'No “breakthrough” in Alzheimer’s disease' BMJ Feature
"The trial results were disappointing so why did some of the media call the drug LMTX revolutionary?"
Jacqui Wise journalist, London, UK
BMJ 2016;354:i4474 (Published 16 August 2016)
Making the Case Against Antidepressants in Parliament: Robert Whitaker, Mad in America, 10 May 2016
"On Wednesday, May 11, there will be an inquiry by a work group in the
U.K.’s Parliament into whether increases in the prescribing of
antidepressants are fueling a marked increase in disability due to
anxiety and depression in the U.K. I wrote about a similar rise in
disability in the United States in Anatomy of an Epidemic, and the All Party Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence, which is the Parliamentary group that organized the debate, asked me to present the case against antidepressants.
I don’t now where this will lead, but it is encouraging to see this debate rising to the level of a work group in Parliament.
The effort to organize this session was led by Luke Montagu, whose father is a member of the House of Lords. He has publicly told
of his having been incapacitated by psychiatric drugs and their
withdrawal effects, with his entry into the world of psychiatry coming
when he was prescribed Prozac after having a bad reaction to a sinus
operation. Together with James Davies, a psychotherapist and medical anthropologist who authored Cracked (a really good “critical psychiatry” book), he created the Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry
in the United Kingdom. As the name suggests, they believe that a close
examination of the scientific literature reveals that psychiatric drugs,
on the whole, do more harm than good, and that the use of these drugs
needs to be rethought.
For me, the invitation to present to the work group provided a nice
opportunity to update the case against antidepressants that I made in Anatomy of an Epidemic. The slides that I will present on Wednesday are attached here. ..."
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