease in the first place?
Like Hirsch, psychologist and writer Gary Greenberg is part of a growing number of psychiatric professionals who have begun to publicly question the underpinnings of popular thinking on depression.
Read entire article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/style/is-depression-a-disease/article1609422/
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Tags: antidepressants, big pharma, depressed, depression, disease, Gary Greenberg, Irving Kirsch, melancholia, placebo, prozac, psychiatric community, psychiatry, sadness, serotonin, SSRIs
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Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
June 17, 2010
Drug giant AstraZeneca attempted to obscure the connection between one of its blockbuster drugs and diabetes risk for years after it knew of the problem, according to documents recently unsealed as part of lawsuits against the company.
More than 15,000 patients have sought damages from the company, alleging that they were harmed by side effects from its atypical antipsychotic Seroquel. According to the plaintiffs, AstraZeneca deliberately hid information linking the drug to an increased risk of weight gain and diabetes. The lawsuits have been consolidated into a single case for the purpose of pre-trial proceedings.
The recently unsealed documents include notes from a meeting between salesperson Nancy White and a doctor in July 2006, during which the doctor said that his patients were expressing concern about Seroquel’s links to diabetes. White reported telling the doctor that “there has been no causative effect” proven between the drug and the disease.
Yet in November 2002, AstraZeneca had issued a warning to doctors in Japan that due to dozens of reports linking Seroquel to diabetes, “causality with the drug could not be ruled out.” The company cautioned doctors not to prescribe the drugs to diabetics and to encourage all Seroquel patients to monitor their blood sugar. Just over a year later, the company issued a similar warning to doctors in the United States.
Read entire article: http://www.naturalnews.com/029012_AstraZeneca_diabetes_drug.html
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Tags: antipsychotic, AstraZeneca, blood sugar, damages, Dan Carlat, diabetes, disease, drug company, hid information, increased risk, Japan, lawsuit, patients, plaintiffs, psychiatric drug, Seroquel, trial, weight gain
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Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
June 17, 2010
Antidepressant use more than doubled in the United States between 1996 and 2005, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Columbia and University of Pennsylvania and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
“Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans,” the researchers wrote. “Not only are more U.S. residents being treated with antidepressants, but also those who are being treated are receiving more antidepressant prescriptions.”
The number of people being treated with antidepressants increased from 13 million in 1996 to 27 million in 2005, rising from 6 percent to 10 percent of the population. More than 164 million antidepressant prescriptions were given out in 2008, generating $9.8 billion for pharmaceutical companies.
Not only selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac have seen rises in use, but also other varieties of antidepressant and psychoactive drugs.
“During this period, individuals treated with antidepressants became more likely to also receive treatment with antipsychotic medications and less likely to undergo psychotherapy,” the researchers wrote.
Read entire article: http://www.naturalnews.com/029010_antidepressants_SSRI.html
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Tags: antidepressants, antipsychotics, depression, pharmaceutical companies, prescriptions, psychiatric drugs, psychotherapy, University of Columbia
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