Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.
Is female sexual dysfunction a medical condition? Drug companies have sure been trying to make you think so, says researcher and journalist Ray Moynihan in his new book, “Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals.” Moynihan lambastes drug-industry-financed patient advocacy groups, medical associations and “key opinion leaders” for a global marketing strategy aimed at convincing doctors and regulators that female sexual dysfunction was a medical condition in need of a pharmaceutical treatment.
Doctors and patients are being misled about the effectiveness of some drugs because negative trial results are not published, experts have warned. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they say that pharmaceutical companies should be forced to publish all data, not just positive findings. The German team give the example of the antidepressant reboxetine, saying publications have failed to show the drug in a true light. Pfizer maintains its drug is effective. Reboxetine (Edronax), made by Pfizer, is used in many European countries, including the UK. But its rejection by US drug regulators raised doubts about its effectiveness, and led some to hunt for missing data. This is not the first time a large drug company has come under fire about its published drug trial data.
BEIJING – Members of the legal profession have warned that loopholes in China’s current system of compulsory mental health treatment are at risk of forcing healthy people into psychiatric hospitals. Under the current system, people can be sent to asylums for treatment against their will by blood relatives or spouses, who only need to claim that they are suffering from a serious mental illness. Once committed, they are only eligible to be discharged from the hospitals by those who had them committed in the first place. Afterward, the person who had them committed automatically becomes their guardian.
Philip Robinson was 25 when he went to his GP with mild depression. The pills he was prescribed changed his life, turning him into a ‘zombie-like’ addict — just one of the 1.5 million Britons whose lives have been ruined by prescription drugs. Here, with extraordinary candour, he reveals how he battled to get his life back.