The miracles of modern medicine are self-evident. Have a cough? Take some syrup. Got an infection? Take some antibiotics. Not entirely right in the head? There’s countless dozens of psychiatric medications out there that could placate, even eliminate, your symptoms. There’s no question that these medications are at least somewhat effective treatments to the ills that continue to plague mankind today. Or is there?
Medical journalist Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic – the damning exposé on the psychiatric pharmaceutical industry – and Mad in America – the eye-opening timeline uncovering the dark history of psychiatry in the United States – is one person that has raised serious doubt over the benefits of the modern drug-heavy psychiatric treatments that are practiced on everyone from hyperactive kindergarten-aged children to dementia-ridden centenarians.
His doubt stems from the fact that, despite the ubiquity of these psychiatric drugs in modern society – in today, …show more content…
When evidence-based medicine was declared the “idea of the year” in 1992, the testing of new drugs blossomed into a new business. However, this testing – done in the form of clinical trials – was more so done to advertise for pharmaceutical companies, fulfill FDA regulations, and soothe the public mind than to actually prove improvement, either in terms of absolute mental health or in comparison to previous psychiatric medications. Moreover, Whitaker contends that almost all of these clinical trials practiced “bad science” that rendered their “results” moot. These clinical trials compare a spectrum of dosages for new drugs to a single, sometimes excessively large, dosage of an old drug; they sidelined sometimes disproportionately dangerous side effects; and they failed to properly introduce controls for their trials, , sometimes attributing improvements from other factors – such as time and personal attention – to their
Medical journalist Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic – the damning exposé on the psychiatric pharmaceutical industry – and Mad in America – the eye-opening timeline uncovering the dark history of psychiatry in the United States – is one person that has raised serious doubt over the benefits of the modern drug-heavy psychiatric treatments that are practiced on everyone from hyperactive kindergarten-aged children to dementia-ridden centenarians.
His doubt stems from the fact that, despite the ubiquity of these psychiatric drugs in modern society – in today, …show more content…
When evidence-based medicine was declared the “idea of the year” in 1992, the testing of new drugs blossomed into a new business. However, this testing – done in the form of clinical trials – was more so done to advertise for pharmaceutical companies, fulfill FDA regulations, and soothe the public mind than to actually prove improvement, either in terms of absolute mental health or in comparison to previous psychiatric medications. Moreover, Whitaker contends that almost all of these clinical trials practiced “bad science” that rendered their “results” moot. These clinical trials compare a spectrum of dosages for new drugs to a single, sometimes excessively large, dosage of an old drug; they sidelined sometimes disproportionately dangerous side effects; and they failed to properly introduce controls for their trials, , sometimes attributing improvements from other factors – such as time and personal attention – to their