An excellent Newsweek cover story today brings the sad news that antidepressants depressingly don’t work. Which is sad, because – among other reasons – a lot of people use them. What’s even worse, however, is that they work less than placebos.
It has been a routine week in my clinical and forensic practice. I evaluated a malpractice case involving a woman on the West Coast whose family doctor from a decade earlier kept prescribing Prozac to her for ten years without ever seeing her again. When she ran into emotional difficulty, she called this doctor who simply raised the dose and added a new drug, still without seeing her for a decade.
As psychiatrists from around the world flood the area this weekend to take part in the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), psychiatric watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is demanding that the APA sever all ties to pharmaceutical company interests and that psychiatrists stop killing children with harmful drugs.
Women who use antidepressants while pregnant are being warned by health chiefs about the risks to their unborn child. The Government’s medicines watchdog advised doctors there is an increased risk that babies will be born with a rare lung condition if expectant mothers take drugs such as Prozac and Seroxat.
Proposed changes to the U.S. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) could include reclassifying childhood temper tantrums, teenage angst, and binge eating as psychiatric disorders. If accepted, the proposals could equal billions of dollars in new revenue for pharmaceutical companies.