Judith Warner VS Robert Whitaker /Part Two
Nils Bruzelius, former science editor for the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, wrote about Robert Whitaker‘s Anatomy of an Epidemic:
Every so often a book comes along that exposes a vast deceit. Robert Whitaker has written that sort of book. Drawing on a prodigious quantity of psychiatric literature as well as heart-rending stories of individual patients, he exposes a deeply disturbing fraud perpetrated by the drug industry and much of modern psychiatry—at horrendous human and financial cost to patients, their families, and society as a whole. Scrupulously reported and written in compelling but unemotional style, this book shreds the myth woven around today’s psychiatric drugs.”
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. Robert Whitaker reveals that there is no such thing as a “chemical imbalance” in the brain – the very thing the drug companies were determined to “fix”.
Prescription drugs create the imbalance.
Whitaker uncovers research that shows that drugs do not have the long-term effects hoped for, and in fact people do not stay well, nor do they function better after long-term drug therapy. And the numbers keep increasing: The number of adults, ages 18 to 65, on the federal disability rolls due to mental illness jumped from 1.25 million in 1987 to four million in 2007. Roughly one in every 45 working-age adults is now on government disability due to mental illness.This epidemic has now struck our nation’s children, too. The number of children who receive a federal payment because of a severe mental illness rose from 16,200 in 1987 to 561,569 in 2007, a 35-fold increase. From the Huffington Post, April 28, 2010.
According to Nancy Andreasen, who did an MRI study on the brains of people taking neuroleptics, brains shrink and cognitive ability dwindles. People are less able to function well and are more prone to physical illness after long-term exposure to psychiatric medications.
Why have the results from these long-term studies—all of which point to the same startling conclusion—been kept from the public? Pharmaceutical companies have been wielding their power over the mental healthcare industry for years. Money. Money. Money.
There might be change in the air as reported by Shirley S. Wang in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, June 11, 2010. “The medical profession has been curtailing financial ties to drug makers in response to criticism over possible conflicts of interest. Now the bill is coming due: Doctor groups are facing budget shortfalls and cuts in services… a more than 10% cut in revenue, which funds its research and educational activities.
Several prominent psychiatrists have been scrutinized by media and Congress for their financial ties with drug makers. Disclosure rules, codified in new guidelines expected out today, discourage doctors involved in policy decision from accepting industry funds.
Advertising by drug makers in group’s journals is down, in part because the industry faces its own pressures to avoid potential conflicts of interest.”
This is just a start. There needs to be even more separation between drug makers and the psychiatric community to ensure honest, complete analysis of the drugs flooding the market.
Now what?
I am sorry that I was the driving force behind my daughter scouring the country looking for relief. I am culpable in the loss of her beautiful brain because I believed in the drug companies who insisted that their concoctions would help.
My daughter saved herself by running away from a drug-pushing environment. She is still addicted to benzodiazepines and she is struggling against bad odds to make a life.
Robert Whitaker says in the Huffington Post article June 13, 2010 that he does not mean that antipsychotics don’t have a place in psychiatry’s toolbox. But it does mean that psychiatry’s use of these drugs needs to be rethought, and fortunately, a model of care pioneered by a Finnish group in western Lapland provides us with an example of the benefit that can come from doing so. Twenty years ago, they began using antipsychotics in a selective, cautious manner, and today the long-term outcomes of their first-episode psychotic patients are astonishingly good. At the end of five years, 85% of their patients are either working or back in school, and only 20% are taking antipsychotics. In Anatomy of an Epidemic, (Whitaker) reports on the long-term outcomes for schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and bipolar illness, and also the literature that details outcomes for children treated with psychiatric medications. My hope is that if our society can become informed about these long-term studies, then it could have a reasonable discussion about embracing other models of care–like the one pioneered by the group in Finland–that have proven to help people get better and stay well too.
What is the prognosis for someone like my daughter?
There is no doubt that she is sick. She has innumerable diagnosable mental illnesses. (Of course, I have seen all the symptoms, but should I reconsider the diagnoses? Maybe they are just arbitrary, a way for doctors so summarize and categorize.)
And, now, of course, I have learned that my daughter was probably made sicker by years of pharmaceuticals forced on her.
For a couple of months after I read Judith Warner’s book (See Part One, Warner VS Whitaker), I beat myself up over not allowing my daughter to be medicated earlier in life. Maybe if I had, the super highways of “bad behavior” would have deteriorated. I will never know.
Maybe if Robert Whitaker had written this book a few years earlier, my daughter’s life wouldn’t have been hijacked by the pharmaceutical industry. Maybe she would have had a chance at a full, rich life.
NOW WHAT?!
I want national platform for Ms. Warner and Mr. Whitaker to have a smack-down with of all the pharmaceutical companies forced to watch. And, no one leaves the room until they come clean.
Keep asking NOW WHAT?!
More:
http://www.furiousseasons.com/movabletype/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=judith+warner
http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2007/11/mom_of_formerly_bipolar_child_invites_judith_warner_to_dinner.html
Very interesting comments in this one
http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2008/02/judith_warner_is_at_it_again.html
I quote you:
“I want national platform for Ms. Warner and Mr. Whitaker to have a smack-down with of all the pharmaceutical companies forced to watch. And, no one leaves the room until they come clean.”
That would really be something to watch (though I believe “Warner” would end up looking like pharma pimp one legged high-jumper against Whitaker)
Yet, there’s not a chance in H-E-double-hockey sticks that this debate would ever happening. The main stream corporate media, and those Big Boys over at the APA & Pharma are making a concerted effort, and have conducted a masterful behind the scene’s campaign to bury the Whitaker book and any damning data it contains far far away from the general “Quick Fix Pill Loving” public eye & mind.
mspiggy,
Yes, I know, I know – but wouldn’t it be GREAT! Tell it like it is. Present the facts for all to hear on prime time network tv. There are millions of Americans affected by mental illness and those that aren’t know someone who is. Every household in America might be interested in this debate. There were no adequate reviews in any national magazines other than Time of Anatomy of an Epidemic. That alone speaks volumes. The long arm of Pharma shut them all down. If his research was sketchy, that would be one thing, but it is so thorough. No stone was left unturned. (Great line about Warner’s role in all of this.)
I also know that there are millions of Americans who do benefit from some medication, sometimes. My daughter, for example. I want to know when she is symptomatic, threatening suicide, or just so lost in chaos, that there is a pill available which will turn her mind off. When it passes, I want her mind clear for the good times. But, we were too late. And I am mad.
Thank you Stephany,
You have a wealth of information and it is great that you are taking time to pass it along to the readers of my blog.
xx kris
It’s GREAT that someone figured out Judith Warner after all this time–and hearing what Whitaker has to say is of utmost importance, especially with the new DSM-5 being re-written to harbor fine line spectrum disorders that will basically allow more drugs to be applied to “diagnoses” when, in fact life at times just has crap happen and we deal with it–grief, anxiety, situations that we don’t like–all of those things are just part of living, and pharma et al will find a way to offer pills for it, and in the end, ppl become numb and don’t feel any more. I’m talking about big picture here, but this is part of it.
Kris….if you haven’t seen this…”Big Tobacco” pulled a similar stunt in the last century as what “Big Pharma” has been doing since “medicine” became the standard of care for people living in distress. Unfortunately, as in the tobacco fraud, pharma has infiltrated the entire health care system, the educational system and government as evidenced in the increase in “pills” as the only offered solution for many diseases that are caused by poor health habits and stress.
Example being; the manufactures of “Gabinpentin” aka “Neurontin” currently in court or have resolved the case of the over-prescription of this drug and its use in situations it was not approved for. Me? I couldn’t join the lawsuit because of my “MI” history I was excluded….even though my medical doctor prescribed it to me for “muscle pain” he let it slip that it was also because I was refusing to take the psychiatric drugs that I had spent the past year withdrawing from. It then took me another almost year to taper off the gabipentin that was given to me for “fibromyalgia”…that is marketed as a “nerve disorder” but is completely curable with stress management, eating natural foods vs the chemical saturated diet we have assumed, exercise etc. People are “recovering” from “fibromyalgia” – an other “generational” “diseases” – every day. Today the only pain I live with is that caused by the residual effects of the benzo’s and the numerous (and unnecessary) surgeries I agreed to over the years. I was “disabled”by the drugs I was given, on “Medicaid” and the doctors took advantage of that ordering expensive tests, “therapies” etc on a regular basis. And I manage this residual pain just fine with diet, stress management skills and exercise…but until the end of my affiliation with “health care” the doctors kept telling me I would need this and other drugs “for the rest of my life”.
There’s tons of info out there but basically as one who has lived all views of this nightmare – from my abused mother who was involuntarily committed on the word of an abusive and controlling husband to and including the “medicating” of my “adhd” and “behavior disordered” children…who needed nothing more than to not live with a mother who was drugged out of sanity on numerous “psych” “meds” for a variety of diagnosis that changed and changed only as the drugs changed…not my “symptoms”. Nothing worked so they just changed the dx and the “meds” instead of telling me I wasn’t “mentally ill”. And the “doctors” would have let me live the rest of my life that way if I’d have allowed it once I “woke up” from being drugged into oblivion….and that was quite by accident when an egotistical psychiatrist decided I didn’t ‘need” these drugs….he was telling me I had yet another “personality” disorder. I bought into that for a short while…until my brain cleared and I could think for myself again – and then I rejected that one as well and continued my learning journey and found my way in spite of the determination of my “providers” to force me into dependence and compliance.
I understand that if we can view mental issues as a “disease” there is “hope” for a solution but in my experience and the many others who have shared their stories…this is a false hope. There are alternatives and very often it comes down to 1. feeling safe 2. feeling empowered and 3. feeling validated – without rescuing. Unfortunately, this model is not available in our “mental health system” that view “Meds” as the only viable solution to correcting “behavior” instead of teaching those who suffer how to access their own natural ability to learn how to regulate and express their emotions and corral those thoughts that are causing such distress.
There is nothing “disordered” about this kind of distressing life experience other than the way we are “treated”. It’s not that people are “sick”…it’s that “health care” is a business and we as a society have bought into the “quick fix” for life issues as the only solution while the past 100 years of psychology and the “natural” solutions ie “learning” to manage our thoughts, emotions and behaviors doesn’t make Pharma or health care providers the money that pills do. Think about it; we have an entire country – from universities to government agencies – banking on people accepting “illness” as a way of life and the money that comes in the door from this lifestyle.
I do understand that not everyone will have the same opinion as I do so please take what you find helpful and leave the rest. I also understand that not everyone will have the internal resources to do this kind of work to escape the grips of what we have been conditioned to believe is a “genetic predisposition” but there are people all around the world learning how to live in spite being given a “mental” diagnosis. There is hope. There are solutions. But as long as we are telling people they are “disordered” we are stealing their power and their hope to be anything else.
I am so glad you are writing about this. I ordered Whitaker’s book today. It would be great to see that smackdown – but like others said, highly unlikely. I am so confused now…what if Keven’s meds are making him worse? What if they are causing the problems? Its just plain wrong that we can’t trust doctors because of the Pharma ties they have.
I don’t think it’s that ‘highly unlikely’, the person who wouldn’t partcipate is Warner, because she’s too snotty to care! Why anyone would consider her an authority is beyond me!
Hi Stephany,
Exactly, that is why, as I learn more about her and this subject, I am utterly amazed that the New York Times praised her along with every other mainstream national publication. Now, it is dawning on me; they all recognize which side their bread is buttered.
Hi Barbara,
I am both terrified of finding out more and desperate to know the whole story. I can’t weigh in on Keven’s meds, but I do know that there is a time and place for some meds. I also know that he cocktail he is on is complicated. One offsetting another, a bit of this and that – it is the classic example of trail and error that I often talk about. The antipsychotic might be all he needs when he is symptomatic, not long-term. No doubt, the prescribing doc wants to cover all bases. What is going on in Keven’s brain is hard to say. He hasn’t been on anything very long.
I feel exactly like you do. Where are we supposed to turn when our loved-ones are in the throws of a major episode? Who are we supposed to trust?
xx kris
Yes, she was a columnist at the NYTimes and they paid her for her time off to write her notorious book, which of course was going to come with a one-sided praise review and space in the paper. She’s just a drug promoting monkey with a silver spoon up her ….the NYTimes also published a pro-Kendra’s Law (in NY)Opinion letter by Fuller Torrey, one of the most notorius self-appointed “leaders” in SZ, who firmly believes in forced out patient drugging, rights of people will be removed and his TAC blog promotes ONLY negative mental health stories, fearmongers in charge of promoting a LAW. The NYTimes did not allow comments with that Opinion piece, and over at Stan’s blog, he has posted his response to the NYTimes about that.
BTW somewhere there is an article about how benzos change a person’s DNA…
Thank you Stephany for passing on so much of your information to my readers. I will look at BeyondMeds blog for an article about how benzos change in a person’s DNA. The writer is an amazing researcher fighting the benzo addiction battle.