At least one in six service members is on some form of psychiatric drug. And many troops are taking more than one kind, mixing several pills in daily “cocktails” — for example, an antidepressant with an antipsychotic to prevent nightmares, plus an anti-epileptic to reduce headaches — despite minimal clinical research testing such combinations.
The irresistible, plus-size piñata for on-the-case journalists is the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, now undergoing revision. The DSM famously includes snoring and jet lag as mental disorders. I took a whack last year, calling the 880-page doorstop “a naked land grab by a profession threatened with marginalization by biomedical research.”
Who is Patrick McGorry and what does he promote? He’s a psychiatrist just named Australian of the Year for his work in “youth mental health reform.” What does that reform consist of? What he calls a “new form of climate change.” It sure is. He not only promotes youths being put on antipsychotics and antidepressants, cited by international drug regulatory agencies as causing hallucinations, hostility, personality change, life-threatening diabetes, strokes, suicide and death, McGorry goes a giant step further—drug them before they’ve even developed a “psychiatric” disorder. The Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AHRPP) likens such concepts to “performing mastectomies on women who are at risk of—but do not have—breast cancer.”
Who is Patrick McGorry and what does he promote? He’s a psychiatrist just named Australian of the Year for his work in “youth mental health…
Women expecting a baby have been warned over taking Prozac while they are pregnant, after a new study found it could be harmful to an unborn child. According to a study from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency there is a “small risk” of babies developing heart problems should their mother take the drug early on in their pregnancy.