nitrogen
Schrödinger's cat
- Nov 5, 2019
- 339
Greetings, mothafakas (coming from me means sweetie). Education time.
All this knowledge is useless to me now. Might as well dump it here, hopefully to help some folks make informed decisions when it comes to managing their mental health.
WHAT EXACTLY CAUSES DEPRESSION? NOBODY KNOWS.
Let's clear up a concept first. "Association" is not equal to "causation." Association is a promising step to proving causation, but there's a gap that requires more evidence and a deeper understanding of pathology to fill.
You'd find authors of scientific articles published in medical journals are very careful with suggesting causation. Even when scientists make major discoveries, they more often use the phrases "linked to" or "associated with" rather than "caused by."
You can say AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, anthrax is caused by Bacillus Anthracis bacteria, elephantiasis caused by filarial worms, etc, but you cannot say depression is caused by brain chemistry imbalance or some specific genetic defect - only associations. By the way, life stressors are risk factors and triggers but not direct causes; and feeling down or sad doesn't automatically point to clinical depression.
Cancer can be diagnosed by directly seeing the morphological characteristics of malignant cells. Diabetes can be diagnosed by measuring blood sugar levels.
How's depression diagnosed? Questionnaires alone. There are no lab tests to detect brain chemistry imbalance - there's no measurable physical abnormality to correct.
FDA APPROVED MEANS SAFE? BULLSHIT.
A historical anecdote first:
A true American hero - Frances Oldham Kelsey. There was a generation of children born with "seal limbs" in Canada, Great Britain, and West Germany as a direct result of their mothers taking thalidomide as a mild sleeping pill during pregnancy. The US narrowly escaped a similar tragedy because of this woman. As a medical reviewer at the FDA, Kelsey was one of three people charged with determining a drug's safety before it could be made available for mass marketing and public consumption. She blocked the release of thalidomide in the US, under tremendous pressure from pharmaceutical companies and stupid gullible bitches from the general public.
Before this thalidomide incident, the FDA medical reviewers only had 60 days to approve or reject a drug. If a decision hadn't been made by the end of the 60-day window, the drug would automatically go on the market.
After this thalidomide incident, Congress passed a bunch of new laws and the FDA has been more stringent on drug review, but the process is still rife with loopholes. Four phases of clinical trials are carried out to prove a drug's safety and effectiveness. Phases I, II, & III have to be completed for FDA approval. There are many ways to tweak and manipulate the design of these clinical trials and data. Just one out of the many ways I know: cover up side effects with additional drugs that are not part of the study.
Furthermore, extended studies are rarely done before a drug gains FDA approval (often only a few weeks), so medications can be around for a long time before anybody starts to get a clear picture of what can happen after years of continuous use. This leads to the question, when does Phase IV, post marketing surveillance, get completed? Well, that's done AFTER a drug is approved and released into the market. The general public becomes the unsuspecting guinea pigs of new drugs.
Besides the above-mentioned points, the FDA has conflict of interest:
The FDA allows scientists and docs with financial ties to drug companies to sit on the FDA drug evaluation panels which have the authority to approve or reject drugs. For example, every single psychiatrist on the FDA drug evaluation panel that approved Paxil (an SSRI antidepressant) either directly or indirectly received funding from pharmaceutical companies. Their identities are public record.
PDUFA act: A law passed by Congress to allow the FDA to collect hefty fees from drug manufacturers to speed up new drug approval process. PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) has been a strong supporter of this bill.
INVENTED MENTAL DISEASES
In the DSM (THE manual/bible that psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), many mental illnesses are obviously illnesses - you notice something is off right away when you see a person inflicted by one of those illnesses. On the other hand, there are also so-called mental illnesses that suspiciously look like invented diseases that label individual variations among humans and the inevitable ups and downs in life as diseases. To name a few, social anxiety disorder (shyness); separation anxiety (homesickness); narcissistic personality disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. The DSM has gone under several revisions over the years. The DSM-V contains tripled number of mental illnesses than the DSM-I.
How does a "mental disorder" end up in the DSM? A panel of psychiatrists take votes to decide what to include in the DSM - most have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
One example of drug mongering. After the Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, who had financial ties to over 20 drug companies, published articles all over the world about bipolar disorder in children and gave talks, there was a 4000% increase in the diagnosis of bipolar in children and spike in drugs being prescribed to children. Drug companies made huge profits. More than a decade later, he was exposed by a Congressional investigation for failing to report $1.6 million in drug money income.
A report from the CDC says almost half of the adults in the US will develop a mental illness in their lifetime. And a whole bunch of media and organizations cry out, " 20% of US adults currently have a mental health condition, and more than half of them do not receive treatment. Among youth, the rates of depression are rising, but 80 percent of children and adolescents get either insufficient treatment or none at all. More people need to get medicated!" This begs the question: are mental illnesses searching for drugs, or are drugs searching for "mental illnesses"? Who funded the reports and surveys?
PSYCHIATRISTS KNOW THEIR SHIT? HMM...
The bottom feeders in med school classes most often end up in...you guessed it...psychiatry and primary care. Most of those who can't get into U.S. med schools and instead attend Carribean med schools then practice in the US end up in…you guessed it...psychiatry and primary care.
To people outside the healthcare system, an MD is an MD; to other MDs, especially those in competitive specialties, psychiatrists are the "retarded little brothers" of MDs.
With all that unflattering stuff being said about psychiatrists, it's a stereotypical generalization.
On a separate but related subject, the more we know about the mechanism of action of a drug, the more predictable the clinical efficacy (aka, therapeutic effectiveness), toxicity, side effects, etc. Antibiotics are a good example of this.
The mechanisms of action of antidepressants, and many other psychotropic drugs, on the other hand, aren't well known. Science doesn't have that comprehensive and accurate understanding of the roles of all the neurotransmitters, how they interact, how affecting the concentration of one type of neurotransmitter disrupts delicate brain processes, how irritating nervous tissues generate conscious experiences.
For instance, the early generation antidepressants, TCAs and MAOIs, fell out of use because they activate too many unwanted sites/receptors in the brain. The new generations, SSRIs and a bunch of multi-receptor antidepressants are more selective, but their effects on patients are still varied and unpredictable. They can reduce anxiety in some patients, but can increase anxiety, induce psychosis and suicidal thoughts in others. The side effects range from mild to life-threatening. It's always been a trial and error approach - if this drug doesn't work, add another one or switch to another one.
SHRINKS' POOR TRACK RECORD OF TREATING MENTAL ILLNESSES:
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, promoted cocaine for all kinds of problems, including "masturbation to excess" which he believed was a mental illness and the root of all addictions.
Between the 1930s and 1950s, methamphetamine, under the brand name Norodin, was a top-line antidepressant. A drug that is so dangerous, addictive, with a long list of life-threatening side effects, was popular for as long as 20 years before a considerable number of people realized something about it definitely wasn't right.
Heroin was invented by a German pharmaceutical company and hit the market in 1898. It was promoted as a cutting-edge cough medicine, cure for morphine addiction, used as a mild sleep medicine for children. Doctors were quick to embrace and praise its benefits. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal even claimed there's no danger of acquiring a habit of using it. The company didn't stop manufacturing it until 1913, and it didn't get banned in the US until 1924 (on market for 26 yrs).
The notorious lobotomy - basically stabbing the brain with an icepick through the eye socket. John F. Kennedy's sister, Rosemary Kennedy, got a prefrontal lobotomy to reduce her mood swings, seizures, and erratic behaviors - it left her incapacitated for life. As one of the most prominent families in US history, they still fell for this gold standard procedure at that time. The doc who invented the procedure received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1949.
There are a bunch of other examples which I'm not gonna list here.
Conclusion: While it's not a good idea to trust everything your psychiatrist tells you or diligently take all the pills being thrown at you with no questions asked, don't automatically jump to conclusions and block them out, either, as they do work wonders on some people.
All this knowledge is useless to me now. Might as well dump it here, hopefully to help some folks make informed decisions when it comes to managing their mental health.
WHAT EXACTLY CAUSES DEPRESSION? NOBODY KNOWS.
Let's clear up a concept first. "Association" is not equal to "causation." Association is a promising step to proving causation, but there's a gap that requires more evidence and a deeper understanding of pathology to fill.
You'd find authors of scientific articles published in medical journals are very careful with suggesting causation. Even when scientists make major discoveries, they more often use the phrases "linked to" or "associated with" rather than "caused by."
You can say AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, anthrax is caused by Bacillus Anthracis bacteria, elephantiasis caused by filarial worms, etc, but you cannot say depression is caused by brain chemistry imbalance or some specific genetic defect - only associations. By the way, life stressors are risk factors and triggers but not direct causes; and feeling down or sad doesn't automatically point to clinical depression.
Cancer can be diagnosed by directly seeing the morphological characteristics of malignant cells. Diabetes can be diagnosed by measuring blood sugar levels.
How's depression diagnosed? Questionnaires alone. There are no lab tests to detect brain chemistry imbalance - there's no measurable physical abnormality to correct.
FDA APPROVED MEANS SAFE? BULLSHIT.
A historical anecdote first:
A true American hero - Frances Oldham Kelsey. There was a generation of children born with "seal limbs" in Canada, Great Britain, and West Germany as a direct result of their mothers taking thalidomide as a mild sleeping pill during pregnancy. The US narrowly escaped a similar tragedy because of this woman. As a medical reviewer at the FDA, Kelsey was one of three people charged with determining a drug's safety before it could be made available for mass marketing and public consumption. She blocked the release of thalidomide in the US, under tremendous pressure from pharmaceutical companies and stupid gullible bitches from the general public.
Before this thalidomide incident, the FDA medical reviewers only had 60 days to approve or reject a drug. If a decision hadn't been made by the end of the 60-day window, the drug would automatically go on the market.
After this thalidomide incident, Congress passed a bunch of new laws and the FDA has been more stringent on drug review, but the process is still rife with loopholes. Four phases of clinical trials are carried out to prove a drug's safety and effectiveness. Phases I, II, & III have to be completed for FDA approval. There are many ways to tweak and manipulate the design of these clinical trials and data. Just one out of the many ways I know: cover up side effects with additional drugs that are not part of the study.
Furthermore, extended studies are rarely done before a drug gains FDA approval (often only a few weeks), so medications can be around for a long time before anybody starts to get a clear picture of what can happen after years of continuous use. This leads to the question, when does Phase IV, post marketing surveillance, get completed? Well, that's done AFTER a drug is approved and released into the market. The general public becomes the unsuspecting guinea pigs of new drugs.
Besides the above-mentioned points, the FDA has conflict of interest:
The FDA allows scientists and docs with financial ties to drug companies to sit on the FDA drug evaluation panels which have the authority to approve or reject drugs. For example, every single psychiatrist on the FDA drug evaluation panel that approved Paxil (an SSRI antidepressant) either directly or indirectly received funding from pharmaceutical companies. Their identities are public record.
PDUFA act: A law passed by Congress to allow the FDA to collect hefty fees from drug manufacturers to speed up new drug approval process. PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) has been a strong supporter of this bill.
INVENTED MENTAL DISEASES
In the DSM (THE manual/bible that psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), many mental illnesses are obviously illnesses - you notice something is off right away when you see a person inflicted by one of those illnesses. On the other hand, there are also so-called mental illnesses that suspiciously look like invented diseases that label individual variations among humans and the inevitable ups and downs in life as diseases. To name a few, social anxiety disorder (shyness); separation anxiety (homesickness); narcissistic personality disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. The DSM has gone under several revisions over the years. The DSM-V contains tripled number of mental illnesses than the DSM-I.
How does a "mental disorder" end up in the DSM? A panel of psychiatrists take votes to decide what to include in the DSM - most have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
One example of drug mongering. After the Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, who had financial ties to over 20 drug companies, published articles all over the world about bipolar disorder in children and gave talks, there was a 4000% increase in the diagnosis of bipolar in children and spike in drugs being prescribed to children. Drug companies made huge profits. More than a decade later, he was exposed by a Congressional investigation for failing to report $1.6 million in drug money income.
A report from the CDC says almost half of the adults in the US will develop a mental illness in their lifetime. And a whole bunch of media and organizations cry out, " 20% of US adults currently have a mental health condition, and more than half of them do not receive treatment. Among youth, the rates of depression are rising, but 80 percent of children and adolescents get either insufficient treatment or none at all. More people need to get medicated!" This begs the question: are mental illnesses searching for drugs, or are drugs searching for "mental illnesses"? Who funded the reports and surveys?
PSYCHIATRISTS KNOW THEIR SHIT? HMM...
The bottom feeders in med school classes most often end up in...you guessed it...psychiatry and primary care. Most of those who can't get into U.S. med schools and instead attend Carribean med schools then practice in the US end up in…you guessed it...psychiatry and primary care.
To people outside the healthcare system, an MD is an MD; to other MDs, especially those in competitive specialties, psychiatrists are the "retarded little brothers" of MDs.
With all that unflattering stuff being said about psychiatrists, it's a stereotypical generalization.
On a separate but related subject, the more we know about the mechanism of action of a drug, the more predictable the clinical efficacy (aka, therapeutic effectiveness), toxicity, side effects, etc. Antibiotics are a good example of this.
The mechanisms of action of antidepressants, and many other psychotropic drugs, on the other hand, aren't well known. Science doesn't have that comprehensive and accurate understanding of the roles of all the neurotransmitters, how they interact, how affecting the concentration of one type of neurotransmitter disrupts delicate brain processes, how irritating nervous tissues generate conscious experiences.
For instance, the early generation antidepressants, TCAs and MAOIs, fell out of use because they activate too many unwanted sites/receptors in the brain. The new generations, SSRIs and a bunch of multi-receptor antidepressants are more selective, but their effects on patients are still varied and unpredictable. They can reduce anxiety in some patients, but can increase anxiety, induce psychosis and suicidal thoughts in others. The side effects range from mild to life-threatening. It's always been a trial and error approach - if this drug doesn't work, add another one or switch to another one.
SHRINKS' POOR TRACK RECORD OF TREATING MENTAL ILLNESSES:
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, promoted cocaine for all kinds of problems, including "masturbation to excess" which he believed was a mental illness and the root of all addictions.
Between the 1930s and 1950s, methamphetamine, under the brand name Norodin, was a top-line antidepressant. A drug that is so dangerous, addictive, with a long list of life-threatening side effects, was popular for as long as 20 years before a considerable number of people realized something about it definitely wasn't right.
Heroin was invented by a German pharmaceutical company and hit the market in 1898. It was promoted as a cutting-edge cough medicine, cure for morphine addiction, used as a mild sleep medicine for children. Doctors were quick to embrace and praise its benefits. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal even claimed there's no danger of acquiring a habit of using it. The company didn't stop manufacturing it until 1913, and it didn't get banned in the US until 1924 (on market for 26 yrs).
The notorious lobotomy - basically stabbing the brain with an icepick through the eye socket. John F. Kennedy's sister, Rosemary Kennedy, got a prefrontal lobotomy to reduce her mood swings, seizures, and erratic behaviors - it left her incapacitated for life. As one of the most prominent families in US history, they still fell for this gold standard procedure at that time. The doc who invented the procedure received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1949.
There are a bunch of other examples which I'm not gonna list here.
Conclusion: While it's not a good idea to trust everything your psychiatrist tells you or diligently take all the pills being thrown at you with no questions asked, don't automatically jump to conclusions and block them out, either, as they do work wonders on some people.