The ‘learned intermediary’ roll of prescribers. The catch 22 whereby the pharmaceutical companies get away with it because they pass the blame to the prescribers, who have of course learned everything from the pharmaceutical companies.
It’s a scary place to be I imagine, when you’re a prescriber who’s been lied to by big Pharma and then left with no tools to clean up the mess you’ve unknowingly created. Poor bastards.
So if lowered serotonin is not the cause of depression and I’ve been keeping my levels ‘up’ so to speak for the last 25 years. What has that done in my brain and what else does serotonin do? Could 25 years of forced higher levels be the cause of my now chronic physical illness?
What is wrong in the world that requires ‘having a diagnosis’ to be ok with one’s differences and our general need to fit somewhere? Why do we see difference as a problem? Why do people need validation of who they are?
We have all been brought up on fear and comparison.
Today I was diagnosed as
#ActuallyAutistic
. Naturally my family threw me a happy diagnosis party, with a cake and candle.
With it comes huge feelings of relief that I’m not just strange and unusual but neurodiverse. I’m autistic.
I feel liberated from the expectations of how
♥️Message from London. ♥️
A few of us are turning up outside the royal college of general practice (london) on 20th June - with a megaphone to share our stories and put pressure on them - everyone is welcome. Demand they get their gp’s to all read this deprescribing book asap.
@CultureAlcohol
@DrAnnieHickox
@SameiHuda
People physically harmed by psych treatment, and trying to prevent others from becoming so by telling their stories are not toxic.
The continued denial of harm is.
The official black box and manufacturers warnings are there with good reason
Paradigm shifts do happen, and today’s mental health crisis is telling us that one is desperately needed. Forty years of the disease model of depression has left us sicker and unhappier than ever before.
@drjrucker
@joannamoncrieff
In the harmed by psych drugs circles, people have been killing themselves for decades. It’s been dismissed, denied and swept under the rug of ‘untreated or undertreated mental illness’ when the truth is it’s been the drugs and how badly they’re ‘handled’ by prescribers.
Being told it was a chemical imbalance and that I had as much control over it as someone with diabetes or heart disease convinced me it was out of my hands.
Prescribing psych drugs off label without disclosing they’re psyc drugs AND what that means around dependency and side effects etc (eg: antidepressant for chronic pain or menopause) is STEALTH PRESCRIBING and is akin to spiking someone’s drink. Psych drugs are NOT BENIGN.
If you’re considering an antidepressant, chances are you won’t get facts around potential for harm, dependence or possible withdrawal effects so bad they eclipse the reason you went on. Never mind the potential for permanent life changing after effects.
SNRI did this to me. I’m my 5th year hyperbolic tapering. Cannot go faster as withdrawal symptoms intensify. Damned if you do damned if you don’t. Disabled as it is thanks to venlafaxine.
1/4 The problem with those that were told the chemical imbalance myth (myself included) is that it has created lifelong consumers of drugs that were tested for short term use. Now we find we may only have needed them to help get past a ‘temporary hump’.
How many people are on a psych drug and don’t even know it?!
So much off label prescribing. Take this, it may help with your chronic pain ……
Then they don’t know they’re in withdrawal when they stop, and usually nor does their prescriber. So it’s a new symptom… = more Rx
I am disabled due to iatrogenic harm. I cannot work. I need a diagnosis to get proper financial assistance. I cannot get a diagnosis as iatrogenic harm is ‘impossible’. Gaslit, denied, given the run around. Would be exhausting without injury! Kept on the treadmill to nowhere
Why is it that the people in positions of medical authority who blatantly deny, abuse and ridicule the iatrogenically harmed are never disciplined by their guild for their unnecessary derogatory remarks?
#rcpsych
Where is the integrity?
No wonder faith is lost.
Re psych drugs: 👇👇👇
Sick of being told that my personal experience invalidates the positive experiences of others. What bullshit! It’s two sides to the same coin. Harms are not being disclosed by Rxers and people blindly think if they’re ok now, they’ll be ok next year.
@AlinaV_Psy
@DrEvans_Health
We are neither pill shaming nor fear mongering. I was once someone who was doing well on these drugs…., until I wasn’t.
The point is, we were not told of potential for harm.
Just because someone is ‘doing well’ now, DOES NOT mean they will not eventually be harmed.
I am dependant not addicted. I don’t crave my drug. I want it out of my life asap, but reversing the neurological adaptations make it a slow process. Essentially brain damage takes time to heal
1/5
I’m neither anti drug nor pill shamer.
If you feel your prescription works for you, great.
Know that if it’s a long term prescription, the fact that you’re doing well now, doesn’t mean you can’t be harmed by it eventually.
A note to people and prescribers who don’t see/acknowledge/understand the psych drug harm all around them …
A mind is like a parachute, it won’t work if it’s not open.
1/2 I’m 25 years on Effexor xr and am now physically and mentally unable to be of any use to society. Big Pharma makes money from us and in the end we become reliant on government help and are therefore a financial burden on society.
Hands up everyone who has been blocked by Huda and Hickox for telling your story of psych treatment harm and politely asking questions.
I bet there’s tons of us.
Many never even directly corresponded with them.
Great people to be in the helping people business 🤷♀️
We are devastated to share that on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, we were informed of the passing of our friend, colleague, and Medical Director, Christy Huff, M.D.
I’m struggling with the ‘training’ behind prescribers who question efficacy and safety of supplements and warn of potential harms, yet have the hubris to refuse to see their prescription drugs in the same light.
The current extent of ‘informed consent’ around psych drug prescribing is as safe and effective as giving a 2 yr old a fork and pointing them at a wall socket.
1/4. 🧵
RANT!!
my 20yr old niece recently went to her Gp here in New Zealand, and mentioned she was having trouble sleeping. He gave her a prescription for an antipsychotic!!! First line of attack!
I don’t understand what has happened to their critical thinking. So many other
Why does psych drug tapering information so often claim to ‘prevent or avoid’ withdrawal symptoms?
This needs to be corrected to ‘mitigate’.
Prevent or avoid, creates a sense that it can ALWAYS be avoided, which is incorrect and misleading.
Meaning and nuance are important.
Professor Robert Howard shares why he continues to use SSRIs in dementia patients despite the research indicating they do not outperform placebo.
#RCPsychIC
Currently tapering using available doses is the equivalent of stepping off a high rise building and hitting and rolling off some smaller buildings on your way down.
We need to be able to take the stairs and pause on the landings.
What would be your best medical document to send to my GP to prove to him that I am neurologically harmed by psych drugs. And the extent the harm can go to.
This has been ongoing for 5yrs and I’ve sent many. I need an indisputable one with cred please
Please send links
I am benzo naive but antidepressant harmed.
We need a self explanatory acronym like ADs.
BIND is excellent because it leaves one in no doubt as to the cause and the result.
How about we in the AD community start using ADIND? Antidepressant Induced Neurological Dysfunction
Iatrogenic harm help. Gotta get the admission that it’s iatrogenic first. Huge barrier sadly. Giant potential loss of industry $$$ keeps it pinned down and under the rug.
@benzosarebad
It needs an overarching organization for all post-medication diseases. We need to change politics that these patients get research funded, recompensated and healed. Therefore we need to unite.
The understatement of the century is
………describing AKATHISIA as ‘inner restlessness’
Downplayed and inadequately described to the point of obscurity
…….. like most iatrogenic harm.
@philipbrunner
Finding myself harmed by medication taken as prescribed and then being consistently gaslit by all who should be helping even though there’s evidence and studies and millions of others in the same boat. 🤷♀️🤬
‘The Royal College of GPs told Panorama that family doctors were "highly-trained to have frank and sensitive conversations" with patients about the risks and benefits of antidepressants.’
(My Q: trained? Who influenced the ‘learning material’, and with what end in mind??)
@Chitailova
Her ‘bipolar disorder’ is more than likely not a thing. This is such a common misconception when seeing drug withdrawal in action.
She is struggling with prescribed drug harm and withdrawal….And lack of understanding around that. Withdrawal is her illness.
#prescribedharm
1/2
Around psych drugs:
I believe there are very few patients who know to research and understand what’s happening to them.
That the majority still blindly accept their prescriber knows everything about the drugs they prescribe.
@spideogx
It’s likely withdrawal rather than relapse. Withdrawal is rarely recognised because prescribers rarely understand it and think it’s proof you need the drug.
Tapering too fast and in too large steps (as they do) makes withdrawal symptoms far worse than is necessary
Funny (not funny) how they’re happy to prescribe on anecdote (I’m anxious, depressed, can’t focus etc) but will not listen to harm anecdote. Hubris, wilful blindness and cognitive dissonance all rolled in together 🤷♀️🤷♀️
If people died in a plane crash that happened due to a KNOWN BUT UNDISCLOSED design fault and nothing was being done to fix it, would you tell me to ‘suck it up, most people have safe flights?!’ and ‘stop scaremongering?!’ This is happening with psych drug harm.
#iatrogenicharm
In our podcast, Roy discusses his 16-year battle with
#PSSD
.
He describes how he tried to submit a yellow card report to the
@MHRAgovuk
. While explaining his sexual symptoms to the reviewing doctor, he heard the doctor laughing.
Full episode:
He’d recently ‘come off’ his medication. Will withdrawal and its potentially deadly effects like akathisia be considered?
Or will it be because he was ‘mentally unwell’. Blaming the unseen victim again?! Because it couldn’t possibly be the drugs could it!! 🤬😡
#prescribedharm
@FloralSw1
@FirstDoMoreHarm
@WillaGoodfellow
Population harmed by psych treatment are on a scale from dead, to barely functioning and unemployable, and up towards almost normal life.
There’s a larger iatrogenically harmed population than is realised. Many don’t realise it themselves, wrongly diagnosed with other conditions
This is typical ignorance and misinformation coming from a Dr!! No wonder so many are harmed. I don’t understand the lack of critical thinking…. from someone who is supposed to be smart??!! Totally brainwashed by pharma lead training. 🤬
Enter Psychiatry and be considered a permanent resident. It’s so wrong. And the denied ‘treatment’ harm just compounds, conflates and confounds the problem.
Just saw this. 👍.
It’s the reality I lived until I was harmed and disabled by prescription medication.
Now I’m on the ‘shut her up’ heap.
Along with hundreds of thousands of others all trying to stay alive.
It’s a scary place to be I imagine, when you’re a prescriber who’s been lied to by big Pharma and then left with no tools to clean up the mess you’ve unknowingly created. Poor bastards.
So many deaths….. and the cognitive dissonance of those responsible and those involved in inquiries just increases the obviousness of pressure from industry to be quiet! 🤬🤬
Citalopram: Ten Years of Wilful Blindness – AntiDepAware
1/3 I would like to see attention paid to the effects psyc drugs, taken by people from childhood to adulthood, are potentially having on brain development and subsequent life of the next generation. The harms done to my brain through taking psychotropic drugs as prescribed for…
1/4 Fourth year tapering Effexor. Down to 32.21mg. Disabled and can’t work due to 25yrs use. Wd=pain/fatigue/cognitive. Fried CNS. Went today to renew med cert so income isn’t cut. Temp Dr asked if I’d like to see a psychiatrist!!🤦♀️🤦♀️. Couldn’t understand why I said ‘Not ever!’
Re: psych drug tapering.
Dear researchers and paper writers, PLEASE STOP saying to ‘avoid’ withdrawal.
If someone is looking for help tapering, it’s because they’re already struggling with withdrawal. Tapering appropriately will ‘diminish’ but is unlikely to ‘avoid’ symptoms
@JourneyofHope4U
Of course. They do not have bio markers. They are not diseases to be cured with medication. Not understanding this has aided in the skyrocketing sales of both psych drugs AND apparent ‘mental illness’. The struggles and pain are real. Our medicalisation of them is the problem.
I really hope the severity and impact of harm and dismissal and lack of prescriber knowledge are adequately addressed. This hasn’t happened in anything mainstream that I’ve seen. Nothing that makes people sit up and question ever makes the cut.
How long will it be before enough people have enough knowledge of the lies and corruption in RCT’s, data collection and skewing, ghost writing etc re: psychotropics and their effects to reach the tipping point. What will happen to big Pharma when that happens? It won’t be small
Nobody says it’s a chemical imbalance. Really?!! That’s what I was told.
Dr Ellie Cannon recently espoused this on British TV. Incidentally this has never been retracted nor corrected on British TV leaving viewers to continue believing the now debunked theory!!
#prescribedharm
@shvogt
@mellojonny
@psychgeist52
Christopher J. Playfair GP, in a rapid response to an article by David Healy. He "...was persuaded that depressed patients had a chemical imbalance and that the very safe and effective SSRI drugs would hasten their recovery."
Black box SI: You didn’t mention that it also happens in people prescribed for things not mental health related. So the ‘initial depression’ reason is partially invalid
Debunking the New York Times "What to Know About Antidepressants" Article via
@YouTube
I think many psychiatrists mistakenly equate the length of their training with the quality of their training. It's abundantly clear that psychiatry is not equipped to safely prescribe/deprescribe or to provide assistance to those they've harmed.
‘Mental Heath Care’ is not care at all. It’s fear based control.
You, my square friend, will fit into this round hole even if we kill you in the process.
And we will be unaccountable
because we did everything possible and you didn’t want to ‘get well’.
How accurate do you think I would be in suggesting the DSM can be totally scrapped, as all ‘mental illness’ can be traced back to PTS (Post Traumatic Stress, which is not a disorder) but due to societal dysfunction.
Thoughts please people.
3/4 withdrawal will continue to be considered relapse by the majority. So much further physical and emotional (through failure) damage done to the patient. The false self fulfilling prophecy will continue and big Pharma will continue to rake in the $$$$$.
Lots of ‘diagnoses’ overlap because they are the subjective observation of the person dishing it out. Nothing is definitively ‘diagnosed’ as there are no bio markers. It’s all the personal opinion of the prescriber involved.
How many of those people you are ‘diagnosing’ are already on a psych drug? Or two, or more? How can you ‘diagnose’ anything when that person’s base line is invisible?!
Mental illness is many illnesses, each with specific symptoms and associated functional impairment and disability. Recognition of this is a first step to the provision of treatment, support and appropriate adjustments so that people can live as well as they deserve to in 2022.
Does anyone else look at strangers (even on the tv) and feel they can ‘see’ some physical evidence of psych meds? Particularly that fatty bloating? Also when someone says how much they struggle to lose weight, my instant thought is ‘I wonder what drugs they are prescribed?’
I was told I had a physiological brain problem that needed psych drugs for life. 25yrs later
the drugs have physically harmed my brain and CNS causing all kinds of daily dysfunction, I’m told it’s in my mind? How convenient!! 🤯🤦♀️
Psych has it backwards
#prescribedharm
Small 🧵
For information and help in tapering psych drugs, here’s the safest sources I’m aware of. Joining any or all of these will give you information and further resources
(UK)
(US)
(Aus)
@MedMinefield
@EveSimmns
Why is making sure that patients are informed about the risks of the drug they are prescribed an issue? Surely informed consent should be mandatory? It currently isn’t & most GPs aren’t even fully informed about the full risk of drugs they are prescribing. This has to change.
While the technical arguments continue, the people who fell off the coalface (us harmed from the ‘medication’) are still waiting for acknowledgement of harm. And possibly even apology? Especially to those of us were told it was a life long necessity and safe!
The psychiatric industry has turned every negative human emotion and behavior into a disease. I'm going to keep talking about this problem, no matter how mad the outrage mob gets.
Mark Horowitz
@markhoro
is the best interviewee. Great easy to understand information from a prescriber with lived experience of the harms and difficulties of psych drugs and withdrawal.
1/2
If we understand validity as the ability to match a diagnosis to a biologically detectable illness or disorder, then the DSM has no validity at all. As has been acknowledged by the Task Force leader of the recent fifth edition of the DSM and in an official statement…
Win win industry. Create the sickness, create the drugs to treat the sickness. But the drugs make the sickness worse…. Follow the money.
#prescribedharm
Adding diagnoses to someone already ‘medicated’ without taking into account the effects of the current drug is like trying to correct someone’s eyesight by layering glasses one upon another. The initial problem is lost in the swamp and new ones are not authentic
@wdpsychiatry
People don’t ‘feel’ like they are going to lose their rights and freedom Josef. It’s not a feeling. It’s a fact. They do lose their rights and freedom. Whether they sign or not.