Surviving spouse of Laurie, a co-founder of the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition. We need a reformed psychiatry based on better science.
#PrescribedHarm
@RadicalMedico
It's orthodox mainstream psychiatry that is the medical equivilant of flat-earthers. Critical Psychiatry (the proper name--not the straw-man "antipsychiatry") is the concience and the future of psychiatry.
@BecauseIMatter
To be safe, perhaps say “imagine that I’m coming to you with the same symptoms as a white male the same age who golfs at your country club, is in your religion, has the same political signs in his front yard as you, and works as a malpractice attorney.”
Good news for me. My wife may have been murdered by psychiatry, but reading the diagnostic criteria for Prolonged Grief Disorder, I qualify. Psychiatry stands ready to help me. Thank you DSM-5 committee for voting my diagnosis into scientific existence.
I propose a new medical specialty, "Iatrogenology". (OED, first use here.) An Iatrogenologist treats iatrogenically injured patients, and works to identify, prevent or reduce patterns of iatrogenic harm. Subspecialties include Psychiatric and Psychopharmacologic Iatrogenology.
@AlinaV_Psy
With respect, instead of “Anti-Psychiatry”, a meaningless slur, please call us “ANTI -bio mechanical model-iatrogenesis denying-diagnostically inflationary-normal human experience medicalizing-corrupted evidence using-psychiatry”. Too long? Just call us what we are, REFORMERS.
@KonLontos
We can’t do medicine without causing iatrogenic injury.But with psychiatry, we’ve created a multibillion dollar drug industry & based the business model of an entire medical specialty upon denying the more or less deliberately covered-up iatrogenesis caused by psychiatric drugs.
I support the substantial & important progress made by the Maudsley DPG, but I find the phrase used here by an attendee at a training, “becomes easier when you taper slowly and gradually” to be troubling. It is not that simple. Experiences and outcomes are highly individual. /1
@ParianteLab
@guardian
The canard that anyone has ever said ADs cause "addiction" is a myth you are debuting, not debunking. You understand the distinction between addiction & dependence. Your defence of ADs from that straw-man is a deflection from the reality that ADs cause DEPENDENCE & WITHDRAWAL.
@rcpsych
@ParianteLab
@guardian
@DrLadeSmith
Your mendacious defense of status quo psychiatry will only delay progress towards reform, not defeat it. The vigorousness of your pushback to truth-telling about the evidence for AD efficacy/safety shows how effective the campaign for reform has become, & how much it worries you.
@Mad_In_America
@BZInfoCoalition
MDs with lived experience of harm from BZDs taken as prescribed, please step forward. We know you're out there. Stand up before your fellow physicians as Dr. Huff did & tell your story of prescribed BZD harm. Was she the only MD with that courage? Contact BIC and work for change.
@drjanaway
@atomicaceso
The attitude you should have, if you are in the system, is (to your peers): “We need to do this. We have caused this problem. We have severely hurt these people. This is a tragedy & it’s our fault & our responsibility to stop causing more harm & to help those harmed already.”
@drjanaway
@atomicaceso
Bullshit, because we’re already doing it now, with peer support. We’re forced to improvise methods for tiny custom reductions because society doesn’t want to burden pharma by requiring them to make a liquid formulation for micro tapering for every dependence causing psych drug.
1/ The 2019 review of Dr. Huda's book 'The Medical Model in Mental Health' is written by Philip Hickey, PhD. After reading Dr. Hickey's review I think I'll pass on reading Dr. Huda's book. The book review, however, is well worth reading. Here are two screenshots with excerpts.
Interesting to see whether Dr. Huda can support his position with evidence & can calmly debate without rudeness & without resorting to ad hominem attacks including transparently false accusations of racism. Can
@SameiHuda
debate point by point, with rigor, or will he smear & run?
@drjanaway
@atomicaceso
You find it practical to cause the CNS injury, but find it impractical to try to help your (unintentional) victims to recover by using the safest (not safe, but safest) method possible to taper? The patient community has learned these lessons through 20+ years of trial & error.
Link to a gofundme to help with the cost of fliers for a small rally outside the Royal College of General Practice (London) on 20th June. "To demand they get their gp’s to all read the Maudsley Deprescribing Guideline asap."
@Louthewarrior
I’m not sure if Dr. Annie Hickox has a working moral compass. If she lacks a moral compass, then she doesn’t know right from wrong. What she does—her shameless lying, her weaponizing of accusatory lies—is deliberate, and she clearly savors it, but she may simply be disturbed.
“Randomised trials of antidepressants have for two decades consistently shown evidence of an increased risk of suicidal acts on active treatment compared with placebo, but an inappropriate application of significance testing has led to this evidence being dismissed.”
"Dr. Healy observes that RCTs, which in the wake of the thalidomide scandal were held up as deliverance from drug harms have instead become a shield for drug companies to protect themselves from the fallout of adverse drug events." 1/2
@Louthewarrior
A diagnosis would be harmless IF ONLY it didn't come with drugs. When I first met my wife she said she felt I might have a touch of Aspergers, which I pretended to hear as asparagus. So that's my diagnosis. An asparagus. No drugs for that, thank God. Not even Hollandaise Sauce.
@KonLontos
And on false claims about beneficial effects of psychiatric drugs. I always think of the psychiatric-psychopharmacological industry as operating like a giant version of a 19th century “snake oil salesman”, a peddler of nostrums which include alcohol or opium or maybe turpentine.
But while simplification & optimism about tapering is perhaps unavoidable to get doctors to agree to learn, what gets lost is the truth about how bad the iatrogenic injury to some people’s CNS already is, from psychotropics only used as prescribed, never misused or abused. /5
@AlinaV_Psy
@JDaviesPhD
@RishiSunak
@AllenFrancesMD
(You are remembering to allow for the placebo effect when you “see” a beneficial response from AD in your practice?) …. (You are remembering to look first and foremost for iatrogenic harm from the psych drugs already taken before you “see” a new dx or “see” worsening?)
@RadicalMedico
The DSM is a part of it, for sure. Here’s a link to a PDF from the UK based Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry. (If you’re asking what position I’m coming from, this PDF provides an overview of what may be called a Critical Psychiatry perspective.)
👇
"Unconventional Views About Mental Health", by Dr. Evgeny Legedin, from 2020: "I am very concerned that senior, powerful, psychiatrists are trying to silence those who are vocal regarding psychotropic medications, and psychiatry’s ’medical model’."
@DrLadeSmith
Psychiatric drugs are life-changing & can be terminal. Fear of ADs may interfere with iatrogenesis. Responses to Pariante by
@markhoro
&
@joannamoncrieff
are a MUST read. The myths that ADs don't cause dependence & withdrawal & are more effective than placebo have been debunked.
@KonLontos
I feel yes and no. Iatrogenic injury seems to me to be an inevitable part of our trying to do medicine. But not wanting to admit iatrogenesis, to face up to the reality of it & the need to try to mitigate, to change practices, or just to apologize, that feels to me unacceptable.
I understand that if Mark were to lay the full jagged-edged truth on the line to his peers as he tries to educate them about what tapering "best-practices" are, he might not get a hearing from them at all. And it's essential that doctors finally begin to learn about this. /4
Racism is a virulent & pervasive social evil. I’m a 66 year old white citizen of the USA, a country riddled with racism, & I’ve known that all my life. I’m sure that Dr. Huda has genuinely experienced racism many times. But he isn’t fooling anyone when he claims “racism” here.
@rcpsych
@ParianteLab
@guardian
@DrLadeSmith
Pariante & the psychiatrists praising his deceptive article know the difference between addiction & dependence perfectly. They are deliberately misleading the public with reassurance about ADs & “addiction” to confuse the public into not heeding our warnings about AD dependence.
@AlinaV_Psy
What an “anti-psychiatry” position means to me (if I accept the term at all, which is problematic) is that you’re stepping back and critically examining what is being passed as to us as properly done, unbiased science, and realizing, on examination, that it isn’t. 1/
Some people’s CNS is already so damaged that for them deprescribing may prove to be hell no matter how it’s done, & after great suffering may not lead to complete healing--or in some cases, to survival--if a person is trapped with unendurable levels of suffering. /6
It is quite possible, especially when symptoms are de novo, to tell the difference between correlation & causation, to recognize accurately, when symptoms are caused by the drug. Drug taken. Health lost. No other variables. So many others reporting the same thing. /10
When things go wrong, reinstating or increasing the dose does not always work to return to a sustainable level of symptoms. What happens is highly variable, depending on the body’s individual response or the degree of neuroadaptive or neurotoxic CNS injury already sustained. /7
We've had to figure this out--until the day before yesterday--mostly with little effective or willing professional help. It's a disgrace to medicine that these patients have had to become the experts in their own --iatrogenic--condition. /11
If the doctors who understand this are less than candid with their peers to win them over to learning tapering, we're still educating doctors to disbelieve their patients who have it rougn, because the doctors have not been told that for some people it can really be that bad. /8
But even with “best practices” there are no guarantees. Tapering may involve great suffering before things get better, if they do. Neuroadaptive harm from prescribed psychotropics may not fully heal for everyone. It may heal more slowly for some than others, or not at all. /3
From the book review (1 of 3), “There is an underlying message that I could not help but be aware of while reading this book: namely that much more effort needs to be made to reduce the prescribing of these drugs in the first place.”
Excerpt: 'The hysteria about antidepressant addiction was unwarranted,' commented Prof. David Nutt. Meanwhile, in The Guardian, Professor Pariante claimed that 'the myth that antidepressants are addictive has been debunked'. However, not all patients – or experts – agree. (1/3)
@pash22
@joannamoncrieff
Is this supposed to be a “gotcha” question? What does she say, in her drug-centered model, about WHETHER what psychiatric drugs—including so-called antidepressants—ACTUALLY DO (which is NOT to “treat disease”) MIGHT sometimes be found to be helpful by some patients (for a time)?
Bought 2 more copies of
#Maudsley
#Deprescribing
for friends. The authors thank the late Christy Huff MD & Nicole Lamberson PA, past & present medical directors of Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, for assistance with the section on tapering BZDs.
@bzinfocoalition
@markhoro
I am a layperson with no medical training. I don’t wear a white coat or have a license on the wall. I speak only for myself. But nonetheless, I am not stating opinions, but facts. I cannot point to studies which prove what I’ve said. I know it to be true from experience. /9
@RadicalMedico
The table of contents. Approximately 38 pages plus about 11 pages of footnotes. Gives a good overview of the issues. If you’re not familiar with the CEP, they have a website.
@wendyburn
@stopharmingus
Pariente kens the different meanings of addiction & dependence, & he knows the general public does not. His canard that anyone says ADs cause addiction is a myth he's debuting, not debunking. His defence against straw-men deflects attention from dependence & withdrawal. Helpful?
Dr. Evans proudly blocked by
@JoshuaMIreland
. (No good done by any interaction with this 🤬. ) Post YOUR screenshot with: “Dr. Evans proudly blocked by [
@insert
your name.]”
@atomicaceso
@drjanaway
I have the greatest respect for him. There are many things about prescribed BZD harm in the Maudsley DPG that I never believed I’d see in a mainstream medical reference book written by doctors for doctors. Wouldn’t have saved my wife’s life but I wish she’d lived to see that.
@ijclausen
@rcpsych
@DrLadeSmith
@DrEvans_Health
No shame in warning about withdrawal & Iatrogenic CNS damage from psychiatric drugs that are far less effective than claimed & far more dangerous than admitted (both errors deliberately manufactured to promote pharma profits & the guild interest of bio-medical psychiatry).
@Altostrata
This is the kind of instruction that none of us gets (or even thinks about learning) unless a terrible situation has already happened to us or someone we love. Ditto for instruction on what not to say to the police if ever questioned as an innocent person suspected of something.
@psychharm
@KonLontos
Sometimes dependency (& can be with severe withdrawal) after taking a psych drug for only 20 days—or for some people, considerably less. I know that’s true for benzos, anyway. For example Dr. Christy Huff had full-on dependency to Xanax after only 3 weeks at only .25 mg nightly.
I think FND may be legitimate as a category of “we think there may be something wrong with your CNS but if so we don’t understand it”, if that isn’t used to cover-up iatrogenic CNS injury from psychiatric drugs which medicine is ideologically & institutionally determined to deny.
@shvogt
@jill_d35
That they ARE listening--& feel threatened--is indicated by the urgency with which they're ramping up their efforts to silence critical voices--IN VAIN. The tone of self-confidence displayed in their fawning Twitter accolades for Pariante's piece are about 'not acting scared'.
True, techniques for customizing individualized reductions are essential for tapering. The patient community has long since worked out innovative ways to do it. Improvements, like tapering strips & manufacturer’s liquid formulations are important & should be widely available. /2
@drjanaway
@atomicaceso
The system as it stands is designed for the survival of profitability for pharma & psychiatry, & for your convenience. To hell with the health or survival of patients who are the collateral damage of the system. Change the system. Start by mandating liquid Rx & tapering strips.
@RadicalMedico
Books which give an introduction to the topic include Anatomy of an Epidemic, & Psychiatry Under the Influence, by Robert Whittaker, & Joann’s Moncrieff’s Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs, shown here. (Whittaker is associated with MIA, Moncrieff with the CEP.)
@jill_d35
@sulmoney
@ReadReadj
1/ 🤔My take. Who does hypocrisy like Huda’s hypocrisy? Aftab. In this article Aftab interviews Huda, & they play at being wolves in sheep’s clothing. I’ve read some of Aftab’s posturing as a fair-minded critic of Psychiatry’s flaws (debating Whittaker in MIA, & other articles).
@KonLontos
It’s interesting that the patient experience IS believed when it is elicited by queries in a RCT. At that stage they can’t entirely avoid the patient experience, but it’s controlled by the selection & framing of questions, & by manipulating/selecting which answers become “data”.
@stopharmingus
@eliotmuir
We need better informed consent, but more fundamental problem is the lie that psych drugs are safe or effective enough to be commonly prescribed. In a perfect world psych dxs would be few (like they used to be), & given to few, & psych Rx would be hard to get (for new patients).
First example of controlling debate by starting with our "Fix Psychiatry" (they must respond to our accusation that Psychiatry is Broken), instead of our having to respond to their accusation "Anti-Psychiatry" (we must respond to their smear that we are "against science").
@jill_d35
@sulmoney
@ReadReadj
5/ So long as Psychiatry’s prestige, power & profit appear safe, Aftab bloviates about seeing our points & feeling our pain. Looks like Huda also plays at being a seeker of truth as a parlor game. Just so long as we don’t go too far & the authority of Psychiatry isn’t questioned.
@DrDavidHealy
@atomicaceso
'Best practices' for tapering are 'safer', on average, than worst practices, but yes, it's true that there's no guarantee that any individual can discontinue safely/successfully, from any method. The damage caused by BIND varies so much from person to person. /1
@Altostrata
What makes me angry is that a person experiencing iatrogenic harm from psychiatric drugs taken as prescribed may not be able to suppress the psychological symptoms of that harm enough to avoid being further misdiagnosed & possibly forcibly treated, causing further CNS damage.
@sulmoney
@ReadReadj
There once was a smarmy psychiatrist
Whose comments were always the vilest.
His repute heading South,
With a foot in his mouth,
He fancied himself a podiatrist.
👄🦶
@psychharm
@Altostrata
Psychiatry does see a serious problem—our noncompliance with their authority—& they respond directly in the person of their snarling, yapping, odious informal defenders, & indirectly, by contemptuously ignoring us: the expressive silence of their formal & institutional response.
@RadicalMedico
So in answer to your question, the critique by Critical Psychiatry of what I called mainstream orthodox psychiatry certainly includes a critique of the DSM, but is by no means limited to that. It’s a broadly based critique.
@KaanthanJ
Have you really, as a psychiatrist, stooped so low as to write sniggering rubbish like “Has she really, as a psychiatrist, gone and used the word…”?
Please don’t misconstrue me as diminishing or denying the reality of intrapersonal & institutional racism in the USA, UK, & many other countries/cultures. But precisely because it is such a virulent social evil, it’s inexcusable to falsely claim racism as an ad hominem tactic.
@KonLontos
A huge systemic problem in medical education/practice. The roots of the problem go so deep & branch out in so many directions. What would it have taken for medicine & society to have NOT taken an institutionally-rooted turn toward mass-iatrogenesis caused by psychopharmacology?
@DrEvgenyLegedin
Self-censorship perhaps part of the core training? I’m sure that’s true of a lot of professions & guilds—for police cadets, for instance—not just in psychiatry. Learn the ideology, protect the ideology. Conform to the group’s rules (the real rules, not the ostensible rules).
@AlinaV_Psy
“Treatment they need” simply asserts that psychiatry doesn’t need fundamental reform.That statement avoids learning from the lived experience of harm from patients, which belies the assumption, or detailed evidence from psychiatry’s internal critics that the assumption is false.
@atomicaceso
@Antidepressed1
@BBCNews
@SkyNews
@GBNEWS
Yes. I’ve only witnessed from outside. Movement disorder but inner agitation causing profound suffering, absolute torment can be horrific—depending on the individual, on level of severity they experience.That inner torment can cause suicide to escape it.I’ve heard also violence.
@AlinaV_Psy
Allow me to restate your comment for you: "There is a certain kind of critic of the present model of psychiatry that really bothers me. The kind that undertakes successful advocacy, using modern methods of communication. It especially bothers me if they don't go broke doing it."
@AlinaV_Psy
So by “antipsychiatry” (if I’ll accept that loaded term at all!), I only mean I want unbiased science, diagnoses not created to market drugs, unbought KOLs, unco-opted regulators & medical guilds, a psychiatry that doesn’t pretend to do what it can’t, & first does no harm. /7
Is it a case of bad-apple clinicians misusing FND as a wastebasket psychosomatic diagnosis or is FND a rotten-barrel diagnosis always meant to say hysterical-neurosis/conversion-disorder without giving offense? I so deeply want to trust their good intentions & I so deeply don’t.
@JoshuaMIreland
FND was not invented to dismiss iatrogenic injury, it's to label mysteries in neurology. It's human medical professionals who apply it unjustly as a wastebasket "psychosomatic" diagnosis.
@AlinaV_Psy
There is an equally powerful argument that the diagnostic model used by the current model of psychiatry is profoundly flawed. We don’t say that MI doesn’t exist, but that much of what you diagnose as MI is over-medicalized human suffering or iatrogenic harm caused by psychiatry.
@recover2renew
@Antidepressed1
@Mad_In_America
The only value to a patient from havings one's doctor or family understand these things--since no one knows how to help those who have bad outcomes despite 'Best Practices' tapering & good support--is to NOT on top of that also be disbelieved & gaslit, but treated with respect.
@Talitha4peace
@DuthieAlyne
My wife sometimes had this symptom, very occasionally and much briefer than stated here, not caused by SSRI but as a symptom of BIND (prescribed benzo harm). She said it was a revolting feeling, one of the most disturbing out of many symptoms which she experienced from BIND.
@AlinaV_Psy
The honorable response from a psychiatrist with the independence of mind & the intellectual honesty to recognize the true state of affairs is to become a dissident within the profession. It means recognizing that psychopharmacology is causing an iatrogenic public health crisis.
@AlinaV_Psy
I understand that administrative reality. It explains, but it doesn’t justify, the decision to prescribe drugs to people who have little likelihood of benefit beyond placebo, but a much higher chance than your profession admits to be true of being neurologically harmed.
@jill_d35
@sulmoney
@ReadReadj
2/ Crocodile tears for psychiatry's faults are shed. Just don’t go “too far” or Aftab will change roles as “Defender of the Science.” Huda’s interview with Aftab in the guise of intellectually honest, open-minded critical thinker (also Aftab’s favorite pose) is from Sept 5, 2020.
Does anyone else find it impossible to read all the way through this screenshot of Dr. Rege’s remarks? I’ve tried several times & I’m stopped by nausea halfway.
@KonLontos
These are important questions for me to wrestle with because it’s part of trying to understand the context in which my wife was harmed by a medical system which denies having done that to her or anyone.What’s deeply heartening to me is that a few doctors do see it, challenge it.
@pash22
@joannamoncrieff
If you would stop calling psychiatry’s drugs by dishonest names redolent of the marketing department, like antidepressants, antipsychotics, & start using names that honestly describe their actual effects, like sedative, stimulant, you’d be part-way to framing better questions.