| Psychiatry has always given the impression that cures were the rule, rather than the exception. However, the psychiatric industry itself admits it has no capacity to cure. Psychotropic drugging is big business — a high-income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion industry in psychotropic drugs. Psychiatrists tell us that the way to fix unwanted behavior is by altering brain chemistry with a pill. But unlike a mainstream medical drug like insulin, psychotropic medications have no measurable target illness to correct, and can upset the very delicate balance of chemical processes the body needs to run smoothly. Nevertheless, psychiatrists and drug companies have used these drugs to create a huge and lucrative market niche. And they’ve done this by naming more and more unwanted behaviors as “medical disorders” requiring psychiatric medication. Thus there is a continuing need to find or create new patients to which to market new drugs, and a continuing rush to market for the latest drugs regardless of their harmful side effects. The Risk of Side Effects In a study of 68,730 individuals it was found that psychotropic drugs (SSRIs, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines) are independently associated with a significantly increased risk of hip fractures and other major osteoporotic fractures. Lead author Dr. James Bolton at the University of Manitoba says, “So physicians need to think about fracture risk as they are prescribing these medications, especially in patients who are vulnerable to fracture.” Psychiatric Marketing Campaigns Almost a third of drugs cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration pose safety risks that are identified only after their approval. Thus we say “rush to market”; you can find hidden drug marketing campaigns practically everywhere. Many of these marketing campaigns come from industry?funded front groups operated by psychiatrists but posing as compassionate patient support groups. Of all these programs, one of the most successful is the benevolent?sounding mental health screening campaign; it uses broad?based psychiatric screening questionnaires to diagnose common life situations such as sadness, nervousness and occasional loneliness. Currently running is the “suicide prevention” campaign. But statistics show that there is no teenage suicide epidemic; and participants in these programs are more likely to consider suicide a solution to a problem after the screening program than before the program. With a long and well-documented history of failure, psychiatrists and their drugs are under attack by government safety warnings, legislation, and tens of thousands of lawsuits. Interestingly, underlying most psychiatric problems is an undiscovered and untreated physical illness. And when that is cured, so is the “mental problem.” But because of the powerful hold psychiatrists and drug companies exert over the rest of the medical field, this is rarely told to patients. To protect yourself and those you love, insist on a full and accurate consent: an accounting of all risks and benefits of the treatment recommended, of other treatments and of not doing anything at all. |
