When ‘Medicine’ Makes Things Worse

by Stefan Kruszewski, Psychiatrist —In the past, psychiatric physicians have diagnosed homosexuality, paraphrenia, paranoia, narcissism, neuroses, combat fatigue and other entities, treating those “disorders” with a variety of therapies, including pills. More recently, psychiatrists diagnose bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (NOS), adult attention deficit disorder and pre-psychotic conditions, for which they may prescribe pills. The problem is that some of those earlier diagnoses like (homosexuality, neuroses, combat fatigue, paranoia and paraphrenia) no longer exist as entities recognized by the DSM-IV-TR — the most current compendium of mental conditions and disorders.

Virtually anyone at any given time can meet the criteria for bipolar disorder NOS or ADD. Anyone. And the problem is everyone diagnosed with even one of these illnesses triggers the pill dispenser. Taking stimulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics or off-label use of anti-convulsants often obscures the real problem and instead adds a new layer of unintended adverse events that only make conditions worse.

FDA Issues Label Changes for Antipsychotic Drugs—Outlining risks for newborns whose mothers took drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has notified health care providers that the Pregnancy section of drug labels for the entire class of antipsychotic drugs has been updated. The new drug labels include additional and consistent information regarding the potential risk for abnormal muscle movements (extrapyramidal signs [EPS]) and withdrawal symptoms among newborns whose mothers received the drugs in the third trimester of pregnancy.

Concern over high medication rate among foster kids—Review of kids’ psych drugs urged

Giovan Bazan was 6 when a doctor first gave him medicine to treat his diagnosis of hyperactivity. Bazan admits he was unruly at the time. Perhaps it was because the only parent he had ever known, his foster mother since he was an infant, had just died. No one asked about that. Nor did anyone check years later to see that he was on a double dose of Ritalin when another physician, seeing a boy so mellowed out that he barely reacted, prescribed an antidepressant. “They start you on one thing for a problem, then the side effects mean you need a new medicine,” Bazan said. “As a foster kid, I’d go between all these doctors, caseworkers, therapists, and [it] seemed like every time there was a new drug to try me on.”

When he turned 18, Bazan elected to stop all medications. It turned out he didn’t need any of them.

Sedation nation the cost of taking boisterous out of boys

I have an acquaintance who, apart from being a practising professional, successful academic and author of several important books, is a pianist capable of rendering entire Bach cantatas as casually as you or I might plunk out Chopsticks. He also has seven equally accomplished children, an undisclosed number of complex relationships, a flourishing side-career as a magician and a personal presence so intensively entertaining that catching up once every few years is enough.

These days, I imagine, he would be diagnosed with ADHD and medicated into normalcy

Brain shrinkage seen in those taking antipsychotic medications

A new study finds that one the fastest-growing classes ofprescription drugs in the United States is linked to shrinkage in the brains of those who take it, raising some new questions about the widening use of antipsychotic medications.

What they found was that those whose treatment with antipsychotic medication was most “intensive”—those who took the largest doses over the longest time–had the greatest losses in brain volume. The intensity of a subject’s antipsychotic medication therapy was a far stronger predictor of brain-volume loss than was the severity of his or her psychiatric symptoms or of the extent of his or her illicit drug or alcohol abuse, the researchers found.