The Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

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Wed Apr-28-10 10:53 AM
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The Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

http://counterpunch.com/levine04282010.html

A Conversation with Robert Whitaker

In 1987, prior to Prozac hitting the market and the current ubiquitous use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, the U.S. mental illness disability rate was 1 in every 184 Americans, but by 2007 the mental illness disability rate had more than doubled to 1 in every 76 Americans. Robert Whitaker was curious as to what was causing this dramatic increase in mental illness disability. The answers are in his new book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (Crown Publishers, April 2010).

Whitaker�s findings will create a problem for both Big Pharma and establishment psychiatry, but his credentials and his craftsmanship will make it difficult to marginalize him.

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Whitaker: The rise in the disability rate due to mental illness is simply the starting point for the book. The disability numbers don�t prove anything, but, given that this astonishing increase has occurred in lockstep with our society�s increased use of psychiatric medications, the numbers do raise an obvious question. Could our drug-based paradigm of care, for some unforeseen reason, be fueling the increase in disability rates? And in order to investigate that question, you need to look at two things. First, do psychiatric medications alter the long-term course of mental disorders for the better, or for the worse? Do they increase the likelihood that a person will be able to function well over the long-term, or do they increase the likelihood that a person will end up on disability? Second, is it possible that a person with a mild disorder may have a bad reaction to an initial drug, and that puts the person onto a path that can lead to long-term disability. For instance, a person with a mild bout of depression may have a manic reaction to an antidepressant, and then is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on a cocktail of medications. Does that happen with any frequency? Could that be an iatrogenic pathway that is helping to fuel the increase in the disability rates?

So that�s the starting point for the book. What I then did was look at what the scientific literature -- a literature that now extends over 50 years -- has to say about those questions. And the literature is remarkably consistent in the story it tells. Although psychiatric medications may be effective over the short term, they increase the likelihood that a person will become chronically ill over the long term. I was startled to see this picture emerge over and over again as I traced the long-term outcomes literature for schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and bipolar illness. In addition, the scientific literature shows that many patients treated for a milder problem will worsen in response to a drug-- say have a manic episode after taking an antidepressant -- and that can lead to a new and more severe diagnosis like bipolar disorder. That is a well-documented iatrogenic pathway that is helping to fuel the increase in the disability numbers.

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Whitaker: A journalist friend of mine, who was a long-time reporter at the Washington Post and Newsday, said that he too was reminded of Silent Spring when he read Anatomy of an Epidemic. And, in fact, I was stunned by much of what I found when I was researching the book, and I did at times become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the tragedy. Let me give a specific example. When you research the rise of juvenile bipolar illness in this country, you see that it appears in lockstep with the prescribing of stimulants for ADHD and antidepressants for depression. Prior to the use of those medications, you find that researchers reported that manic-depressive illness, which is what bipolar illness was called at the time, virtually never occurred in prepubertal children. But once psychiatrists started putting �hyperactive� children on Ritalin, they started to see prepubertal children with manic symptoms. Same thing happened when psychiatrists started prescribing antidepressants to children and teenagers. A significant percentage had manic or hypomanic reactions to the antidepressants. Thus, we see these two iatrogenic pathways to a juvenile bipolar diagnosis documented in the medical literature. And then what happens to the children and teenagers who end up with this diagnosis? They are now put on heavier-duty drugs and often on a drug cocktail, and you find that they do poorly on that treatment. You find that a high percentage end up �rapid cyclers,� which means they have severe �bipolar� symptoms, and that they can now be expected to be chronically ill throughout their lives. We also know that the atypical antipsychotics prescribed to bipolar children cause a host of physical problems, and there is pretty good evidence that they cause cognitive decline over the long term. When you add up all this information, you end up documenting a story of how the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in the United States have been destroyed in this way. In fact, I think that the number of children and teenagers that have ended up �bipolar� after being treated with a stimulant or an antidepressant is now well over one million. This is a story of harm done on an unimaginable scale.

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Whitaker: Big Pharma and their partners in establishment psychiatry have smartly used Scientology to defuse criticism of their medications. I honestly believe that if Scientology weren't around, then our society could have a much more rational discussion about our drug-based paradigm of care. As for the position taken by MindFreedom and other psychiatric survivors, I basically do think that is the right one to take, with two caveats. In order to make a �truly informed choice,� a person needs to know the long-term effects of a treatment. It�s not enough for people to be fully informed about the immediate �side effects� of a drug. People need to be presented with information about whether such treatment has been shown to better the long-term course of the disorder, or worsen it. They need to be told about long-term physical and cognitive problems that often arise with every day use of psychiatric drugs. So providing people with a �truly informed choice� is a tall order.

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in a nut shell, big pharma barons make you crazy and broke

and today's teachers/schools have to deal with the outcome

and today's cops/jails have to deal with the outcome

and families/mothers have to deal with the outcome

not good. none of it is good.

actually it's a crime.