Medicine has risk factors involved. There are no perfect medications. Each persons physiology is somewhat unique so how a person reacts is equally unique. Which means every time you are putting something new in your body you are making a gamble and rolling the dice. It is the kind of gamble where you cannot know the outcome with any certainty.
It is not a case of good or bad either. More a question of what you place greater value on. Reduction in symptomology in the present, versus potential harm in the future? There is another thing to also consider, the issue of side effects that can offset any wellness gained.
Medications are so varied there is no one size fits all solution in the first place. Much of medicine is aspects of trial and error trying to formulate the best strategy. This can be a horrible experience for a patient as they may feel like some sort of guinea pig having experiments done on them. They wouldn't actually be too wrong. Should you devise a better method though I am sure you would go down in world history.
Medicine just does the best it can with what it has got access to and its current level of understanding. There are plenty of physical illnesses that are still a huge mystery but the symptomology can be reduced or mitigated.
Psychiatric medications fall in even more difficult territory. Because the brain is such a complicated organ with developments in technology only now shedding further light on it. Recently the largest brain study in the world was completed. Creating fascinating insights that the scientific field is busy pouring over. The science on the brain is behind in contrast to say, the liver. So of course treatments for things like psychosis are also going to be behind.
You have to be careful to not take your own bad medication experiences as reflective of a greater whole.
There are plenty of studies that demonstrate the efficacy of some psychiatric medications versus placebo along with improved quality of life outcomes. I am doubtful you will find those people here. There are though definitely issues with pharmaceuticals and behaviours in how they report their findings or mask unfavourable outcomes.
It does not help market-driven forces keep polluting things further with ghostwriters and shitting all over the science and what it actually says. It also does not help that front line psychiatry continues to peddle the chemical imbalance hypothesis as a hard truth. It really isn't. Or reduce people's life experiences down to a lack of something in the brain. Or don't even define what is 'Normal.' So I am not sure how you can arrive at any sort of control group.
But that also does not discredit psychiatric medications either because they operate no different to taking something for a migraine.
If you take something for a migraine you are not actually curing the migraine with what you take, just reducing the symptomatology of it so you can function. Long-term use of migraine medication increases your chances of heart attack or stroke. Again, comes down to what you put a value on. Reduction in symptoms in the present vs possible future stroke? That is for you to decide. Good or bad is irrelevant.
As for the studies you presented. They are very interesting reading.
Looking at the first one here are issues that their own studies acknowledge.
Our results must be interpreted in the context of additional limitations. Identifying an association does not necessarily indicate a causal relationship. Furthermore, observational studies involving long durations such as ours inevitably preclude use of the "gold standard"
Their conclusion also does not finalise with antipsychotics are bad. Quite the opposite.
Antipsychotics are effective medications for reducing some of the target clinical symptoms of schizophrenia: psychotic symptoms. In medicine, we are aware of many instances in which improving target symptoms worsens other symptoms.
What they do seem to show though is yes, there is likely a link between antipsychotics and brain shrinkage that is worth investigating. Good for them, maybe it will be useful in future medications and we can get away from brain shrinkage occurring. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not a sensible response.
The second study is also interesting. I actually dug out the full thing. Because the problem with abstracts is they don't give the full story. Good science will acknowledge issues with its own experiments.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/12...214.672705038.1545425902-680759847.1545425902
Although to me this study just feels like testing to see if water is wet. I have been on Olanzapine and it definitely slows down mental processing power. My value judgement is that I would rather accept that, than have maggots across multiple surfaces and have dead clients telling me how much I suck and failed them.
I am not responding to the third link, there is nothing substantive there.
The fourth link is stating the obvious. Corruption by its very nature impairs discussion on anything. There are plenty of issues with the psychiatric industry that is partly due to a larger problem. Profit before people. Want a better world, might be time to bother your representatives for a more ethical variety of capitalism. But since they benefit from the status quo I don't see that happening. Roll on self-cannibalism and unprecedented horror.
The fifth link in full.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fb80/a441c39007c84913905410d68397dea55ac2.pdf
Entirely agree with its conclusion. It is not saying medication is bad just that there should be more effort to curb over medicating and keeping people on things far too long. With tendency towards caution. Over drugging for convenience, or as a first response to problems is definitely an issue.
The sixth link is saying the same as the second link I have already stated my view there.
Yes, it should be banned. Because it is outdated and proven toxic. The reason it is still knocking about though is because it is old, meaning the patent likely lapsed and it became open season for anyone else to make it. Competition drives down the price of the drug and so makes it cheaper than its modern counterparts. Also, hospitals enter into contracts with drug suppliers that can tie them to that drug for years even when there are significantly better ones. That or it is lazy bureaucracy, probably all of the above. We are back to profit before people again…
As for the last few studies benzodiazepines have warnings about not driving heavy machinery so it is a given it impairs cognitive function. Most of these studies are pretty much highlighting the need for these dangers to be highlighted to the patient.
Lastly, there is a problem with all these studies because there is something else that also causes brain shrinkage. Adding a new variable.
Pollution!
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/09/news-air-quality-brain-cognitive-function/
Correlation can be a real pain when it comes to humans because to limit all variables you would have to do very unethical things.
So my final conclusion involves a goat.
Life is a risk, as is medicine. The problem isn't that medication has the potential to cause harm and therefore is bad. Most things have the potential to cause harm. The problem is that people are not informed well enough about that potential in the first place. The problem is that at some point the response to mental health issues has become thoroughly lazy. Leaving people to languish on things because if you are a zombie, your not technically in distress or making a nuisance of yourself; even if your life is slipping you by one year at a time. The problem is that a whole approach to mental health has been lost to a very narrow focus on the quick fix that medications seemingly offer, aggressively pushed by marketing efforts and other dodgy practices. With little regard for the toxic environment, the person may be living in or have come from. It is also a smoke screen to not look at the core toxic force in our lives involving our society and the conditions we have come to accept.
More disturbingly is physicians not ruling out physical issues before they offer a brain chemical altering prescription. That may well have the permanent side effect of long-term shakes. With the advice to come back in two weeks as if this gamble is a trivial one. It is worsened by the fact that quite a few mental health issues may well be undiagnosed physical issues. So not getting a screening further delays discovering that in the first place. Time can be crucial if a tumour is pressing on your brain…
If you do go down the route of talking to a physician of some sort and their first response to your depression is to write a prescription, you should say. "Shouldn't you rule out physical issues first?" Then look at them long and hard as if they are about to molest a goat that is wearing a top hat and monocle.
In that way, you are doing your small bit to improve the world. For the next person that comes through the door.
( Sorry couldn't be arsed to edit.)
