The pharmaceutical industry

February 08. 2009 12:00AM Are drugs used too often? Psychiatric drug info unrevealed By Lee Hammel TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF lhammel@telegram.com WORCESTER — Is there a conspiracy to keep accurate information about medications from psychiatric patients? Both an author and a local resident told College of the Holy Cross students last week that they think so. Robert Whitaker, author of “Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill,” and Oryx Cohen of Worcester, who is director of the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community in Holyoke, think there are many healthy alternatives to psychotropic medications for people with mental illness. Mr. Cohen, who is also co-founder of the Freedom Center in Northampton, said he has not taken a psychiatric drug in six years regardless of his diagnosis as having bipolar illness. He is a leader of the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement and touts holistic treatments such as proper sleep, yoga, acupuncture and reiki. Mr. Whitaker spoke about a 2007 study by two University of Illinois researchers that he claimed shows that 40 percent of patients with schizophrenia who weaned themselves from antipsychotic medications showed improvement in their illness 15 years after the study began. Only 5 percent of those who remained on the drugs showed similar improvement, he told the 79 people attending the symposium at Dinand Library Thursday. Most remarkable, said Mr. Whitaker, a journalist and Cambridge resident, not one mainstream newspaper in the country reported the surprising results of the study, which was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. It would have been treated as big news had the results been reversed as pharmaceutical companies would have liked, he claimed. “Corruption” keeps adverse drug results out of the public eye, Mr. Whitaker said. He pointed to profits so great that not even a $1.4 billion settlement with the federal Justice Department last month by one company, Eli Lilly, of civil and criminal claims surrounding the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, seems to slow the companies, Mr. Whitaker said. If the side effects of Zyprexa, which include diabetes, weight gain and high cholesterol, were caused by a bacterium rather than a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would try to find a cure for it, Mr. Whitaker said. While some patients with mental illness can benefit from psychotropic medication, he said in an interview Friday that studies going back to the 1970s make him believe it is in fewer than half of the cases. Psychiatrist Thomas H. Jobe, who co-authored the 2007 study with psychologist Martin Harrow, agreed in an interview Friday that the study showed the surprising result that not all patients with mental illness need long-term medication as the drug companies would have people believe. But Dr. Jobe, who is retired from the University of Illinois Medical School at Chicago, disagreed with Mr. Whitaker’s figures, saying the complicated study shows that ratio of schizophrenic patients whose symptoms improve after going off their medication is “maybe one-third.” Dr. Jobe concurred that the result of the study, called the Chicago Follow-Up Study, has not been reported in mainstream media. Published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, it has been debated in professional journals, Dr. Jobe said. The psychiatrist, who himself has treated thousands of patients with medication, said he understands the reluctance to see the results of his study widely distributed. “I can say that medication is very, very helpful, and it’s key to treating agitated and acutely ill patients,” he said. Because of the side-effects of psychiatric medications, “there’s an understandable resistance of patients to taking these drugs initially. The field of psychiatry is understandably reluctant to have the public use the study as an excuse for patients for not taking the medication when it’s necessary. “But we do feel that long-term medication maintenance needs to be fundamentally re-evaluated,” Dr. Jobe said. “The value of the study is that we can tell which” patients likely need long-term medication and which need it only in the acute phase of the illness. According to the study, “the more favorable outcome is associated with internal characteristics of the patients, including better” achievements prior to getting sick, a favorable personality and attitude, less vulnerability, greater resilience, and other factors. The “data suggest not all schizophrenic patients need to use antipsychotic medications continuously throughout their lives.” Dr. Jobe said, “The clinicians need to do objective measures on patients and provide them with information on whether they would do better on or off medication over the long haul. “Balance is the key. The pharmaceutical industry does not want to look at these exceptions to long-term use of drugs, while the anti-drug people want to throw the baby out with the bath water.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Order the Telegram & Gazette, delivered daily to your home or office! www.telegram.com/homedelivery clicca qui' materiali ricercati: testimonianze su chi ha subito i tso,video,convegni,informazioni,effetti collaterali degli psicofarmaci,testi,pubblicazioni etc,etc Aiutaci a diffondere questo portale, linkaci con il logo NP dal tuo sito/blog