Posted by JohnL on April 30, 2000, at 2:36:31
In reply to Re: Dr Martin Jensen - JohnL, posted by Scott L. Schofield on April 29, 2000, at 10:50:36
Scott,
You bring up some very good issues. I certainly understand your hesitancy and slight skepticism. I think that's a good thing. I must admit, I was a whole lot more skeptical than you at first. Just a few followup comments that might help in perspective of the issues...The graphs and tables are all based on 250 patients in one year who were completely cured. They show what percent of patients in each symptom category (depression, anxiety, etc) got better on what classes of medications. What they highlight more than anything else is how people with identical symptoms may respond to meds of different classes, and by what percents. And they show differences between similar meds in the same class. It is helpful when deciding where to start, what are the best odds, where to go from here, what has been missed. Stuff like that.
Back in the old days there were few meds to choose from, and thus the trickle down effect was a necessity. And it set the stage for setting precedence of what the psychiatric community now considers fact...drugs take time to work. But today there are so many more choices. In Jensen's office at least, all the drugs we might ever need to achieve excellent results are already in existence today. The hard part is that it takes experimentation to find the right one. But those graphs help point us in the right direction, setting priorities, and adding structured organization to the process based on what has worked in the past.
The farther away a drug is from targeting the problem, the longer the wait...if it works at all. Who said that? Only Jensen. He began noticing a few sporadic quick responses in medical school and on into private practice, and he explored the phenomenon in depth to see if there was a way to identify why those things happened. You are correct when you say "we" are not there yet. True. But a few passionate physicians, like Jensen, are indeed already there. By the time the psychiatric community accumulates empirical evidence on a widespread scale to support Jensen's empirical evidence on a small scale, I'll be dead. As we all know, psychiatry's best efforts are full of disappointments and failures. Even 70% success rates are usually only based on a 50% improvement of symptoms...not complete recovery. With that in mind, today's psychiatry is even weaker than it seems at first glance. Might as well flip a coin for equal odds. All this against a backdrop of thousands of studies providing empirical evidences.
Personally, I'm not happy about waiting for psychiatry to have all the answers proved. I want to be well ASAP. With that in mind, I narrow the universe down to one successful doctor's office. I could care less what the psychiatric community is doing, I want a doctor with results. How or why he gets those results, I could care less.
Your skepticism is justified. I've experienced it too. But it's a good thing, because it fosters discussion of issues that might help somebody somewhere get bette, one way or the other.
JohnL
poster:JohnL
thread:31396
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000429/msgs/31737.html