Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

[Guest guest]

http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/7831-mental-illness-in-america.html

Astonishing

Rise of Mental Illness in America

By K.Gajendra Singh

Saturday, 08

January 2011 17:23

Most of us who live stressed

out lives (certainly in the diplomatic profession) have taken

recourse to Psychiatric drugs, some times. But their effectiveness

remains doubtful. Many a times the medical practitioners are

encouraged in prescribing these drugs, in league with

Pharmaceuticals and Drugs companies with commissions and other

quid pro quo.

I was Chairman and Managing Director of India’s largest Drugs and

Pharmaceuticals Company , IDPL in 1985 and 1986 , with five units

producing a wide range of bulk drugs, formulations, chemicals and

surgical instruments , employing nearly 13,000 personnel .As a

result of price control regime , the Indian government did succeed

in keeping the prices of the life saving drugs cheap , also

forcing multinationals to produce bulk drugs in India. IDPL

trained a large number of Pharma industry experts , ( Dr Reddy of

Reddy Laboratories was one of them) researchers, marketers and

technicians .India now produces drugs amounting to 12 o 15 billion

dollars and is a major exporter.

During my tenure with IDPL, I became aware of the nexus between

the doctors and drug companies. How private companies keep

politicians on their rolls to plead their case and other such

practices. IDPL was always at a disadvantage, with the controlling

ministry not supporting us .Many bureaucrats were gifted shares in

private companies, whose cause they promoted.

It was clear that drugs mostly treat the symptoms and not cure the

disease .But some medicines like anti-biotics are necessary in

curing infections. But have been abused and over prescribed.

I am reproducing below an article edited by G. Kohls, MD,

with his permission, on the subject noted above. Three years ago I

was forced to take Xanax and other Psychiatric drugs with

indifferent results .Finally I was able to kick off the drugs with

daily breathing exercises , one can learn from TV being done by

Guru Ram Dev , who has done more for the health of Indians than

many health ministers put together .

Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental

Illness in America

Excerpts from Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic

From Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 7, Number 1,

Spring 2005

Full article, with extensive documentation, accessible at:

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

Excerpted, with minimal editing, by G. Kohls, MD

The percentage of Americans disabled by “mental illness” has

increased dramatically since 1955, when Thorazine – remembered

today as psychiatry’s first “wonder” drug – was introduced into

the market.

There are now nearly 6 million Americans disabled by “mental

illness”, and this number increases by more than 400 people each

day. A review of the scientific literature reveals that it is our

drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this epidemic. The

drugs increase the likelihood that a person will become

chronically ill, and induce new and more severe psychiatric

symptoms, often psychiatric drug-induced, in a significant

percentage of patients.

E. Fuller Torrey, in his 2001 book The Invisible Plague, concluded

that insanity had risen to the level of an epidemic. This epidemic

has unfolded in lockstep with the ever-increasing use of

prescription psychiatric drugs.

The number of disabled “mentally ill” has increased nearly

six-fold since Thorazine was introduced.

The number of disabled “mentally ill” has also increased

dramatically since 1987, the year Prozac was introduced.

Anti-psychotics, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs create

perturbations in neurotransmitter functions. In response, the

brain goes through a series of compensatory adaptations. Neurons

both release less serotonin and down-regulate (or decrease) their

number of serotonin receptors. The density of serotonin receptors

in the brain may decrease by 50% or more. After a few weeks, the

patient’s brain is functioning in a manner that is qualitatively

as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.

Conditions that disrupt brain chemistry may cause delusions,

hallucinations, disordered thinking, and mood swings – the

symptoms of insanity. Infectious agents, tumors, metabolic and

toxic disorders and various diseases could all affect the brain in

this manner. Psychiatric medications also disrupt brain chemistry.

Psychotropic drugs also increase the likelihood that a person will

become chronically ill, and they cause a significant percentage of

patients to become ill in new and more severe ways.

CAN THE “CURES” BE WORSE THAN THE “DISEASE”?

Neuroleptics (AKA Anti-psychotics, Anti-schizophrenics, Major

Tranquilizers)

In an NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) study, short-term

(6 weeks) anti-psychotic drug-treated patients were much improved

compared to placebo (75% vs. 23%). However patients who received

placebo treatment were less likely to be re-hospitalized over the

next 3 years than were those who received any of the three active

phenothiazines.

Relapse was found to be significantly related to the dose of the

tranquilizing medication the patient was receiving before he was

put on placebo – the higher the dose, the greater the probability

of relapse.

Neuroleptics increased the patients’ biological vulnerability to

psychosis. A retrospective study by Bockoven also indicated that

the drugs were making patients chronically ill.

There were three NIMH-funded studies conducted during the 1970s

that examined this possibility (whether first-episode psychotic

episodes could be treated without medications), and in each

instance, the newly admitted patients treated without drugs did

better than those treated in a conventional manner (i.e. with

anti-psychotic drugs).

Patients who were treated without neuroleptics in an experimental

home staffed by nonprofessionals had lower relapse rates over a

2-year period than a control group treated with drugs in a

hospital. Patients treated without drugs were the better

functioning group as well.

The brain responds to neuroleptics – which block 70% to 90% of all

D2 dopamine receptors in the brain – as though they are a

pathological insult. To compensate, dopaminergic brain cells

increase the density of their D2 receptors by 30% or more. The

brain is now supersensitive to dopamine and becomes more

biologically vulnerable to psychosis and is at particularly high

risk of severe withdrawal symptoms should he or she abruptly quit

taking the drugs.

Neuroleptics can produce a dopamine supersensitivity that leads to

both dyskinetic and psychotic symptoms. An implication is that the

tendency toward withdrawal psychosis in a patient who had

developed such a supersensitivity is determined by more that just

the normal course of the illness.

With minimal or no exposure to neuroleptics, at least 40% of

people who suffered a psychotic break and were diagnosed with

schizophrenia would not relapse after leaving the hospital, and

perhaps as many as 65% would function fairly well over the long

term. However, once first-episode patients were treated with

neuroleptics, a different fate awaited them. Their brains would

undergo drug-induced changes that would increase their biological

vulnerability to psychosis, and this would increase the likelihood

that they would become chronically ill (and thus permanently

disabled).

In the mid 1990s, several research teams reported that the drugs

cause atrophy of the cerebral cortex and an enlargement of the

basal ganglia. The drugs were causing structural changes in the

brain. The drug-induced enlargement of the basal ganglia was

associated with greater severity of both negative and “positive”

(schizophrenic) symptoms. Over the long term the drugs cause

changes in the brain associated with a worsening of the very

symptoms the drugs are supposed to alleviate.

Antidepressants

The story of antidepressants is a bit subtler, and it leads to the

same conclusion that these drugs increase chronic illness over

time. Well-designed studies, the differences between the

effectiveness of antidepressant drugs and placebo are not

impressive. About 61% of the drug-treated patients improved,

versus 46% of the placebo patients, producing a net drug benefit

of only 15%.

At the end of 16 weeks (in a study comparing cognitive behavior

therapy, interpersonal therapy, the tricyclic antidepressant

imipramine and placebo) there were no significant differences

among treatments, including placebo plus clinical management, for

the less severely depressed and functionally impaired patients.

Only the severely depressed patients fared better on a tricyclic

than on placebo. However, at the end of 18 months, even this

minimal benefit disappeared. Stay-well rates were best for the

cognitive behavior group (30%) and poorest for the imipramine

group (19%).

Antidepressants were making people chronically ill, just like the

anti-psychotics were. In 1985, a U.K. group reported that in a

2-year study comparing drug therapy to cognitive therapy, relapse

was significantly higher in the pharmacotherapy group. Long-term

use of antidepressants may increase the patient’s biochemical

vulnerability to depression and thus worsen the course of

affective disorders. An analysis of 27 studies showed that whether

one treats a depressed patient for 3 months or 3 years, it does

not matter when one stops the drugs. The longer the drug

treatment, the higher the likelihood of relapse.

Benzodiazepines

Xanax (a benzodiazepine class “minor” tranquilizer) patients got

better during the first four weeks of treatment; they did not

improve any more in weeks 4 to 8, and their symptoms began to

worsen after that. A high percentage relapsed and by the end of 23

weeks, they were worse off than patients treated without drugs on

five different outcomes measures. Patients tapered off Xanax

suffered nearly 4 times as many panic attacks as the non-drug

patients and 25% of the Xanax patients suffered from rebound

anxiety and insomnia more severe than when they began the study.

Today’s drug-treated patients spend much more time in hospital

beds and are far more likely to die from their mental illness than

they were in 1896. Modern treatments have set up a revolving door

and appear to be a leading cause of injury and death.

MANUFACTURING “MENTAL ILLNESS”

It is well-known that all of the major classes of psychiatric

drugs – anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, benzodiazepines, and

stimulants for ADHD – can trigger new and more severe psychiatric

symptoms in a significant percentage of patients. It is easy to

see this epidemic-creating factor at work with Prozac and the

other SSRIs.

Prozac quickly took up the top position as America’s most

complained about drug. By 1997, 39,000 adverse-event reports about

it had been sent to Medwatch. These reports are thought to

represent only 1% of the actual number of such events, suggesting

that nearly 4 million people in the US had suffered such problems,

which included mania, psychotic depression, nervousness, anxiety,

agitation, hostility, hallucinations, memory loss, tremors,

impotence, convulsions, insomnia and nausea.

The propensity of Prozac and other SSRIs to trigger mania or

psychosis is undoubtedly the biggest problem with these drugs. The

American Psychiatric Association warns that manic or hypomanic

episodes are estimated to occur in 8% to 20 % of patients treated

with anti-depressants.

Anti-depressant-induced mania is not simply a temporary and

reversible phenomenon, but a complex biochemical mechanism of

illness deterioration. Yale researchers reported that 8.1% of all

admissions to a psychiatric hospital they studied were due to

SSRI-induced mania or psychosis.

Thus the SSRI path to a disabling mental illness can be easily

seen. A depressed patient treated with an anti-depressant suffers

a manic or psychotic episode, at which time his or her diagnosis

is changed to bipolar disorder. At that point, the person is

prescribed an anti-psychotic to go along with the anti-depressant,

and, once on a drug cocktail, the person is well along on the road

to permanent disability.

CONCLUSION

There is an outside agent fueling this epidemic of mental illness,

only it is to be found in the medicine cabinet. Psychiatric drugs

perturb normal neurotransmitter function, and while that

perturbation may curb symptoms over a short term, over the long

run it increases the likelihood that a person will become

chronically ill, or ill with new or more severe symptoms. A review

of the scientific literature shows quite clearly that it is our

drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this modern-day

plague.

Whitaker’s ground-breaking book, Mad In America: Bad

Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the

Mentally Ill was published in 2002, That critically acclaimed book

should be, but is not, required reading for everybody in the

medical profession, including psychiatric patients and their loved

ones. (www.madinamerica.com)

Whitaker’s latest book (published in 2010) Anatomy of an Epidemic:

Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of

Mental Illness in America, further documents the epidemic of

“mental illness” disability (which, in many cases, are not mental

illnesses at all, but rather drug-induced neurological illnesses

that manifest psychological symptoms or drug-induced withdrawal

both of which can be mis-diagnosed as mental illnesses).

Each of these books have been essentially black-balled by the

pharmaceutical, medical and psychiatric industries, neither book

having even been reviewed in any mainstream medical journals.

Dr. Kohls warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any

psychiatric drug because of the common, often serious withdrawal

symptoms that can occur with the chronic use of any

dependency-inducing psychoactive drug, whether illicit or legal.

Close consultation with an informed physician who is familiar with

treating drug withdrawal and who is also willing to read and study

the above books and become familiar with the previously poorly

understood dangers of these drugs.

[Guest guest]

http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/7831-mental-illness-in-america.html

Astonishing

Rise of Mental Illness in America

By K.Gajendra Singh

Saturday, 08

January 2011 17:23

Most of us who live stressed

out lives (certainly in the diplomatic profession) have taken

recourse to Psychiatric drugs, some times. But their effectiveness

remains doubtful. Many a times the medical practitioners are

encouraged in prescribing these drugs, in league with

Pharmaceuticals and Drugs companies with commissions and other

quid pro quo.

I was Chairman and Managing Director of India’s largest Drugs and

Pharmaceuticals Company , IDPL in 1985 and 1986 , with five units

producing a wide range of bulk drugs, formulations, chemicals and

surgical instruments , employing nearly 13,000 personnel .As a

result of price control regime , the Indian government did succeed

in keeping the prices of the life saving drugs cheap , also

forcing multinationals to produce bulk drugs in India. IDPL

trained a large number of Pharma industry experts , ( Dr Reddy of

Reddy Laboratories was one of them) researchers, marketers and

technicians .India now produces drugs amounting to 12 o 15 billion

dollars and is a major exporter.

During my tenure with IDPL, I became aware of the nexus between

the doctors and drug companies. How private companies keep

politicians on their rolls to plead their case and other such

practices. IDPL was always at a disadvantage, with the controlling

ministry not supporting us .Many bureaucrats were gifted shares in

private companies, whose cause they promoted.

It was clear that drugs mostly treat the symptoms and not cure the

disease .But some medicines like anti-biotics are necessary in

curing infections. But have been abused and over prescribed.

I am reproducing below an article edited by G. Kohls, MD,

with his permission, on the subject noted above. Three years ago I

was forced to take Xanax and other Psychiatric drugs with

indifferent results .Finally I was able to kick off the drugs with

daily breathing exercises , one can learn from TV being done by

Guru Ram Dev , who has done more for the health of Indians than

many health ministers put together .

Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental

Illness in America

Excerpts from Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic

From Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 7, Number 1,

Spring 2005

Full article, with extensive documentation, accessible at:

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

Excerpted, with minimal editing, by G. Kohls, MD

The percentage of Americans disabled by “mental illness” has

increased dramatically since 1955, when Thorazine – remembered

today as psychiatry’s first “wonder” drug – was introduced into

the market.

There are now nearly 6 million Americans disabled by “mental

illness”, and this number increases by more than 400 people each

day. A review of the scientific literature reveals that it is our

drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this epidemic. The

drugs increase the likelihood that a person will become

chronically ill, and induce new and more severe psychiatric

symptoms, often psychiatric drug-induced, in a significant

percentage of patients.

E. Fuller Torrey, in his 2001 book The Invisible Plague, concluded

that insanity had risen to the level of an epidemic. This epidemic

has unfolded in lockstep with the ever-increasing use of

prescription psychiatric drugs.

The number of disabled “mentally ill” has increased nearly

six-fold since Thorazine was introduced.

The number of disabled “mentally ill” has also increased

dramatically since 1987, the year Prozac was introduced.

Anti-psychotics, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs create

perturbations in neurotransmitter functions. In response, the

brain goes through a series of compensatory adaptations. Neurons

both release less serotonin and down-regulate (or decrease) their

number of serotonin receptors. The density of serotonin receptors

in the brain may decrease by 50% or more. After a few weeks, the

patient’s brain is functioning in a manner that is qualitatively

as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.

Conditions that disrupt brain chemistry may cause delusions,

hallucinations, disordered thinking, and mood swings – the

symptoms of insanity. Infectious agents, tumors, metabolic and

toxic disorders and various diseases could all affect the brain in

this manner. Psychiatric medications also disrupt brain chemistry.

Psychotropic drugs also increase the likelihood that a person will

become chronically ill, and they cause a significant percentage of

patients to become ill in new and more severe ways.

CAN THE “CURES” BE WORSE THAN THE “DISEASE”?

Neuroleptics (AKA Anti-psychotics, Anti-schizophrenics, Major

Tranquilizers)

In an NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) study, short-term

(6 weeks) anti-psychotic drug-treated patients were much improved

compared to placebo (75% vs. 23%). However patients who received

placebo treatment were less likely to be re-hospitalized over the

next 3 years than were those who received any of the three active

phenothiazines.

Relapse was found to be significantly related to the dose of the

tranquilizing medication the patient was receiving before he was

put on placebo – the higher the dose, the greater the probability

of relapse.

Neuroleptics increased the patients’ biological vulnerability to

psychosis. A retrospective study by Bockoven also indicated that

the drugs were making patients chronically ill.

There were three NIMH-funded studies conducted during the 1970s

that examined this possibility (whether first-episode psychotic

episodes could be treated without medications), and in each

instance, the newly admitted patients treated without drugs did

better than those treated in a conventional manner (i.e. with

anti-psychotic drugs).

Patients who were treated without neuroleptics in an experimental

home staffed by nonprofessionals had lower relapse rates over a

2-year period than a control group treated with drugs in a

hospital. Patients treated without drugs were the better

functioning group as well.

The brain responds to neuroleptics – which block 70% to 90% of all

D2 dopamine receptors in the brain – as though they are a

pathological insult. To compensate, dopaminergic brain cells

increase the density of their D2 receptors by 30% or more. The

brain is now supersensitive to dopamine and becomes more

biologically vulnerable to psychosis and is at particularly high

risk of severe withdrawal symptoms should he or she abruptly quit

taking the drugs.

Neuroleptics can produce a dopamine supersensitivity that leads to

both dyskinetic and psychotic symptoms. An implication is that the

tendency toward withdrawal psychosis in a patient who had

developed such a supersensitivity is determined by more that just

the normal course of the illness.

With minimal or no exposure to neuroleptics, at least 40% of

people who suffered a psychotic break and were diagnosed with

schizophrenia would not relapse after leaving the hospital, and

perhaps as many as 65% would function fairly well over the long

term. However, once first-episode patients were treated with

neuroleptics, a different fate awaited them. Their brains would

undergo drug-induced changes that would increase their biological

vulnerability to psychosis, and this would increase the likelihood

that they would become chronically ill (and thus permanently

disabled).

In the mid 1990s, several research teams reported that the drugs

cause atrophy of the cerebral cortex and an enlargement of the

basal ganglia. The drugs were causing structural changes in the

brain. The drug-induced enlargement of the basal ganglia was

associated with greater severity of both negative and “positive”

(schizophrenic) symptoms. Over the long term the drugs cause

changes in the brain associated with a worsening of the very

symptoms the drugs are supposed to alleviate.

Antidepressants

The story of antidepressants is a bit subtler, and it leads to the

same conclusion that these drugs increase chronic illness over

time. Well-designed studies, the differences between the

effectiveness of antidepressant drugs and placebo are not

impressive. About 61% of the drug-treated patients improved,

versus 46% of the placebo patients, producing a net drug benefit

of only 15%.

At the end of 16 weeks (in a study comparing cognitive behavior

therapy, interpersonal therapy, the tricyclic antidepressant

imipramine and placebo) there were no significant differences

among treatments, including placebo plus clinical management, for

the less severely depressed and functionally impaired patients.

Only the severely depressed patients fared better on a tricyclic

than on placebo. However, at the end of 18 months, even this

minimal benefit disappeared. Stay-well rates were best for the

cognitive behavior group (30%) and poorest for the imipramine

group (19%).

Antidepressants were making people chronically ill, just like the

anti-psychotics were. In 1985, a U.K. group reported that in a

2-year study comparing drug therapy to cognitive therapy, relapse

was significantly higher in the pharmacotherapy group. Long-term

use of antidepressants may increase the patient’s biochemical

vulnerability to depression and thus worsen the course of

affective disorders. An analysis of 27 studies showed that whether

one treats a depressed patient for 3 months or 3 years, it does

not matter when one stops the drugs. The longer the drug

treatment, the higher the likelihood of relapse.

Benzodiazepines

Xanax (a benzodiazepine class “minor” tranquilizer) patients got

better during the first four weeks of treatment; they did not

improve any more in weeks 4 to 8, and their symptoms began to

worsen after that. A high percentage relapsed and by the end of 23

weeks, they were worse off than patients treated without drugs on

five different outcomes measures. Patients tapered off Xanax

suffered nearly 4 times as many panic attacks as the non-drug

patients and 25% of the Xanax patients suffered from rebound

anxiety and insomnia more severe than when they began the study.

Today’s drug-treated patients spend much more time in hospital

beds and are far more likely to die from their mental illness than

they were in 1896. Modern treatments have set up a revolving door

and appear to be a leading cause of injury and death.

MANUFACTURING “MENTAL ILLNESS”

It is well-known that all of the major classes of psychiatric

drugs – anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, benzodiazepines, and

stimulants for ADHD – can trigger new and more severe psychiatric

symptoms in a significant percentage of patients. It is easy to

see this epidemic-creating factor at work with Prozac and the

other SSRIs.

Prozac quickly took up the top position as America’s most

complained about drug. By 1997, 39,000 adverse-event reports about

it had been sent to Medwatch. These reports are thought to

represent only 1% of the actual number of such events, suggesting

that nearly 4 million people in the US had suffered such problems,

which included mania, psychotic depression, nervousness, anxiety,

agitation, hostility, hallucinations, memory loss, tremors,

impotence, convulsions, insomnia and nausea.

The propensity of Prozac and other SSRIs to trigger mania or

psychosis is undoubtedly the biggest problem with these drugs. The

American Psychiatric Association warns that manic or hypomanic

episodes are estimated to occur in 8% to 20 % of patients treated

with anti-depressants.

Anti-depressant-induced mania is not simply a temporary and

reversible phenomenon, but a complex biochemical mechanism of

illness deterioration. Yale researchers reported that 8.1% of all

admissions to a psychiatric hospital they studied were due to

SSRI-induced mania or psychosis.

Thus the SSRI path to a disabling mental illness can be easily

seen. A depressed patient treated with an anti-depressant suffers

a manic or psychotic episode, at which time his or her diagnosis

is changed to bipolar disorder. At that point, the person is

prescribed an anti-psychotic to go along with the anti-depressant,

and, once on a drug cocktail, the person is well along on the road

to permanent disability.

CONCLUSION

There is an outside agent fueling this epidemic of mental illness,

only it is to be found in the medicine cabinet. Psychiatric drugs

perturb normal neurotransmitter function, and while that

perturbation may curb symptoms over a short term, over the long

run it increases the likelihood that a person will become

chronically ill, or ill with new or more severe symptoms. A review

of the scientific literature shows quite clearly that it is our

drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this modern-day

plague.

Whitaker’s ground-breaking book, Mad In America: Bad

Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the

Mentally Ill was published in 2002, That critically acclaimed book

should be, but is not, required reading for everybody in the

medical profession, including psychiatric patients and their loved

ones. (www.madinamerica.com)

Whitaker’s latest book (published in 2010) Anatomy of an Epidemic:

Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of

Mental Illness in America, further documents the epidemic of

“mental illness” disability (which, in many cases, are not mental

illnesses at all, but rather drug-induced neurological illnesses

that manifest psychological symptoms or drug-induced withdrawal

both of which can be mis-diagnosed as mental illnesses).

Each of these books have been essentially black-balled by the

pharmaceutical, medical and psychiatric industries, neither book

having even been reviewed in any mainstream medical journals.

Dr. Kohls warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any

psychiatric drug because of the common, often serious withdrawal

symptoms that can occur with the chronic use of any

dependency-inducing psychoactive drug, whether illicit or legal.

Close consultation with an informed physician who is familiar with

treating drug withdrawal and who is also willing to read and study

the above books and become familiar with the previously poorly

understood dangers of these drugs.

[Guest guest]

http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/7831-mental-illness-in-america.html

Astonishing

Rise of Mental Illness in America

By K.Gajendra Singh

Saturday, 08

January 2011 17:23

Most of us who live stressed

out lives (certainly in the diplomatic profession) have taken

recourse to Psychiatric drugs, some times. But their effectiveness

remains doubtful. Many a times the medical practitioners are

encouraged in prescribing these drugs, in league with

Pharmaceuticals and Drugs companies with commissions and other

quid pro quo.

I was Chairman and Managing Director of India’s largest Drugs and

Pharmaceuticals Company , IDPL in 1985 and 1986 , with five units

producing a wide range of bulk drugs, formulations, chemicals and

surgical instruments , employing nearly 13,000 personnel .As a

result of price control regime , the Indian government did succeed

in keeping the prices of the life saving drugs cheap , also

forcing multinationals to produce bulk drugs in India. IDPL

trained a large number of Pharma industry experts , ( Dr Reddy of

Reddy Laboratories was one of them) researchers, marketers and

technicians .India now produces drugs amounting to 12 o 15 billion

dollars and is a major exporter.

During my tenure with IDPL, I became aware of the nexus between

the doctors and drug companies. How private companies keep

politicians on their rolls to plead their case and other such

practices. IDPL was always at a disadvantage, with the controlling

ministry not supporting us .Many bureaucrats were gifted shares in

private companies, whose cause they promoted.

It was clear that drugs mostly treat the symptoms and not cure the

disease .But some medicines like anti-biotics are necessary in

curing infections. But have been abused and over prescribed.

I am reproducing below an article edited by G. Kohls, MD,

with his permission, on the subject noted above. Three years ago I

was forced to take Xanax and other Psychiatric drugs with

indifferent results .Finally I was able to kick off the drugs with

daily breathing exercises , one can learn from TV being done by

Guru Ram Dev , who has done more for the health of Indians than

many health ministers put together .

Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental

Illness in America

Excerpts from Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic

From Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 7, Number 1,

Spring 2005

Full article, with extensive documentation, accessible at:

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

Excerpted, with minimal editing, by G. Kohls, MD

The percentage of Americans disabled by “mental illness” has

increased dramatically since 1955, when Thorazine – remembered

today as psychiatry’s first “wonder” drug – was introduced into

the market.

There are now nearly 6 million Americans disabled by “mental

illness”, and this number increases by more than 400 people each

day. A review of the scientific literature reveals that it is our

drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this epidemic. The

drugs increase the likelihood that a person will become

chronically ill, and induce new and more severe psychiatric

symptoms, often psychiatric drug-induced, in a significant

percentage of patients.

E. Fuller Torrey, in his 2001 book The Invisible Plague, concluded

that insanity had risen to the level of an epidemic. This epidemic

has unfolded in lockstep with the ever-increasing use of

prescription psychiatric drugs.

The number of disabled “mentally ill” has increased nearly

six-fold since Thorazine was introduced.

The number of disabled “mentally ill” has also increased

dramatically since 1987, the year Prozac was introduced.

Anti-psychotics, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs create

perturbations in neurotransmitter functions. In response, the

brain goes through a series of compensatory adaptations. Neurons

both release less serotonin and down-regulate (or decrease) their

number of serotonin receptors. The density of serotonin receptors

in the brain may decrease by 50% or more. After a few weeks, the

patient’s brain is functioning in a manner that is qualitatively

as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.

Conditions that disrupt brain chemistry may cause delusions,

hallucinations, disordered thinking, and mood swings – the

symptoms of insanity. Infectious agents, tumors, metabolic and

toxic disorders and various diseases could all affect the brain in

this manner. Psychiatric medications also disrupt brain chemistry.

Psychotropic drugs also increase the likelihood that a person will

become chronically ill, and they cause a significant percentage of

patients to become ill in new and more severe ways.

CAN THE “CURES” BE WORSE THAN THE “DISEASE”?

Neuroleptics (AKA Anti-psychotics, Anti-schizophrenics, Major

Tranquilizers)

In an NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) study, short-term

(6 weeks) anti-psychotic drug-treated patients were much improved

compared to placebo (75% vs. 23%). However patients who received

placebo treatment were less likely to be re-hospitalized over the

next 3 years than were those who received any of the three active

phenothiazines.

Relapse was found to be significantly related to the dose of the

tranquilizing medication the patient was receiving before he was

put on placebo – the higher the dose, the greater the probability

of relapse.

Neuroleptics increased the patients’ biological vulnerability to

psychosis. A retrospective study by Bockoven also indicated that

the drugs were making patients chronically ill.

There were three NIMH-funded studies conducted during the 1970s

that examined this possibility (whether first-episode psychotic

episodes could be treated without medications), and in each

instance, the newly admitted patients treated without drugs did

better than those treated in a conventional manner (i.e. with

anti-psychotic drugs).

Patients who were treated without neuroleptics in an experimental

home staffed by nonprofessionals had lower relapse rates over a

2-year period than a control group treated with drugs in a

hospital. Patients treated without drugs were the better

functioning group as well.

The brain responds to neuroleptics – which block 70% to 90% of all

D2 dopamine receptors in the brain – as though they are a

pathological insult. To compensate, dopaminergic brain cells

increase the density of their D2 receptors by 30% or more. The

brain is now supersensitive to dopamine and becomes more

biologically vulnerable to psychosis and is at particularly high

risk of severe withdrawal symptoms should he or she abruptly quit

taking the drugs.

Neuroleptics can produce a dopamine supersensitivity that leads to

both dyskinetic and psychotic symptoms. An implication is that the

tendency toward withdrawal psychosis in a patient who had

developed such a supersensitivity is determined by more that just

the normal course of the illness.

With minimal or no exposure to neuroleptics, at least 40% of

people who suffered a psychotic break and were diagnosed with

schizophrenia would not relapse after leaving the hospital, and

perhaps as many as 65% would function fairly well over the long

term. However, once first-episode patients were treated with

neuroleptics, a different fate awaited them. Their brains would

undergo drug-induced changes that would increase their biological

vulnerability to psychosis, and this would increase the likelihood

that they would become chronically ill (and thus permanently

disabled).

In the mid 1990s, several research teams reported that the drugs

cause atrophy of the cerebral cortex and an enlargement of the

basal ganglia. The drugs were causing structural changes in the

brain. The drug-induced enlargement of the basal ganglia was

associated with greater severity of both negative and “positive”

(schizophrenic) symptoms. Over the long term the drugs cause

changes in the brain associated with a worsening of the very

symptoms the drugs are supposed to alleviate.

Antidepressants

The story of antidepressants is a bit subtler, and it leads to the

same conclusion that these drugs increase chronic illness over

time. Well-designed studies, the differences between the

effectiveness of antidepressant drugs and placebo are not

impressive. About 61% of the drug-treated patients improved,

versus 46% of the placebo patients, producing a net drug benefit

of only 15%.

At the end of 16 weeks (in a study comparing cognitive behavior

therapy, interpersonal therapy, the tricyclic antidepressant

imipramine and placebo) there were no significant differences

among treatments, including placebo plus clinical management, for

the less severely depressed and functionally impaired patients.

Only the severely depressed patients fared better on a tricyclic

than on placebo. However, at the end of 18 months, even this

minimal benefit disappeared. Stay-well rates were best for the

cognitive behavior group (30%) and poorest for the imipramine

group (19%).

Antidepressants were making people chronically ill, just like the

anti-psychotics were. In 1985, a U.K. group reported that in a

2-year study comparing drug therapy to cognitive therapy, relapse

was significantly higher in the pharmacotherapy group. Long-term

use of antidepressants may increase the patient’s biochemical

vulnerability to depression and thus worsen the course of

affective disorders. An analysis of 27 studies showed that whether

one treats a depressed patient for 3 months or 3 years, it does

not matter when one stops the drugs. The longer the drug

treatment, the higher the likelihood of relapse.

Benzodiazepines

Xanax (a benzodiazepine class “minor” tranquilizer) patients got

better during the first four weeks of treatment; they did not

improve any more in weeks 4 to 8, and their symptoms began to

worsen after that. A high percentage relapsed and by the end of 23

weeks, they were worse off than patients treated without drugs on

five different outcomes measures. Patients tapered off Xanax

suffered nearly 4 times as many panic attacks as the non-drug

patients and 25% of the Xanax patients suffered from rebound

anxiety and insomnia more severe than when they began the study.

Today’s drug-treated patients spend much more time in hospital

beds and are far more likely to die from their mental illness than

they were in 1896. Modern treatments have set up a revolving door

and appear to be a leading cause of injury and death.

MANUFACTURING “MENTAL ILLNESS”

It is well-known that all of the major classes of psychiatric

drugs – anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, benzodiazepines, and

stimulants for ADHD – can trigger new and more severe psychiatric

symptoms in a significant percentage of patients. It is easy to

see this epidemic-creating factor at work with Prozac and the

other SSRIs.

Prozac quickly took up the top position as America’s most

complained about drug. By 1997, 39,000 adverse-event reports about

it had been sent to Medwatch. These reports are thought to

represent only 1% of the actual number of such events, suggesting

that nearly 4 million people in the US had suffered such problems,

which included mania, psychotic depression, nervousness, anxiety,

agitation, hostility, hallucinations, memory loss, tremors,

impotence, convulsions, insomnia and nausea.

The propensity of Prozac and other SSRIs to trigger mania or

psychosis is undoubtedly the biggest problem with these drugs. The

American Psychiatric Association warns that manic or hypomanic

episodes are estimated to occur in 8% to 20 % of patients treated

with anti-depressants.

Anti-depressant-induced mania is not simply a temporary and

reversible phenomenon, but a complex biochemical mechanism of

illness deterioration. Yale researchers reported that 8.1% of all

admissions to a psychiatric hospital they studied were due to

SSRI-induced mania or psychosis.

Thus the SSRI path to a disabling mental illness can be easily

seen. A depressed patient treated with an anti-depressant suffers

a manic or psychotic episode, at which time his or her diagnosis

is changed to bipolar disorder. At that point, the person is

prescribed an anti-psychotic to go along with the anti-depressant,

and, once on a drug cocktail, the person is well along on the road

to permanent disability.

CONCLUSION

There is an outside agent fueling this epidemic of mental illness,

only it is to be found in the medicine cabinet. Psychiatric drugs

perturb normal neurotransmitter function, and while that

perturbation may curb symptoms over a short term, over the long

run it increases the likelihood that a person will become

chronically ill, or ill with new or more severe symptoms. A review

of the scientific literature shows quite clearly that it is our

drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this modern-day

plague.

Whitaker’s ground-breaking book, Mad In America: Bad

Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the

Mentally Ill was published in 2002, That critically acclaimed book

should be, but is not, required reading for everybody in the

medical profession, including psychiatric patients and their loved

ones. (www.madinamerica.com)

Whitaker’s latest book (published in 2010) Anatomy of an Epidemic:

Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of

Mental Illness in America, further documents the epidemic of

“mental illness” disability (which, in many cases, are not mental

illnesses at all, but rather drug-induced neurological illnesses

that manifest psychological symptoms or drug-induced withdrawal

both of which can be mis-diagnosed as mental illnesses).

Each of these books have been essentially black-balled by the

pharmaceutical, medical and psychiatric industries, neither book

having even been reviewed in any mainstream medical journals.

Dr. Kohls warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any

psychiatric drug because of the common, often serious withdrawal

symptoms that can occur with the chronic use of any

dependency-inducing psychoactive drug, whether illicit or legal.

Close consultation with an informed physician who is familiar with

treating drug withdrawal and who is also willing to read and study

the above books and become familiar with the previously poorly

understood dangers of these drugs.

[Guest guest]

http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/7831-mental-illness-in-america.html

Astonishing

Rise of Mental Illness in America

By K.Gajendra Singh

Saturday, 08

January 2011 17:23

Most of us who live stressed

out lives (certainly in the diplomatic profession) have taken

recourse to Psychiatric drugs, some times. But their effectiveness

remains doubtful. Many a times the medical practitioners are

encouraged in prescribing these drugs, in league with

Pharmaceuticals and Drugs companies with commissions and other

quid pro quo.

I was Chairman and Managing Director of India’s largest Drugs and

Pharmaceuticals Company , IDPL in 1985 and 1986 , with five units

producing a wide range of bulk drugs, formulations, chemicals and

surgical instruments , employing nearly 13,000 personnel .As a

result of price control regime , the Indian government did succeed

in keeping the prices of the life saving drugs cheap , also

forcing multinationals to produce bulk drugs in India. IDPL

trained a large number of Pharma industry experts , ( Dr Reddy of

Reddy Laboratories was one of them) researchers, marketers and

technicians .India now produces drugs amounting to 12 o 15 billion

dollars and is a major exporter.

During my tenure with IDPL, I became aware of the nexus between

the doctors and drug companies. How private companies keep

politicians on their rolls to plead their case and other such

practices. IDPL was always at a disadvantage, with the controlling

ministry not supporting us .Many bureaucrats were gifted shares in

private companies, whose cause they promoted.

It was clear that drugs mostly treat the symptoms and not cure the

disease .But some medicines like anti-biotics are necessary in

curing infections. But have been abused and over prescribed.

I am reproducing below an article edited by G. Kohls, MD,

with his permission, on the subject noted above. Three years ago I

was forced to take Xanax and other Psychiatric drugs with

indifferent results .Finally I was able to kick off the drugs with

daily breathing exercises , one can learn from TV being done by

Guru Ram Dev , who has done more for the health of Indians than

many health ministers put together .

Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental

Illness in America

Excerpts from Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic

From Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 7, Number 1,

Spring 2005

Full article, with extensive documentation, accessible at:

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

Excerpted, with minimal editing, by G. Kohls, MD

The percentage of Americans disabled by “mental illness” has

increased dramatically since 1955, when Thorazine – remembered

today as psychiatry’s first “wonder” drug – was introduced into

the market.

There are now nearly 6 million Americans disabled by “mental

illness”, and this number increases by more than 400 people each

day. A review of the scientific literature reveals that it is our

drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this epidemic. The

drugs increase the likelihood that a person will become

chronically ill, and induce new and more severe psychiatric

symptoms, often psychiatric drug-induced, in a significant

percentage of patients.

E. Fuller Torrey, in his 2001 book The Invisible Plague, concluded

that insanity had risen to the level of an epidemic. This epidemic

has unfolded in lockstep with the ever-increasing use of

prescription psychiatric drugs.

The number of disabled “mentally ill” has increased nearly

six-fold since Thorazine was introduced.

The number of disabled “mentally ill” has also increased

dramatically since 1987, the year Prozac was introduced.

Anti-psychotics, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs create

perturbations in neurotransmitter functions. In response, the

brain goes through a series of compensatory adaptations. Neurons

both release less serotonin and down-regulate (or decrease) their

number of serotonin receptors. The density of serotonin receptors

in the brain may decrease by 50% or more. After a few weeks, the

patient’s brain is functioning in a manner that is qualitatively

as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.

Conditions that disrupt brain chemistry may cause delusions,

hallucinations, disordered thinking, and mood swings – the

symptoms of insanity. Infectious agents, tumors, metabolic and

toxic disorders and various diseases could all affect the brain in

this manner. Psychiatric medications also disrupt brain chemistry.

Psychotropic drugs also increase the likelihood that a person will

become chronically ill, and they cause a significant percentage of

patients to become ill in new and more severe ways.

CAN THE “CURES” BE WORSE THAN THE “DISEASE”?

Neuroleptics (AKA Anti-psychotics, Anti-schizophrenics, Major

Tranquilizers)

In an NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) study, short-term

(6 weeks) anti-psychotic drug-treated patients were much improved

compared to placebo (75% vs. 23%). However patients who received

placebo treatment were less likely to be re-hospitalized over the

next 3 years than were those who received any of the three active

phenothiazines.

Relapse was found to be significantly related to the dose of the

tranquilizing medication the patient was receiving before he was

put on placebo – the higher the dose, the greater the probability

of relapse.

Neuroleptics increased the patients’ biological vulnerability to

psychosis. A retrospective study by Bockoven also indicated that

the drugs were making patients chronically ill.

There were three NIMH-funded studies conducted during the 1970s

that examined this possibility (whether first-episode psychotic

episodes could be treated without medications), and in each

instance, the newly admitted patients treated without drugs did

better than those treated in a conventional manner (i.e. with

anti-psychotic drugs).

Patients who were treated without neuroleptics in an experimental

home staffed by nonprofessionals had lower relapse rates over a

2-year period than a control group treated with drugs in a

hospital. Patients treated without drugs were the better

functioning group as well.

The brain responds to neuroleptics – which block 70% to 90% of all

D2 dopamine receptors in the brain – as though they are a

pathological insult. To compensate, dopaminergic brain cells

increase the density of their D2 receptors by 30% or more. The

brain is now supersensitive to dopamine and becomes more

biologically vulnerable to psychosis and is at particularly high

risk of severe withdrawal symptoms should he or she abruptly quit

taking the drugs.

Neuroleptics can produce a dopamine supersensitivity that leads to

both dyskinetic and psychotic symptoms. An implication is that the

tendency toward withdrawal psychosis in a patient who had

developed such a supersensitivity is determined by more that just

the normal course of the illness.

With minimal or no exposure to neuroleptics, at least 40% of

people who suffered a psychotic break and were diagnosed with

schizophrenia would not relapse after leaving the hospital, and

perhaps as many as 65% would function fairly well over the long

term. However, once first-episode patients were treated with

neuroleptics, a different fate awaited them. Their brains would

undergo drug-induced changes that would increase their biological

vulnerability to psychosis, and this would increase the likelihood

that they would become chronically ill (and thus permanently

disabled).

In the mid 1990s, several research teams reported that the drugs

cause atrophy of the cerebral cortex and an enlargement of the

basal ganglia. The drugs were causing structural changes in the

brain. The drug-induced enlargement of the basal ganglia was

associated with greater severity of both negative and “positive”

(schizophrenic) symptoms. Over the long term the drugs cause

changes in the brain associated with a worsening of the very

symptoms the drugs are supposed to alleviate.

Antidepressants

The story of antidepressants is a bit subtler, and it leads to the

same conclusion that these drugs increase chronic illness over

time. Well-designed studies, the differences between the

effectiveness of antidepressant drugs and placebo are not

impressive. About 61% of the drug-treated patients improved,

versus 46% of the placebo patients, producing a net drug benefit

of only 15%.

At the end of 16 weeks (in a study comparing cognitive behavior

therapy, interpersonal therapy, the tricyclic antidepressant

imipramine and placebo) there were no significant differences

among treatments, including placebo plus clinical management, for

the less severely depressed and functionally impaired patients.

Only the severely depressed patients fared better on a tricyclic

than on placebo. However, at the end of 18 months, even this

minimal benefit disappeared. Stay-well rates were best for the

cognitive behavior group (30%) and poorest for the imipramine

group (19%).

Antidepressants were making people chronically ill, just like the

anti-psychotics were. In 1985, a U.K. group reported that in a

2-year study comparing drug therapy to cognitive therapy, relapse

was significantly higher in the pharmacotherapy group. Long-term

use of antidepressants may increase the patient’s biochemical

vulnerability to depression and thus worsen the course of

affective disorders. An analysis of 27 studies showed that whether

one treats a depressed patient for 3 months or 3 years, it does

not matter when one stops the drugs. The longer the drug

treatment, the higher the likelihood of relapse.

Benzodiazepines

Xanax (a benzodiazepine class “minor” tranquilizer) patients got

better during the first four weeks of treatment; they did not

improve any more in weeks 4 to 8, and their symptoms began to

worsen after that. A high percentage relapsed and by the end of 23

weeks, they were worse off than patients treated without drugs on

five different outcomes measures. Patients tapered off Xanax

suffered nearly 4 times as many panic attacks as the non-drug

patients and 25% of the Xanax patients suffered from rebound

anxiety and insomnia more severe than when they began the study.

Today’s drug-treated patients spend much more time in hospital

beds and are far more likely to die from their mental illness than

they were in 1896. Modern treatments have set up a revolving door

and appear to be a leading cause of injury and death.

MANUFACTURING “MENTAL ILLNESS”

It is well-known that all of the major classes of psychiatric

drugs – anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, benzodiazepines, and

stimulants for ADHD – can trigger new and more severe psychiatric

symptoms in a significant percentage of patients. It is easy to

see this epidemic-creating factor at work with Prozac and the

other SSRIs.

Prozac quickly took up the top position as America’s most

complained about drug. By 1997, 39,000 adverse-event reports about

it had been sent to Medwatch. These reports are thought to

represent only 1% of the actual number of such events, suggesting

that nearly 4 million people in the US had suffered such problems,

which included mania, psychotic depression, nervousness, anxiety,

agitation, hostility, hallucinations, memory loss, tremors,

impotence, convulsions, insomnia and nausea.

The propensity of Prozac and other SSRIs to trigger mania or

psychosis is undoubtedly the biggest problem with these drugs. The

American Psychiatric Association warns that manic or hypomanic

episodes are estimated to occur in 8% to 20 % of patients treated

with anti-depressants.

Anti-depressant-induced mania is not simply a temporary and

reversible phenomenon, but a complex biochemical mechanism of

illness deterioration. Yale researchers reported that 8.1% of all

admissions to a psychiatric hospital they studied were due to

SSRI-induced mania or psychosis.

Thus the SSRI path to a disabling mental illness can be easily

seen. A depressed patient treated with an anti-depressant suffers

a manic or psychotic episode, at which time his or her diagnosis

is changed to bipolar disorder. At that point, the person is

prescribed an anti-psychotic to go along with the anti-depressant,

and, once on a drug cocktail, the person is well along on the road

to permanent disability.

CONCLUSION

There is an outside agent fueling this epidemic of mental illness,

only it is to be found in the medicine cabinet. Psychiatric drugs

perturb normal neurotransmitter function, and while that

perturbation may curb symptoms over a short term, over the long

run it increases the likelihood that a person will become

chronically ill, or ill with new or more severe symptoms. A review

of the scientific literature shows quite clearly that it is our

drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this modern-day

plague.

Whitaker’s ground-breaking book, Mad In America: Bad

Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the

Mentally Ill was published in 2002, That critically acclaimed book

should be, but is not, required reading for everybody in the

medical profession, including psychiatric patients and their loved

ones. (www.madinamerica.com)

Whitaker’s latest book (published in 2010) Anatomy of an Epidemic:

Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of

Mental Illness in America, further documents the epidemic of

“mental illness” disability (which, in many cases, are not mental

illnesses at all, but rather drug-induced neurological illnesses

that manifest psychological symptoms or drug-induced withdrawal

both of which can be mis-diagnosed as mental illnesses).

Each of these books have been essentially black-balled by the

pharmaceutical, medical and psychiatric industries, neither book

having even been reviewed in any mainstream medical journals.

Dr. Kohls warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any

psychiatric drug because of the common, often serious withdrawal

symptoms that can occur with the chronic use of any

dependency-inducing psychoactive drug, whether illicit or legal.

Close consultation with an informed physician who is familiar with

treating drug withdrawal and who is also willing to read and study

the above books and become familiar with the previously poorly

understood dangers of these drugs.