Borderline Families

I like new beginnings. Fresh starts and clean slates are exciting but also daunting when I don’t know what to expect. It has been very hard to be silent during the last month. Even though it was necessary to step away for personal reasons, a month is a long time to hold your tongue when you are as passionate as I am.

Every single day the barrage of pharmaceutical mishaps, law enforcement misjudgments concerning the rights of those with mental health issues, and the simple lack of humane treatment of individuals threatened to send me back to my keyboard. I would think I will write about that or post it on my facebook page and the next day there would be more and the following day, even more.

The year before last, I spent writing a book about my daughter’s search for help throughout our country’s psychiatric system. It was a long and sad year.

Last year I devoted myself to my blog, borderlinefamilies.com.

Then, in May I read Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic. During the next few months, I began to question everything I had been taught about mental health by the psychiatric community. After years of following the doctors’ orders, a voice inside began screaming, “I knew it!”. It was all a sham. Our family had attached ourselves to an industry built in the marketing departments of the pharmaceutical industry with little science to back up their claims.

I still gasp when I hear the most common misconception – that there is a “chemical imbalance” in the brain which needs to be treated with psychotropic drugs in order to live a meaningful life. This singular myth created by psychiatrists and perpetrated by Big Pharma is accepted without question by publishers of every kind in our country. It is so pervasive and beyond doubt that novelists use “it must be chemical” as a plot device. Newspapers and nationally distributed magazines treat the “chemical imbalance” as a given, not a red flag as it has become for me.

When I learned that no chemical imbalance exists prior to the introduction of psych meds, I stepped into the alternative movement.

The burden of lifelong “illness” was lifted from my daughter and our family began the difficult job of rebuilding.

Unfortunately, my daughter cannot so easily step away; she is a product of years of abuse by the system. We will never know if, by using alternative methods – diet, meditation, acupuncture, etc., the emotional distress she experiences today would be less. I do know that the drugs made it worse.

So, as I look to this New Year, I want to start something, make some waves, see change. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, “Don’t listen to the doctor telling your loved-one to take another dose! Don’t add an anti-psychotic to your anti-depressant! Don’t step onto the slippery slope Big Pharma has groomed.”

I want to unite the loved ones of psychiatric survivors and give them a platform to voice their unhappiness, outrage, and, yes, even guilt at having been duped. When my daughter entered the psychiatric system, an impenetrable door slammed shut between her and the rest of the family. This is the industry’s way of seizing control – by telling the families that they cannot manage the degree of “illness” demonstrated and then translating the behavior of our loved ones into baffling, complex psychobabble.

I was completely taken in by the industry; I handed my daughter over with trusting hands. I have written in the blog about my shame at having encouraged my daughter to stick with program even when it clearly wasn’t working. I want to regain what we lost.

There are legions of us – those who experienced the deception personally and parents, siblings, spouses and friends who watched, hands tied and mouths silenced, as their loved ones were lead away.

This year I am going to devote my energy to uniting the loved ones of psychiatric survivors. We can make a difference! If each of us can stop even one unsuspecting family from entering into the system, it will be well worth the effort.

NAMI stands, arms out and gathers in the newly-minted diagnosed and their families. Let’s be the alternative. Let’s be loud and clear and give people entering the system hope for a life without diagnoses and drugs.

Let’s complain about the unavailability of options offered when people seek help.

Let’s tackle the language problem and ensure that all conversation about emotional and cognitive distress is NOT filtered through what the industry has “normalized” through advertising. The very word “illness” is a misnomer.

Let’s do away with involuntary psychiatric intervention.

Let’s force doctors to reveal the side effects of drug therapy before they write a prescription.

I could go on and on. I am open to ideas on how to develop a counterpunch to the efforts of NAMI. I am sick and tired of seeing them throw their Big Pharma- backed weight around.

The science is on our side. With authors like Robert Whitaker publishing accessible, critical views of the psychiatric industry, I sense a groundswell of dissension. More articles are are making it into mainstream media exposing the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry. This is where I want to devote my energy next year.

In the meantime we have today, the last of 2010, and I want to take the time to thank all my new facebook/blogosphere friends for joining me on this journey. I have struggled and this community has held my hand through it all with patience and kind guidance. Thank you.

As we step into 2011, let’s unite and create meaningful change!

Uncategorized Anatomy of an Epidemic, Robert Whitaker

This is the second part of my final post for Borderline Families. In the post A Scented Memory, I talked about my guilt over encouraging my daughter to believe in the psychiatric system and in On the Move, I wrote about getting lost in the system. With these final two, I wanted to deal with what it feels like to see the problem but how impossible it was to fathom that the PROBLEM was the institution we had trusted to help our daughter. In this final two-part post, I wanted to write about my experience as a caregiver.

Part one: A Charade ended with me returning my daughter to Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a brief month after her first four-month stay.

A caretaker is expected to be wholly involved and unemotional. I had reached the point where I had nothing to give. I left my daughter in her room, caught a bus and checked into a rundown hotel in mid-town Manhattan.

I sat on the end of the bed in the room for days. A strange buzzing in my ears both blocked sounds and amplified them. I heard faint wisps of laughter from down the hall. Car horns sounded like they were bleating in my head. I watched taxis splash through slush and sleet seven floors below. I sat, not moving a muscle, as if I might break. At some point that first night, I climbed into the bed. I felt coiled up like a snake ready to strike.

All my senses were firing random signals. A loud steady stream of recriminations told me to get back to my job, to take care of my daughter. I didn’t sleep. I was tense, my muscles twitched. I wondered if my heart was irreparably broken.

My cell phone rang early, just as the sun was breaking the horizon sending delicate shafts of winter light through the streets below. My daughter had not slept either and she wanted EVERYTHING. NOW. CALL THE NURSES!

I took up my post at the end of the bed. I watched the day pass but saw nothing. I did not call the nurses. My initial anger at their lack of compassion was dissolved by the apathy that engulfed me. I didn’t call anyone. I sat. I looked out the window. I felt nothing as long as I kept my mind blank. At times a thought or a memory would drift in and piercing pain ripped through me. I waited it out.

Living for so long at constant readiness had left me unable to let my guard down. I felt outmaneuvered, mowed down by this once familiar situation. I knew how to take care of my daughter. What was wrong with me? Save her! I felt paralyzed.

I tried to heal myself. I eventually got up and took long walks, visited a chiropractor/healer, ate with friends but the fact that I had left my daughter in such a precarious state made me sick and I felt newly traumatized each time that she came to mind. Which was all day, every day.

It was hard to convince myself to honor that I had done everything in my power to help my daughter.

I returned to Austen Riggs a couple of times during the next two weeks. Each time she was worse, miserable and mad. Each time my daughter had developed new twitches and each time the nurses dismissed them. I stayed up into the early morning hours researching drug combinations. I paced the floors of the Red Lion Inn waiting for a reasonable hour to visit and ask my questions.

“Her right arm is flinging out into space. How much Haldol do you have her on?”

“She was started on Cogentin. Those symptoms should subside.”

When I returned to Minnesota, I reviewed our bills from Austen Riggs and pulled out the statements from the pharmacy. This is the “premier facility in the country for the treatment-resistant patient” and they were drugging the life out of my daughter.

Their reliance on pharmaceuticals was the backbone of their “success”. They should have said,

“We drug our clients into submission.”

My guess is that one hundred years from now the sedation techniques and useless attempts to corral my daughter’s mind with locked doors and rules will be viewed to have been as barbaric and innocuous as attaching a leach to cure a fever.

Psychiatry has lost its way. Poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications, coupled with talk therapy that did not promote coping strategies, help with sorting out her reasoning skills or hone her ability to manage relationships had all failed.

For a couple of months during her first stay, it looked like they were tapering off the drug regimen, clearing her system, but when she returned, there was a startling increase in medications being administered. More importantly, my daughter’s discomfort continued through every drug recommended. Didn’t anybody notice?

My daughter rebelled. She entered into a two-week reevaluation phase. They were weighing two questions – could they keep her safe and could anyone create an alliance with my daughter that would hold? My daughter was too aware of the drug-pusher’s motives and probably not going to drop her dislike for them. But, I was hopeful. I still believed in the system.

Emily, the social worker who was assigned to be our liaison suggested a back-up plan – a long-term facility called Windhorse. Rural, farm, horses. I couldn’t picture it working for my very urban daughter. Emily gently told me that she didn’t think that my daughter would be able to live independently, certainly not in the near future and if the committee did feel that she couldn’t stay at Austen Riggs, we needed to be ready to formulate another plan for her.

My world spun out of control. This is not the future I envisioned. I had a different plan for my daughter – one where she survives and prospers. She leaves Austen Riggs healthier than when she entered. PLEASE.

During a conference call a couple of months into her second stay, my daughter insisted that the community of Austen Riggs was bringing her down. She didn’t think that she belonged there anymore. She also wanted to make it clear that she had been asking for help and not getting any.

“Maybe I want to be kicked out. Day in and day out – no end in sight. I want to go live in a shack by the ocean and drink myself to death. I do not want to live a mediocre life like you, mom. I can’t imagine it. I would die of boredom. I want to leave here. Basically, I feel like you are ruining my life by making me stay.”

“Drinking is the only reliable thing in her life right now,” Dr. Stevens, her therapist, sounded measured as she went on carefully. “She doesn’t believe that there is a human relationship that could be helpful. No one is trustworthy enough.”

My daughter broke in, “I don’t understand how you expect someone to live here. Everyone is obsessed with themselves, living “an examined life”. Look at how hard I have tried to survive. I would have been dead years ago if I wasn’t trying so hard. Right now I hate myself too much to stay here and scrutinize every little thing. I want to be alone. I don’t want to bother with anyone. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I like. The floor is shifting under me. My heart doesn’t know what it wants.”

My daughter was worked up and crying hard. She took a deep breath as she asked in a quivering voice, “What are you going to do?” She was sobbing and I barely made out, “It is not worth it. I want to start my life now. Again. Leave everything behind and start again, new, today.”

Our fifty-five minutes was up. I felt like we had followed my daughter to hell. Emily said that they would get her back to her room and alert the nursing staff that she had had a difficult meeting.

I didn’t want to hang up. I wanted to rip through the phone lines and hold onto my daughter. I would have torn off my skin if she could have used it. Instead, I was absolutely powerless.

I had arrived home from New York a couple of months before on empty and my husband had tenderly, painstakingly filled the emptiness. He’d let me ramble on about how I wanted to help her and he’d nod when I remembered that I couldn’t. He knew that I was coming to grips with just this conundrum.

It was my daughter’s life and we had run out of possibilities.

And, then she fled the system.

Within a week of the conference call, she had packed up her jeep and was living in Brooklyn.

The saying goes that you carry your problems along wherever you go. Yet my daughter was able to quickly reinvent herself, or she might have said, she found herself, and fell into syncopated rhythm with the city. The wild pulse, the endless hustle and commotion concealed, even seemed to absorb some of the tumult in her head.

When she loses her composure less people are apt to notice. That’s good and bad, but mostly, it is what she wanted when she asked for a shack on the beach where she could seal herself away. In Minneapolis, her dress and her off-kilter energy stuck out like a disco ball in a chapel. In treatment, everyone was always trying to discourage her individuality. My daughter feels that New York City lets her be herself, no questions asked.

My husband and I try to be supportive without getting into her day-to-day life. We continue to pay her health insurance and know that her anxiety is too unpredictable so that holding a job is out of the question for right now. We send money weekly. She has friends. I don’t know if they know my daughter’s past or if they are aware of the long and painful journey that got her back to New York where she was born, but they are there if she’ll let them in.

As for me, I joined her but it took time. I wasn’t as sure as my daughter was that turning our backs on the one and only system that had offered us help was a good thing.

Yes, the system had failed her repeatedly. I faltered because my daughter was going through withdrawal from the tons of meds Austen Riggs had her on when she left and I read her behavior as uncontrolled “mental illness”. I did. I am sorry but she was in excruciating pain for months, sobbing in cabs, hallways, having angry tirades while walking across the Williamsburg Bridge, holed up in her apartment for days. She was always reeling me into the chaos, demanding I do something to relieve the pain. Mostly, I just listened.

For nearly a year after she left Massachusetts, the withdrawal took its toll. Suicidal and irrational, sick and scared, she swung into moods that couldn’t be washed away with alcohol.

I went to New York to hold up the edges of her world when the calls were hushed/suppressed. Those are still the calls I pay attention to. The quiet ones, the calls for help.

As time has passes, my daughter’s brain is healing. Without the psychotropic drugs, the downs are still very black, but they do not last as long. And, the ups are still rather wild, but the middle ground is much more stable and, with time, I think she will find herself there more often.

I am not alone. I know that there are many devoted parents, spouses, and friends just like me who have watched a very similar story unfold. When we first sought help, we looked were everyone looks first – to the professionals.

We followed the doctors orders for years but we discovered that they do not have the answers. I set out to learn more. I read Robert Whitaker’s books, Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America. I read Breggin, Moncrieff and Szasz. I read Gianni Kali’s blog, Beyond Meds and Susan Kingsley-Smith’s blog, A Journey.  I haven’t stop reading.

I tracked down the “movement” which had been there all along, right under my nose. And, I joined up because I thought that if I could help one family just entering the system from losing their footing and giving away their power like we did, my involvement would have been worth the exposure.

I opened our doors and talked very candidly about my guilt at having been complicit in my daughter’s involvement with the psychiatric industry. I was transparent, thinking that by being honest, telling the whole truth, that I could bypass the naysayers and win over skeptics.

There are some very damaged souls who are part of this movement. I wasn’t prepared for their manipulation. I find that their anger and abusive nature are undermining to my message which is simply:

You are not alone.

There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people who are directly affected by the psychiatric system through friends and family members. These people who have stood next to their loved-ones want what is best for long term physical and mental well-being.

We want our loved-ones to be presented options to drug therapy which seems to be the first and, too often, only option presented when seeking help.

We want that the issues presented as problems be filtered through life experience – economic, family dynamics, and other common causes of stress which should not be translated into an “illness” and added to the DSM (shyness, shopping, etc.). Empower healing through outreach programs, job training, parenting classes, etc.

We want to change the language associated with emotional and cognitive distress.

We want safe and affordable care for times of acute distress which are not hospital based (peer-run and drug free when possible).

We want our loved-ones to be presented with affordable options covered by insurance, including acupuncture, nutrition guidance, membership to exercise facilities. And, we want these options to be presented as a First Line of Defense in the place of a prescription for a quick-fix with pharmaceuticals.

We want that the prescribing doctor be honest about the side effects of drug therapy and the change in the brain AFTER drugs are introduced (the creation of chronic need).

We want that when psychotropics are prescribed, that the side effects, including the predicted loss of years to their lifespan, be discussed at length.

We want every doctor practicing to read Anatomy of an Epidemic. Everyone – from  psychiatrists to General Practitioners and all “specialists” in between.

We oppose any kind of involuntary psychiatric intervention on behalf of our loved-ones.

We also oppose the “voluntary” treatment that supports the notion that the normal human condition can be solved by psychiatric/medical means.

“Caretaker” is a pejorative word, really. But, in changing the language I have to make some concessions so that people understand what I am talking about. Although I have been taking care that my daughter is safe and has a roof over her head every night, I am not a caretaker. She does a very good job at taking care of herself. I step in when she stumbles. I am a woman with so much love her daughter, I could burst. I am a mom. Lately, I have been a mom on a mission.

As I step away from this blog, I am not abandoning the movement. I think we need the transparency I have used. I think we need to keep telling our families’ stories and I know that in doing so, we will draw in people like me who are sitting on the fence wondering if they should jump into the unknown.

I am here to say, the other side of the fence is far less scary than the fraudulent world of the psychiatric industry. Our family was intimidated and shamed and my daughter’s life was altered forever when we gave away our power to the psychiatric industry.

Alternative approaches are available in every community. Start with a healthy diet, a little exercise. Add mindfulness training, meditation. Most alternative methods of healing can be added to existing medication. Take your time getting off of prescription meds. The key is to feel better and hopefully, eventually, not be dependent on pharmaceuticals.

Thank you for spending time with me as I came to grips with this drastic change in our lives; we abandoned one system but were greeted with open arms by the online community. I am very thankful for your support. I gave weight to each of your heartfelt comments and appreciated that you took the time to pass on your ideas.

I will begin another project after the first of the year. Until then, I will keep the Borderline Families blog online.

Uncategorized A Journey, Anatomy of an Epidemic, Austen Riggs Center, Beyond Meds, Breggin, Cogentin, Haldol., Mad in America, Moncrieff, Robert Whitaker, Szasz

I hate when the phone rings at 3:30 AM. It is so alarming. My heart races and there is always a dog resting on me and it makes me feel weighted down and claustrophobic. The gasping and fumbling is also disconcerting. But, I am good at coming to; I wake up in a flash. (I’ve had lots of practice.) My daughter sounded ok. She even said that she will call back at a more decent hour. I am waiting for her call. She wants to leave Australia early.

I have been thinking about clearing out my twitter and facebook accounts – getting rid of barrage of comments like the one on facebook I found this morning in a comment from a woman encouraging parents to get their young kids diagnosed and on meds as soon as a problem arises. UGH. I wrote a fast and furious reply but deleted it. I sounded like a lunatic on a soapbox!

I really had no idea how disturbed I would be by Robert Whitaker‘s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic. If it wasn’t so well-researched, if he had depended more on anecdotal information like Judith Warner, I could discount it. Whitaker’s book consists of hard facts easy to comprehend. It is all so startlingly apparent that it is amazing that we all haven’t heard this before. It is easy to get stuck on the colossal deception the pharmaceutical industry got away with.

The reader only has to take a step away from the psychiatric medical model, the one that we have been convinced by the current professionals in the field to believe without question, and look at the evidence.

Why does the current medical model work in the US? Why have the pharmaceutical companies been so successful in perpetuating the myth that brain chemistry is “off” in individuals who suffer from mental health issues? This fallacy was a misconception from the start, but it thrived with little scientific evidence supporting it. Chemical Imbalance became the problem that had to be fixed. Fix the brain chemistry and you have cured “mental illness”.

“The public was eager to hear of wonder drugs, and this was just the story that the pharmaceutical industry and the nation’s physicians were eager to tell.” ~ from Anatomy of an Epidemic

The earliest formulated neuroleptics (antipsychotics), muscle relaxants (mood stabilizers) and psychic energizers (antidepressants) were pronounced  antidotes to specific disorders. This comparison to antibiotics worked in the pharmaceutical industry’s favor. These magic bullets were prescribed as if they were disease fighters.

I am not convinced that mental illness exists as it has been described by the DSM manuals. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and covers all mental health disorders for both children and adults. It also lists known causes of these disorders, statistics in terms of gender, age at onset, and prognosis as well as some research concerning the optimal treatment approaches.

Mental Health Professionals use this manual when working with patients in order to better understand their illness and potential treatment and to help 3rd party payers (e.g., insurance) understand the needs of the patient.  The book is typically considered the ‘bible’ for any professional who makes psychiatric diagnoses in the United States and many other countries.

All of its contributors are funded by the pharmaceutical industry. The industry is feeding itself.

My daughter was a victim of this system. She suffered from emotional distress, born with a brain which never rested, constantly giving her things to worry about. She was unhappy and agitated. We were told that she was depressed and she should be on antidepressants. They made her worse. The diagnoses snowballed when she started seeing psychiatrists. More and more drugs were added to the mix. The industry had created a life-long participant.

Americans are fiercely individualistic. New mothers are told to let the baby cry when put down for a nap or at night to develop self-soothing; in other words, encouraging them to take care of themselves, right from the get-go. A neighbor whose daughter used to wander into the parents bed every night, locked the daughter into her room at the advice of their pediatrician. The mom was a wreck; the daughter was owl-eyed and miserable. The little girl finally cried herself to sleep every night for weeks. Spirit broken, the daughter surrendered. She was a “strong, independent girl” her daddy announced when we saw them on the street.

Independence was valued in this case above all else. This little girl was forced to conquer her demons on her own. Someone like my daughter would not have faired so well. But, I think that that typical family is a good example of what I have been thinking about lately. If we create individuals early on,  we do not have life-long responsibility for their emotional well-being later in life. They will have developed lifeskills to rely on. We applaud the ego and encourage our youth to separate themselves to succeed.

When things go wrong, like they did with my daughter, we jump at the quick fix first. This knee-jerk reaction is probably to keep them on track and to not let them fall behind the competition – get through college, find a spouse, secure a job, buy the right house, groom your yard, travel, etc..

The pharmaceutical industry has ready-made answers in pill form to most problems that get in the way of this trajectory. I am the first to admit that I was delighted when my daughter started taking benzodiazepines and relaxed, really relaxed, for the first time in a long time. BUT, look where this quick fix has gotten her. She has increased anxiety and depression and cognitive impairment – all attributed to long term use of benzos. To withdraw from them, she will have to endure tremors, headaches, more anxiety, sleeplessness and physical pain.

What if we weren’t so quick as a society to dump our aging parents into nursing homes? What if we weren’t so quick to shuttle our difficult family members into treatment? What if healing happened at home, in the community, where responsibility isn’t a burden but just part of being an active member of our society? What if we all shared the burden of care? In the simplest of ways – by showing inclusion rather that exclusion, by accepting rather than rejecting.

Impossible. We are individually driven in the States and it is up to the individual to find help. Families are ostracized if they have family members with vulnerabilities. I know this because I have been on the receiving end of smiles and read behind them the relief and desire for a quick retreat to the safety of their conventional families waiting at home.

There will always be the stigma of “mental illness” and people afflicted  will never be encouraged to construct a new “self-narrative” for their futures where they are integrated into society, rather than isolated from it. Right from the start when a person describes symptoms that are not within the normal range, a label is slapped on and they are “out of play”. Addiction, “mental illness’, old age, kids who won’t sleep in their own beds – are all considered weak. Less worthy. Less likely to succeed. Out to pasture, out of sight or just forced to conform.

We do not live in a forgiving society.

It is after mid-night in Australia. I haven’t heard from my daughter. If she calls in the middle of the night tonight, I will make her stay on the phone and tell me what’s up. I feel her here with me today. I hope that she is okay.

Uncategorized Anatomy of an Epidemic, antidepressants, antipsychotics, Brain Chemistry, Chemical imbalance in the brain, DSM, facebook, Judith Warner, mood stabilizers, Robert Whitaker, twitter

My therapist made my discovery of the Psychiatric Drug Deceit look like I had just figured out that I could change the channel on the television with a remote OR on the box itself. Obvious and rudimentary. (This kind of pissed me off…)

I searched for years to find help for my daughter and NEVER along the way did anyone insinuate that she might be better off without the endless trial and error drug treatments.

It might be too late for my daughter; it is not too late for millions of new patients being diagnosed and starting on psych meds this year. Robert Whitaker’s research revealed that it is “a fact that  the mentally ill are now dying twenty-five years earlier than their peers, and that it is clear that the atypical antipsychotics, which regularly cause metabolic dysfunction, are contributing to that early death problem.”

From psychiatrist and author Dr. Daniel Carlat – Carlat Psychiatry:

Few laypeople realize how little we actually know about the underpinnings of [psychiatric] disorders….In virtually all of the psychiatric disorders including depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorders, the shadow of our ignorance overwhelms the few dim lights of our knowledge.

Doesn’t this frighten you like it does me? For years I blindly followed the medical model that seem driven by smart, trustworthy people.

Our diagnostic process is shallow and is based on an elaborate checklist of symptoms, leading us sometimes to over-diagnose patients with disorders of questionable validity, or, conversely, to miss the underlying problems in our rush to come up with a discrete diagnostic label that will be reimbursed by the insurance company. We tend (Dr. Carlat asserts, as he is a member of the psychiatric community) to treat all psychological problems the same way – with a pill and a few words of encouragement. Because of this rote approach to treatment, patients are often misdiagnosed and medications are over prescribed. In the end, we miss- serve our patients, failing to offer them psychotherapies that are sometimes more effective than drugs.

My therapist said that some of the worst offenders are the GP’s who get fifteen minutes or less to discuss problems with their patients before the next in a long line of clients passes through their office.   “My friend tried …” Or, “I saw an ad for…” The GP doesn’t have time to ask why the patient feels they need the drug; they just write a prescription. Who, my therapist asked, is going to invest hours a month to work out of their depression with psychotherapy, when a pill can be taken. The quick and easy method of relief wins out each time. No one, he insisted, is thinking long-term.

The resulting frenzy of psychiatric diagnoses has damaged the credibility of everyone in the field.

I only wish that this was true. I think the mental health profession is getting off scott-free. My little voice certainly isn’t going to sway anyone or start a revolution. Robert Whitaker’s book is getting buried by APA, NAMI, praise for Judith Warner, etc.

Who is paying attention to the fraud? No one is discrediting the psychiatric field because few people in the general public even know that they have placed their trust in a faulty system.

We like to see ourselves as neuroscientists, rationally manipulating levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin in order to get patients better. But the fact is that we have no clear evidence that chemical imbalances are at the root of any mental disorder…. We don’t know if changing levels of serotonin [by prescribing Zoloft or Celexa, or any other drug] is the actual curative mechanism. Nonetheless, we give patients elaborate explanations of how the drugs work chemically. It makes psychiatrists feel more scientific, and gives patients a feeling of confidence, but it’s little more than made up neuro-babble.”

As Robert Whitaker’s research revealed, psychiatrists wanted the magic pill just the the Real Doctors have – an antibiotic to cure the troubled mind, to correct the “chemical imbalance”.  Never mind that there isn’t an imbalance, we, the unsuspecting public doesn’t know better. I was won over by the neuro-babble just like millions of other believers.

The fact is that psychopharmacology is primarily trial and error, a kind of muddling through different candidate medications…. depending upon which company’s sales rep or which academic “Hired Gun” recently made a pitch for one or another drug. Indeed, when our most esteemed colleagues have essentially joined the marketing teams, it makes it that much harder for us to practice our craft responsibly.

“The fact is” should make everyone sit up and take notice. Do  psychiatrists ever admit to one another that long-term results are not favorable for psych meds? Maybe not to us, the unaware public, but among themselves, do they nod and wink as they are writing out the prescriptions?

From Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic:

The pharmaceutical companies would not have been able to build a $40 billion market for psychiatric drugs without the help of the psychiatrists at academic medical centers. The public looks to doctors for information about illnesses and how best to treat them, and so it was the academic psychiatrists – paid by drug companies to serve as consultant, on advisory boards, as as speaker – who in essence acted as the salesmen for this enterprise.

Bipolar/BPD Daniel Carlat, Robert Whitaker

When my daughter was in high school, she would copy her notes from a class repeatedly until they were perfect. This, evidently, set her apart from the garden-variety compulsive student so her neurologist prescribed Paxil, an antidepressant. Within a year of taking Paxil it became pubic knowledge that GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical giant, suppressed information or manipulated research data to make the drug appear safe and effective for treating depression in kids.

Neither is true. Paxil is neither safe NOR effective for treating depression in children.

Their own research showed its ineffectiveness but the company released the one study that showed some positive outcomes which mislead doctors and patients. As a result, Paxil was prescribed as the answer to teen depression before it was established that there is a three times greater risk of suicidal thoughts or attempts among teenagers who were put on Paxil.

Paxil actually worked for my daughter for a short time. The anxious confusion around dressing abated. Her preoccupation on perfection (straightening her hair in the mornings, copying her class notes, choosing the right shoes) lessened. But, within three months, the same behaviors returned. In many cases worse than before. She was starting to have panic attacks marked by hot flashes and excessive sweating. She was weaned off the Paxil, but too quickly. The deep depression that followed was not worth the couple of weeks of curbed anxiety.

This was her first foray into the medicines that treat mental illness. Much later she discovered that she reacts poorly to SSRI’s – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Although SSRIs are not supposed to be addictive, there is a dependency withdrawal reaction with Paxil. The rebound from the drug gave her symptoms that were worse than before she took the Paxil. The depression intensified, the anxiety became panic attacks. But, her pediatric neurologist, Dr. Espinosa, continued to prescribe SSRI’s. A few years later my daughter was weaned off of Celexa, another SSRI, one which might trigger manic episodes in bipolar patients and a drug that has side effects that include hyperactivity and agitation, respiratory problems which, ironically had always plagued my daughter, and like Paxil, suicidal ideation in kids and adults.

I didn’t allow my daughter to take pharmaceuticals as a pre-teen. I was afraid of the side effects and as she grew up, I was confident that lifestyle choices, on-going therapy, a good diet, no tv during the week, books, art and family time would eventually heal what ailed her. I resisted up until she tried Paxil when she was in her mid-teens. The depression, Dr. Espinosa explained, was just too overwhelming for my daughter.

I was dismayed to read in Judith Warner’s book, We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication, that research now shows that depression and ADHD are deviations in brain development. John March, director of neurosciences medicine at Duke Clinical Research Institute, says that “it’s bad for the brain to be mentally ill. The brain grows by learning. If you’re mentally ill, what your brain learns is mental illness.”

The years of untreated depression that my daughter experienced was poison for her developing brain, making her brain more prone to severe depression later in life. “If you get depressed as a child or adolescent, it scars the brain,” says neuropsychologist William Stixrud. It is now believed that antidepressants could promote brain resilience and help to protect it. John Marsh says, “If you reduce the symptoms of mental illness, the bet is that the brain will learn to be more normal.”

An article by Alison Gopnik in Slate, Monday February 2, 2010 is critical of Ms. Warner’s research.

http://www.slate.com/id/2245192/pagenum/all/#p2

From the Kirkus Review:

Judith Warner set out to write a condemnation of American parents for hysterically spotting mental disorders where there are none. When she began interviewing parents and mental-health professionals, however, she reversed her position. Only five percent of American children take psychotropic drugs, she writes, yet that many suffer from extreme mental illness, while another 15 percent endure at least minimal illness. Not only has Warner never met a parent who lunged for the medicine cabinet to dope up their kids, but some fought the medication route as long as they could, to the detriment of their child. It’s true that antidepressant prescriptions for children have skyrocketed, but that’s because primitive understanding of the brain left many sick children undiagnosed in the past; we now have more effective drugs for some illnesses; and the stigma of mental illness is blessedly diminished. Warner cites research that girls, minority children and those with less-educated parents are undertreated for ADHD. Careful reporter that she is, the author acknowledges that some experts might dispute parts of her thesis. Other signs of childhood trauma-teen pregnancy, school violence, crime, substance abuse and suicide-have declined, and Warner reports special professional skepticism about exploding rates of bipolar diagnoses in children. Meanwhile, too many laypeople are spooked by drug companies’ ads plugging their latest products, which doctors might not recommend. Curtailing those ads and more insurance coverage for pediatric mental-health screenings are among the author’s welcome common-sense proposals.

Parents of mentally ill children will find this tonic reassuring, while all parents will find it a valuable reminder that it’s not poor parenting to seek medical help for your children.

I thought I was protecting my daughter by not giving her drugs.

And then I picked up a copy of Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic.

To be continued in Part Two: Warner VS Whitaker

Uncategorized ADHD, agitation, Alison Gopnik, Anatomy of an Epidemic, antidepressants, Boston Globe, Celexa, Chemical imbalance in the brain, corrupt pharmaceutical companies, depression, Duke Clinical Research Institute, GlaxoSmithKline, hyperactivity, John Marsh, Judith Warner, manic episodes, MRI study of the brain, Nancy Andreasen, Nils Bruzelius, Paxil, Robert Whitaker, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, Slate, SSRI, suicidal ideation in kids and adults, Washington Post, We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication, William Stixrud