Tag Archives: major depression

“How do I get off all the depression drugs?” We asked an expert

Phillip Sinaikin, MD, is a Florida psychiatrist who has been in practice for 25 years. Author of “Get Smart About Weight Control” and co-author of “Fat Madness: How to Stop the Diet Cycle and Achieve Permanent Well-Being,” his new book focuses on excesses and industry influence in the field of psychiatry.
Rosenberg: Your new book, Psychiatryland, traces how deception, conflicts of interest, medical enabling and direct-to-consumer advertising have resulted in millions being on psychiatric drugs they don’t need. One patient you describe has legitimate mourning and grief work to do after his wife leaves him for his own cousin. But his grief is pathologized into “bipolar disorder” by the system, including his own mother.

A psychiatrist who believes in returning to fundamentals of self care & traditional forms of healing instead of drugs

I call it a return to fundamental self care. Traditional forms of healing. These are fundamental and should be available to everyone. The problem is the medical establishment. This goes against the grain of what is taught in medical schools and threatens their authority and the income of the drug companies. We have a system that essentially says even in the most basic matters of care, doctors and medicine knows best and that’s simply not true. Western medicine is wonderful. Antibiotics are miracles. But we tend to hope for the same kind of miracles for psychological conditions. The alternative is going back to basics and learning how to take better care of one’s self.

Psychiatrists want depression tests and treatment for 3 year olds

The new study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and released Monday in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, did not examine depression treatment, which is highly controversial among children so young. Some advocates say parents and doctors are too quick to give children powerful psychiatric drugs. Though sure to raise eyebrows among lay people, the notion that children so young can get depressed is increasingly accepted in psychiatry.