[جوري]

I am currently reading this book:

I am only on page 53 but I must admit that Dr. Burns is challenging alot of things that I have learned in psychiatry and pharmacology .. I am having a paradigm shift.. obviously doing research in the matter far outweighs subscribing to popular teachings .. and I honestly recommend it to everyone who is suffering from panic/depression/anxiety but likes a drug free existence...

Pls. note drugs are important for certain conditions but he does discuss which ones those are in a compelling fashion..

It isn't an easy thing for a doctor to 'don't just stand there do something' to the shift of 'don't just do something, stand there and observe'

p.s did you know that Munch suffered from panic and anxiety?

I believe the above painting was stolen a few yrs ago and returned ..

 

[Trumble]

Just ordered. I'm all in favour of shedding the flouxetine for a drug-free existence.

Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[جوري]

Just ordered. I'm all in favour of shedding the flouxetine for a drug-free existence.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Greetings,

I was surprised by the findings on page 55 and let me quote:

''In a recent multi-university study funded by the national institute of health, 320 pts. with major depression were randomly assigned to treatment with the herb St. John's, sertraline (zoloft), or a placebo. The investigators wanted to find out, once and for all, whether st. John's wort had any anti-depressant effects, so they compared it to the 'real' antidepressant on one hand and an inactive placebo on the other.
Neither Zoloft nor the st. john's wort fared well, although 32% of the patients who received a placebo recovered, only 25% of the patients who received zoloft and 24% of the patients who received st. John's wort recovered.''

I can't tell you how many times I looked at that study and ignored it, thinking you can't beat a random double blind trial, but even that he addresses in the book of how pharmaceutical companies manipulate the outcome by telling one group to expect certain side effects so obviously they feel like they are being treated, the placebo effect alone is curative for some, while the other group knowing that they ended up on a sugar pill feel more depressed.. He said if they wanted to be honest, they'd note the most common side effect in the drug for instance (insomnia) as an ex. and in lieu of giving the placebo group a sugar pill they might give a caffeine pill but they don't..

They always hammered in us in medical school the important things about medical statistics where the numbers matter and which studies are the best, but I am upset to learn of the deceptiveness of pharmaceutical companies to manipulate outcome although I can't say it comes as a great big surprise .. if they fund research, they obviously expect payback in some form.. even if it comes in the form of high rate suicide...

I can't say the book is instantly curative but I believe that it will teach the techniques that one can use as an outline to get back to baseline..

and I think you are exactly the sort of person who might benefit from it..I have personally always had a pill phobia where I'd have to crush pills to swallow them and so a depression free existence sans the pills is a very welcome opportunity..

wish you well on your recovery

peace

 

[Trumble]

Thank you... and the same wishes regarding yourself, of course.

I don't have a pill phobia but, like most Buddhists, I do have a particular problem with any pharmaceuticals that mess with your head. In this case, though, I do recognise the necessity to take them for a while, but hopefully this book and suitable effort on my part will reduce that time to a minimum.

P.S. Sorry for the absence of rep for this thread but it seems I must spread some more about first before giving it to you again!

 

[جوري]

Thank you... and the same wishes regarding yourself, of course.

I don't have a pill phobia but, like most Buddhists, I do have a particular problem with any pharmaceuticals that mess with your head. In this case, though, I do recognise the necessity to take them for a while, but hopefully this book and suitable effort on my part will reduce that time to a minimum.

P.S. Sorry for the absence of rep for this thread but it seems I must spread some more about first before giving it to you again!

Greetings,


No worries about reps. although I thank you..
There is a reference to Buddhism in the beginning of the book, actually where the author tries to play on a couple of themes to show the compatibility of this science with personal religious beliefs. To me what he was trying to say that one should rely on their faith or 'meditation' to get through this difficulty amongst other modalities and he even made a reference that if you don't have any personal God at all for this to work, that there is a value system that we all believe in and share that we can rely on, in our paiful hour.. This spiritual factor is actually quite beneficial in medicine in general and used in healing extensively through the gamut.. I suppose it is one of the things that attracted me to this field is that it seems to deal with the whole person rather than a particular part although spirituality plays a very small role, it is neither neglected nor mocked..
he also went over some of the terms that I tried to cover in the other thread about when something is considered a particular 'label' for instance when it is schizophrenia vs. schizophreniform disorder vs. psychizotypal etc. in psychiatry and that it is indeed all quite arbitrary.. but believe me that goes for many fields in medicine..

every few months or so you'll find a committee convening to decide something not just in psych. for instance pathologists can get together and decide that a melanoma .65 in diameter is more lethal than the previousely thought .7 and that would require a different excision and different treatment modalities..(this is just an ex. no basis in reality) It isn't always as arbitrary as it is in psychiatry as there is some science behind as to why something is considered a stage 3A while another is IB.. it depends on the level of morbidity/mortality/place in the body response to treatment and it is really no different in psychiatry with slight variations on how you can divide up the psyche. ..

I really wish there was a 'happy pill' that one would take and all their problems would merely dissolve, unfortunately nothing works that way, and even more unfortunate is putting up with many difficult and undesired side effects in lieu of searching for that underlying cause and just addressing it head on..The problem is that one can't always pinpoint what got them in that stage.. like me driving and then having an extreme anxiety attack while on the highway that I freuqnted a thousand times before without incident.

I am all kinds of excited about this book, although a great big part of me still think there is value in SSRI's, SNRI's and st. John's wort and the rest of the clan.. I can't help but be forced to look at the results that the national institute of health independent of the pharmaceutical companies and their privilege power and expertise have found, or that he as a research psychiatrist and a clinician has found differently over thirty years of practice -- and I am appreciative of that as most doctors in primary care are pill pushers.. I mean if you are not actively performing surgery or doing something very specialized then you are writing prescriptions.. that is unfortunately how many institutions survive in this economy, through the sponsorship and research of pharmaceutical companies ..

I imagine it quite different in England because you guys are under 'socialized medicine' is it true? I don't know but I am not sure how many pfizer or eli lilly sponsored luncheons you have...

anyhow.. I am going back to sleep and I hope in part this made sense?
I think perhaps in the future if not too outlandish we can have a group CBT here in keeping with the exercises perhaps it will prove therapeutic for the few of us whose lives have changed of late?..

all the best

 

[جوري]

curious if anyone read the book and wish to discuss it?

 

[Hugo]

A good read is a book just published by Robert Whitaker called "The Anatomy of an Epidemic" ISBN 9780307 452412. This is compelling reading on the rise of mental illness (mainly in America) Here is its review.

In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nation's children. What is going on?

Anatomy of an Epidemic challenges readers to think through that question themselves. First, Whitaker investigates what is known today about the biological causes of mental disorders. Do psychiatric medications fix "chemical imbalances" in the brain, or do they, in fact, create them? Researchers spent decades studying that question, and by the late 1980s, they had their answer. Readers will be startled—and dismayed—to discover what was reported in the scientific journals.

Then comes the scientific query at the heart of this book: During the past fifty years, when investigators looked at how psychiatric drugs affected long-term outcomes, what did they find? Did they discover that the drugs help people stay well? Function better? Enjoy good physical health? Or did they find that these medications, for some paradoxical reason, increase the likelihood that people will become chronically ill, less able to function well, more prone to physical illness?

This is the first book to look at the merits of psychiatric medications through the prism of long-term results. Are long-term recovery rates higher for medicated or un-medicated schizophrenia patients? Does taking an antidepressant decrease or increase the risk that a depressed person will become disabled by the disorder? Do bipolar patients fare better today than they did fort)' years ago, or much worse? When the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) studied the long-term outcomes of children with ADHD, did they determine that stimulants provide any benefit?

By the end of this review of the outcomes literature, readers are certain to have a haunting question of their own: Why have the results from these long-term studies—all of which point to the same startling conclusion—been kept from the public? In this compelling history, Whitaker also tells the personal stories of children and adults swept up in this epidemic. Finally, he reports on innovative programs of psychiatric care in Europe and the United States that are producing good long-term outcomes. Our nation has been hit by an epidemic of disabling mental illness, and yet, as Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals, the medical blueprints for curbing that epidemic have already been drawn up.

ROBERT WHITAKER is the author of Mad in America, The Mapmaker's Wife, and On the Laps of Gods, all of which won recognition as "notable books" of the year. His newspaper and magazine articles on the mentally ill and the pharmaceutical industry have garnered several national awards, including a George Polk Award for medical writing and a National Association of Science Writers Award for best magazine article. A series he cowrote for the Boston Globe on the abuse of mental patients in research settings was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

 

[جوري]

^^ that does indeed sound like another excellent read.. psychiatry has had quite a brutal and less than stellar history and unfortunately continues on that same path.. Don't get me wrong.. I think many great strides have been made from the days of lobotomies and hysterectomies but wonder how much of the research that is being pushed out is free of confounders and biases simply to push out products to people who think that what cures all is a simple pill.. and rather than dealing head on with their circumstances prefer to modulate their body's chemistry to acquiesce to difficulty or unfortunate circumstance. So much so that Prozac was almost going to be made as over the shelf product to help with PMS..

I think there is still room for psychiatry in medicine albeit it in my mind's eye a very esoteric branch.. I believe whole-heartedly in cognitive behavioral therapy as a the cornerstone to good psychiatry, but I am having a paradigm shift after my last read and quizzical and critical of all the shades of anti-depressants and attentions deficit disorders meds that are handed out like candy as a cure for all.. In fact I once read a book written by a psychiatrist Dr Daniel Amen called change your brain change your body and wondered how many pharmaceutical companies sponsored that abomination for in its totality was a glorious song to the wonders of Fluoxetine and Methylphenidate.. I don't believe that prozac is the answer to everything and I think many people need to wake up from that self-induced coma that can't be answered by pills or bottles and see how to take better charge of their emotions..

Medicine as a science that doesn't always have absolute values should always be 'Evidence based'!

and Allah swt knows best