psychiatric drugs as agents of trauma

[btdt]

Table 4 

Drug Stress Trauma Syndrome (DSTS) summary Drug: most psychiatric drugs 

Stress: the effects of taking & stopping the drug are not only stressful, but distressing & often disruptive to pts quality of life 

Trauma-repeated distress & disruption to quality of life by the drug effects can be & often are traumatic 

Syndrome: it has a recognizable pattern of symptoms & signs 6. How common is DSTS? preliminary data

   I don't have a reliable answer to this question. From my clinical experience, it may occur in at least a distinct minority of 20% or more of people who take psychiatric drugs long-term. We need observation, research and data-gathering for more reliable figures. For example, in April 2008 I surveyed 24 clinicians (social workers, nurses, therapists and counselors; 22 women and 2 men) at a one-day workshop that I gave on trauma and recovery to a total of 65 people. Of these 24 people, 9 (37.5%; 8 women and 1 man) had taken antidepressant drugs, 6 (2/3) of whom had been prescribed and taken more than one ADP drug. Seven of the 9 (77%) said they had felt bothersome toxic effects of the drug(s), 4 (44%) had thus far experienced a disruptive or bothersome withdrawal syndrome, and 2 (22% of the 9) said they had clearly become worse long-term than before they began taking the ADPs.

   I did not ask them about their taking other psychiatric drugs. I believe that for their use of antipsychotic drugs, stimulants and benzodiazepines the percentage occurrence of DSTS may be more than 22%, and for "mood stabilizers", aka anticonvulsants, and lithium probably less. I discuss and raise several questions regarding these small and preliminary data after the next section.

7. Characteristic of DSTS

   1. The first characteristic of DSTS is the vicious cycle described above and in Table 3. This vicious cycle contains the stressors and resulting distress described among most of the other characteristics below.

   2. Distress from the toxic effects of the drug(s). While these are many and varied, they frequently include several of the following: Spellbinding, confusion, difficulty thinking and focusing, insomnia, metabolic-endocrine system disruption, weight gain, diabetes, easy irritability, relationship disruption, drug seeking, depression, akathisia, suicidality, various aches and pains, inability to work, and more [1, 6, 7, 21, 26, 33, 37, 44, 46-51]. These are commonly misinterpreted as being a return of the original symptoms and diagnosis.

   3. Withdrawal effects. These withdrawal effects can be identical to the toxic effects of the drugs and to some of the person's original symptoms, making the differential diagnosis difficult.

   4. Emotional "roller coaster" effects. The person may be (seemingly, on the surface) relatively peaceful, content, or numb for hours or longer, only to be followed by varying degrees of emotional and behavioral distress, sometimes markedly so. This experience will often be exaggerated by either missing a dose (usually withdrawal) or an upper-downer cycle when the person uses alternating uppers or stimulants (such as caffeine, amphetamines, or Ritalin/stimulant-type drugs to wake up, then later, sedatives to try to sleep) [26].

   5. Disrupted sleep, which tends to lead to a painful state of chronic sleep deprivation. A stressor in itself, this sleep deprivation can then aggravate their acute and chronic stress state. This disrupted sleep is often also aggravated by the upper-downer cycle described above [26].

   6. Treatment failure. The drug or drugs commonly do not consistently help the person's original symptoms [6, 7, 21, 25, 26, 34, 35, 37]. I have seen countless patients who came to me complaining that even after trying numerous and different psychiatric drugs, that they are either no better, or commonly that they are worse. For example, I regularly see "depressed" people who have tried a string of antidepressants [such as Prozac (fluoxetine), Paxil (paroxetine), Zoloft (sertraline), Wellbutrin (bupropion), Effexor (venlafaxine), Celexa (citalopram), Lexapro (escitalopram), Cymbalta, (duloxitine), Pristiq (desvenlafaxine)], and they are no better -- or often are worse. Some of them have also been tried on the more toxic antipsychotics, also with no help, and many have additionally been prescribed anti-convulsants ("mood stabilizers"), lithium and benzodiazepines -- all to little or no avail. These repeated treatment failures have contributed to their loss of hope that they can ever get better [6, 7, 22, 26, 33, 46-51].

   As an example, David Healy and colleagues reported the first results of an epidemiological study in North Wales on a population that has been stable for over 100 years regarding their numbers, age, cohorts, ethnic mix and rurality. It showed that since the introduction of the modern psychiatric drugs in psychiatry, that there has been a fifteen-fold increase in the rate of admissions to psychiatric inpatient hospitals, and a three-fold increase in the rate of forced psychiatric hospital admissions. It also showed that people with bipolar disorders have relapsed sooner and more often. This is a remarkable study. Overall, patients with all psychiatric conditions now appear to spend a greater amount of time in a psychiatric hospital than they would have 50 or 100 years ago. These conditions have worsened to these degrees despite the availability of supposedly effective and claimed prophylactic drug treatments. These findings are incompatible with drug treatments being effective in practice for a majority of the patients [21].

   7. Relative non-support from psychiatrists, other physicians and clinicians for using non-drug healing and recovery aids. Most of my patients have told me of having had this experience with other physicians, and I have seen it repeatedly over time in most dimensions of psychiatry from discussions with colleagues to psychiatry education events [5, 15,32].

   8. Stigma, shame and confusion from all of the above, including having been first labeled with a mental illness, promised improvement, and then not getting better with all these "state of the art" psych drugs that they see advertised on TV, in magazines, and elsewhere [5, 6, 7, 46, 47]. These painful feelings may aggravate the above stress responses.

   9. The presence of DSTS then reactivates and often worsens any underlying PTSD, alcoholism, other chemical dependence, or other problems in their life. The original failure to address and treat the underlying trauma and its effects is a major factor in the genesis of PTSD. Most of the patients that I found to have the features of DSTS also had an underlying PTSD. So, rather than psychiatric drugs helping them, a fair percentage of patients with PTSD who are treated with the drugs appear to have been made worse. Instead of helping their PTSD this iatrogenic and drug-mediated worsening is likely relatively common among the multi-millions of people who are treated with psychiatric drugs today.

8. Healing from DSTS

   10.Complex features. This painful syndrome is not usually easy to recognize and diagnose. It usually cannot be readily seen in a 5 to 15 minute medication follow-up check by a physician -- which is the usual time approved by the health insurance industry, aka "managed care." If government-run medicine takes hold in the USA, it will get worse. It takes enough time to recognize the many dimensions of DSTS, which usually requires the taking of a careful and thorough initial history from the patient. Then it will likely take a number of follow-up visits and psychotherapy sessions, coordinated with a physician with expertise in treating PTSD and helping people slowly detoxify from psychiatric drugs. Many affected patients won't be able to recognize that it is the drugs that are making them worse due to their lack of knowledge and the spellbinding effects of the drugs.

   For the person who has DSTS or similar symptoms, negotiating their recovery may seem like trying to walk through a minefield. They usually have to deal with multiple people: Clinicians, health insurance and payers, family (some of whom may want them to stay "mentally ill"), friends, community, and other authority figures. Navigating all these requires a self-commitment and focus on recovery, with ongoing patience and persistence. Some several thousand traumatized and damaged patients and their families have brought successful lawsuits against the drug makers, especially for drug-caused completed suicides, diabetes, birth defects and addictions [29].

   Based on my long experience assisting many patients with it, to help someone heal from DSTS the clinician usually has to first realize that the patient may have it. The patient may also eventually have to self-diagnose it. The clinician then helps them gradually (over months or longer) decrease the dose of the psychiatric drugs and eventually stop taking them. If appropriate, they may also consider referring the patient to a psychotherapist or counselor who knows how to assist with trauma recovery and if indicated, alcohol and other drug dependence recovery [14, 16, 17, 30]. The patient learns to tolerate the emotional and physical pain of withdrawal from the drugs and grieving any trauma effects. They will need to get the right nutrition, attend any appropriate self-help meetings such as AA, NA, ACA, CoDA, EA, or AlAnon, all while being patient and persistent over months and sometimes years. This is similar to the recovery approach that I have outlined in my other books, including especially My Recovery [48]. For more details, see Chapter 15 in Breggin's Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry [6] and Chapter 12 on Stopping Psychiatric Drugs in my book You May Not be Mentally Ill [51].

[btdt]

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Authors

Charles L. Whitfield^{1, 2}

¹Private Practice of Trauma Psychology, Psychiatry, and Addiction Medicine Consultant and Research Collaborator at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA

²Board of Directors of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence, Baltimore, MD, USA

Abstract

 

Drawing on the work of numerous psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists and my own observations, I describe how most common psychiatric drugs are not only toxic but can be chronically traumatic, which I define in some detail throughout this paper. In addition to observing this occurrence among numerous of my patients over the past 20 years, I surveyed 9 mental health clinicians who had taken antidepressant drugs long-term. Of these 9, 7 (77%) experienced bothersome toxic drug effects and 2 (22%) had become clearly worse than they were before they had started the drugs. Based on others' and my observations I describe the genesis of this worsened condition which I call the Drug Stress Trauma Syndrome. These drug effects can be and are often so detrimental to the quality of life among a distinct but significant minority of patients that they can no longer be considered trivial or unimportant. Instead, they are so disruptive to many patients' quality of life that their effect becomes traumatic, and are thereby agents of trauma. These observations and preliminary data may encourage others to look into this matter in more depth.

 

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[InvisibleUnless]

good stuff, i dont think ive read this one before.

 

"Medical Law and Ethics" ahh, no wonder it lays the issues bare.

[westcoast]

Excellent.

[smallfarmer]

As one who believes in the scientific method I don't see any legitimacy to this article. The first paragraph describes a data set of people(only 22!) that he surveyed at his own trauma workshop. You don't think the people attending and seeking help are going to be having problems? Obviously very skewed and misrepresented of the population. If you go through the footnotes almost all are based on books people have written, very little peer reviewed journals, or scientific, controlled experiments. The sentence that got me was when he said "If government-run medicine takes hold in the USA, it will get worse." Placing your political beliefs in an article likes this loses all legitimacy for me, whether I agree with the statement or not. 

[InvisibleUnless]

smallfarmer, i think you may be misunderstanding the purpose and bend of the article.  it is published in the journal of medical law and ethics, which means it is approaching medical issues from the standpoint of practical and philosophical evaluation of practices, resource allocation, and systemic definition.

 

i couldnt access the full article, but in skimming the posted excerpts, it seemed evident that the article was meant to establish the existence of psychotropic pharmaceuticals as agent of trauma similar to precipitating events such as natural disasters and human interactions like war and rape.  there is no need to establish the relative incidence of these drugs causing trauma if one is simply showing that they clearly and historically have been a source of trauma.  drugs as a source of trauma is about picking the drug-induced symptoms out from those which are proven to not be drug-induced (and offering convincing evidence for shades of grey).

 

this means, then, that the information offered from studies and patients referenced is put towards illuminating the medical community on the existence of the trauma that can and indeed has been caused by these drugs in a meaningful number of cases.  it does not attempt to extrapolate the commonality of these instances towards the support of its conclusion, insofar as i read, and does not attempt to represent the outcome of all psychotropic drug treatments.  the article exists to present the documentation of harm and industry complications surrounding the administration of these drugs.

 

 

as for your other criticisms, i think it can definitely be sketchy when a lot of footnotes are not peer-reviewed journals, however, you need to take into account two important things:

 

1. the books cited most usually themselves cite peer-reviewed journals and other scientific sources --- its a paper trail that takes a bit of work to follow sometimes, but these books arent based on mere personal experience with facts and numbers manifesting out of thin air.  they are subject to the same biases and interpretive slants as the papers and journals themselves, so naturally discretion is warranted, but to imply that citing books consolidating factual information is somehow less scientific than directly citing individualistic studies outside of a supporting context would be itself dishonest.

 

2. very VERY little research has been done, let alone published, on the subject of severe drug-induced trauma and protracted psychotropic withdrawal.  this is for several, often interrelated reasons, which i assume you are aware of but i will delineate in brief for the benefit of having everything on the table in this post.

 

I. drug companies own the patents to these drugs, and thus studying their effects is most often illegal and prohibited.

II. secondly, the vast majority of research is funded by drug companies and their subsidiary interests/mutualistic partners, like hospitals, foundations, and universities---all of these players benefit financially from issuing drug prescriptions far more than regulating drug prescriptions, even if law suits are occasionally brought up against companies or medical establishments.  so, even if research is authorized, or not prevented legally, the funding (and to a lesser degree, the availability of patients and information for gathering) is markedly scarce.  and, most specifically, all of these entities profit quite handsomely from the less-discriminating prescription of pharmaceuticals, and all exist as entities that perpetuate through and based on the level of their profiting; we are talking about their very survival being pitted against giving in to the demands of a minority that is easy, and well within their personal powers, to marginalize instead.

III. thirdly, the individuals/firms/companies running the initial drug trials, and pretty much any other corroborating studies, are participating on a regular basis in both unethical and illegal omissions, suppressions, and misrepresentations of inculpating information about these drugs.  the companies running the most comprehensive studies are being determined in court to conduct utterly criminal enterprises, both within the scope of the medical field and also in the larger field of general business practices.  doctors given access (via subpoena) to trial data that companies buried so they could release their purposely misleading study results have stated plainly that information on the harmful and deadly nature of psychotropic pharmaceuticals is absolutely present in the trial data that is consistently omitted from publication and all public access.

 

 

as for your comment on the quote "If government-run medicine takes hold in the USA, it will get worse." i think its ok to feel uncomfortable at such a mention, but construing it as a political statement was not supported in your post or in the article.  "government-run medicine" falls within very specific predetermined boundaries in terms of practice and orientation regarding services and finances in america---these are established principles being referred to rather than simply the notion of a government-backed, government-subsidized, or government-run healthcare system, and whatever predictive imaginings spring to mind for people.  put even more clearly, the "government-run" portion of that statement is actually saying nothing of a political assessment of the situation, and it being the government "running" the medicine is entirely incidental to the statement aside from the factual associations between "care done a specific way" [here being "the way of the US government per their own statements"] and "the difficulty in diagnosing and treating DSTS if care is being done a specific way" [which includes the governments way].  it makes no moral or political judgement, and only comments on the procedural elements endemic to the proposed situation---the logistics of healthcare systems and how those impact patient health and the availability of care.  and, rightly so, because it is an article in a journal that is meant to evaluate medicine and related practices from a legal and procedural standpoint.

[cymbaltawithdrawal5600]

bump

[btdt]

smallfarmer, i think you may be misunderstanding the purpose and bend of the article.  it is published in the journal of medical law and ethics, which means it is approaching medical issues from the standpoint of practical and philosophical evaluation of practices, resource allocation, and systemic definition.

 

i couldnt access the full article, but in skimming the posted excerpts, it seemed evident that the article was meant to establish the existence of psychotropic pharmaceuticals as agent of trauma similar to precipitating events such as natural disasters and human interactions like war and rape.  there is no need to establish the relative incidence of these drugs causing trauma if one is simply showing that they clearly and historically have been a source of trauma.  drugs as a source of trauma is about picking the drug-induced symptoms out from those which are proven to not be drug-induced (and offering convincing evidence for shades of grey).

 

this means, then, that the information offered from studies and patients referenced is put towards illuminating the medical community on the existence of the trauma that can and indeed has been caused by these drugs in a meaningful number of cases.  it does not attempt to extrapolate the commonality of these instances towards the support of its conclusion, insofar as i read, and does not attempt to represent the outcome of all psychotropic drug treatments.  the article exists to present the documentation of harm and industry complications surrounding the administration of these drugs.

 

 

as for your other criticisms, i think it can definitely be sketchy when a lot of footnotes are not peer-reviewed journals, however, you need to take into account two important things:

 

1. the books cited most usually themselves cite peer-reviewed journals and other scientific sources --- its a paper trail that takes a bit of work to follow sometimes, but these books arent based on mere personal experience with facts and numbers manifesting out of thin air.  they are subject to the same biases and interpretive slants as the papers and journals themselves, so naturally discretion is warranted, but to imply that citing books consolidating factual information is somehow less scientific than directly citing individualistic studies outside of a supporting context would be itself dishonest.

 

2. very VERY little research has been done, let alone published, on the subject of severe drug-induced trauma and protracted psychotropic withdrawal.  this is for several, often interrelated reasons, which i assume you are aware of but i will delineate in brief for the benefit of having everything on the table in this post.

 

I. drug companies own the patents to these drugs, and thus studying their effects is most often illegal and prohibited.

II. secondly, the vast majority of research is funded by drug companies and their subsidiary interests/mutualistic partners, like hospitals, foundations, and universities---all of these players benefit financially from issuing drug prescriptions far more than regulating drug prescriptions, even if law suits are occasionally brought up against companies or medical establishments.  so, even if research is authorized, or not prevented legally, the funding (and to a lesser degree, the availability of patients and information for gathering) is markedly scarce.  and, most specifically, all of these entities profit quite handsomely from the less-discriminating prescription of pharmaceuticals, and all exist as entities that perpetuate through and based on the level of their profiting; we are talking about their very survival being pitted against giving in to the demands of a minority that is easy, and well within their personal powers, to marginalize instead.

III. thirdly, the individuals/firms/companies running the initial drug trials, and pretty much any other corroborating studies, are participating on a regular basis in both unethical and illegal omissions, suppressions, and misrepresentations of inculpating information about these drugs.  the companies running the most comprehensive studies are being determined in court to conduct utterly criminal enterprises, both within the scope of the medical field and also in the larger field of general business practices.  doctors given access (via subpoena) to trial data that companies buried so they could release their purposely misleading study results have stated plainly that information on the harmful and deadly nature of psychotropic pharmaceuticals is absolutely present in the trial data that is consistently omitted from publication and all public access.

 

 

as for your comment on the quote "If government-run medicine takes hold in the USA, it will get worse." i think its ok to feel uncomfortable at such a mention, but construing it as a political statement was not supported in your post or in the article.  "government-run medicine" falls within very specific predetermined boundaries in terms of practice and orientation regarding services and finances in america---these are established principles being referred to rather than simply the notion of a government-backed, government-subsidized, or government-run healthcare system, and whatever predictive imaginings spring to mind for people.  put even more clearly, the "government-run" portion of that statement is actually saying nothing of a political assessment of the situation, and it being the government "running" the medicine is entirely incidental to the statement aside from the factual associations between "care done a specific way" [here being "the way of the US government per their own statements"] and "the difficulty in diagnosing and treating DSTS if care is being done a specific way" [which includes the governments way].  it makes no moral or political judgement, and only comments on the procedural elements endemic to the proposed situation---the logistics of healthcare systems and how those impact patient health and the availability of care.  and, rightly so, because it is an article in a journal that is meant to evaluate medicine and related practices from a legal and procedural standpoint.

I sit in awe of your brain... knowing mine is awol I still know a good one when I see it ... thanks for responding. 

 

I think people who have taken Ad like small farmer may think that trauma as a result of these drugs does not happen as it has not happened to them and they took the drugs. 

 

For those of us it has happened to... ME for instance.  I completely understand his take on this yet I could not respond the way you did and I am in awe thank you. 

[btdt]

As one who believes in the scientific method I don't see any legitimacy to this article. The first paragraph describes a data set of people(only 22!) that he surveyed at his own trauma workshop. You don't think the people attending and seeking help are going to be having problems? Obviously very skewed and misrepresented of the population. If you go through the footnotes almost all are based on books people have written, very little peer reviewed journals, or scientific, controlled experiments. The sentence that got me was when he said "If government-run medicine takes hold in the USA, it will get worse." Placing your political beliefs in an article likes this loses all legitimacy for me, whether I agree with the statement or not. 

 

It can happen.. SF it happened to me.  It has happened to others who are no longer around to tell their take on this. I know to read this and to have taken the drugs and or be taking them can scare the crap out of you... and if your trying to decide if you should take them again or not it may scare you too.... 

 

Could it be fear that has you wanting to close your mind to the trauma being real?  It does not happen to everyone it may not happen to you.  I think a lot of people on here have actually experienced some sort of traumas in wd...I would call what I experienced in wd trauma. 

I would also call a severe adverse reaction I had to prozac after 14 days use trauma. 

 

Not everybody gets it.. the purpose of this site in general I am sure you have read is to make people aware of the facts and one of the facts is that trauma does happen to people as a result of taking these drugs and or getting off them.   

 

The bigger purpose of this site for me... is that this trauma be reduced in any and every way possible that is within our power to do... as we all know there are limits to what a site can do...giving the right information on the least damaging way to get off the drugs goes a long way to reduce the trauma or perhaps to have it no trauma. 

 

I can see how this would scare you it scares me...it should scare some more people like the ones making it and the ones giving it out. 

[westcoast]

I too believe in the scientific method, and was trained in the design of experiments. Not all topics are amenable to experimentation.

 

Case studies have always had value in medicine and psychology. Not being experiments does not mean they are not part of the body of literature known as science.

 

Psych drugs do cause trauma. Ruining one's finances and love life and credibility during a psychotic episode caused by the drugs, in midlife, is a trauma. Doing it repeatedly because of stupid, lazy, arrogant doctors? Worse. That it was all caused by doctors, who are supposed to help people, makes it worse yet.

 

If you have not suffered the hideous side- and after-effects of these crappy drugs, perhaps you will, someday, and then you can join the club. Until then, your opinion is just an opinion, and it it is not worth as much as the opinions of those who have been through life-wrecking psychosis wrought by psych drugs. Ask Andrea Yates, or her husband. Ask BTDT. Ask Rhiannon. Ask me.

[cymbaltawithdrawal5600]

Bumping this so the topic of pilots is not on the first page of the forum. I am finding it extremely upsetting to see those 2 words every time I come to read.

[ang]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ex-pharmaceutical-sales-representative-comes-clean-reveals-horrors-of-western-medicine/5438950

[cymbaltawithdrawal5600]

Please change the title of the story of the pilot to remove upsetting words or move to off topic so it does not have to be seen on the first page of the site. This is an extremely upsetting story.

[cymbaltawithdrawal5600]

again