VisionAndPsychosis.Net©

In Montgomery Alabama

Copyright 2003 Edit July 8, 2010

Enter the site from the HOME page.

Drugs

Draft ... incomplete page.

The top half of this page is my article about psychotropic drugs. The second half is the list of links used in writing it.

This method allows you to review the quality of the information used. 

It also points out that these are not my thoughts alone, But I am the only person telling you why these things are so.

Caution:  Before you stop any psychotropic drug you should consider that there may be rebound from cessation. The phenomenon discussed on this site does not require any treatment. Nor does it interferer with any treatment you now have. It consists of investigating your daily activities for locations where the "special circumstances" for Subliminal Distraction are present. Because of the way your brain functions subliminally to initiate a vision startle reflex, SD exposure is silent, painless, and invisible. It cannot be detected. The only possible action is to eliminate potential sources of exposure. That's what engineers and designers did when the problem was discovered. They created the office cubicle in 1968 to block peripheral vision for a concentrating worker.  Cubicle Level Protection is usually simple and free. Rearranging study areas and computer workstations is all that is usually needed. Remember this problem was discovered before computers existed. Daydreaming is enough dissociation to allow exposure. Exposure explained.

The effectiveness of drugs for psychiatric treatment of mental illness symptoms  is a debated topic. Some swear by drugs they were taking when they had improvement and remission of symptoms and others go from one drug to another with no improvement.

There is no "testable  objective evidence" that psychotropic drugs do anything.    Kirch 2010

Look carefully at that statement. What do I mean by testable evidence? When someone improves after taking a drug the drug is credited with that improvement but there is no evidence of the drug's action available. In fact if you go to the drug company sites and download the physician prescription instructions there is an identical statement for most of them related to "method of operation."

Abilify®

RISPERDAL®

Zyprexa®

Note:

All the drugs have almost a verbatim statement under  'Pharmacodynamics' or 'method or operation', and the phrase "it has been proposed." This does not mean they are all the same chemistry but indicates that they all have the same theory for the cause of mental illness. And that is a chemical change in the brain. Articles you can research on-line indicate these medications have a low rate of  results. ECT is the first line treatment. (Builds your confidence in medications doesn't it?)

That means the manufacturer does not know what the drug does. The effectiveness is determined by subjective evaluations, asking questions, and observation of subjects.

The first mistake made is to select potential drug test subjects from patients who have an identical diagnosis from the DSM. Having a diagnosis of schizophrenia is meaningless. Why? To begin, no one knows what schizophrenia is. It is defined as a 'constellation of of signs and symptoms indicating impaired occupational or social functioning.' (Paraphrase from DSM-IV-TR pg 301.)

The original idea behind the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness, the DSM, was that every person with a specific set of symptoms would have the same diagnosis and treatment as anyone else with that same set of symptoms.  It doesn't work that way.

Even though I was careful to give the same  information each doctor my wife saw had a different diagnosis. They disregarded some  information and  weighted other information to reach their favorite diagnosis. This is touted as "skill in diagnosis."

Another obvious problem is that  what is abnormal or bizarre in one ethnic group may be normal thought process in another group. Natives of Central and South America accept that negative occurrences happening to a  parent may cause illness in that person's child. It is called Susto and is a Culture Bound Syndrome. A parent being startled by suddenly encountering a snake might be interpreted as the cause of a child's persistent headache days later. In other cultures magic worked against someone is believed to be causation. A witchdoctor  is employed to counter the spell or hex.

We here in the United States ridicule these beliefs but some of us accept eastern beliefs that eyes-open meditation while  participating  in group exercises overcomes Newtonian physics and gravity allowing  levitation. This is called enlightenment.

There is a 2500 and 3000 year respective history of mental problems happening after participating in Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga group sessions. No one one has investigated why. These people believe standing in groups and waving arms and legs about in unison while engaging eyes-open meditation unlocks powerful supernatural forces. Only when the delusions and actions challenge our concept of reality do we attach the label psychotic.

If you or I appeared at a hospital intake desk with beliefs that we could levitate, walk through solid objects unharmed, read minds or control actions through mental telepathy we would be held for observation. But there are those who earn a living teaching "The Awakening of Kundalini." They are not challenged for these strange beliefs of the seven chakras, the coiled snake of energy at the base of the spine, and control of supernatural forces.

Qi Gong psychotic deviation is included in the DSM as a Culture Bound Syndrome of China but not The Awakening of Kundalini even though  they both happen after group exercises involving eyes-open meditation and unison movements.

There is no  test for effectiveness.

There is no blood  or other test that would show that the drug directly caused an improvement.

For instance, do changes in brain chemistry cause mental illness or does mental illness cause those changes in brain chemistry?

Regardless of what you have heard or read there is no consistent connection between brain chemistry and mental illness. There are those with chemistry variations but no mental illness and others with mental illness but no chemistry changes. When a  drug treatment is discontinued the brain cannot react fast enough allowing a reversal of the accommodation it made for the drug. That causes the rebound effect when the drugs are suddenly stopped.

Monitoring brain chemistry tells us nothing. But as you can see from the prescription instructions the drugs do make changes in chemistry. Your brain must then deal with those changes and may attempt to reverse the action of the drug.

This does not mean the drugs do not have some effect such as a calming but no one knows how they work with the symptoms of mental illness. Calming the patient does not mean the drug is effective treating psychosis. Psychosis remains for most patients. Rather it may be the placebo effect at work. The patient improves because he or she had side effects to make them believe the drug was effective and working. In fact patients improve on placebo then fall back when they are told they were in the placebo group.

It has been suggested that the drugs being tested function as "active placebos." An active placebo is an inert substance that has an additive to produce some side effect. That side effect, though harmless,  makes the subject believe they are taking the test drug.

Stop here for a minute and consider that. Patients improve when they think they are receiving new, potentially effective treatment. That is a thought process. How  would brain chemistry be involved in that improvement? ... It wouldn't. ... Brain chemistry is the same before and after placebo treatment. This tells you that drugs cannot mediate changes to treat mental illness. It also reinforces my point that brain chemistry is not the cause of psychiatric symptoms.

That answer is in plain sight for every researcher to notice. Why haven't they realized this. There is no money in placebo treatment! There is also no money in revealing Subliminal Distraction as the cause of symptoms. Once you impart that knowledge there is never a need for further treatment.

But the mental health establishment is not guilty of withholding information. They do not know know Subliminal Distraction exists.

Subliminal Distraction is the subject of this site.

When SD exposure increases psychiatric symptoms increase. When exposure decreases there will eventually be a decrease in symptoms. Any treatment ongoing at the time symptoms decrease would be credited.

There has been a long list of successful treatments such as Native American dance, diet, sweat lodge, and of course Qi Gong. Intensive talk therapy is claimed to have success. But for those symptoms caused by Subliminal Distraction exposure any treatment that takes the subject away from daily activities thus reducing Subliminal Distraction exposure would allow a remission of symptoms.

SD can be explained as a previously unnamed form of operant conditioning, The repeating subliminal detection of threat movement colors thought and reason. It is the subconscious negative shaping of human thought.  For that reason no drug treatment could possibly work to treat SD.  

Where is this evident?

This conclusion comes from observation of the effect of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga. Group performance of the two exercises are engines for Subliminal Distraction exposure. Acolytes of these two exercises begin to have psychotic-like beliefs of superhuman strength and supernatural powers with long-term low-level Subliminal Distraction exposure. .  Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

In locations around the world too-small single-room living arrangements also serve to allow Subliminal Distraction exposure. There is a long list of mental events that experts explain with psychosocial psychobabble. But the startle matching behaviors, so strange they cannot be mistaken for anything else, serve to deny psychosocial causation because of the unique pressures of each ethnic group's social framework.  With each instance in different cultures having different names they happen across culture and ethnic barriers.  We call them Culture Bound Syndromes.

Reinforcing this conclusion is an additional location and activity that has these mental events. Participants in Landmark Education's seminar The Forum also have mental events as an outcome of the seminar. est

Classrooms around the world have mental outcomes in the form of ADD and ADHD. Each semester there is a long list of student suicides and strange disappearances. Too close side-by-side seating in classrooms is the same design problem discovered to cause mental breaks for office workers forty years ago. College Suicides  Missing Students

Singly any one of these cases could be discounted as coincidence. But together they form a preponderance of evidence that Subliminal Distraction is a major stressor for the behaviors and beliefs we call mental illness.

What are the side effects of these drugs?

There is  no standard for the listing of these side effects. Thus it is not possible to compare them. Recognition and recording of them is subjective. In addition the FDA constantly changes which effects must be included so that the listing may change from time to time. The quoted paragraphs below show that inconsistency. These side effects are generally known by the subjects so that having  placebos that also have some side effects to keep subjects from correctly guessing which test group they are in is difficult.

Abilify®

This section about adverse outcomes in the Abilify instruction is difficult to understand and correctly quote.

"The most common adverse reactions in adult patients in clinical trials (≥10%) were nausea, vomiting, constipation, headache, dizziness, akathisia, anxiety, insomnia, and restlessness...

Adverse events during exposure were obtained by collecting volunteered adverse events, as well as results of physical examinations, vital signs, weights, laboratory analyses, and ECG. Adverse  experiences were recorded by clinical investigators using terminology of their own choosing. In the tables and tabulations that follow, MedDRA dictionary terminology has been used to classify reported adverse events into a smaller number of standardized event categories, in order to provide a meaningful estimate of the proportion of individuals experiencing adverse events. ...

Throughout this section, adverse reactions are reported. These are adverse events that were considered to be reasonably associated with the use of ABILIFY (adverse drug reactions) based on the comprehensive assessment of the available adverse event information. A causal association for ABILIFY often cannot be reliably established in individual cases. ...

Psychiatric Disorders:

≥1/100 patients - suicidal ideation; ≥1/1000 patients and <1/100 patients - aggression, loss of libido, suicide attempt, hostility, libido increased, anger, anorgasmia, delirium, intentional self injury, completed suicide, tic, homicidal ideation; <1/1000 patients - catatonia, sleep walking."

http://www.abilify.com/pdf/pi.aspx?num=100&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&as_qdr=all&q=abilify+&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

RISPERDAL®

"Other Adverse Reactions Observed During the Premarketing Evaluation of RISPERDAL®
The following adverse reactions occurred in < 1% of the adult patients and in < 5% of the pediatric patients treated with RISPERDAL® in the above double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial data sets. In addition, the following also includes adverse reactions reported in RISPERDAL®-treated patients who participated in other studies, including double-blind, active-controlled and open-label studies in schizophrenia and bipolar mania studies in pediatric patients with psychiatric disorders other than schizophrenia, bipolar mania, or autistic disorder, and studies in elderly patients with dementia. Body as a Whole, General Disorders: edema peripheral, pain, influenza-like symptoms, leg pain, malaise, allergy, crying abnormal, allergic reaction, rigors,
allergy aggravated, anaphylactoid reaction, hypothermia Central Nervous System Disorders: gait abnormal, speech disorder, coma, ataxia, dysphonia, stupor, cramps legs, vertigo, hypoesthesia, tardive dyskinesia, neuroleptic malignant syndrome
Endocrine Disorders: hyperprolactinemia, gynecomastia Gastrointestinal System Disorders: dysphagia, flatulence Heart Rate and Rhythm Disorders: AV block, bundle branch block Liver and Biliary Disorders: SGPT increased, hepatic enzymes increasedMetabolic and Nutritional Disorders: thirst, hyperglycemia, xerophthalmia, generalized edema, diabetes mellitus aggravated, diabetic coma Musculoskeletal Disorders: muscle weakness, rhabdomyolysis."

http://www.risperdal.com/sites/default/files/shared/pi/risperdal.pdf

Zyprexa®

"Nervous System — Frequent: abnormal dreams, amnesia, delusions, emotional lability, euphoria, manic reaction, paresthesia, and schizophrenic reaction; Infrequent: akinesia, alcohol misuse, antisocial reaction, ataxia, CNS stimulation, cogwheel rigidity, delirium, dementia, depersonalization, dysarthria, facial paralysis, hypesthesia, hypokinesia, hypotonia, incoordination, libido decreased, libido increased, obsessive compulsive symptoms, phobias, somatization, stimulant misuse, stupor, stuttering, tardive dyskinesia, vertigo, and withdrawal syndrome; Rare: circumoral paresthesia, coma, encephalopathy, neuralgia, neuropathy, nystagmus, paralysis, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and tobacco misuse".

An additional warning about suicide  is included in the Abilify instructions.

Abilify®

"5.2 Clinical Worsening of Depression and Suicide Risk

Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), both adult and pediatric, may experience worsening of their depression  and/or the emergence of suicidal ideation and behavior (suicidality) or unusual changes in behavior, whether or not they are taking antidepressant medications, and this risk may persist until significant remission occurs. Suicide is a known risk of depression and certain other psychiatric disorders, and these disorders themselves are the strongest predictors of suicide. There has been a long-standing concern, however, that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression and the emergence of suicidality in certain patients during the early phases of treatment. Pooled analyses of short-term placebo-controlled trials of antidepressant drugs (SSRIs and others) showed that these drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 18-24) with MDD and other psychiatric disorders. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a reduction with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older....

No suicides occurred in any of the pediatric trials. There were suicides in the adult trials, but the number was not sufficient to reach any conclusion about drug effect on suicide. It is unknown whether the suicidality risk extends to longer-term use, ie, beyond several months. However, there is substantial evidence from placebo-controlled maintenance trials in adults with depression that the use of antidepressants can delay the recurrence of depression."

Remember this quote is from the printed instructions from Bristol Meyers Squibb. Do you think anyone being prescribed this medication has this information? Think about the placebo group. They are depressed just like the drug group. The groups are selected randomly from the available pool. But the pool is  made up of those who volunteer then meet the drug test entry qualifications. The pool is not randomly selected. 

Suicides occur in both groups? Or do the suicides happen in just the placebo group?

The quote says suicides in "adult trials" but there is no information other than that.

Chemical Imbalance Theory

The chemical imbalance theory is the basis for drug treatment for mental illness. Drugs are developed to change chemistry, theoretically bringing brain chemistry back to a norm.

The Media and the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression
Jonathan Leo & Jeffrey R. Lacasse

"In spite of the enormous amount of money and time that has been spent in the quest to confirm the chemical imbalance theory, direct proof has never materialized. Moreover, during the past several decades, a significant amount of evidence has accumulated which calls the theory’s validity into question."

This study is available more than one place. This is Springer's link.  http://www.springerlink.com/content/u37j12152n826q60/fulltext.pdf

Drug reaction lookup

Use this public data base to investigate drug side effects, Type in the drug name and click your enter key

http://dotnet.judgerc.org/MiscForms/DrugLookup.aspx

FDA

"The Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) is a computerized information database designed to support the FDA's post-marketing safety surveillance program for all approved drug and therapeutic biologic products "

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Surveillance/AdverseDrugEffects/default.htm

Paxil

Study number 329 is  usually called the infamous Paxil study.

There are several articles on this study, I have linked some of them here, The behaviors that were engaged to get approval of this drug for teenage use are typical of the process abuses used by drug companies. Paxil is still prescribed even though its effectiveness is seriously in doubt. The outcome observed is probably because the subject group, students, are at high risk for Subliminal Distraction exposure.

Psyche Central discusses the study and has links to other information. The site is well respected and university connected.

"In a rare behind-the-scenes disclosure (due to a lawsuit), the public is seeing for one of the first times the degree and depth some pharmaceutical companies will go to in order to publish positive results about their drug. Using the same peer-review process that is supposed to prevent abuses by researchers and drug companies and provide other professionals (and the public) with objective data. And the same peer-review process that is used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve medications as safe and effective."

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/04/30/more-on-infamous-paxil-study-329/comment-page-1/#comment-664124

  Link from Psyche Central http://www.pharmalot.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/329-study-paxil.pdf

http://clinpsyc.blogspot.com/2008/04/paxil-lies-and-lying-researchers-who.html

Healthy Skepticism International News

Paxil Study 329: Paroxetine vs Imipramine vs Placebo in Adolescents

by Jon Jureidini, January 2010

 "GlaxoSmithKline’s Study 329 of medication for adolescent depression failed to demonstrate any benefit for paroxetine over placebo in adolescents and demonstrated a worrying profile of adverse events for paroxetine. The study was ultimately published in 2001 by the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry with Keller as the primary author. This misleading paper has been a focus of interest for Healthy Skepticism since 2002. In 2003 we wrote to the Editor of JAACAP raising concerns about the misleading reporting by the authors that exaggerated benefit and downplayed adverse effects."

This site page has a large  number of links to data about this study.

http://www.healthyskepticism.org/global/news/int/hsin2010-01

Time

Placebo

Double blind controlled studies are necessary under the FDA practices to approve any drug for sale in the United States. That means that neither the test subjects nor the test administrators know which subjects are receiving the drug and which are receiving inert tablets.

Unaware of Subliminal Distraction exposure and the symptoms it can cause, placebo is being credited for some improvements. It is probably true that Subliminal Distraction is responsible for all improvements in both sides of the drug test study not the placebo effect or the drug.

This letter published by the American Psychiatric Association shows the problem if you read between the lines. It argues that those who receive the inert placebo should be made aware of that. But while making that argument it admits that placebo caused remissions. Why? The belief is that the test drug must be a life time treatment. If it worked at all why is that true? ... What thinking human can read this and not realize that the drug is doing nothing. Correlation is not causation!

Schizophrenia is a diagnosis in the DSM nothing more.

There is only a correlation  between drug treatment and recovery. That is not proof that the drug is effective.

 "In the first part, or acute phase, of the study, a one-year relapse risk of 28.6 percent was found for patients treated with standard-dose olanzapine, while a relapse risk of 69.9 percent was found for patients treated with placebo (2)....

Subliminal Distraction is a unrealized form of operant conditioning. It can be layered on any number of brain deficits, diseases, and levels of intelligence. Those with long term mental illness may not (repeat may not) have the cognitive ability to recover. Only the ability to form a peripheral vision reflex limits potential exposure. The fully blind or blind from birth are immune. I cannot find cases of those blind from birth with schizophrenia. There are cases where a schizophrenic became blind but not the other way around.

http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/49/5/699

New research suggests that the miracles promised by antidepressants may be largely due to the placebo effect.

"BEFORE SCIENCE TOOK OVER the healing arts and focused physicians' attention on biological causes of disease, mystics and alchemists and flimflam artists alike offered potions and powders to the ailing. Some of these remedies were bizarre, like usnea -- the moss from the skull of a hanged man, used to treat nervous illness -- and others merely fanciful, like powdered unicorn horn. Some were truly dangerous, like calomel, a mercury-based laxative that may have hastened George Washington's death from the cold he famously caught while riding on a rainy night. Some -- notably cinchona bark, the source of quinine -- turned out to have actual healing powers, but there were so few of these that in 1860 Oliver Wendell Holmes, the doctor who fathered a Supreme Court justice, wrote, "If the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes."..."

"There's no money to be made in sugar pills, so drug companies, which fund much of the drug research in the United States, have not looked very hard into this question. But placebos do figure prominently in their studies -- as a stalking-horse for the potential new medications. Because any drug may well be acting as a placebo, it is not a sufficient test simply to give a new compound to sick people to see if they get better. To rule out the possibility that patients are recovering because of faith or a good sales pitch, and to ensure that the drug works by virtue of its biochemical properties, the FDA has, since the late 1970s, required that all drugs be tested against placebos. Typically, between 35 and 45 percent of people given placebos improve. If a candidate drug outperforms a placebo in two independent studies, and if it does so without untoward side effects, the FDA will approve it for use."

The missing information here is that failed tests do not count against the subject drug. They do not have to tell the public how many tests were preformed before they got the two that led to approval.

I

Greenberg, Mother Jones http://motherjones.com/politics/2003/11/it-prozac-or-placebo#comment-704282

Wired
Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.
By Steve Silberman 08.24.09

"As a psychiatrist, Potter knew that some patients really do seem to get healthier for reasons that have more to do with a doctor's empathy than with the contents of a pill. But it baffled him that drugs he'd been prescribing for years seemed to be struggling to prove their effectiveness. Thinking that something crucial may have been overlooked, Potter tapped an IT geek named David DeBrota to help him comb through the Lilly database of published and unpublished trials—including those that the company had kept secret because of high placebo response. They aggregated the findings from decades of antidepressant trials, looking for patterns and trying to see what was changing over time. What they found challenged some of the industry's basic assumptions about its drug-vetting process.

Assumption number one was that if a trial were managed correctly, a medication would perform as well or badly in a Phoenix hospital as in a Bangalore clinic. Potter discovered, however, that geographic location alone could determine whether a drug bested placebo or crossed the futility boundary. By the late '90s, for example, the classic antianxiety drug diazepam (also known as Valium) was still beating placebo in France and Belgium. But when the drug was tested in the US, it was likely to fail. Conversely, Prozac performed better in America than it did in western Europe and South Africa. It was an unsettling prospect: FDA approval could hinge on where the company chose to conduct a trial.

Mistaken assumption number two was that the standard tests used to gauge volunteers' improvement in trials yielded consistent results. Potter and his colleagues discovered that ratings by trial observers varied significantly from one testing site to another. It was like finding out that the judges in a tight race each had a different idea about the placement of the finish line."

In the first paragraph a practitioner's belief that a drug works is not supported by correctly managed testing,. Remember no drug company controls for Subliminal Distraction exposure.

In part hyper-suggestibility as seen in Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, Latah, and iich'aa may be one of the reasons for the placebo effect.  These command and startle matching behaviors happen where subjects live and work in too-small  single-room arrangements. When entire families live in a single room there will be many opportunities for Subliminal Distraction exposure.

The placebo effect does not include the bizarre behaviors but SD exposure can explain suggestibility.

Read More http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all#ixzz0tA5lkhKO

There are several excellent sites with information..

Page links .... the list of sites used to construct this page. Some are direct quotes and others are used for background.

My method of using the complete URL rather than a button system  allows the material including the URL to be copied with a single stroke.

(Kirch 2010)

Are Antidepressant Drugs Actually Worth Taking?

"Just as one would hope, taking an antidepressant typically improved a person's depressive symptoms, the trials showed. But so did taking a placebo. In fact, the overall difference between medication and placebo was so small that it was "clinically insignificant" for all but the most depressed patients, Kirsch says, a point that was consistent with his past findings. Moreover, antidepressant therapy improved symptoms by the same degree in both mildly and moderately ill patients. "There seems little evidence to support the prescription of antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients," says Kirsch, "unless alternative treatments have failed to provide benefit."

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/oct/10-are-antidepressant-drugs-actually-worth-taking

Psychologist Says Antidepressants Are Just Fancy Placebos

"Depression is a chemical imbalance, most people think. Researchers, drug manufacturers, and even the Food and Drug Administration assert that antidepressants work by “normalizing” levels of brain neurotransmitters—chemical messengers such as serotonin. And yet hard science supporting this idea is quite poor, says Irving Kirsch, professor of psychology at the University of Hull in the U.K. An expert on the placebo effect, Kirsch has unearthed evidence that antidepressants do not correct brain chemistry gone awry. More important, the drugs are not much more effective against depression than are sugar pills, he says. "

The current antidepressant drugs have a variety of chemical structures, but they all work equally well. What does that tell you?


These different antidepressants do things that, in some cases, are incompatible. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac increase the amount of serotonin that’s available to be used by the brain. Then you have the norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors (NDRIs) such as Wellbutrin that are not supposed to affect serotonin at all. And most recently you have the selective serotonin reuptake enhancers (SSREs) such as Stablon, which enhance the reuptake of serotonin rather than inhibit it.
These drugs all have different and in some cases opposite effects on brain chemistry, and yet they all show exactly the same response rate. It’s uncanny! That suggests it’s really the placebo effect that is helping the patients. In practice, all the different antidepressants have the same response rate. In a population of depressed people, they all work equally well. If they were actually correcting chemical imbalances, it would mean that the exact same number of people who are depressed have each kind of chemical imbalance: The proportion of people who have too much serotonin is exactly the same as the fraction who don’t have enough norepinephrine. The odds against that are astronomical.

What should the highlighted sentence tell you? The drugs can't do what is claimed if they have opposite effects but cause the same outcomes. It's not  just uncanny, it's impossible. So why has no one resolved this? They think the only things acting in tests are the drug and placebo.

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/the-brain/09-psychologist-says-antidepressants-are-just-fancy-placebos

In this analysis there were 47 drug tests  for six antidepressant drugs. They only needed two positive tests per drug to meet the FDA requirement or twelve total. But 47 were required to get the two positive tests per drug. (Some  tests were not included in the  analysis because they were missing data needed  for the evaluation. There were probably more than fifty total tests.)

"Are Psychiatrists Betraying Their Patients?" — Psychology Today

This is the Home page for several articles about mental illness.

http://www.moshersoteria.com/index.htm

"The Biopsychiatric Model of "Mental Illness" A Critical Bibliography Loren R. Mosher M.D.

"Conclusions: Today's dominant theory of serious"mental illnesses" posits them to be genetically determined (i.e., inherited), biochemically mediated (via "chemical imbalances"), life-long"brain diseases"(with associated specific neuropathologic changes) whose cause(s) and course is more or less independent of environmental factors is not supported by existing evidence...."

http://www.moshersoteria.com/litrev.htm

Exorcism by rabbit

"Sickened by the lithium and frustrated about her condition, Gelma Zarate, now 39, once headed south of Lima to see a folk healer near the city of Ica. Treatment there included herbal massages, counseling and rubbing rabbits all over the young woman's body, purportedly to absorb evil spirits. Zarate saw the rabbits dying shortly after. "It was as if my illness had died with the rabbits," she says. "I felt great for a long time." ..."

This case history is typical of cures by folk healers. They actually work for a time. Why? Psychiatrists claim it's the power of suggestion. But separating the subject from their situation where there was Subliminal Distraction exposure would also bring a remission. Of course there is no evidence of that in this story. But it is typical of these remedies working.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=99289558

Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression

This clinical tool is an attempt to standardize the diagnosis and lend a scientific air to the diagnosis of depression,  But it is subjective because it depends on a human evaluation not a test reading such as a blood test. A diagnostician asks questions or observes the subject and decides which response is appropriate for each question on the scale. It is a multiple choice test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Depression_Rating_Scale

  Other rating scales used in psychology.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_classification_and_rating_scales_used_in_psychiatry

McMan's Depression and Bipolar Web

"A meta-analysis of nineteen nineteen double-blind antidepressant trials published in the American Psychological Association's online publication, Prevention and Treatment (Guy Sapirstein PhD of Westwood Lodge Hospital, Needham, MA, co-author) in 1998 caused an uproar in professional circles when it was revealed that the placebo effect accounted for a mind-boggling 75 percent of an antidepressant's result - any antidepressant, you name it."

http://www.mcmanweb.com/clinical_trials.html

 American Journal of Psychiatry

"The purpose of this study was to determine if fear of an increased risk of attempted suicide in placebo groups participating in placebo-controlled studies is an argument against the performance of placebo-controlled trials in studies of major depression. "`

"Our results show that in both short-term and long-term placebo-controlled trials, the rates of suicide and attempted suicide did not differ between placebo-treated patients and patients treated with an active compound."

Full Article URL http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/158/8/1271

PRIMER ON PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS

"…a review of the scientific literature shows that the precise opposite [of the notion that drugs correct chemical imbalances in the brain] is true: people diagnosed with mental disorders do not have any known chemical imbalance, and the drugs prescribed for these disorders all work by perturbing—sometimes profoundly—neurotransmitter systems in the brain. These medications actually create “chemical imbalances” in the brain, and once this is understood, it is easy to see why their long-term widespread use has correlated with an astonishing rise in the number of disabled mentally ill adults in the United States in the past fifty years. (Whitaker, 2007, p. 47) [bracketed material supplied]"

There is too much material in this document to quote under the fair use exception to Copyright, Click the link and visit the site, read the material for  yourself.

http://www.judgerc.org/DrugPrimer.pdf

AFFIDAVIT OF ROBERT WHITAKER

Whitaker is the author of Mad In America. This document is an affidavit he signed in September 2007 in a lawsuit against forced drugging. This affidavit presents his arguments in crystal clear form and has active links to the professional papers that support his points. (Whitaker, 2007)

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

New York Times

"The popular drugs known as atypical antipsychotics, prescribed for an array of conditions, including schizophrenia, autism and dementia, double patients’ risk of dying from sudden heart failure, a study has found."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/health/research/15psych.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

AstraZeneca Pays Millions to Settle Seroquel Cases

October 30, 2009
"The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said Thursday that it had reached a $520 million agreement to settle two federal investigations and two whistle-blower lawsuits over the sale and marketing of its blockbuster psychiatric drug Seroquel....Earlier this year, Eli Lilly & Company paid $1.4 billion over its marketing of Zyprexa, another antipsychotic drug. And Pfizer announced it would pay $2.3 billion, including a record $1.195 billion criminal fine, mostly over its painkiller Bextra, which has been withdrawn from the market....AstraZeneca also said it had been served with 14,444 civil lawsuits over the drug as of Oct. 9. Ed Blizzard, a lawyer for some of the people suing AstraZeneca, said Thursday that many patients have developed diabetes and other health problems because of misleading marketing. Mr. Blizzard said he did not know what clinical trials were part of the inquiry. But in one trial, known as Study 15, he noted, an e-mail message showed a company official saying “a great ‘smoke and mirrors’ job’ ” had been done on a “buried” study in 1997, the year the F.D.A. approved Seroquel."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/business/30drug.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Statement for the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Hearing on The Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act of 2001 May 8, 2001

The neonate population (0- 1 month olds) is an important but difficult group to study in pediatric trials. Neonates are an especially vulnerable population, but their delicate condition should not preclude pediatric studies to determine what medications will best treat them.

http://www.aacap.org/galleries/LegislativeAction/pe.pdf

Understand this professional group is advocating psychotropic drugs for one month old children.

This study obtained all the data from tests of antidepressant drugs including failed testing.

How does it escape investigators that  this outcome is the reverse of probability. Why would the most severely effected be helped if the mildly effected were not.?

It does not make sense. It suggests that something else is happening,.

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045