Scroll down to see the Dr. David Healy's video: Not Just an Anecdote Just an FYI. This is a constructive way to get the information so many of us have learned the hard way out to others and prevent the grave harm that has happened to us from happening to others. Go report your adverse events upon coming off psychiatric or other pharmaceuticals. Information is below.
Reporter Jeanne Lenzer investigates overtreatment at the heart of healthcare. Overly aggressive treatment is estimated to cause 30 000 deaths among Medicare recipients alone each year.
My mom is an addict. Or was an addict I should say. She wasn’t addicted to any street drugs, not heroin, not cocaine or meth. She took the drugs, not because she wanted an escape, but because she was prescribed them without knowing their addictive properties. She became addicted to the medicine that the doctors continued to give her when her depression and anxiety didn’t go away. I have never seen so many pills. Prozac, Cymbalta. Xanax, Klonopin, Zoloft. Take three a day, take one in the morning and one at night to help her sleep, remember to take twice daily with food.
While taking these she wasn’t herself. … [click on title to read the rest]
We can change how our brain functions. We can change the very structure of the brain. There are enormous implications here for anyone who has ever been labeled with a DSM psychiatric diagnosis. We can change and heal our minds and brains and we need not do it in detrimental fashion with neurotoxic medications.
Self-compassion and awareness are the qualities we need to start to heal our mind and body. Bringing mindfulness to a problem is the beginning of change. Paying attention to a process is changing the process! Even before any behavior changes. … [click on title to read the rest]
I've lost 65 lbs now. Cutting out neuro-toxic drugs will do that. I've not done anything to lose weight intentionally...my focus has been on healing. So that means I eat whole real food but I do not count calories or control portions...I have simply learned to feed my body what it needs when it needs it. There has been no deprivation dieting involved whatsoever. It's been a process. The pounds just come off as part of the healing process. It's taken years but different aspects of healing become apparent even while in others ways I'm still sick. It's been a fascinating process really...I continue to learn so much about my body/mind/spirit. … [click on title to read the rest]
I was told by the medical student I was interacting with the other day that my work undermined the authority of mental health professionals. So...basically, his stance was that if you empower the "patient" you, by definition, undermine the professional. Very sad.
Still, I'm pleased to say that a good 50% of my subscribed readers are professionals and I'm aware of many who are also young and still studying. There are some good ones out there that want big change too. … [click on title to read the rest]
This op-ed in the New York Times from a few days ago is perfect for today. Friday. Yes, foodie friday.
It’s the Sugar, Folks
Sugar is indeed toxic. It may not be the only problem with the Standard American Diet, but it’s fast becoming clear that it’s the major one.
A study published in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal PLoS One links increased consumption of sugar with increased rates of diabetes by examining the data on sugar availability and the rate of diabetes in 175 countries over the past decade. And after accounting for many other factors, the researchers found that increased sugar in a population’s food supply was linked to higher diabetes rates independent of rates of obesity. (and lots more info on topic) … [click on title to read the rest]
Patients with more severe depression gain as much clinical benefit from low-intensity interventions, such as self-help books and websites, as those with less severe depression, researchers found.
In a meta-analysis, patients who were more severely depressed at baseline had larger treatment effects with low-intensity interventions than those who were less depressed (coefficient -0.1, 95% CI -0.19 to -0.002), reported Peter Bower, PhD, of the University of Manchester in England, and colleagues online in BMJ. (read more)
YES, THANK YOU...don't believe the hype about how essential drugs are in severe cases. … [click on title to read the rest]
I have only lived four decades, but I hope never again in life, even at its end, to experience suffering like I felt while taking and withdrawing from the drugs. At essence, looking back six years after swallowing my last psychotropic medicine and feeling saner, healthier, and happier than ever, all I can see is a vast black storm behind me: the physical illness, emotional lability, and compromised cognition caused by the pills; the hopelessness of being told that this chemical abomination was some underlying “organic” and “lifelong” “disease”; and the even bleaker hopelessness of having my autonomy stripped away in the hospitals, of forced drugging on a host of ever-more dangerous and unnecessary pills.
Often I wonder, just what the hell was I thinking, entrusting my brain — the very seat of my soul — to other people?
"No, the message of the film is not anti-medical model. But the film does call for recognition of the pain the medical model has caused. That pain has been caused not so much by its existence but because of the force and dishonesty with which it has been applied. Were there more transparency about the medical model being just one of many options, about the lack of definitive scientific proof for its claims, about the true benefits and risks of psychiatric drugs… Well, then, it would just be another tool in the tool box that we could try or not try, use or discard."
iatrogenic /iat·ro·gen·ic/ (i-ă´tro-jen´ik) resulting from the activity of physicians; said of any adverse condition in a patient resulting from treatment by a physician or surgeon. (see more definitions here -- medical dictionary: iatrogenic harm)
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When a doctor harms you there are the additional insults of not only having trusted but also having paid someone for the service of hurting you...this is how one is also re-traumatized, adding even more layers to the injury.
