**BREAKING: CNN's psychiatrist admits there may be trouble with long-term AD use

[cinephile]

Wow. I didn't think I'd be reading something like this so soon in the mainstream media, but it's very welcome nonetheless! CNN's resident psychiatrist, Charles Raison (an Emory man, no less! Emory was where toxic Charles Nemeroff used to chair the psychiatry department until he was forced to resign for a conflict of interest scandal), has admitted he's getting very concerned about just how safe and effective antidepressants are in the long run when he recently answered a reader's question on the CNN health blog. He quotes the studies we're familiar with that say that ADs are no better than placebo for all but the most severe depression.

 

Just read this response he had to the reader's question, "Is it dangerous to be on antidepressants for years?"

 

Ten years ago my answer to this question would have been, "Certainly not."

 

A year ago my answer would have been, "Almost certainly not."

 

Now, unfortunately, the most honest answer I can give you is, "I'm not sure."

 

Coming from a guy who has treated thousands of people over the years with antidepressants, I have to admit that my uncertainty both shocks and distresses me.

Just this admission alone is astonishing to me, as Dr. Raison is a pretty mainstream psychiatrist as I understand it. Let's hope this is just the start of the truth FINALLY getting out! WE WILL NOT BE STOPPED!

 

FULL TEXT: http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/26/is-it-ok-to-be-on-antidepressants-for-years/

[Altostrata]

Wow, that is an amazing concession. Respect to Dr. Raison for his honesty and confessing concern over all the prescriptions he's written.

[lupe]

I am so glad you saw this and posted it. Thanks!!! and WOW is right and so soon. Now days things happen faster... word spreads faster.

[Altostrata]

Here's the argument again:

 

The advantage ascribed to placebo in these meta-analyses is only partly due to the so-called "placebo effect." Rather, the rate of so-called "relapse" off antidepressants is inflated by the inclusion of withdrawal syndrome in the statistics for "relapse."

 

Not one of those studies reviewed, or any study of antidepressant efficacy ever, includes a protocol to distinguish withdrawal syndrome from relapse. Patients who had been on antidepressants were taken off them and incidences of withdrawal were misdiagnosed as relapse, supposedly arguing for antidepressant efficacy. (If you don't take your antidepressant, you get sick again.)

 

The inflated statistics for post-medication relapse look bad when compared to recovery on placebo. The true interpretation is not that placebos are more powerful than antidepressants, it is that antidepressants are MORE DESTRUCTIVE than placebo.

 

If the stats for withdrawal were taken out of the column for relapse (showing antidepressant advantage) and counted properly as adverse events, antidepressants would lose their original statistical advantage, still fall short of placebo, and be revealed for what they are: Drugs that may make you feel good for a while but, in the long term, cause brain changes and withdrawal problems that are destructive.

[cinephile]

The inflated statistics for post-medication relapse look bad when compared to recovery on placebo. The true interpretation is not that placebos are more powerful than antidepressants, it is that antidepressants are MORE DESTRUCTIVE than placebo.

Excellent point. For some people (and that includes, tragically, children put on this stuff) that is indeed true.

 

BTW: I have to think that this concept crossed the mind of at least one psychiatrist, but I think they didn't listen to their conscience because the biomedical model train had left the station, and by then the stakes were too high to go back and investigate this.

[Baxter]

This is good news. A bit late for my brain, but I am glad to see the tide starting to turn.

[Eliotsmum]

This makes me really really mad...like we were all freakin' guinea pigs........

[cinephile]

This makes me really really mad...like we were all freakin' guinea pigs........

You got that right, Eliotsmum! I have such mixed emotions about this: on the one hand, I feel hopeful that the word is getting out and psychiatrists are starting to think twice about the meds. BUT I also share your fuming anger that we were, after all, guinea pigs. I remember saying I felt like a guinea pig to my psychiatrist and he said, basically, that I wasn't because "these drugs go through such tough trials" blah blah blah. I didn't buy that explanation then, and I certainly don't buy it now.

 

It's utterly surreal (and, of course, infuriating) that our worst fears really are coming true: we were played for chumps, treated like guinea pigs, and ultimately just dollar signs for big (pig?) pharma. BUT we will not go down without a fight and the truth WILL come out. We all deserve some kind of payback from this, either legal (mass jailings of pharma execs and corrupt psychiatrists) or monetary (unprecedented civil lawsuits that bring the pharma companies to the brink of bankruptcy sounds like a good start). Better yet would be studies researching the long-term safety of these drugs and just what in the hell they do to the brain. Seriously, how could we have accepted the disclaimer "is thought to work by..." as an acceptable explanation of how these profound, brain-changing drugs "work"? Sorry, that doesn't cut it, especially when so many kids are on this stuff. No, now is the time to start studying, to the best of our ability and technology, what these things do to the brain so we can start looking into REAL treatments for the damage done by these meds, like protracted withdrawal and PSSD. I'll tell you right now I will not accept what I fear might happen: that moving forward psychiatry grudgingly accepts antidepressants should only be used in extreme circumstances (what we've known all along, of course), and thus only the NEW generation of kids and patients benefit from this knowledge and us "early adopters" of SSRIs are forgotten about and left to dangle on a pole with a devastatingly reduced quality of life. We cannot let that happen.

 

NOBODY deserved what we got. Nobody.

[Altostrata]

If it's any consolation, millions of people have been affected by this. Yes, there will be some apologetic psychiatrists in the near future....

[Sunny1008]

Thank you so much for posting this article. I am showing it to my family, in the hopes that "CNN" may get their attention!

[Phil]

You got that right, Eliotsmum! I have such mixed emotions about this: on the one hand, I feel hopeful that the word is getting out and psychiatrists are starting to think twice about the meds. BUT I also share your fuming anger that we were, after all, guinea pigs.

 

I feel exactly the same. My biggest fear is that all this is gonna be swept under the carpet and we are left to pick up the pieces by ourselves.

 

I know several people on AD's, many of them not even for serious disorders, and no doubt somewhere along the line they too will find out what we have the hard way. My hope is that eventually there will be enough angry voices that will be heard.

[Sunny1008]

 

You got that right, Eliotsmum! I have such mixed emotions about this: on the one hand, I feel hopeful that the word is getting out and psychiatrists are starting to think twice about the meds. BUT I also share your fuming anger that we were, after all, guinea pigs.

 

I feel exactly the same. My biggest fear is that all this is gonna be swept under the carpet and we are left to pick up the pieces by ourselves.

 

I know several people on AD's, many of them not even for serious disorders, and no doubt somewhere along the line they too will find out what we have the hard way. My hope is that eventually there will be enough angry voices that will be heard.

 

Phil,

 

This is my fear as well - that all of this is going to get swept under the rug, and those of us who have suffered hard core are going to be thought of as either 1) crazy, or 2) a very small freak minority.

[Altostrata]

The discussion about the WebMD article was so interesting I made it into its own topic: SUNY psychiatrist admits use of "chemical imbalance" fallacy to persuade patients

 

 

I came across this article, not sure if it's been posted already, but it seems similar to what's been posted in this thread:

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20081076-10391704.html

 

That would be the study discussed here http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/911-relapse-more-frequent-with-antidepressants-blue-again-study-finds/

[Rhiannon]

Nice.

 

Alto, I added a comment on the CNN page as a reply to your comment. Just saying the same thing you said but using smaller words, for the sake of the multisyllabically-challenged.

 

Teamwork. :-)

[Altostrata]

Great post, Rhi. Every bit of explanation helps!