As I was reading this article, for some reason I could not avoid thinking of scientology. Dr Lucire's views would align very nicely with scientologists' views that psychiatry is dangerous and mental illness does not need drug treatment. Well, read this - http://www.scara-mouche.com/?p=114

I'm amazed that nobody has commented on this very important subject.

I remember not all that long ago whereby big pharmaceutical companies where taken to task for bribing Australian doctors with anything from pens, all the way through to golf clubs and expensive overseas holidays and all in an attempt to have those doctors push their particular brand of drugs.

As someone who works in mental health, I once asked a doctor why he'd prescribe a product whose own company didn't even know how that drug worked. He was rather rude when he asked "exactly what do you mean by that?" I pointed out that the spiel on the back of the packet of a particular antidepressant he'd prescribed said...... "This product is thought to work by......" The literature went on in an attempt to explain the relationship between lack of serotonin and it's effect on mental stability, however it was the words "thought to work by" that I pointed out to him. If a doctor was trying to get me to take pills where the producing company only "thought" it knew how it's own product worked, then I'd be looking for another doctor. Needless to say he snorted a indecipherable response and stormed out of the office.

The point is, as the article demonstrates, too many doctors are using drugs put out by pharma companies where the documented evidence of non harm and an acceptable patient outcome simply doesn't stack up. It's equally unfortunate that many of these doctor's patients are in a vulnerable condition at the time of prescription and their knowledge of adverse drug reaction and poly pharmacy is near to non-existent.

Good article Peter King. My only wish is that it doesn't get relegated to the dust-bin of history. This is a very important story, but one I fear that is simply the tip of the ice-berg.

A recent book that supports Dr Yolande Lucire's concerns is "Anatomy of an Epidemic" by Robert Whitaker (2010)

http://www.robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Anatomy%20of%20an%20Epidemic.html

Available at amazon.com

Anatomy of an Epidemic investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of adults and children disabled by mental illness skyrocketed over the past fifty years?

The modern era of psychiatry is usually said to have begun with the introduction of Thorazine into asylum medicine in 1955. This kicked off a “psychopharmacological revolution,” or so our society is told, with psychiatry discovering effective drugs for mental disorders of all kinds. In 1988, the first of the “second-generation” psychiatric drugs--Prozac--was introduced, and these new drugs were said to represent another therapeutic advance. Yet, even as this “psychopharmacological revolution” has unfolded over the past 50 years, the number of people disabled by mental illness has soared.

In 1955, there were 355,000 adults in state and county mental hospitals with a psychiatric diagnosis. During the next three decades (the era of the first generation psychiaric drugs), the number of disabled mentally ill rose to 1.25 million. Prozac arrived on the market in 1988, and during the next 20 years, the number of disabled mentally ill grew to more than four million adults (in 2007.) Finally, the prescribing of psychiatric medications to children and adolescents took off during this period (1987 to 2007), and as this medical practice took hold, the number of youth in America receiving a government disability check because of a mental illness leapt from 16,200 in 1987 to 561,569 in 2007 (a 35-fold increase.)

Theis astonishing increase in the disability numbers during the past fifty years raises an obvious question: Could the widespread use of psychiatric medications be fueling this epidemic?

Anatomy of an Epidemic investigates that question by focusing on the long-term outcome studies in the research literature. Do the studies tell of a paradigm of care that helps people get well and stay well over the long term? Or do they tell of a paradigm of care that increases the likelihood that people diagnosed with mental disorders will become chronically ill?

Well worth reading!

Clearly this Doctor is 'evil'. How dare she target the poor defenceless mega billionaire run pharmaceutical industry? So what if a few hundred or even a few thousand suffer due to this or that medication? They'll just get another one, not on the PBS.

The truth is that this industry is too powerful, too influential and far too dangerous to be allowed any measure of self regulation.

The federal government should establish an Aussie version of the FDA with teeth, but do you see that happening?

Very interesting article on the courageous, intelligent and original Yola Lucire. Her work in uncovering this corrupt mess is of a piece with her PhD on RSI, which showed a massive corrupt culture involving doctors, unions and insurance companies; all profiting downstream from the government-granted privileges of the medical guild with its snout in the OHS trough.

The article shows the corrupt interrelation of big government with big business that is the inevitable outcome of interventions intended to regulate and subsidise "health" care.

It is important to understand that this kind of corrupt mess *cannot ever* be avoided with the combination of
a) government subsidising and licensing medical training, licensing and compulsory insuring of doctors, subsidising health care, providing "free" medical services for all, subsidising pharmaceutical benefits, and regulating pharmaceutical developments, and
b) definitions of medical conditions by a medical profession whose very existence is dependent in innumerable ways on government status, privileges, insurances, favours and subsidies, and
c) medicines provided by private corporations to government-set standards with a view to profit.

It is easy to get confused in the welter of ethical, technical, economic and political issues. But we should never lose sight of the original value - the health and individual responsibility of the patient, however his discretion may be delegated in some degree to his doctor.

There is no way in the world these problems can be fixed by more regulation. It is indeed the chimera of governmental universal wisdom, competence and benevolence that has allowed the corruption to take this particularly insidious form, protected by the authority and status of government-qualified and -sponsored vested interests. Their sinecures are too comfortable for them to condescend to intellectually honest inquiry, and why should they?

Even if the political will existed to "fix" the problem, exactly how can that be done by rules, regulations, and bureaucracies without importing all the original problems of knowledge and power?

Predictably someone (anaminx) has raised the Scientology spectre.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which was jointly founded by Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, makes many valid claims criticising psychiatric drugs and relationships between psychiatry and drug companies. Many critics of antidepressants (myself included) would agree with many of CCHR's evidence-based claims. But most critics of antidepressants (myself included) are not, have never been, and never will be Scientologists.
Robert Whitaker, author of 'Anatomy of an Epidemic', has suggested that the pharmaceutical industry may have encouraged Scientology to criticise them, in order to tarnish perceptions about critics collectively. I think he is probably right.