Tag: antidepressants

LA Times Opinion Page

By Stuart A. Kirk, STUART A. KIRK is a professor of social welfare at UCLA. He is the coauthor of “The Selling of DSM” and “Making Us Crazy.” His most recent book is “Mental Disorders in the Social Environment”.

PSYCHIATRIC researchers recently estimated that half of the American population has had or will have a mental disorder at some time in their life. A generation ago, by contrast, only a small percentage of the American population was considered mentally ill. Are we all going mad?

By Richard DeGrandpre, Ph.D.

On May 18, 1999, the New York Times reported that “social phobia ranks today as the third most prevalent psychiatric disorder in the United States……….affecting an estimated 19 million Americans, according to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America. Many are to bashful even to talk to therapists.” In the same week, the Boston Globe reported that “Epidemiological studies have found that acute social anxiety is the third most common psychiatric disorder in the United States………. affecting up to 13 percent of Americans. Jerilyn Ross, president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America……she hopes a publicity blitz planned by………..SmithKline Beecham will raise awareness of social anxiety disorder and lead more people to seek help, which could include psychotherapy instead of drugs.” Why were the Boston Globe and the New York Times both writing about “social phobia disorder” in the same week, and why would a drug company spend its money to “raise awareness” of a mental-health disorder? The answer: the FDA had just approved a drug for the treatment of social phobia. As the Boston Globe put it, SmithKline Beecham makes the drug Paxil, which was “the first drug approved by the FDA specifically for treating social anxiety disorder.”

By Debbie Thurman, Christian Communication Network

MONROE, Va., July 18 /Christian Wire Service/– “Shut up and pass the Prozac.” That is the consensus of the media in the most volatile round of psycho trash talk in recent memory. Since Tom Cruise kicked it up a notch on the “Today” show with Matt Lauer, all manner of “experts” have weighed in on both sides of the debate.

One of the most articulate and credentialed critics of current psychiatric practices was notably absent, however. Dr. Peter Breggin of The International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, was essentially shut out of the debate by the media, at one point being forced to watch a 90-minute-long exchange between Jane Pauley and CNBC’s Donny Deutche, which he was invited to join by link-up, but to which he was never asked to contribute a comment.

New York Times, by Gardiner Harris

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 — An influential Republican senator says he will propose legislation requiring drug makers to disclose the payments they make to doctors for services like consulting, lectures and attendance at seminars.

The lawmaker, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, cited as an example the case of a prominent child psychiatrist, who he said made $180,000 over just two years from the maker of an antipsychotic drug now widely prescribed for children.

I am the mother of a 16-year-old autistic son. First, autism is not a mental illness. There are physical situations that precede the condition. The best definition I ever heard came from Bob Doman, the founder of the National Association for Child Development, when he told me he referred to autism as “brain toxicity.”