02/25/20

Rethinking and Transforming Psychiatry

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“We believe that a fundamental rethinking of psychiatric knowledge creation and training is in order.” This statement was made in a commentary published in the New England Medical Journal, “Medicine and the Mind—The Consequences of Psychiatry’s Identity Crisis.” The authors are two prominent Harvard researchers in psychiatry, Caleb Gardner and Arthur Kleinman, so their words cannot be dismissed as ‘anti-psychiatry.’ They went on to say biologic psychiatry has so far failed to produce a comprehensive theoretical model for any major psychiatric disorder. However, they think it would be “too great a loss,” to diminish its role drastically as suggested by Anne Harrington. Rather than contracting to an exclusive focus on biologic structure, “the field needs to expand if we are to meet the needs of real people.”

I have mixed feelings about their proposal. Their critique of biological psychiatry, the acknowledgment of over prescribing psychiatric medication, the abandonment of its social, interpersonal, and psychodynamic foundations are concerns I share. But they balked at Anne Harrington’s proposal in Mind Fixers to limit its scope to severe, mostly psychotic disorders. She said there is hardly any knowledgeable person who believes the so-called biological revolution of the 1980s made good on its therapeutic and scientific promises. “It is now increasingly clear to the general public that it overreached, overpromised, overdiagnosed, overmedicated, and compromised its principles.” If psychiatry needed to be rebuilt, as the authors said, won’t there have to be some dismantling first? Otherwise, there is a danger of building on an unstable, unreliable foundation.

Harrington pointed to how in 2013, just before the publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), Thomas Insel, who was then the director of NIMH, said the agency was re-orienting its research away from DSM categories; that is was critical to realize that “we cannot succeed if we use DSM categories as the ‘gold standard’” for diagnosis. He said it was like using the nature of chest pain or the quality of a fever to create a diagnostic system. Harrington said, “Put another way, there seemed to be little if any sound biology undergirding the psychiatric enterprise.”

In Psychology Today, Jonathan Shedler wrote, “A Psychiatric Diagnosis Is Not a Disease.” He said there was a circular logic to psychiatric diagnosis. “How do we know a patient has depression? Because they have the symptoms. Why are they having symptoms? Because they have depression.” He elaborated that psychiatric diagnoses were categorically different from medical diagnoses like atherosclerosis, myocarditis, or pneumonia, because they are descriptive rather than explanatory. “Medical diagnoses point to etiology—underlying biological causes.”

In an addendum, Shedler said he appreciated the lively discussion his article inspired. He was surprised by some of the comments, from individuals he assumed to be psychiatrists, who had impugned his credentials to discuss psychiatric diagnosis. But he took comfort in knowing that Allen Frances, MD, Chair of the DSM-IV Task Force, had the same view. Frances also said mental disorders were not diseases, but constructs. They were descriptive, rather than explanatory.

There was a study published in Psychiatry Research, “Heterogeneity in Psychiatric Diagnostic Classification,” that examined the heterogeneous nature of categories within the DSM-5, and its consequences for clinicians, clients and the diagnostic model itself. Heterogeneity was found in specific diagnostic criteria, including symptom comparators, duration of difficulties, indicators of severity, and the perspective used to assess difficulties. Each of the three researchers called for dismantling, not expanding DSM diagnosis.

The lead researcher of the study, Kate Allsopp, said for Medical Express: “Although diagnostic labels create the illusion of an explanation they are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice.” Peter Kinderman, another author, said: “This study provides yet more evidence that the biomedical diagnostic approach in psychiatry is not fit for purpose.” He added the diagnostic system wrongly assumed that all distress resulted from disorder. John Read, who was the third author, said: “Perhaps it is time we stopped pretending that medical-sounding labels contribute anything to our understanding of the complex causes of human distress or of what kind of help we need when distressed.”

Psychiatric Times published an interview with Allen Frances for Conversations in Critical Psychiatry. Although he thought psychiatry was among the noblest of professions, “I fear that too many psychiatrists are now reduced to pill pushing, with far too little time to really know their patients well and to apply the rounded biopsychosocial model that is absolutely essential to good care.” He despaired that diagnostic inflation resulted in a too loose of a diagnostic system. “Diagnoses should be written in pencil, and under-diagnosis is almost always safer and more accurate than over-diagnosis.” With regard to epidemiological studies that tend to exaggerate rates of mental disorders, Frances said:

Never believe the extremely high rates of mental disorders routinely reported by epidemiological studies in psychiatry—usually labelling about 25% of the general population as mentally ill in the past year, about 50% lifetime. This entire literature has a systematic, but unacknowledged, methodological bias that inherently results in over-reporting. Because epidemiology requires such huge samples—in the tens of thousands—it is prohibitively expensive to conduct clinical interviews. Instead phone surveys are done by non-clinicians following a highly structured format that allows no clinical judgment whether the symptoms reported cause sufficient clinically significant distress and impairment to qualify as a mental disorder. Since there is no sharp boundary between normal distress and mental disorder, not assessing for clinical significance includes among those labelled mentally ill many who are merely distressed. The rates reported in studies are really only upper limits, not accurate approximations of true rates. They should be, but never are, reported as such.

His final word on DSM was: “DSM should be seen only as a tool helpful in guiding clinical judgment, not as a replacement for it.”

Returning to “Medicine and the Mind” by Gardner and Kleinman, psychiatrist Sandy Steingard said she shared their wish that research funding would be allocated to fields other than basic biologic research. But she was surprised they appeared to support buttressing psychiatry’s hold as leaders in research and program development. “I need some convincing that the problems we agree exist will be best addressed within my profession. In recent years, I have been most impressed by approaches to mental distress that emanate from outside of psychiatry.”

Finally, there was an article published in Public Understanding of Science that aimed to analyze the ‘critical reception’ of the DSM-5—how it has been received, discussed and criticized by different categories of people: “The Critical Reception of the DSM-5.” They noted two major themes surrounding the critical reception of the DSM-5, the pseudo-scientific nature of the manual and its normalizing power. Mental health professionals, especially psychiatrists, were more invested in the debate on the scientific nature of the DSM-5. There was a more eclectic variety of audiences in the debate over the normalizing power of the manual.

In the first debate (the scientific nature of the DSM), we found opposing argumentative positions regarding whether or not the manual is a scientific tool and questioning the type of science to which the manual adheres. In the second debate (the normalising power of the DSM), opinions were also polarised: while some argued that the manual was potentially socially harmful, some pointed out its lack of inherent agency and others mentioned its potential benefits. Although these debates have been noted in previous studies (Demazeux, 2015; Ecks, 2016), our research aims to deepen the understanding of such discussions.

They concluded the DSM was not simply a scientific manual. Rather, it is “a social laboratory where political, sociological, ethical and psychological issues are discussed and confronted.” In order to critically analyze the DSM, the authors said it was important to consider the claims that challenge the APA’s narrative of the DSM, namely its scientific and democratic nature. They said a range of arguments interacted and overlapped “in differing and opposing ways.” This was said to nuance the idea often presented academic publications that critiques of the DSM were mostly fixed, repeating the same themes and antagonistic positions.

The above issues were not being discussed in fringe, antipsychiatry forums. Rather, they appeared in well-received, medical and psychological arenas: The New England Medical Journal, Psychology Today, Psychiatry Research, Medical Express, Psychiatric Times, the National Institute of Mental Health. The people addressing them: Allen Frances, Thomas Insel, Caleb Gardner, Arthur Kleinman and others are or were key individuals within the mental health, psychiatric, diagnostic fields. The time is coming where just discussing the issues and concerns will not be enough; change will be necessary.

Psychiatry and diagnosis need to be reined in. They have extended their “reach” too far as it is, and scaling back is a necessary and essential step before any future recasting of the role of psychiatric treatment for mental “disorders.” Anne Harrington’s suggestion to limit its scope to severe, mostly psychotic disorders is a good first step. Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, a psychiatrist, seems to share this view. In “Rethinking Modals of Psychotropic Drug Action,” and “The Psychoactive Effects of Psychiatric Medication,”  she proposed a “drug centered model” of drug action, rather than the existing “disease centered model,” whose core assumption is that psychotropic drugs help correct “a biochemical abnormality that represents a biological substrate of a specific disease process.”

In The Myth of the Chemical Cure, Moncrieff acknowledged abandoning the disease-centered model would challenge “some of the most fundamental principles of modern psychiatry.” Yet she said it would also open the way “to a more honest practice” that requires its own specialist knowledge, and implements a more democratic treatment process:

Adopting a drug-centred model of drug action would require psychiatrists to become more informed about the effects of different psychoactive drugs, and become attuned to evaluating the subjective experiences of their patients in a more equal and reciprocal relationship. Where their function was to participate in mechanisms of social control this would be openly acknowledged and rigidly controlled rather than veiled, as currently, under the cloak of medicine.

In “The Psychoactive Effects of Psychiatric Medication,” she pointed out how re-orienting drug therapy towards a drug-centered model raised some questions about the validity and relevance of diagnostic systems like the DSM-5. The idea that psychiatric drugs exert “a disease- or disorder-specific action” has been one of the principal justifications for modern psychiatric classification. Using psychiatric drugs explicitly for their psychoactive effects would require a different understanding of the nature of psychiatric problems. It would break the link between diagnoses and treatment, “and enable a frank discussion about the purpose and ethics of the already frequent ‘off-label’ use of prescribed psychoactive medications, such as their use for behavioral control in children and the elderly.”

Gardner and Kleinman were not advocating going this far, but I think psychiatry needs a transformation. Long live the transformation!

06/9/17

Worse Results with Psych Meds

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Psych meds are popular. One in six U.S. adults (16.7% of 242 million) reported filing at least one prescription for a psychiatric medication in 2013. That increased with adults between the ages of 60 and 85, where one in four (25.1%) reported using psych meds. Only 9% of adults between the ages of 18 and 39 reported using one or more psych drugs. Most psychiatric drug use was long-term, meaning patients reported taking these meds for two years or more; 82.9% reported filling 3 or more prescriptions in 2013. “Moreover, use may have been underestimated because prescriptions were self-reported, and our estimates of long-term use were limited to a single year.”

The above findings were reported in a research letter written by Thomas Moore and Donald Mattison in JAMA Internal Medicine. Their findings got a fair amount of media attention, including articles in Live Science (here), The New York Times (here), Mad in America (here), Psychology Today (here) and even Medscape (here).

Moore said the biggest surprise was that 84.3% of all adults using psychiatric medication (34.1 million) reported using these meds long-term, meaning over two years. He said the high rates of long-term use of psych meds raises the need for closer monitoring and a greater awareness of the potential risks.

Both patients and physicians need to periodically reevaluate the continued need for psychiatric drugs. . . This is a safety concern, because 8 of the 10 most widely used drugs have warnings about withdrawal/rebound symptoms, are DEA Schedule IV, or both.

The ten most commonly used psychiatric drugs in ranked order were:

  1. Sertraline (Zoloft, an SSRI antidepressant)
  2. Citalopram (Celexa, an SSRI antidepressant)
  3. Alprazolam (Xanax, a benzodiazepine for anxiety)
  4. Zolpidem tartrate (Ambien, a hypnotic prescribed for sleep)
  5. Fluoxetine (Prozac, an SSRI antidepressant)
  6. Trazodone (an antidepressant often prescribed for sleep)
  7. Clonazepam (Klonopin, a benzodiazepine for anxiety)
  8. Lorazepam (Ativan, a benzodiazepine for anxiety)
  9. Escitalopram (Lexapro, an SSRI antidepressant)
  10. Duloxetine (Cymbalta, an SNRI antidepressant)

Drawing on data from a different source in “Drugs on the Mind” for Psychology Today, Hara Estroff Marano said the Institute for Healthcare Informatics (IMS) reported there were 4.4 billion prescriptions dispensed in 2015, with total spending on medicines reaching $310 billion. “Over a million of the prescriptions written for a psychiatric drug were to children 5 years of age or younger.” There were 78.7 million people in the U.S. using psychiatric meds. Within this group, 41.2 million were prescribed one or more antidepressants; 36.6 million were given anti-anxiety medications; and 6.8 million were given antipsychotics.

These figures were different than the percentages reported above from the Moore and Mattison study. Moore and Mattison found that 12% (29 million) reported using antidepressants; 8.3% (20 million) reported using anxiolytics and 1.6% (3.9 million) reported using antipsychotics. Their 1 in 6 (16.7%) figure would then be 40.4 million people using at least one psychiatric medication. Regardless of which data source you use, there are millions of U.S. citizens taking at least one psychiatric drug and therefore at risk of experiencing the adverse effects associated with these drug classes.

Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker described how psychiatric drugs seem to be contributing to the rise of disabling mental illness rather than treating those who suffer from it. What follows is a sampling of comments from Anatomy that he made about benzodiazepines (anxiolytics), which are widely used to treat anxiety and insomnia. Whitaker said long-term benzodiazepine use can worsen the very symptoms they are supposed to treat. He cited a French study where 75 percent of long-term benzodiazepine users  “. . . had significant symptomatology, in particular major depressive episodes and generalized anxiety disorder, often with marked severity and disability.”

In addition to causing emotional distress, long-term benzodiazepines usage also leads to cognitive impairment (137). Although it was thirty years ago that governmental review panels in the United States and the United Kingdom concluded that the benzodiazepines shouldn’t be prescribed long-term … the prescribing of benzodiazepines for continual use goes on (147).

In her article for Medscape, Nancy Melville pointed out the CDC found zolpidem (a so-called “Z” drug) was the number one psychiatric linked to emergency department visits. As many as 68% of patients used it long-term, while the drug is only recommended for short-term use. Up to 22% of zolpidem users were also sustained users of opioids.

Among the concerns with antidepressants are that they are not more effective than placebos (see discussions of the research of Irving Kirsch, starting here: “Do No Harm with Antidepressants”). In some cases they contribute to suicidality and violence (see “Psych Drugs and Violence” and “Iatrogenic Gun Violence”) and they have a risk of withdrawal symptoms upon discontinuation.

In a systematic review of the literature, Fava et al. concluded that withdrawal symptoms might occur with any SSRI. The duration of treatment could be as short as 2 months. The prevalence of withdrawal was varied; and there was a wide range of symptoms, encompassing both physical and psychological symptoms. The table below, taken from the Fava et al. article, noted various signs and symptoms of SSRI withdrawal.

The withdrawal syndrome will typically appears within a few days of drug discontinuation and last for a few weeks. Yet persistence disturbances as long as a year after discontinuation have been reported. “Such disturbances appear to be quite common on patients’ websites but await adequate exploration in clinical studies.”

Clinicians are familiar with the withdrawal phenomena that may occur from alcohol, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, opioids, and stimulants. The results of this review indicate that they need to add SSRI to the list of drugs potentially inducing withdrawal phenomena. The term ‘discontinuation syndrome’ minimizes the vulnerabilities induced by SSRI and should be replaced by ‘withdrawal syndrome’.

Updating his critique of the long-term use of antipsychotics in Anatomy of an Epidemic, Robert Whitaker made his finding available in a paper, “The Case Against Antipsychotics.” There are links to both a slide presentation and a video presentation of the information included in his paper. The breadth of material covered was difficult to summarize or select out some of the more important findings. Instead, we will look at what Whitaker said was the best long-term prospective study of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders done in the U.S. The Harrow study assessed how well an original group of 200 patients were doing at various time intervals from 2 years up until 20 years after their initial hospitalization for schizophrenia. In his paper, Whitaker reviewed the outcome for these patients after 15 and 20 years of follow up.

Harrow discovered that patients not taking medication regularly recovered from their psychotic symptoms over time. Once this occured, “they had very low relapse rates.” Concurrently, patients who remained on medication, regularly remained psychotic—even those who did recover relapsed often. “Harrow’s results provide a clear picture of how antipsychotics worsen psychotic symptoms over the long term.” Medicated patients did worse on every domain that was measured. They were more likely to be anxious; they had worse cognitive functioning; they were less likely to be working; and they had worse global outcomes.

There is one other comparison that can be made. Throughout the study, there were, in essence, four major groups in Harrow’s study: schizophrenia on and off meds, and those with milder psychotic disorders on and off meds. Here is how their outcomes stacked up:

As Whitaker himself noted, his findings have been criticized from several individuals. However, he answered those critiques and demonstrated how they don’t really hold up. Read his paper for more information. But his conclusions about the use of antipsychotic medications are not unique. In the article abstract, for “Should Psychiatrists be More Cautious About the Long-Term Prophylactic Use of Antipsychotics?” Murray et al. said:

Patients who recover from an acute episode of psychosis are frequently prescribed prophylactic antipsychotics for many years, especially if they are diagnosed as having schizophrenia. However, there is a dearth of evidence concerning the long-term effectiveness of this practice, and growing concern over the cumulative effects of antipsychotics on physical health and brain structure. Although controversy remains concerning some of the data, the wise psychiatrist should regularly review the benefit to each patient of continuing prophylactic antipsychotics against the risk of side-effects and loss of effectiveness through the development of supersensitivity of the dopamine D2 receptor. Psychiatrists should work with their patients to slowly reduce the antipsychotic to the lowest dose that prevents the return of distressing symptoms. Up to 40% of those whose psychosis remits after a first episode should be able to achieve a good outcome in the long term either with no antipsychotic medication or with a very low dose.

All three classes of psychiatric medications reviewed here have serious adverse effects that occur with long-term use. In many cases, they lead to a worsening of the very symptoms they were supposed to “treat.” Increasingly, it is being shown that the psychiatric drug treatments are often worse than the “mental illness” they allegedly treat.

04/28/17

Huffing and Puffing at Anti-Psychiatry

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For awhile now I’ve been aware of the ongoing dispute between mainline psychiatry and what is disparagingly referred to as the “anti-psychiatry” movement instead of the critical psychiatry movement.  Over time I have come to identify with the “anti-psychiatric” types. The term sets up a false dichotomy, implying you can only be “for” or “against” psychiatry. Critiques of psychiatric diagnosis or the use of psychiatric medications are regularly dismissed out-of-hand by mainline psychiatry. One of the ongoing dialogues of dispute occurs between the author and journalist Robert Whitaker and the eminent psychiatrist Ronald Pies.

Robert Whitaker is the author of three books that relentlessly drive their readers to question the narrative for mental illness and psychiatry verbalized by mainline psychiatrists like Ronald Pies. These books are: Mad in America, Anatomy of an Epidemic and Psychiatry Under the Influence.  His articles on the mentally ill and the drug industry have won several awards. A series he wrote for The Boston Globe was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 1998. Anatomy was the 2010 winner for best investigative journalism by Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. Mad in America is also the name of a nonprofit organization and webzine, madinamerica.com, whose mission is “to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the United States (and abroad).”

Ronald Pies is a noted psychiatrist, a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University and SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse NY. He is also Editor in Chief Emeritus of Psychiatric Times. A bit of a Renaissance man, he’s published poetry: The Heart Broken Open, a novel: The Director of the Minor Tragedies, nonfiction: Becoming a Mensch: Timeless Talmudic Ethics for Everyone, as well as psychiatry: Psychiatry on the Edge, Handbook of Essential Psychopharmacology and psychotherapy: The Judaic Foundations of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.  He has authored or coauthored several other books as well.

Whitaker and Mad in America authors have disagreed with Pies on several issues. For example, they disagreed on whether psychiatrists widely promoted the chemical imbalance theory (see “Psychiatry DID Promote the Chemical Imbalance Theory” and “My Response to Dr. Pies” on madinamerica.com); or whether the long-term use of antipsychotics is helpful (see “Dr. Pies and Dr. Frances Make a Compelling Case that Their Profession is Doing Great Harm on madinamerica.com).

Into this mix Pies has written three articles for Psychiatric Times: “Is There Really an ‘Epidemic’ of Psychiatric Illness in the US?,” “The Bogus ‘Epidemic’ of Mental Illness in the US” and “The Astonishing Non-Epidemic of Mental Illness.” He’s clearly playing off of Whitaker’s book: Anatomy of an Epidemic. In his third article, “The Astonishing Non-Epidemic of Mental Illness,” Pies said that the epidemic of mental illness narrative is (with a few qualifications) “mostly fear-mongering drivel.” It sells books and makes for good online chatter, but “The so-called epidemic of mental illness among adults in the US proves largely illusory.”

He did some rhetorical sleight-of-hand, stating that by pulling out the bottom card of the epidemic narrative, the entire house of cards of the anti-psychiatry movement would collapse. In order to do this, he first quoted what he said was the CDC definition of epidemic: “ . . . an increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in that population in that area . . .” Pies then said the CDC definition of epidemic applied to actual cases of disease; not to changing rates of diagnosis, which are subject to many socio-cultural variables. The distinction was critical,

Since psychiatry’s critics do not claim merely that there is more diagnosis of schizophrenia or major depression; rather, they claim there are actually more people sick with these illnesses, owing to misguided or harmful psychiatric treatment.

Remember that in psychiatric diagnosis, there are relatively few diagnoses that can be confirmed by medical tests. The vast majority of psychiatric disorders are assessed by a diagnostic process alone. If you demonstrate to a clinician that you meet the diagnostic criteria for a psychiatric disorder, you are treated as if you actually have the disorder. So Pies seems to be splitting hairs with his distinction between actual cases and diagnoses. And I don’t think he has made as telling a point as he thought.

It would seem he is suggesting that psychiatric diagnostic rates for a disorder are overstated from the actual cases because of the influence of socio-cultural variables.  Yet how can you distinguish the actual cases from the false positives due to socio-culturally influenced diagnosis? The same diagnostic criteria are used. Is there an unstated assumption that diagnostic inflation is due to factors beyond psychiatry? Namely, that if a trained psychiatrist follows the structured clinical interview process, only actual cases of a psychiatric disorder will be identified?

Pies also said the “epidemic” claim was largely based on the increasing US rates of psychiatric disability over the past 50 years. Here he cited an article by Whitaker without mentioning Whitaker’s name. He dismissed the validity of using disability determinations, saying they cannot be used as “a legitimate index of disease incidence or prevalence.” He then shifts the focus to affirm there is a growing population of “persons with serious psychiatric illness who are not receiving adequate treatment.” Here he named two well-known psychiatrists who have written of their concerns with the “epidemic” of neglect with our most severely impaired citizens. But one of the persons he mentioned, Dr. Fuller Torrey, wrote The Invisible Plague about the rise of mental illness from 1750 to the present!

In the Introduction to The Invisible Plague Torrey described what he saw as “the epidemic of insanity.”  He said a major impediment to understanding the epidemic of insanity was that its onset occurred over so many years. Few people fully appreciated what was happening. “Those who did raise an alarm were largely ignored.” He said the suggestion today that we are living in the midst of an epidemic of insanity strikes most people as unbelievable.

Insanity is an invisible plague. There are no body counts with which one can compare the present with the past. In most countries, there are remarkably few statistics that can be used to assess insanity’s prevalence over time. Professional textbooks assume that insanity has always been present in approximately the same numbers as now.

Fuller Torrey is a believer in insanity as an epidemic of brain dysfunction. And he blames the likes of Michel Foucault, Thomas Szasz, Ronald Laing and others for emptying the insane asylums that have been “the mainstay for containing the epidemic for a century and a half,” without insuring these individuals received the treatment needed to control the symptoms of their illness.

When looking at the costs of this epidemic, Torrey said the combined costs in 1991 for the US were $110 billion. “And this included the single largest disease category for federal payments under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) programs.” So in quantifying the cost of the epidemic of insanity, Torrey used the same statistic to make his point that Whitaker did. Pies either didn’t realize this, or ignored it in his critique of Whitaker. I wonder if Pies sees what Torrey said as fear-mongering drivel or one of the few qualifications?

Pies dismissively cited two articles written by Marcia Angell for The New York Review of Books in 2011 (“The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” and “The Illusions of Psychiatry”) in all three of his articles as an example of the promotion of the false narrative of “the raging epidemic of mental illness.” Her articles discussed three books and their implications for psychiatry: The Emperor’s New Drugs, Anatomy of an Epidemic, and Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry. Angell’s review of Whitaker’s book drew it to the attention of a wide audience; so it seems this may be at least partly why Pies is dismissive of it.

However, read her articles. They will give you a thumbnail sketch of issues Pies goes to great lengths to deny and minimize. Then read the books she discusses. Remember that Marcia Angell is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and was the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. Don’t be dismissive of what she has to say; she has great credibility.

There is one final point to be made with regard to Pies’ third article. In the conclusion, he references Thomas Kuhn’s idea of “paradigm,” saying it is misleading and unfair to suggest that psychiatry is laboring under a “failed paradigm.” This was, he said, because “there is no one paradigm the defines all of psychiatry or that dictates practice on the part of all psychiatrists.” But I wonder if he truly understood the implications to his comment. If you apply Kuhn’s notion of paradigm (“a paradigm is what members of a scientific community share”) with Pies’ application of the term to psychiatry, then you would have to conclude that psychiatry as it’s practiced, is NOT a science. Rather, it would either be what Kuhn called a “pseudoscience” or pre-scientific. He also seems to be oblivious to the possibility of an implicit paradigm generated in psychiatric practice with DSM diagnosis—that it classifies a real “illness” or “disease” of the brain.

I’m reminded of what Robert Whitaker pointed out in his review of Jeffrey Lieberman’s book Shrinks, “The Untold Story of Psychiatry.” Whitaker noted how speeches given by the presidents of the American Psychiatric Association at their annual meetings regularly sounded the same theme: “Psychiatrists are true heroes.” He said it struck him that Shrinks served as an institutional self-portrait of psychiatry. “What you hear in this book [Shrinks] is the story that the APA and its leaders have been telling to themselves for some time.” Similarly, it seems Pies is preaching to the psychiatric choir—a message that there really isn’t an epidemic increase in mental illness; the argument that the anti-psychiatry movement is just a house of cards. Yet it seems to me that house is still standing despite the huffing and puffing of Pies and others.

06/24/15

Debating the Harm from Psychotropics

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© iqoncept | 123RF.com

In mid-May of 2015, there was a public debate on whether the long-term use of psychiatric medications causes more harm than good. Before saying “Boring” and moving on to something else, realize that prescriptions for antidepressants are on the rise —increasing by 7.5% in Britain since 2013 and over 500% since 1992. Recent research has shown that more people are taking antidepressants for longer periods of time, “often because they become dependent upon them and cannot stop.” Yet there is no good research into the safe long-term use of these drugs.

It seems that the challenge for the debate grew out of several prominent British psychiatrists publically criticizing the launch of the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry, an organization aimed at starting a dialogue about the use of psychiatric drugs and treatments. The two sides of the debate jointly published a paper in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).  The original BMJ press release, now removed from the site, inexplicably did not include a declaration of interests for one of the speakers against the motion, Alan H. Young. So what?

Young was initially in print as saying he had no interests to declare, while in fact he had several. This was important information to reveal, not only because it is a BMJ policy, but also because Young was planning to challenge the premise of whether long-term use of psychiatric medication causes more harm than good. In other words, his financial and professional ties to the pharmaceutical industry were initially not reported in a debate where he was defending the use of psychiatric medications. You can view the original press release here; the revised one here. Look at the bottom right column on page 2 for both.

This mistake was caught by one of the speakers for the motion, Peter Gøtzsche, who also reported a series of actions that appeared to be aimed at undercutting  Gøtzsche’s credibility and the information he presented. You can read his description of these “bizarre events” related to the Maudsley debate here. You can review the debate here. Gøtzsche opened his time to speak during the debate by estimating that psychiatric drugs were the 3rd leading cause of death among people aged 65 and over.

I have estimated, based on randomised trials and cohort studies, that psychiatric drugs kill more than half a million people every year among those aged 65 and above in the USA and Europe. This makes psychiatric drugs the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer. The drugs furthermore cripple tens of millions. There are no benefits that can justify so much harm.

Gøtzsche also described how clinical trials include patients already taking other psychiatric medications. These participants are then rapidly withdrawn for their medication. If they are randomly placed in a placebo group, they often experienced withdrawal symptoms. “This design exaggerates the benefits of treatment and increases the harms in the placebo group, and it has driven patients taking placebo to suicide in trials in schizophrenia.”

He called for the establishment of withdrawal clinics to help patients slowly and safely taper off of psychiatric drugs. He estimated that 98% of all psychotropic drugs could be stopped without causing harm. In the revised BMJ press release, it says “we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm.” Gøtzsche said this replaced his original statement. This could be accomplished by dropping all antidepressants, ADHD medications, and dementia drugs. Only a small percentage of the antipsychotics and benzodiazepines currently used should be continued.

This would lead to healthier and more long-lived populations.  Because psychotropic drugs are immensely harmful when used long term, they should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients.

The Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry (CEP) began on April 30th of 2014 with an event at the House of Lords and the release of a publication entitled: Unrecognized Facts about Modern Psychiatric Practice. This is linked on the CEP website. You can get a quick introduction to some of the CEP members and what they believe by viewing some short videos linked on their homepage. One of the innovative ways they have attempted to provide a bridge between the public, policy makers and legislators, and the research community that investigates the areas where psychiatry has caused harm, although the intention has been to help.

Unrecognized Facts is a nifty slide show that presents various facts about modern psychiatric practice, with links on each slide to further available information. Here are a few of examples of what you can find there.

Myth of the Chemical Imbalance

Psychiatric drugs have often been prescribed to patients on the basis that they cure a ‘chemical imbalance.’ However, no chemical imbalances have been proven to exist in relation to any mental health disorder. There is also no method available to test for the presence or absence of these chemical imbalances.

Worse Long-Term Outcomes

There has been little research on the long-term outcomes of people taking psychiatric drugs. The available studies suggest that all the major classes of psychiatric drugs add little additional long-term benefit, and for some patients they may lead to significantly worse long-term outcomes.

 Long-Lasting Negative Effects

Psychiatric drugs can have long-lasting negative effects on the brain and central nervous system, particularly when taken long term, which can lead to physical, emotional and cognitive difficulties.

Negative Effects Are Often Misdiagnosed

Psychiatric drugs can have effects that include mental disturbance, including suicide, violence, and withdrawal syndromes. These can be misdiagnosed as new psychiatric presentations, for which additional drugs may be prescribed, sometimes leading to long-term use of multiple different psychiatric drugs in the same person.

10/29/14

Creating Chemical Imbalances

“Rather than fix chemical imbalances in the brain, the drugs create them.” (Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic)

One of the most enlightening books I’ve read recently was Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whitaker. In the foreword, Whitaker said he originally believed that psychiatric drugs were like “insulin for diabetes.” He believed that psychiatric researchers were discovering the biological causes of mental illnesses and that this led to the development of a new generation of psychiatric drugs that helped “balance” brain chemistry. Then he stumbled upon some research findings that challenged that belief, “and that set me off on an intellectual quest that ultimately grew into this book.”

What follows is a collection of quotes from Anatomy of an Epidemic and a chart containing data on psychiatric medications.  There is little additional commentary by me. The power of the quotes is underscored by the sales and prescription data in the chart.

Some of the quotes were handily gathered together for me on Goodreads. My chart is a combination of a listing of the top 25 prescribed psychiatric medications in 2013 found on PsychCentral and data for 2013 pharmaceutical sales on Drugs.com. It follows the rank order given by John Grohol on PsychCentral for the top 25 most prescribed psychiatric medications in 2013.  I then included the sales data found on Drugs.com from its list of the top 100 pharmaceutical drugs by gross retail sales for the listed drugs.

Drug

Prescriptions-2013

Use

Sales-2013

Xanax (alprazolam)

48,465,000

Anxiety

Zoloft (sertraline)

41,416,000

Depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, PMDD

Celexa (citalopram)

39,445,000

Depression, anxiety

Prozac (fluoxetine)

28,258,000

Depression, anxiety

Ativan (lorazepam)

27,948,000

Anxiety, panic disorder

Desyrel (trazodone)

26,242,000

Depression, anxiety

Lexapro (escitalopram)

24,920,000

Depression, anxiety

Cymbalta (duloxetine)

18,573,000

Depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, diabetic neuropathy

5,083,111,000

Wellbutrin XL (bupropion)

16,053,000

Depression

Effexor (venafaxine)

15,796,000

Depression, anxiety, panic disorder

Valium (diazepam)

14,754,000

Anxiety, panic disorder

Paxil (paroxetine)

14,335,000

Depression, anxiety, panic disorder

Seroquel (quetiapine)

14,326,000

Bipolar disorder, depression

1,183,989,000

Amphetamine salts (Adderall)

12,785,000

ADHD

727,892,000

Risperdal (pisperidone)

12,320,000

Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, iirritability in autism

Vyvanse (lixdexamfetamine)

9,842,000

ADHD

1,689,091,000

Concerta ER (methylphenidate)

8,803,000

ADHD

Abilify (aripiprazole)

8,747,000

Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression

6,293,801,000

Wellbutrin SR-W (bupropion)

8,238,000

Depression

Buspar (buspirone)

8,065,000

Sleep, anxiety

Vistaril (hydroxyzine)

8,052,000

Anxiety

Amphetamine salts ER (Adderall)

7,925,000

ADHD

Zyprexa (olanzapine)

5,101,000

Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia

Concerta/Ritalin (methylphenidate)

5,335,000

ADHD

1,383,814,000

Pristiq (desvenlafaxine)

3,217,000

Depression

Of the top 25 prescribed psychiatric drugs in 2013, 13 were to “treat” anxiety; 13 were to “treat” depression; 4 were to “treat” panic disorder; 4 were to “treat” bipolar disorder; and five were to “treat” ADHD. As the chart indicates, some of the medications are used for two or more disorders. In fact, 11 of the top 13 prescribed medications in 2013 could be used for anxiety; 10 of the top 13 could be used for depression.  Three of those were benzodiazepines (Xanax, Ativan and Valium); nine were antidepressants of some type (Zoloft, Celexa, Prozac, Desvrel, Lexapro, Cymbalta, Wellbutrin, Effexor and Paxil); and one, Seroquel, was an antipsychotic.

In addition to causing emotional distress, long-term benzodiazepines usage also leads to cognitive impairment (137). Although it was thirty years ago that governmental review panels in the United States and the United Kingdom concluded that the benzodiazepines shouldn’t be prescribed long-term … the prescribing of benzodiazepines for continual use goes on (147). Antidepressant drugs in depression might be beneficial in the short term, but worsen the progression of the disease in the long term, by increasing the biochemical vulnerability to depression. . . . Use of antidepressant drugs may propel the illness to a more malignant and treatment unresponsive course (160). In a recent survey of members of the Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association, 60 percent of those with a bipolar diagnosis said they had initially fallen ill with major depression and had turned bipolar after exposure to an antidepressant (181). Given that the biology of ADHD remains unknown, it is fair to say that Ritalin and other ADHD drugs ‘work’ by perturbing neurotransmitter systems. . . . Cocaine acts on the brain in the same way (227).

Disturbing, huh?

Only six of the most widely prescribed medications were among the 100 best sellers. The six best selling psychiatric medications in the order of their sales were: 1) Abilify ($6.294 billion); 2) Cymbalta ($5.083 billion); 3) Vyvanse ($1.689 billion); 4) Concerta/Ritalin ($ 1.384 billion); 5) Seroquel ($1.184 billion); 6) Amphetamine salts (found in Adderall, $727.9 million). Part of the explanation for the difference is that the majority of the prescribed psychiatric medications are now off patent and available as generic drugs. So they typically don’t make as much money for pharmaceutical companies. An example would be how Abilify was the top grossing prescription for all medications in 2013, but only the 18th most prescribed medication.

With the exception of VyVanse, I’d expect most of the six to also drop out of the top 100 selling drugs of the next few years. Abilify’s patent expires in October of 2014. Cymbalta’s patent expired in December of 2013. Vyvanse’s patent will expire in 2023. Concerta’s patent expired in 2011. Seroquel’s patent expired in 2012.

If you expand the boundaries of mental illness, which is clearly what has happened in this country during the past twenty-five years, and you treat the people so diagnosed with psychiatric medications, do you run the risk of turning an anger-ridden teenager into a lifelong mental patient? (p. 30) We have been focusing on the role that psychiatry and its medications may be playing in this epidemic, and the evidence is quite clear. First, by greatly expanding diagnostic boundaries, psychiatry is inviting and ever-greater number of children and adults into the mental illness camp. Second, those so diagnosed are then treated with psychiatric medications that increase the likelihood they will become chronically ill. Many treated with psychotropics end up with new and more severe psychiatric symptoms, physically unwell, and cognitively impaired. This is the tragic story writ large in five decades of scientific literature (209). Twenty years ago, our society began regularly prescribing psychiatric drugs to children and adolescents, and now one out of every fifteen Americans enters adulthood with a “serious mental illness.” That is proof of the most tragic sort that our drug-based paradigm of care is doing a great deal more harm than good. The medicating of children and youth became commonplace only a short time ago, and already it has put millions onto a path of lifelong illness (246). For the past twenty-five years, the psychiatric establishment has told us false story. It told us that schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar illness are known to be brain diseases, even though … it can’t direct us to any scientific studies that document this claim. . . . Most important of all, the psychiatric establishment failed to tell us that the drugs worsen long-term outcomes (358).