Unethical Psychiatrists Misrepresent What is Known About Schizophrenia

by Al Siebert, Ph.D.
Abstract: Prominent psychiatrists are stating that schizophrenia is a brain disease like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or multiple sclerosis. These statements are disconfirmed by scientific facts: no neurologist can independently confirm the presence or absence of schizophrenia with laboratory tests because the large majority of people diagnosed with schizophrenia show no neuropathological or biochemical abnormalities and a few people without any symptoms of schizophrenia have the same biophysiological abnormalities. People with schizophrenia do not usually progressively deteriorate: most improve over time. Psychotherapy and milieu therapy, without medications, have led even the most severely disturbed individuals with schizophrenia to full recovery and beyond. Many people diagnosed with schizophrenia have recovered on their own without any treatment, something never accomplished by a person with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or multiple sclerosis. Link


This junk science diagram speaks volumes about this kind of scholarship.
From http://stahlonline.cambridge.org/content/ep/images/85702c09_fig43.jpg

Read our entry about the mother of Prince Philip, who made a complete recovery from schizophrenia:
Link

The 29 verifiable, correctable causes of schizophrenia are listed
here.

NYT: Dr. Drug Rep

Dr. Daniel Carlat tells us how he and other physicians are wooed - and very well paid - to become "Doctor" drug reps.
He is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and the publisher of The Carlat Psychiatry Report.

As the reps became comfortable with me, they began to see me more as a sales colleague. I received faxes before talks preparing me for particular doctors. One note informed me that the physician we’d be visiting that day was a “decile 6 doctor and is not prescribing any Effexor XR, so please tailor accordingly. There is also one more doc in the practice that we are not familiar with.” The term “decile 6” is drug-rep jargon for a doctor who prescribes a lot of medications. The higher the “decile” (in a range from 1 to 10), the higher the prescription volume, and the more potentially lucrative that doctor could be for the company.

A note from another rep reminded me of a scene from “Mission: Impossible.” “Dr. Carlat: Our main target, Dr. , is an internist. He spreads his usage among three antidepressants, Celexa, Zoloft and Paxil, at about 25-30 percent each. He is currently using about 6 percent Effexor XR. Our access is very challenging with lunches six months out.” This doctor’s schedule of lunches was filled with reps from other companies; it would be vital to make our sales visit count.+

Naïve as I was, I found myself astonished at the level of detail that drug companies were able to acquire about doctors’ prescribing habits. I asked my reps about it; they told me that they received printouts tracking local doctors’ prescriptions every week. The process is called “prescription data-mining,” in which specialized pharmacy-information companies (like IMS Health and Verispan) buy prescription data from local pharmacies, repackage it, then sell it to pharmaceutical companies. This information is then passed on to the drug reps, who use it to tailor their drug-detailing strategies. This may include deciding which physicians to aim for, as my Wyeth reps did, but it can help sales in other ways. For example, Shahram Ahari, a former drug rep for Eli Lilly (the maker of Prozac) who is now a researcher at the University of California at San Francisco’s School of Pharmacy, said in an article in The Washington Post that as a drug rep he would use this data to find out which doctors were prescribing Prozac’s competitors, like Effexor. Then he would play up specific features of Prozac that contrasted favorably with the other drug, like the ease with which patients can get off Prozac, as compared with the hard time they can have withdrawing from Effexor.

The American Medical Association is also a key player in prescription data-mining. Pharmacies typically will not release doctors’ names to the data-mining companies, but they will release their Drug Enforcement Agency numbers. The A.M.A. licenses its file of U.S. physicians, allowing the data-mining companies to match up D.E.A. numbers to specific physicians. The A.M.A. makes millions in information-leasing money.

Once drug companies have identified the doctors, they must woo them. In the April 2007 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine, Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman of Georgetown teamed up with Ahari (the former drug rep) to describe the myriad techniques drug reps use to establish relationships with physicians, including inviting them to a speaker’s meeting. These can serve to cement a positive a relationship between the rep and the doctor. This relationship is crucial, they say, since “drug reps increase drug sales by influencing physicians, and they do so with finely titrated doses of friendship.”

Link

Former drug rep Gwen Olsen talks about manipulating doctors.

GOOD Magazine: America's Problem Drugs

There is a drug use great graphic at this site. However it does not reflect that legal medications - pharmaceuticals - account for America's biggest addiction and fatality problems. The biggest "drug dealers" are listed on the Stock Exchange.

NYT: Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System

Image of Pinocchio turning into a Donkey Boy after falling under bad influences. He is imprisoned and made into a slave. - Image adapted from Walt Disney.

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.

Link

Study after study after study after study has proved that nutrition is the key to mental health. Good nutrition helps the brain form and function correctly and can assist young persons in avoiding impulsive decisions that lead to unhappy outcomes. Why don't we act on that information and help these people?
Food and vitamins are inexpensive; drugs and incarceration are not.


Image: Modern "Panopticon"- style prison

Prisons are big business.

“Incarceration, Inc.,” by Sasha Abramsky, The Nation, July 19, 2004, 16 p.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/19156
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040719/abramsky
Prisons thrive on cheap labor and the hunger of job-starved towns.

“The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?” by Vicky Pelaez, El Diario-La Prensa, New York, October 13, 2005, 7 p.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289
http://prisonmovement.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/us-prison-industry-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/
http://cannabisnews.com/news/21/thread21654.shtml
The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up.

What don't we know about the pharmaceutical industry?

A NYT Freakonomics quorum.
Link

From the page:

Dr. Harlan Krumholz, professor of medicine, epidemiology, and public health at Yale:

"Science and the public good in a capitalist society depend on the free flow of unbiased information, but it doesn’t always work that way. Events are revealing that many pharmaceutical companies, along with their consulting academic physicians, have engaged in practices that obscure or misrepresent information about their products. Does the public realize the depth of these practices, and their implications for patient care?

Most physicians continue their education and keep up to date with new science by attending lectures given by experts, with the assumption that the information they hear is unbiased. But pharmaceutical companies regularly pay high-profile scientists and physicians, either directly or indirectly, to speak on topics relevant to their products. At a scientific meeting in Europe, I watched an American colleague — a famous cardiologist who was being well compensated for his participation — practice his upcoming speech in front of drug company marketers. After his practice talk, they replaced some slides with ones that presented their drug in a more favorable light. The speaker initially resisted the change, but finally acceded, and his talk the next day was a strong endorsement of his sponsor’s drug."

Did caffeine in cola lead to schizophrenia and murder?

GEORGIA MENTAL HEALTH
Unstable mental patients freed by flawed system
By Alan Judd
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Chris Pak pleaded with doctors and nurses at the state psychiatric hospital. His sister, Na Yong Pak, was still psychotic, he said. If they let her go home, he was afraid she would kill herself or someone else – their mother, most likely, the frequent target of her schizophrenia-fueled rage.

Two weeks earlier, Georgia officials had pledged to use caution in discharging patients from its psychiatric facilities. Federal investigators had sharply criticized the state for releasing patients to homeless shelters and bus stops, street corners and abandoned buildings, with little hope for continuing treatment or, in some cases, survival.

Now, on a Friday evening in January at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta, Na Yong angrily refused to sign her discharge papers. She cursed the nurse and swore she would not take her antipsychotic medication.

The doctor and nurse sent Na Yong home, anyway.

“That,” her brother would say later, “is when I knew hell was going to break loose again.”

Twelve days later, after she left Georgia Regional, authorities say, Na Yong doused her mother with gasoline, struck a match, and watched her burn. Myong Hui Pak, 58, died 10 hours later.

Na Yong, 32, is in the Gwinnett County Jail, charged with murder. Her case illustrates the deficiencies that plague Georgia’s mental health system and challenges the state faces in making corrections mandated after a federal civil-rights investigation of hospital conditions.
-snip-
"Her depression gradually turned darker. She yelled at people no one else could see. She would drink only Coca-Cola, but often threw nearly full cans on the floor and against the walls. She accused her mother of poisoning her food."
Link

Since 1953, we have known that adrenochrome malfunction - sometimes related to caffeine - can trigger schizophrenia. See research by Abram Hoffer here and here, as well as an in-depth investigation of caffeine and mental health in our previous post here.
Many young people have a break with reality under the stresses of establishing themselves as adults - while consuming empty calories or toxic foods. But with proper nutrition, vulnerable people's stories do not have to end in tragedy. Link

We would like to see an investigation into caffeine/cola as factors in this murder, though we wonder if the city that is the center of cola manufacturing would permit it.

LA Times on Stopping Antidepressants

Hopelessly simplified; totally inadequate. People are going to get hurt. FAIL.
For links to the facts about antidepressant dangers please go here to Dr. Heather Ashton's site and check out other withdrawal resources listed in our FRIENDS links - David Healey's is of special note: Halting SSRI's PDF