> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Psychology Today: Bob Whitaker on Psychiatric Drug Silencing
> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 14:41:27 -0700
> From: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> [to get off this MFI free public alert list on human rights in mental
> health see bottom]
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Psychology Today Blog:
>
> Journalist Robert Whitaker asks BELOW:
>
> "Will we ever be able to have an honest discussion about psychiatric
> medications?"
>
> Author describes his experience as controversial keynoter of
> Alternatives 2010 mental health conference.
>
> Kick-start the discussion: Forward this news item!
>
> The US federal agency Substance Abuse and Mental Health Systems
> Administration [SAMHSA] has funded an annual gathering of mental
> health consumers and psychiatric survivors since 1985.
>
> This year's "Alternatives 2010" in Anaheim, California, which gathered
> together more than 1,000 Americans diagnosed with psychiatric
> disabilities, ended just a few days ago, and was one of the most
> controversial.
>
> SAMHSA was nervous that keynoter Robert Whitaker -- author of the new
> book Anatomy of an Epidemic -- would question mental health industry
> claims about psychiatric drugs. He did.
>
> BELOW, Whitaker blogs yesterday, 6 October 2010, in Psychology Today
> about his experience of breaking the silence about this taboo:
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Join discussion in Psychology Today at bottom of below original
> article here:
> http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/48811
> You can break the silence, too -- Please forward this to colleagues.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> SAMHSA, the Alternatives Conference, and the Story of an Opportunity
> Lost
>
> By Robert Whitaker
>
> Oct 6 2010
>
> In the last chapter of my book Anatomy of an Epidemic, I noted that if
> our society is going to stem the epidemic of disabling mental illness
> that has erupted during the past twenty years, then it needs to have
> an honest discussion about what is truly known about the biological
> causes of psychiatric disorders, and an honest discussion about how
> the medications affect the long-term course of those disorders. The
> illuminating powers of science could work their usual magic. But that
> is a discussion that many in our society don't want to have, and my
> recent experience at the Alternatives conference in Anaheim
> illustrates that point, and reveals too why this is such a loss.
>
> The Background to the "Controversy"
>
> In Anatomy of an Epidemic, I basically followed a tried-and-true
> journalistic path. I followed the evidence. I looked at how the
> chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders arose, how it was
> investigated, and how it never panned out. As Kenneth Kendler,
> coeditor in chief of Psychological Medicine wrote in 2005, "We have
> hunted for big simple neurochemical explanations for psychiatric
> disorders and have not found them." Then I investigated how
> psychiatric medications affect the long-term course of four major
> mental disorders (schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and bipolar
> illness), and that involves doing an exhaustive survey of studies
> conducted (or funded) by the National Institute of Mental Health, the
> World Health Organization, and foreign governments for the past 50
> years.
>
> Now, when you do that, you discover a story of science quite at odds
> with our societal belief that psychiatric medications fix chemical
> imbalances in the brain and that they have dramatically improved long-
> term outcomes. And when you write up this history of science, as I did
> in Anatomy of an Epidemic, you do become unpopular in certain circles.
>
> In July, the National Empowerment Center, which is a peer-run advocacy
> organization, invited me to be a keynote speaker at the Alternatives
> Conference. The National Empowerment Center is funded by the Substance
> Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and SAMHSA,
> I was told, had signed off on having me speak. However, once the
> National Empowerment Center announced that I would be speaking at the
> conference, SAMHSA quickly rescinded the invitation. In response,
> MindFreedom, which is an activist group, organized a protest via the
> Internet, asking people to contact both SAMSHA and the White House,
> and within 36 hours, I had been publicly re-invited to speak.
>
> What people following this "controversy" didn't know was that my re-
> invitation came with considerable strings attached. I had originally
> been scheduled to give a workshop in addition to a keynote, but the
> workshop was still cancelled. (I had planned to speak about a Finnish
> program for treating psychotic patients that was producing excellent
> results, and the prescribing of exercise as a treatment for
> depression, which is now being done in Britain.) The other condition
> was this: The National Empowerment Center was required to recruit a
> psychiatrist, from a list of names provided by SAMHSA, to "rebut" my
> keynote. And I would not be given an opportunity to respond to that
> rebuttal.
>
> Now, if SAMSHA had wanted to organize a debate following my talk, that
> would have been terrific. But this was a setup that SAMHSA seemed to
> have torn from the pages of a 25-year old Soviet Union handbook:
> invite dissident speaker and then denounce him! Normally, I wouldn't
> have accepted such an arrangement, but I had been quite moved and
> humbled by the protest that had led to my "reinvitation," and so I
> figured, what the heck. It wasn't every day that you got to sit in a
> ballroom with more than 1,000 people and hear your work denounced.
>
> As the conference approached, a new controversy reared its head. Will
> Hall, who many years ago was given a diagnosis of "schizoaffective
> disorder/schizophrenia," and who today works as a therapist (having
> been off psychiatric medications for 17 years), had planned to give a
> workshop that included discussing a "harm-reduction" approach to
> withdrawing from psychiatric medications. Several years ago, Hall had
> written a book on the subject, which had been published by two
> advocacy groups, The Freedom Center and the Icarus Project, and given
> that there are few books written by professionals on the circuit, his
> had proven to be quite popular. But a few days before the conference
> began, Hall was told that the printed description of his workshop in
> the conference brochure had been changed to remove any mention about
> "coming off drugs." Hall announced that he couldn't accept such
> censorship, a new protest erupted, and then he was told that the
> offending words could in fact be mentioned in an updated description
> that would be added to the conference brochure.
>
> And all this occurred before an alternatives conference.
>
> Friday, October 1
>
> On Friday morning, I was given about 45 minutes to speak, and after I
> gave a brief overview of Anatomy of an Epidemic, I spoke at greater
> length about this question: Is it true that people diagnosed with
> schizophrenia (or other psychotic disorders) need to be on
> antipsychotic medication all their lives? There is a fairly long line
> of studies dating back to the 1960s that bear on this question, and
> the conclusion to be drawn is this: If psychiatry wants to maximize
> long-term outcomes, it needs to use antipsychotic medications in a
> selective, limited manner. Time and time again, the studies showed
> that there is a large subgroup of patients that would fare better if
> they were never put on the drugs in the first place, or if they were
> maintained on the drugs for only a short while.
>
> The beauty of this particular story of science is that it concludes
> with a description of how western Lapland, in northern Finland,
> started using antipsychotic medications in this manner in 1992, and
> today their psychotic patients enjoy the best long-term outcomes in
> the western world. Five years after a first psychotic episode, eighty
> percent of their patients are either back in school or working. About
> one-third of the patients have been exposed to antipsychotics during
> this period, and about twenty percent end up taking the medication
> regularly. And what I like most about this success story is that it
> cannot be viewed, in any way, as an "anti-medication" story. It's a
> "best-practices" story.
>
> Most of the audience understood this to be a "good news" tale, with
> science telling us of a therapeutic path that led to high recovery
> rates. And imagine if the program, at this national conference, had
> been structured to have psychiatrists (or other providers) discuss the
> talk I had just given. We could have spoken about whether a similar
> therapeutic approach could ever be tried here, and with
> representatives from SAMHSA there, perhaps this possibility could even
> have leapt onto a national agenda. This could have been a moment for
> transformative change in the treatment of first-episode psychosis in
> this country, a change designed to put young people back onto a path
> of real recovery, rather than down a path that led all too often to
> chronicity and disability. But unfortunately, in that Hyatt Regency
> ballroom, a much different process was underway. Several SAMHSA
> officials were nervously huddled with the psychiatrist, Mark Ragins,
> who had been selected to rebut my talk, apparently with a sense of
> urgency that he effectively counter what I had said. No good news
> allowed!
>
> When Dr. Ragins took the stage at lunchtime, he was remarkably candid.
> He was here because SAMHSA wouldn't let me speak unless a psychiatrist
> had a chance to rebut what I had said. This, of course, was startling
> news to most in the audience, as few had ever been to a conference
> where a second keynote speaker was brought in to discredit the first.
>
> There was, however, no real discussion by Dr. Ragins of the talk I had
> given, or the issues brought up in Anatomy of an Epidemic. Instead,
> Dr. Ragins used this metaphor to criticize Anatomy: In the book, he
> said, I had provided readers with a "compelling picture" of a "close-
> up of a car accident," but "we have to widen our view to decide if
> freeways should be torn down." Dr. Ragins then discussed other factors
> besides medication that might be causing the astonishing rise in the
> number of disabled mentally ill in our society, such as the fact that
> once people are on SSI or SSDI, there is a financial disincentive to
> return to work (which I agree is a factor.) Finally, in apparent
> reference to the many studies I cited in the book that had found that
> medicated patients have worse long-term outcomes than the off-
> medication group, he said:
>
> "Medical interventions are always correlated with worse (long-term)
> problems . . . It is likely that all interventions 'done to' someone
> to give them help or take care of them will have short-term benefits
> that wane over time and may well become long-term negatives."
>
> I still am not quite sure how that was supposed to be a "rebuttal" to
> Anatomy of an Epidemic. But that is how it was being pitched, and then
> when Dr. Ragins detailed some of his thoughts on what promoted long-
> term recovery -- "Love other people, family, partners, kids" was one
> of the things he advised -- I could only think: Am I supposed to be
> against this? Indeed, I had the feeling that if Dr. Ragins and I had
> been on a panel together, we would have found much common ground, and
> that he might have thought that there was considerable merit to the
> Western Lapland approach. But the chance to have that productive
> discussion had been lost.
>
> A Postscript
>
> During the conference, D. J. Jaffe, who has close ties to the National
> Alliance on Mental Illness, having served on its national board of
> directors, wrote a blog about the conference for The Huffington Post,
> describing it as a waste of taxpayer money. My presence there, he
> argued, was evidence of why this was so. The keynote speaker, Jaffe
> said, had written that "antipsychotic drugs do not fix any known brain
> abnormality nor do they put brain chemistry back into balance," and
> readers were left to understand that, given that everybody knew that
> mental disorders were caused by chemical imbalances, I was a bit of a
> loony-tune.
>
> So what was the real purpose of this blog? NAMI is a powerful
> political group, heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies, and in my
> opinion, Jaffe was delivering a warning. He was telling the National
> Empowerment Center and other consumer groups that they risked losing
> their funding if they did not, in the future, march in lockstep with
> psychiatry's official story, which is that mental disorders are known
> brain illnesses, and that the drugs are like "insulin for diabetes."
> No more invitation by the National Empowerment Center to speakers who
> would say otherwise.
>
> At such moments, I have to confess that I begin to lose all hope. It
> seems quite impossible that our society will ever be able to have a
> thoughtful, honest discussion about what is truly known about mental
> disorders, and about the merits of psychiatric medications. The forces
> lined up against such a discussion are simply too great.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
> *
> ACTION * ACTION * ACTION *
>
> "Join the discussion"! Please add your comment to Psychology Today
> discussion at bottom of Whitaker's piece here:
>
> http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/48811
>
> YOU can break the silence, for free. Forward this news!
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> More info on this controversy:
>
> Report on MindFreedom successful campaign to support Whitaker speaking:
> http://3.ly/whitakervictory
>
> MFI alert about attack on Alternatives 2010 by D.J. Jaffe's blog:
> http://3.ly/mfijaffe
>
> To go directly to Jaffe's attack on Alternatives 2010:
> http://3.ly/huffingtonjaffe
>
> MFI director David Oaks blogs about Alternatives 2010, and Jaffe attack:
> http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog
>
> Psychologist/Author Bruce Levine blogs on HuffPost defending
> Alternatives 2010... you can still comment:
> http://3.ly/levinejaffe
>
> MindFreedom's Facebook page also has a discussion on controversy:
> http://www.facebook.com/pages/MindFreedom-International/33579368821
>
> Influential mental health author Pete Earley is a "velvet glove"
> blogger who supports says he supports mental health consumer
> empowerment, and the iron fist of more forced drugging. He posted a 4
> October entry attacking Alternatives 2010:
>
> http://www.peteearley.com/blog/2010/10/04/an-alternative-voice
>
> Pehaps because of what Earley calls a "firestorm" of comments, he
> apparently changed his mind the next day, blogging 5 October in an
> "Answering Critics" entry that he "supports" Alternatives 2010, if it
> meets his standards. He also disabled all comments "until further
> notice":
>
> http://www.peteearley.com/blog/2010/10/05/alternatives-2010-answering-critics
>
> Mental health consumer and psychiatric survivor leaders called it back
> in July, when they issued a statement at a SAMHSA summit, warning
> about "undue influence of the pharamceutical industry" in mental
> health care. Your group is encouraged to endorse the urgent call:
> http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/psychiatric-drugs/bastille-2010
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> REMEMBER:
>
> PLEASE USE the Internet to kick start this discussion -- that some in
> the US government think is taboo.
>
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>
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>
> FORWARD this news item to others those who support human rights and
> alternatives in mental health!
>
> Please post on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and more! Break the silence
> with YOUR free mind!
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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