Posted by linkadge on July 11, 2006, at 17:24:48
In reply to Re: couldn't have said it better myself, posted by Klavot on July 11, 2006, at 6:45:49
>Are you telling me that the thousands of >medical scientists, and millions more medical >doctors, who are behind contemporary >psychiatry, are all wrong? That they are all in >the pockets of Big Pharma?
Just like it was mentioned below, 50 years ago, methamphetamine was used to treat depression. The doctors who pused it probably claimed that it was treating some genuine biochemical abnormality, and the people who took it probably believe in it based upon the notion of "how could these doctors be wrong?" Its "The Emperor's New Cloths".
>If drug-based psychiatry is so flawed, then why >are psychiatric hospitals at an all-time low?
Because drug-based psychiatry is so flawed.
>It seems to me that there are some people on >this board who, based on their own isolated >anecdotal exeriences with psychiatric drugs, >are hell-bent on discrediting these drugs.
The drugs will discredit themselves. The operative demention here is time. I have my own opinions, but thats no proof in itself. I don't believe in opinion. I try to take information and process it for what it is, information.
Breggin, maybe he's a bit of a nerd. When he asserts that ECT seems to cause significant and observable abornmalities in glial function, I take that for what it is, either true or false. If you think in black and white, and lable Breggin as bad, and assume everything he says is wrong because he is bad, then you may be missing the whole story. We all like to compartmentalize information because it helps us cope with the decisions we must make.
>I would also be careful to take everything that >I read on the net seriously. The internet is >often the medium of quacks, who are unable to >have their work published in proper literature.
I don't read an article with preset opinions. He brought up the point about why no placebo was used. I never thought of that, its a good point. If the placebo showed what it was probably going to (which might make the already dismal responce rates seem even more insignificant), one might reconsider its use.
>By the way, is is not a given that you MUST use >a placebo in clinical trials. Often the >efficacy of a treatment is compared not to a >placebo, but to other well-established >treatments, particularly where it is unethical >to use placebo (for example cancer drugs).Yes, but cancer doesn't get better with hope (at least in my books), but depression can, and often does. That's why a placebo is so critical in the trial of depression drugs. It gives you a guage of the degree to which the setting, care and support, are contrubuting to a person's recovery.
Think of the sertraline, SJW, placebo trial. Without placebo, it would say that 30% of people responded to sertraline (roughly the number of people who responded here), with placebo, you'd see that 40% responded to placebo. All of a sudden, the "response" to sertraline seems virtually nonexistant.
Linkadge
poster:linkadge
thread:662854
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060709/msgs/666133.html