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Guardian article by Johann Hari


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I don't think this is saying anything that we haven't learnt the hard way

 

Is everything you think you know about depression wrong? | Society | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/07/is-everything-you-think-you-know-about-depression-wrong-johann-hari-lost-connections

Current daily meds. Citalopram 2.5mg morning. Diazapam 1.5mg evening, Propanalol 40mg split 4x10mg throughout day.

 

Recent meds. Fluoxetine 20mg began 24th Nov 2017, CT on 4th December on medical advice due to bad Akathisia. Citalopram 10mg began on 13th Dec 2017, tapered to 2.5mg by 20th Dec 2017 on medical advice. Diazapam 2mg began on 6th Dec 2017 cut to 1.5 mg on 26th Dec. Propanalol 40mg began on 13th Dec. Zopiclone 3.75 mg began 13th December, used maybe 5 times then quit.

 

Previous history. Tricyclics, Fluoxetine or Citalopram for periods of 6mo to 2yrs over last 25 years. Probably 5 yrs in total. No significant ill effects.

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Then, as the years and decades passed, doctors on the frontline started to come back with another question. All over the world, they were being encouraged to tell patients that depression is, in fact, just the result of a spontaneous chemical imbalance in your brain – it is produced by low serotonin, or a natural lack of some other chemical. It’s not caused by your life – it’s caused by your broken brain. Some of the doctors began to ask how this fitted with the grief exception. If you agree that the symptoms of depression are a logical and understandable response to one set of life circumstances – losing a loved one – might they not be an understandable response to other situations? What about if you lose your job? What if you are stuck in a job that you hate for the next 40 years? What about if you are alone and friendless?

 

 

The grief exception seemed to have blasted a hole in the claim that the causes of depression are sealed away in your skull. It suggested that there are causes out here, in the world, and they needed to be investigated and solved there. This was a debate that mainstream psychiatry (with some exceptions) did not want to have. So, they responded in a simple way – by whittling away the grief exception. With each new edition of the manual they reduced the period of grief that you were allowed before being labelled mentally ill – down to a few months and then, finally, to nothing at all. Now, if your baby dies at 10am, your doctor can diagnose you with a mental illness at 10.01am and start drugging you straight away.

 

....................................

Is this for rea,l the period of bereavement is now nothing!!!

I didn't know this.

 

This is what I know ...the period of time before a season of bereavement is called depression is:

 

DSM III; 1980 ; 1 year

DSM IV; 1994; 2 months

DSM V; 2013; 2 weeks

now 2 seconds ??... Really 

Talk about pharma creep!!

Doctors have never applied these time frames anyway ..people got drugs immediately.

Thought for the day: Lets stand up, and let’s speak out , together. G Olsen

We have until the 14th. Feb 2018. 

URGENT REQUEST Please consider submitting  for the petition on Prescribed Drug Dependence and Withdrawal currently awaiting its third consideration at the Scottish Parliament. You don't even have to be from Scotland. By clicking on the link below you can read some of the previous submissions but be warned many of them are quite harrowing.

http://www.parliament.scot/GettingInvolved/Petitions/PE01651   

Please tell them about your problems taking and withdrawing from antidepressants and/or benzos.

Send by email to petitions@parliament.scot and quote PE01651 in the subject heading. Keep to a maximum of 3 sides of A4 and you can't name for legal reasons any doctor you have consulted. Tell them if you wish to remain anonymous. We need the numbers to help convince the committee members we are not isolated cases. You have until mid February. Thank you

Recovering paxil addict

None of the published articles shed light on what ssri's ... actually do or what their hazards might be. Healy 2013. 

This is so true, with anything you get on these drugs, dependance, tapering, withdrawal symptoms, side effects, just silent. And if there is something mentioned then their is a serious disconnect between what is said and reality! 

  "Every time I read of a multi-person shooting, I always presume that person had just started a SSRI or had just stopped."  Dr Mosher. Me too! 

Over two decades later, the number of antidepressant prescriptions a year is slightly more than the number of people in the Western world. Most (nine out of 10) prescriptions are for patients who faced difficulties on stopping, equating to about a tenth of the population. These patients are often advised to continue treatment because their difficulties indicate they need ongoing treatment, just as a person with diabetes needs insulin. Healy 2015

I believe the ssri era will soon stand as one of the most shameful in the history of medicine. Healy 2015

Let people help people ... in a natural, kind, non-addictive (and non-big pharma) way. J Broadley 2017

 

 

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Current daily meds. Citalopram 2.5mg morning. Diazapam 1.5mg evening, Propanalol 40mg split 4x10mg throughout day.

 

Recent meds. Fluoxetine 20mg began 24th Nov 2017, CT on 4th December on medical advice due to bad Akathisia. Citalopram 10mg began on 13th Dec 2017, tapered to 2.5mg by 20th Dec 2017 on medical advice. Diazapam 2mg began on 6th Dec 2017 cut to 1.5 mg on 26th Dec. Propanalol 40mg began on 13th Dec. Zopiclone 3.75 mg began 13th December, used maybe 5 times then quit.

 

Previous history. Tricyclics, Fluoxetine or Citalopram for periods of 6mo to 2yrs over last 25 years. Probably 5 yrs in total. No significant ill effects.

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I read that and was not impressed.

Id like to know if Dean Burnett has any conflict of interest. 

He finishes with :

 

Hari may have the best intentions when it comes to addressing mental health problems like depression, but this doesn’t seem like a good way to go about it. Asserting yourself as a maverick expert and backing your arguments up with suspect cherry picking of evidence and at-the-very-least exaggerated claims? Such a sensitive subject that affects millions surely requires a more thorough, thoughtful and specific approach than this?

But hey, what do I know?

 

Lets consider

"this backing your arguments up with suspect cherry picking of evidence and at-the-very-least exaggerated claims? Such a sensitive subject that affects millions surely requires a more thorough, thoughtful and specific approach than this?" 

This is exactly what pharma have done on all the ghost written ad studies . So I agree the millions harmed by uninformed consent deserved better.

 

Burnett finishes with But hey, what do I know? I posit if Burnett has never taken any of these drugs for himself  then Dr Burnett you in fact correct .... you know nothing! 

Thought for the day: Lets stand up, and let’s speak out , together. G Olsen

We have until the 14th. Feb 2018. 

URGENT REQUEST Please consider submitting  for the petition on Prescribed Drug Dependence and Withdrawal currently awaiting its third consideration at the Scottish Parliament. You don't even have to be from Scotland. By clicking on the link below you can read some of the previous submissions but be warned many of them are quite harrowing.

http://www.parliament.scot/GettingInvolved/Petitions/PE01651   

Please tell them about your problems taking and withdrawing from antidepressants and/or benzos.

Send by email to petitions@parliament.scot and quote PE01651 in the subject heading. Keep to a maximum of 3 sides of A4 and you can't name for legal reasons any doctor you have consulted. Tell them if you wish to remain anonymous. We need the numbers to help convince the committee members we are not isolated cases. You have until mid February. Thank you

Recovering paxil addict

None of the published articles shed light on what ssri's ... actually do or what their hazards might be. Healy 2013. 

This is so true, with anything you get on these drugs, dependance, tapering, withdrawal symptoms, side effects, just silent. And if there is something mentioned then their is a serious disconnect between what is said and reality! 

  "Every time I read of a multi-person shooting, I always presume that person had just started a SSRI or had just stopped."  Dr Mosher. Me too! 

Over two decades later, the number of antidepressant prescriptions a year is slightly more than the number of people in the Western world. Most (nine out of 10) prescriptions are for patients who faced difficulties on stopping, equating to about a tenth of the population. These patients are often advised to continue treatment because their difficulties indicate they need ongoing treatment, just as a person with diabetes needs insulin. Healy 2015

I believe the ssri era will soon stand as one of the most shameful in the history of medicine. Healy 2015

Let people help people ... in a natural, kind, non-addictive (and non-big pharma) way. J Broadley 2017

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

 

Short Term Case: 7 pill of 10 mg of Modafinil in a 3 month span, but last 3 I took back to back causing severe withdrawals, lasting 3 weeks. Than 2 pills lexapro to help withdrawal lead to more withdrawal.  I have most symptoms Pssd, emotional loss, cognitive issues, nerve damage in legs.  Also 2 benzodiazepines.  Not much to damage me long term...

 

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  • 11 months later...
  • Administrator

Another article by Johann Hari

 

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/2/25/16997572/causes-depression-pills-prozac-social-environmental-connections-hari

 

"....The [Cambodian] doctors told Summerfield a story about a farmer they had treated. He worked in the water-logged rice fields, and one day he stepped on a land mine and his leg was blasted off. He was fitted with an artificial limb, and in time he went back to work. But it’s very painful to work when your artificial limb is underwater, and returning to the scene of his trauma must have made him highly anxious. The farmer became deeply depressed.

 

So the doctors and his neighbors sat with this man and talked through his life and his troubles. They realized that even with his new artificial limb, his old job — working in the paddies — was just too difficult, that he was constantly stressed and in physical pain, and that these things combined to make him want to just stop living. His interlocutors had an idea.

 

They suggested that he work as a dairy farmer, a job that would place less painful stress on his false leg and produce fewer disturbing memories. They believed he was perfectly capable of making the switch. So they bought him a cow. In the months and years that followed, his life changed. His depression, once profound, lifted...."

This is not medical advice. Discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical practitioner.

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has surpassed our humanity." -- Albert Einstein

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