Teen Prescribed Antidepressants Kills Fifteen in a Drug Rage

You are most welcome.

It is my strong opinion that any mind altering drugs should be used with extreme caution. Given that each individual reacts differently alone, not to mention the direct reason why their behavior changes is an unknown factor.

There is WAY too much grey area here for these types of drugs to be used on human beings. People are not lab rats for the big pharm companies to make porfit from and do tests on without regard for the value of good scientific research on ALL adverse effects.

I do not think people should be given only one option just because some pyscitrist feels nothing else is working (like they can even tell). As Ive said a couple of times now we could get the same physical results with a lobotomy but that would not be ethical.

I do not see how giving people drugs without knowing the full impact on the human is any more ethical then a lobotomy, maybe someone respresenting big pharm companies could clue me in? Definately dont have to wonder if they have vested interest in internet cotainment and control.

"This guy might have done this without the use of those drugs. I seriously doubt the medications made someone act out such a crime. Maybe if they were on PCP,Crack, and Alcohol. These drugs have helped a lot of people lead better lives. "

Now I really love this point because you are some how seperating the anti-depressents from the other psychotropic drugs you listed yet you forgot to mention whats the difference.

I have the difference for you, corporate profits vs gang profits. One is marketed and sold to you because I doubt anyone would take a drug that they have no clue as to ALL the side effects unless there was an authority telling him it was "good for him". Oherwise the person would be doing the other drugs you mentioned instead?

So we outlaw something like pot yet pour this crap down peoples throat when they feel, frankly, normal depression that we all get from time to time. The answer is to support the person and try to make them feel better without substances, atleast before trying medication and to not say "oh thats to much work give them a drug and take their money".

Once again the free market fails us. When it comes to drugs, especially so. How many lives will it take to see that profit is not more important then human lives?

Oh my God, Lordd42. I wish I had read this response before wasting my time above. You are just a plain vanilla idiot. For a moment I actually thought you had some SUBSTANCE behind your positions. The "normal depression we all get from time to time...?" You don't have the faintest idea what you are TALKING about! Doctors don't give anti-depressants to people who are just "a little bummed" or "feeling the blues." Clinical depression has an actual list of symptoms and until you have actually experienced clinical depression you are just blowing smoke up your own ass! If you HAVE had a clinical depression and you are nonetheless saying these things then you are some kind of sociopath. Somebody who is truly depressed could read your crap and be too embarrassed or fearful to take their medication, you dipshit! When they are found hanging in their garage next week, I hope you can be as nonchalant handing out this tripe as you are now. What are you, a Scientologist or something? A total freakshow is more like it.

Tell me how to judge a person's level of depression and I will tell you why you are wrong. Physical symptoms do not prove mental condition, I am tired of your totally irrational logic that you just parot from other people.

Sure you can say some murderer is crazy (since he, like you, can parot) and send him to an institution but what if he knew what he was doing while killing people then acted crazy aftewards as a defense. The list goes on, your ideology is flawed.

And thus since I shattered your enitre view of reality you attack me saying I am some religious person? You definately sound like the average QUACK, no offense to any REAL scientists.

I never said you were some religious person. I am saying that your views sound similar to those of Scientologists. You have apparently come to the rather bizarre conclusion that the mind and the body are not in any way interrelated. You keep saying that medications to treat physical disorders are inappropriate to treat disorders of the mind. But scientists have known your proposition to be false for more than a century. The placebo effect alone is sufficient evidence to disprove the notion that no connection exists between the mind and the body. But what is TRULY bizarre is that you are somehow able to simply ignore the fact that millions and millions of people have demonstrably benefitted from taking anti-depressants. I can tell you with absolute sincerity that there is no more wonderful feeling than that of finally feeling the fog lifting and being able to get your mental compass working again following such a bout. One of the SADDEST trains of thought is considering all of the gifted minds over the centuries that we lost prematurely but that might have been saved if only they had access to these medications. No, they are not a panacea. But to those who have benefitted from them -- as have I -- they are without question the greatest gift I could ever have received. I have had an exceptionally successful career, and my family life is particularly sweet right now. None of it would have been possible without anti-depressants. In fact, I doubt I would have seen my 25th birthday. That is just about as real as life gets.

When you move your arm there is a connection between body and mind, that is not in question here and looks like you are trying to divert the subject because you are losing horriblely.

My dispute is that you THINK you know what a person's mental conditition is based on their physical response and what they tell you. That is where I am calling bs because there is no way to know what the person is thinking at any given point in time even if "You felt similarly when you said the same thing".

You're grasping at straws now and falling below the wake. There is no way to measure the effects of physcology given the fact that you cannot tell its results except their physical behavior and what they tell you. Their actual state of mind may have been effected adversely for all you know and they just continued to behave normally with prolonged mental issues.

The point I am trying to make is that if you dont know what helps or hurts a person mentally you shouldnt be f'n with their heads.

*SIGH* once again the drugs cause a physical behavior to change that does not mean that his mental issues were solved with the drug.

The cause of his rampage was atributed to the drug because when he stoped taking them his physical behavior returned to normal x10. Whereas with a patient that just sees a doctor to talk every week seems to be less likely to kill their class mates, given that almost every recent school shooting involved anti-depressents. I would wager the correlation is fairly strong at this point and such arguements as yours are regulated to the same place in the minds of people as the proven state/pentagon propaganda on tv at this point.

Ha HA! Given the tone of your response, I am frankly surprised that you condescented to even correspond with someone as ignorant as I. I guess my thirty years of experience working as a volunteer with both depressed adults and depressed youth has been one long self-delusion. All of the cases I have seen over the years where those who come for counseling and take the anti-depressants seem to find a foundation on which to build a stronger "place" for themselves while those who choose not to take them seem to either "tread water" for a year or longer (or decline even further until the next time we hear of them is in the obituary section of the newspaper -- those, apparently have all been figments of my overactive imagination.

No, I am sorry, the cases you list do NOT, by themselves, establish a correlation. You might want to look up the term "scientific method." The definition explains how scientists determine whether causation actually exists. Oh, but I am quite certain you could not be bothered making that kind of an effort. After all, you already "know" what is going on here. Any opinion that deviates from your own is based entirely in the ignorance of the "unwashed masses" (of whom I am obviously just one more example) who lack your penetrating insights. I honestly don't know why we don't simply forward more of our great problems to you. While our greatest minds have been stumbling over themselves trying to come up with solutions, YOU can do so with a mere snap of your fingers. All cars that are involved in traffic accidents have tires, HENCE tires cause all traffic accidents...VOILA!

Wow sorry to stomp on your pseudoscience but until you can read a persons brain I would say drugs with unforeseen effects are not the way to go regardless of the frankly irresponsible correlation you sited (lie/opinion) and that human intervention would help wonders over sending someone a box a pills and calling it a day.

Your experience allowed you to watch the physcial reactions of individuals who took the drugs but their mental reactions is another thing entirely. So you tell me how you can monitor the difference in a persons mental state other then what they exhibit physically and what they tell you (possible unintentional/intentional lie). Then it will be easy to tell you why your entire theory is based on something totally irrational. The german occult pseudoscience of psychology is all but a joke unless you admit to the supernatural.

I have suffered from three bouts of clinical depression over the course of my 47 years. I volunteer because I know EXACTLY the kind of horrors these people are going through. I ALSO know how little those who have NOT had the experience can possibly infer from just reading about it or having it described to them. When you can sit across from someone you know to be a fundamentally decent, intelligent, hard-working person, and that person can tell you that he would like to kill himself to stop the mental and physical anguish but he just can't seem to pull himself together enough to do the deed -- and when you understand EXACTLY what he is feeling because you can recall saying pretty much the same thing a few times, THEN tell me what an expert you are in this area. Until then, you are a loose cannon. I was just slightly pleased to see that you prefaced your comment with the word "wow." I am sure you meant that you couldn't understand why I was getting so hot under the collar when I was so clearly wrong on this issue -- but you simply have no idea how irresponsible your arguments are. Your bio claims that you are a leader. Telling people in an open forum that they shouldn't be taking anti-depressants for their depression is NOT leadership. It is the kind of thing people who are full to the brim with their own self-importance say when they really don't have the faintest idea what they are talking about. The people on this thread who have suffered clinical depressions are infinitely more knowledgeable on this subject, yet you bat aside their comments like they were mere annoyances. Get a grip.

Wow took 3 times and you still think it worked? Thats great, idiot... I feel another one coming on, maybe you should address the reason you are depressed (maybe because you aren't really helping people and your subconscious knows it) instead of taking a pill like the rest of the lazy people. A pill will never solve the problem, I am sorry to say your chemical imbalance bullsht doesnt hold much weight with me. I doubt you even know what the scientific method is since you obviously dont use it in your line of work. Where is the proof of what the person is thinking? It cant be proven or disproven therefor it is not science. You accuse me of not knowing the scientific process yet your own profession hinges on working around it.

If you think anyone person thinks anything like you then you understand muchless about people then you think.

"when you understand EXACTLY what he is feeling because you can recall saying pretty much the same thing a few times, THEN tell me what an expert you are in this area."

Scientific Method? LOL what a joke... future refrence wow means hard to believe someone actually has such a small amount of logic... if you understand context.

If you truely cared about these people you would want furturer research before people continue to take drugs that may not only harm them but like the 13 school shootings listed above may harm those around them too. I feel at this point that you dont and you are just pushing them like any other corner drug dealer.

Ah, so you know nothing of the law, either. Hardly a surprise.

But wait! Doesn't your bio say you are a judge? So you are a judge without a law degree? Interesting...

Once again changing the subject shows you are losing.

The law has nothing to do with it and people fake being crazy all the time to get out of crimes... dont see how that isnt a given.

I am a judge, I am judging medication that was not properly tested as being bad for our society. Just as you are judging it to be fit. The difference is that I have logic on my side and you have a german occult pseudoscience on yours.

Oh, and I have not been depressed for about 10 years. I have NO idea whether I am helping people. They say I help -- perhaps they are just telling me that to make me feel better? That kind of thing usually isn't the highest priority for people who are depressed, but I suppose it is possible. I feel better doing it -- depression is so misunderstood that these people are often dealing with a lot more than mental anguish and physical symptoms like the inability to eat for lack of appetite, the inability to sleep (or, in some cases, the inablity to STOP sleeping). They also face discrimination at work -- some of our more ignorant fellow citizens seem to think that depressed people are one step away from being "psyco killers" since they are both mental illnesses (kind of like thinking that someone with a cold must also be dying of pneumonia). For obvious reasons, they have self-esteem problems. Watching them overcome these problems and emerge on the other side as content (sometimes even happy), fully-functioning members of society is pretty cool. I am not saying that I am taking any credit at all for such developments. There is not a scintilla of doubt in my mind that they are benefitting from the anti-depressants. Saying that they are "lazy" for taking the pills instead of...what? Instead of just "gutting it out?" Doing a few more push-ups? Just plain "getting over themselves?" is, simply, a wilful misunderstanding of the disorder. Such a view is also akin to telling someone that taking antibiotics for their bronchitis is the "lazy" way out. A "real man" would allow the bronchitis to settle into his lungs, suffer through the ensuing pneumonia -- and swim the English Channel for good measure...

First off theres plenty of ways people can make tons of money from arguing your point of view. Thats a given though. Back to the point.

'Just plain "getting over themselves?" is, simply, a wilful misunderstanding of the disorder. Such a view is also akin to telling someone that taking antibiotics for their bronchitis is the "lazy" way out.'

Great example, now you are comparing mental illness to physical illness. This is exactly what I am talking about here. MENTAL and PHYSICAL are two seperate things that are CONNECTED. Do you understand what CONNECTED Means? I knew you could...

Physical and mental are different... how many more times does it have to be said before you understand that you cannot KNOW for sure someones mental state of mind just because they told you "You helped me". You are assuming they know whats good for them but if that was the case why would they need you to help them?

Since it is a MENTAL issue and not a PHYSICAL one that means that all your suggestions for physical activities are just idiocy and yet another distraction. Pills have physical side effects whereas consulting a person can, at worst, cause more mental issues. Therefor seeing a shrink is much more useful then taking a pill and yes I do/will tell friends/family the same, as a leader. I sincerely hope someone reading this decided to live their life without the dependence of a drug and seeks a professional whom they can speak with to get alternative treatment.

"Watching them overcome these problems and emerge on the other side as content (sometimes even happy), fully-functioning members of society is pretty cool."

Here you are saying that you think them being "Fully-functioning members of society" means the job is done. There is no way for you to tell if it helped them or not just that they behave nice now. You cannot measure ANYTHING except physical reactions and you keep clinging to them because its ALL you got!

lordd42 . . . you really have no clue what you are talking about do you?

Psychology may be a pseudoscience, (and it is from the standpoint of a physicist), but I'll give them credit for having improved the practice quite a bit over the decades . . . especially in regards to behavioral psychology.

However, pharmacology is not a pseudoscience whatsoever and that is the area surrounding the effects of the anti-depressants on the brain and on the mind.

Psychiatry is the attempt of using these pharmaceutical options to help with psychological therapy.

A good psychiatrist/psychologist has a good doctor-patient relationship that is built on mutual trust. The psychiatrist/psychologist can then monitor the effect the medication has on the patient's mental state by asking him/her questions. That is what is supposed to happen.

(psychologists don't prescribe medication but can work in tandem with psychiatrists)

That's not saying that their aren't bad psychiatrists in the world, but you seem to be unaware of the very basics involved in this practice. It also seems that you wrote off the entire field haphazardly from a limited experience through introductory psychology and sociology classes.

From a physicist's perspective, I'd be among the first to criticize pseudo sciences like psychology for not being able to bring about a fundamental understanding in the field on a universal scale. However, there is a lot of very real good that psychologists/psychiatrists can do by making tangible improvements in an individual's mental state . . . even if they don't have universal theorems. In my opinion it's currently more like an art than science, but that doesn't make their work false.

And again, it relies on the ability of the practitioner to make the right judgment calls in regards to their patient's mental state . . . which is monitored through a healthy doctor-patient relationship.

"The psychiatrist/psychologist can then monitor the effect the medication has on the patient's mental state by asking him/her questions. That is what is supposed to happen."

OK this right here is my problem with this logic, you are assuming you are able to monitor a persons mental state by merely asking them questions when the patient can easily intentionally or uninteionally lie without you ever being able to know the differece.

I never said "There is no possible way to help mental illness". What I said was that there is no way to tell if you helped or not. That being said I think you are right its more of an art, which if you asked any surgen they would say the same about their professon. The difference is when that doctor messes up there is a physical problem to notice, whereas with mental illness there is no way to measure improvement scientifically.

Behavioral psychology is the same as the rest, it depends on knowing what the person is thinking while they exhibit the given behavior.

You or I may not be able to tell if a person is intentionally or unintentionally lying, but a psychiatrist is supposed to be to tell the difference by being able to read the body language of the patient. It's a subjective interpretation, but it is one that can be made.

That would be a good psychiatrist anyway, I'm disregarding bad ones as they shouldn't have a license anyway.

Well I can tell when someone is lying thats not a problem. What I am saying is that you cannot scientifically or logically PROVE they are lying. You are relying on non-scientific means to find out the problem which means there will be a VERY LARGE rate of mistakes and the evidence of these school shootings above seems to be proving my point pretty well.

If we really wanted to get technical we could stick them in an MRI and see if they are lying . . . but we're not doing that, so disregard.

I really don't think any of these incidents revolve around a patient trying to scam the psychiatrist as they obviously had emotional issues (hence the meltdown), so let's rule that out.

A functioning doctor-patient relationship is supported entirely on trust to begin with. The patient is supposed to trust the psychiatrist in divulging personal facts and mental states. That's the reason the patient is getting treatment to begin with. The psychiatrist is supposed to be able to judge the mental state of the patient . . . that is why they went through all of those years of education. However, there will be times when psychiatrists will misdiagnose a problem.

Yet, doctors misdiagnose their patients all the time as well, so let's not hold psychiatrists to a standard higher than the rest of the medical community.

"I really don't think any of these incidents revolve around a patient trying to scam the psychiatrist as they obviously had emotional issues (hence the meltdown), so let's rule that out."

Lets take the crazy guy's word for it shall we? Not to mention there is no way to know if they unintentionally lied due to ignorance and or other complications.

I do agree MRI technology is looking promising but still at its early stages. When we are able to see images in a persons head due to the electrical signals in the brain we will be much closer to understanding how other people think. I doubt it will give us enough clarity to understand what exactly a chemical introdued into the brain will do though.

"Yet, doctors misdiagnose their patients all the time as well, so let's not hold psychiatrists to a standard higher than the rest of the medical community."

There is a problem, how do you know when a psychiatrist misdiagnoses a problem if you cannot know what is wrong with the person in the first place?

We know a psychiatrist misdiagnoses a problem the same way we know a doctor misdiagnoses a disease . . . if the treatment doesn't work.

The bulk of your argument hinges on the ineffectiveness of psychiatrists/psychologists in diagnosing their patients, and I just have to disagree with you on the grounds that millions are treated successfully.

Again how can you tell it doesnt work.

Again how can you know those millions that were treated do not still have mental problems (If not more) just because they behave differently now? You are repeating the same thing over and over at this point like you are typing from a script...

For all you know the drugs caused damage that changed who they are forever and all you can do is monitor the effects of it on their behavior not their mental state of mind. Oh look hes so stupid now he acts nice, its lovely how these drugs work so well isnt it? Why dont we just cut their brains out that'll do the job too.

We know it works by asking the patient if it worked and by seeing if the problems he had went away. If someone with OCD no longer acts or thinks like someone with OCD, then they have improved.

"If someone with OCD no longer acts or thinks like someone with OCD, then they have improved."

How do you know how they think?

Asking someone how they feel is not scientific to say the least...

Again you are just repeating the same thing over and over... big pharm needs people to take drugs I know but how can you keep denying reality?

It is as scientific as it gets when discussing the mind and mind altering drugs. This is what the science of pharmacology uses as its data set in case studies.

In this context, asking someone how a drug effects their mental state is valid data.

Personally, it took me a while to accept that in my cut and dry, black and white mathematical view of the world. But there are instances when subjective qualitative measurements ARE acceptable.

Bringing it back to the general medicine again: when a patient is admitted to the ER they are asked to subjectively rate their pain.

I had a family member who broke her back and had a very high threshold for pain and rated it at a 7. Since she did not rate it a 10, she was misdiagnosed as having pulled a muscle and the doctor didn't even order an X-ray.

Can subjective data be wrong, yes. Is it still valuable in certain contexts, also yes.

Lordd42: I have insomnia and that is the only reason I read all your arguments with cztheday. You are so clueless and evidentally extremely judgemental about a subject you probably have either not experienced or are trying to convince yourself of something, like you are not depressed?

You say:
"Regardless of if these drugs caused the problem or not, we can all agree that they do alter the mind for better or worse. Since their posisitive effects cannot be scientifically proven, in my opinion, the potential adverse effects far out weigh the subjective benifits."

As a nurse, I can tell you that ALL drugs can not been 'scientifically proven". Oh yes, there are studies but that is not evidence that each person will react the same. My "theory" is that a large percentage of people in this population are going to do what they are going to do-regardless but everyone wants to blame a drug.You are correct, they are handed out like candy,and 'counseling' has gone by the wayside unfortunately. We are a "take a pill to feel better society " as much of the world is.

My biggest problem with you is attacking a person over and over who has had this struggle. I grew up with an alcoholic mother. And a brother who was abusive and mentally ill. I was on my own at 15! I bottled up a lot of crap in my head, saw a 'shrink' who was a total idiot who just stared at me. I was not, as you say, 'bummed out because no one invited me to a prom or something"Finally treatment with Prozac was like a veil lifted and It saved my life and helped me function and go on to reach my potentials as a student, mother, wife and unless you have walked in someone's shoes, just what makes you such an expert that you seem to have a great need to be right when there is no right or wrong here. I repeat, there are many 'walking wounded' and will be more in this abusive society. For you to say the adverse effects outweigh benefits is shows that you are very judgmental and simple minded...life is not black and white, there are shades of gray and you should not try to judge so much. Especially if you are not a doctor or psychologist or have never experienced a true chemical imbalance/clinical depression.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? What came first, the self hatred/fear/denial/hopelessness or the antidepressant?

"It is as scientific as it gets when discussing the mind and mind altering drugs."

Thats the problem is asking someone, who knows nothing about the problem, going to a professional to seek advise then is asked to know whats wrong with them. Technically your not even able to tell whats wrong with them even when they tell you how they feel, so the whole arguement is pretty pointless.

When a real doctor asks you how you feel he does not rely on that evidence along to prescribe you medicine. He is responsbile to have evidence to back up his assertion, which is the way it should be! Theres no problem there, again you just change the subject and repeat your talking points over and over, its VERY obvious.

Your family member either sued that doctor or was a complete idiot for not doing it. Either way asking someone how they feel is not scientific, not even close and your entire argument just a joke at this point. Suck it up and tell your boss you failed no big pharm drugs for the masses! :D

"As a nurse, I can tell you that ALL drugs can not been scientifically proven"

Wrong.

'We are a "take a pill to feel better society " as much of the world is.'

Correct.

"My biggest problem with you is attacking a person over and over who has had this struggle."

Take some pills for that.

I'll judge as I see fit, your personal experiences with drugs is by far not scientific and only holds emotional sway over any individual reading. I am speaking of logic and reason, I am sorry I upset you emotionally. I guess it is to be expected but prozac? Come on, of all the drugs to mention...

Again sorry if I offended you but to me this is FAR too important then to let a little crying shut up what is obviously rational thought to which I have seen absolutely no evidence to say otherwise. And just the opposite in fact, all three arguments against my statements have been nothing but text book thumping while I continue to state new ideas.

FDA pushes drugs on people its fact, the idea that these drugs are some how good for people is insane(excuse the pun):

Even well-intended FDA employees are actively seeking new employment in more meaningful work. Such is the case with Rosemary Johann-Liang, former FDA deputy director of the Division of Drug Risk Evaluation. Last year she was reprimanded for trying to put a black box warning on Avandia, a move the FDA itself made last week in a damage-control effort to cover its complicity with GlaxoSmithKline. After 6 1/2 years Johann-Liang is leaving the FDA.The 10,000 or so laid off Pfizer employees should cheer up, gainful employment for a legion of drug reps will soon be available through spin-off companies of the FDA's Regan-Udall Foundation. Yes indeed, times are a changing.

The Bush administration figured out that the fastest way to get the FDA out of the way of Big Pharma's profits was to appoint FDA critics to key positions, thereby changing the FDA from within. This began in August of 2001 when Bush appointed Daniel Troy as chief counsel of the FDA, a man best known for defending tobacco companies. Mr. Troy invited Big Pharma to submit cases to him so that the FDA could help Big Pharma defeat citizens who were complaining that drugs and medical devices injured them. This has resulted in legal case precedent that ties up damage claim cases indefinitely and creates "trade secret laws" wherein the FDA claims it is legally obligated to withhold drug risks from the public to protect Big Pharma's proprietary knowledge.

Another active critic of the FDA, Scott Gottlieb, M.D., a Wall Street biotech sales rep and member of the American Enterprise Institute was invited into the FDA to rewrite its medical policy. Shortly after that Bush appointed him to the number two position at the FDA, even though he was a young and inexperienced physician with no expertise in drug safety -- just a major agenda to bring unproven drugs to the market with far less safety or effectiveness testing for the benefits of Wall Street.

These appointments were just warm-ups for Bush. His appointment that floored the drug-safety world and sent well-intentioned FDA employees running for cover was the appointment of Andrew von Eschenbach to head the FDA, an appointment that the Senate made permanent in last year's Lame Duck session. The FDA is now headed by a representative of the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. It is informative to understand the chain of events enabling von Eschenbach to attempt his transformation of the FDA into a drug company.

http://www.naturalnews.com/021900.html

I'm done responding on cztheday's remark as mostly everything is overlapping between the 2 posts, anything else can be said in our discussion on my comment.

Patient testimony IS a very important part of ALL medicine . . . anybody involved in medicine will tell you that. As far as suing the doctor, you must be young or not have had much experience in the medical world because that is an incredibly naive statement, incredibly naive . . . and the family member that broke her back was a nurse of some 30 years with a masters degree and runs the dialysis unit of her hospital.

Your logic looks good on paper if it weren't for ignoring my premises that are very much supported by logic and real world evidence. I assert you are wrong for the reasons in my other post.

But again, I'm done on this post, you can catch me on the other.

[edit] it's curious to note that your post which this is a response to, has been deleted.

So much for consolidating the debate onto one post, very polite of you to grant my request . . .

There is more than patient testimony in psychiatry . . . there are correlating physical behavioral disorders like insomnia, OCD tendencies, hell even stress associated high blood pressure and weight loss or gain, etc. and etc.

You have artificially reduced the argument by discounting a lot of data as being invalid . . . and in this context, it is not invalid and you are incorrect in making these presumptions.

If you refuse to see that in this context surrounding the treatment of mental health that there are sources of data that are valid, that would otherwise be invalid in other sciences then this debate is over.

And that fight definitely goes to lucid..!

Debate was over before it started, if you cannot read a persons mind then you do not know the effect of the drug on the mind. The physical behaviors, responses and symptoms do not tell you the persons state of mind they only show you that somehting unknown is happening. You are trying to classify things there is no way to know for certain and each time a person makes a new theory of why someone exhibits a certain behavior he can pretty much take it off the top of his head without any other psudeoscientists being able to disprove it.

That is the problem with fake science and subjective data, there is no true correlation because you can just make it up. Sure if its absurd no one will believe you but if you know what you are doing... from what I understand there is a large problem with that in the industry too.

"You have artificially reduced the argument by discounting a lot of data as being invalid . . . and in this context, it is not invalid and you are incorrect in making these presumptions."

I did not say the data was invalid I said it is subjective and therefor not worth betting a human life on. When you are dealing with quantum mechanics yes it is subjective and beyond useful but that does not involve the death and brain damage of human beings either, we are talking ethics here as well.

Explain how drugs get on the market that kill people if your evidence is so great and scientifically sound? Given that drugs do make it to the market that kill people the next logical train of thought would be that there are drugs on the market that dont kill people but do effect them adversly. Once again proving my point, that the mind altering drugs are not worth the risk they pose to our society.

"There is more than patient testimony in psychiatry . . . there are correlating physical behavioral disorders like insomnia, OCD tendencies, hell even stress associated high blood pressure and weight loss or gain, etc. and etc."
All three isomnia, OCD and stress are all both behavioral AND mental issues. The behavior can be solved because you can monitor the reaction to the drug, that is not to say there wont be adverse mental effects on the patient due to the type of drug used to treat them. And it does not mean that you solved the direct cause of any of the problems. Just because the behavior was able to be corrected does not necessarily mean any of the mental issues were solved. Kinda like a quick fix, throw some tape on a pipe and look it works... but the leak is still there.

I think you forgot to mention those correlations are based on subjective data and psudeoscience which is my whole point. Fake science is not worth risking human life on, there are other ways to deal with mental illness then shoving drugs down their throat to just shuts them up (stop the behavior)... you have absolutely no proof they do anything besides change physical responses to stimuli other then the crazy person saying they feel better, which if you hand them an opium pipe they would say the same thing.

To those of you who continued on with this thread within a thread long after I went to bed last night, I commend you for your tenacity. I stopped reading Lord's responses at about the point I posted something having to do with swimming the English Channel. I could tell he was "hearing" me up to that point (because he included citations to my posts in his replies), but I don't know if he ever DID "listen" to me.

I DID, however, read the other replies by lucid, barbara3d, and that lovely young lady whose icon bears two heads (which are, after all, better than one). Since your posts seemed generally to agree with mine, I guess it is probably a bit self-serving of me to applaud them. Nonetheless, you all seemed eminently reasonable, and lucid was absolutely TIRELESS.

From bits and pieces of YOUR replies, I gather that Lord continued attacking me on the grounds that because I suffered from depressions in the past, I was (and AM) deranged -- the product of being rejected at the prom or some such. First, that whole line of "argument" simply underscores my comments about how people who suffer from depression become the victims of discrimination. Like the vast majority of people who suffer from depression, I was NOT also neurotic or psychotic. I did not have "mother" issues or "rejection" issues.

Until I was about 22, I barely knew what depression was. I grew up in a poor but loving family. I was blessed with a good mind and became determined at a very early age to make the most of it. By the time I was in the 8th grade, I was given a battery of tests by my junior high and the results indicated that I should skip the remainder of junior high and high school and begin my freshman year of college at the age of 13. A delegation from the school tried to persuade my Mom to let them move me to a local university because they simply didn't know what else to do with me. She refused, so they created a curriculum just for me that I pursued while my classmates did whatever it was that they did.

I had many, many friends. I was not particularly handsome, but I had a good sense of humor and good paying part-time jobs that ALSO started when I was 13. So dating was never a problem, and I attended every single formal dance or prom or sadie hawkins dance or whatever all through junior high and high school. I won an academic scholarship to a very good school, graduated, and went on to a very good law school.

Shortly after I moved to Seattle, however, I came down with a respiratory virus. No big deal, I thought, I have been sick before. I will be well in a few days, maybe a week, and life will be good again. Six months later, I had not improved to any noticeable degree. My blood chemistry was all screwed up, and I could barely climb a flight of stairs without stooping to hold my knees and gasp for breath. At the same time, I was trying to get through law school -- the pressure was intense. I became depressed.

Another depression hit me two years later after the death of someone very close to me. The final one came shortly after I was told that none of the currently available medications for the Chronic Rheumatoid Arthritis with which I was diagnosed at age 35 were working for me, so my only recourse was a steroidal medication called Prednisone and Advil. I have been depression-free for over 10 years now. I have a lovely and loving wife, two pretty teriffic kids, and a successful private practice. And I have friends all over the country. I have much for which to be grateful, so I try to do 5-10 hours of volunteer work each month to "balance the scales" a little.

In the vast majority of patients (not all) anti-depressants work. And they save countless lives every single day. Those are facts. They are open to debate to the same extent the proposition that "the sky looks blue to human eyes" is a fact open to debate.

Thanks, folks (I hope I didn't bore you to tears!).

"In the vast majority of patients (not all) anti-depressants work. And they save countless lives every single day."

The only proof of this is the physical behavior the patient exhibits, that does not mean that the orginal mental illness has been solved. There is no way to know for sure if the person suffers from other mental illnesses as a result of the drugs or if there even was a problem in the first place.

Your logic is based on an ideology that says we are able to measure a person's illness based on asking the subject questions (Subjective not scientific) and monitoring the subject's behavior (Scientific but meaningless when talking purely about mental issues). The subject may or may not answer truthfully intentionally or not, this is why it is not scientific evidence but rather a subjective opinion.

If you are not able to know what the person is thinking then for all you know you are making the problem worse by giving them drugs. If the person acts "Normal" based on your standards that just means the drug is causing them to behave normally not that the persons illness has been cured. Without scientnific proof that it works you are just using people as lab rats and that is just ethically wrong.

Grab any mind altering drug and I bet the person will "Feel" better. Lobotomy has a most definate physical effect and the subject will "Feel" great but we all know that it is very unethical to do either of these yet you defend something relatively similar.

When Lobotomy was used on people the same reasons were given that you are giving me right now. It is much more likely that the intended mental effect will NOT be what you want even when you are able to get the desired behavior and "feeling" from the drugs in question here. As far as other drugs that are not mind altering, have at it... lots of scientific proof there instead of all this subjective data that frankly allows you to make any correlation without being able to prove it wrong or right. Its an opinion not a fact, scientific processes are not involved with this type of pyschology.

It seems that if you prescribed any of these drugs that would indicate you are involved with these pharm companies making your opinion fairly bias. I do not think you are in a good posistion to be objective about this topic given that you said you even used these kinds of drugs yourself.

Lastly the amount of friends you can get to comment on a thread does not make giving people a drug ,without knowing the mental effects on the mind, morally, ethically or scientifically correct.

Here Here, Im with you brother!

How long is it gona take for people to understand that there is no way to read minds, theres no evidence to support any facts that support the posisitive mental effects of these drugs other then the physical behaviors. Hell we could give people opium and watch them veg out to solve the problem but we KNOW thats not a good idea... or do we?

Anyways the point is that we shouldnt be giving these people drugs they have mental issues not health issues. Lets address the problem not throw money at pills that cause so many other problems without hard evidence to support the claims it actually helps other then, again, their physical behaviors.

Its like giving pain medicine for a broken leg. It does solve the symptoms for a period of time but does not address the problem and does not have the ability to deal with such a complex thing as the human mind.

I would agree that Behavioral Psychology should be avenue number one in my personal opinion, but it can not cure everything. Some people have very real chemical imbalances that require medication.

Also, medication can be a very helpful tool in psychological therapy; but, it's up to the practitioner to prescribe it correctly an responsibly.

And if you want to know how it effects a person's mental state . . . than you ask them how it makes them feel. They have large clinical studies to determine what are the reactions to people's mental states, and obviously the results vary. It's not rocket science though.

If you want to say that society relies to much on medication, then I would agree. But, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater by making sweeping generalizations about pharmaceuticals.

How do you prove that "a chemical imbalance" actually is the cause of the persons mental issue to give them the drug in the first place. If there was not a chemical imbalance and you introduced drugs that changed that balance that is supposidly so very important then you may actually cause the problem you were trying to prevent. Therefor if you do not know what will happen to the person you are giving the drug to you should not give it to them TBH. Thats not just my opinion if you look above there are many dead from this obvious problem.

Like in all medicine, they make a diagnosis from the evidence they gather.

Doctors are never 100% certain of the disease they are treating before the prescribe an antibiotic. They gather evidence from listening to the patient and looking for matching symptoms . Doctors treat from a most likely cause premise and then work their way down the list if the previous diagnosis is correct. There is often not 100% certainty in ANY branch of medicine.

Psychiatrists gather evidence through a healthy doctor-patient relationship where the patient discloses facts about their life and mental state.

That's how it works, it's not perfect, but nor are other branches of western medicine.

AGAIN the difference is with a pill that is suppose to improve physical health there is a way to measure. With mental health there is no measurement that is even acurate enough to tell you what the problem is or even if there is one in the first place muchless if the medication worked or not.

It's not a mathematical quantitative measurement, but it is a subjective qualitative measurement. Psychiatrists are supposed to be trained to be able to work within those parameters.

Thank you for admitting it atleast. They have no clue, is what you are saying. In otherwords they are just guessing whats wrong and how to fix it, no science involved there just a hope, a wish and a dream. Lets make you the one to tell that to all the families of people who died in the 13+ school shootings involving these medication that 'they are doing the best they can'.

In my opinion if you dont know what the drug helps or not then just dont give them the drug! Sounds like there are other motives involved to me.

Apparently you confuse subjective qualitative measurements with blindly shooting in the dark. They DO have a clue. Perhaps not a perfect understanding, but they have a workable understanding.

This argument of lack of 100% certainty is the same argument levied by creationists against evolutionary theory, btw.

"They DO have a clue. Perhaps not a perfect understanding, but they have a workable understanding."

I think they owe alittle more then a "clue" to the families of all the people who died in those 13 schools above.

As far as 100% certainy I'd be happy with 60% but there is no way to even tell what percentage we're talking about here because its entirely non-scientific. I dont understand how my arguement FOR the scientific process equates to creationism ideology? You do realize psychology itself has occult origins and if either side needs to defend itself in this argument it would be about that since Ive not mentioned religion except when someone else brings it up to dispute my logic. If i were to argue the non-scientific side, honestly it would have to be thinking you can read someones mind to prescribe them a medication that you think worked...

Any other doctor would be required to have a certain chance of success before giving the person medication and would be held accountable if that did not happen. So tell me how many mistakes have you heard about with regards to anti-depressents? OH NONE REALLY? Im so surprised maybe because they dont know what it is doing to the persons brain?

Honestly I do not think it is this hard to understand, you are here for a reason :)

If you want a percentage you would have to take the data of all the patients from a psychiatrist and then rate them on what percentage of their patients have made improvements in their life vs which ones that haven't. It's subjective and qualitative, but it IS a measurement.

As for the people that were not helped appropriately, that is the psychiatrists fault and I would levy the charge of malpractice against them . . . IF it is shown that the drug was the cause of the meltdown.

People also meltdown due to their own conscious conclusions from time to time, it's not always the drug's influence.

"It's subjective and qualitative, but it IS a measurement."

Its not a scientific measurement is my point and you agree I am guessing. That is my dispute, it has no basis in our scientific community therefor should be religated to "Spirtual Healing" instead of mainstream where they are given drugs that obviously cause problems.

If you think drugs dont cause problems, helping the patient or not, then you are just babbling idiocy at this point. Since its effectiveness cannot be proven scientifically then its pretty much just a harmful substance and should be banned accordingly unless you want to legalize all drugs of course but thats a whole other issue.

You are forgetting that pharmacology is not a pseudo science. Pharmaceuticals do have a very real physical effect on the brain which in turn effects the mind . . . this isn't even in the same genre as "spiritual healing" which operates entirely on a placebo effect.

Drugs CAN cause problems . . . but the question is do they solve more problems then they cause. Judging from the disparity between the millions that are treated without incident vs the handful of "possible" incidents mixed in with a handful of legitimate incidents . . . then I say this is a worthwhile tradeoff.

It's the same type of tradeoff we make when getting behind the wheel of the car. Yes there are problems with accidents, but the overriding benefit is far superior to the 45,800 people that died and the $625.5 billion lost as a result to automobile accidents in the year 2005 alone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_accident

"Pharmaceuticals do have a very real physical effect on the brain which in turn effects the mind"

Once again... you cannot measure if the drug has a posisitive effect on the brain.

As far as incidents go... look pretty damn bad to me and these are just the ones that are most noticable. Its like an old run down house, you see one roach you know theres a million more you didnt see(good analogy for pharm industry). Your arguement is weak at best, sorry.Trading lives is not a good idea, especially when you are doing it irrationally with no scientific proof to support your asertion.

Pyschology is similar to spiritual healing because it is an occult science, they both have the same origins. Which I am not against either, if it helps people great. What I strongly disagree with is giving people pills that obviously have adverse effects without doing scientific research on the benifits involved.

Yes you CAN measure if it has a positive effect . . . all you have to do is ask someone. They have entire case studies to determine if a drug has a positive effect by asking people how it effects their state of mind. (this is pharmacology, which is NOT a pseudoscience)

If you can't accept that, then I give up on you. You constantly point to patient deception when that is not the norm.

Psychology did have occult origins. However, science once had occult origins as well, consider alchemy for example or even astrology. Analysis of past properties is moot, the only relevant analysis is the current state of it today. As it stands, psychology/psychiatry is an IMPROVING pseudoscience that DOES yield positive results.

When it gets down to it, your disagreement is not whether or not drugs if able to be used effectively, should be used; but, that psychiatrists are unable to effectively evaluate a patient's mental state and in turn are unable to determine the drug's effectiveness.

I disagree with that statement on the grounds of the millions of people that get treated successfully vs the few that have meltdowns. I don't have the hard figures for that comparison, but then again neither do you.

Also, if you are uncomfortable with the tradeoff of greater benefit at the expense of possible harm, then you should honestly sell your car.

"You constantly point to patient deception when that is not the norm."

My point is that the person you are asking is not a professional, they are coming to a professional to seek help meaning they have ignorance on the subject already. Secondly the person can incorrectly answer on mistake, you are assuming a person knows whats best for themselves but they have mental issues already and you are just taking their word for it? Thats very hard to swallow... scientifically speaking. Even if it wasnt the "norm", as you put it, how would you even know they were lying at all to find out what is normal, that arguement is inept in itself?

Your evidence of so called "millions of people being treated successfully" is entirely based on monitoring the behavior of the individuals and not their state of mind. You can chop peoples brains up to solve the problem too but that doesnt make it right.

I disagree with having to drive a car but have little choice other then public transportation which needs to be improved MUCH more before its actually viable but I do drive safely thanks. More likely to die in a car then anything for sure!

Yes I know we have shifted away from alchemy and astrology, the point was that you cant judge something by its roots. Psychology has moved away from the Freudian psycho-babble into a more rational pseudoscience of behavioral psychology. So judging psychology from it's origins is a false argument.

Back to the point:
Psychiatrists monitor the state of mind by asking the patients how does the medication effect their state of mind.

Pharmacology case studies use the same data collection technique of asking the patients how the medication effects their state of mind. Pharmacology is a valid science and this data IS appropriate in this context.

If you are to refute that as relevant data in this context then there isn't anywhere to go from here in a logical discussion.

You find weakness in my argument over 2 premises:
1) That a patient's testimony to their state of mind is invalid data in regards to pharmacology, psychology, and psychiatry.

Which leads to:
2) A psychiatrist is not able to make subjective and qualitative assessments and appropriately use those assessments for treatment.

Patient testimony is valid data in this field as it is used extensively in pharmacology, and that IS a completely valid science.

Using this patient testimony and other subjective tools, psychiatrists are able to make qualitative assessments into a person's mental state in order to give an appropriate diagnosis.

Diagnosis won't always be correct as we will find out by treatments not working, not improving the state of mind and behavior of the patient. Then like any other medical practitioner, the psychiatrist will have to re-diagnose the patient to find out what is wrong.

When it comes to the mind, nothing is black and white . . . hence the need for subjective data.

Yes, it is alien to the mathematical sciences that we champion as the true sciences. But, in this circumstance it is a working model that is improving . . . and that alone is a science-esque. (but still not quite science)

If you do not accept the logic behind those 2 premises then there really is nowhere to go from here. Otherwise, it has been nice to actually have a logical exchange for once, even if there is disagreement on the validity of the premises.

"Yes I know we have shifted away from alchemy and astrology, the point was that you cant judge something by its roots. Psychology has moved away from the Freudian psycho-babble into a more rational pseudoscience of behavioral psychology. So judging psychology from it's origins is a false argument."

Merely pointing out that if anyone has to defend themselves from a religious rather then scientific point of view it would be pyschology. Since of the three mentioned it is the only one in mainstream science. My main point was that it is a pseudoscience and created before the idea of the scientific method, which is obviously not being used today either or we would be having a rational discussion about how we are reading brains from MRI and helping people with mental illnesses based on facts rather then mere speculation.

"Patient testimony is valid data in this field as it is used extensively in pharmacology, and that IS a completely valid science."

Asking someone how they "feel" is scientific only when talking about pseudoscience or "false science" I guess? I bet your family member whishes that doctor took an x-ray instead of using pseudoscience to incorrectly diagnose them?

"Using this patient testimony and other subjective tools, psychiatrists are able to make qualitative assessments into a person's mental state in order to give an appropriate diagnosis."

Given the fact that people are killing other people after having taken these drugs I do not think it is appropriate unless we can have more HARD evidence that it actually works.

"Diagnosis won't always be correct as we will find out by treatments not working, not improving the state of mind and behavior of the patient."

A real doctor can take an x-ray or use other scientific instruments to discover the problem, at which point if he makes a mistake he can be held liable. Whereas the psychiatrist will not be held liable because there is no scientific way to diagnose the problem therefor when another psychiatrist looks at his work it is entirely SUBJECTIVE. Saying that shooting in the dark is good enough because its all we got will not cut it. I dont see how you can prove any mind altering drug is actually having the intended effect. It is much much much more likely you are not having the intended effect even if you get the desired behavior.

"Yes, it is alien to the mathematical sciences that we champion as the true sciences. But, in this circumstance it is a working model that is improving . . . and that alone is a science-esque. (but still not quite science) "

Not good enough when we're talking about people's lives here, yes maybe if you experiment on lab rats but these are people you monster!

Again we're not just talking about science but also people's lives which is why I think it is EVEN MORE important that we know FOR SURE what these drugs are doing to people's brains not just the behaviors they exhibit and the way they "say they feel".

LoL, you don't need to explain the axioms of science to me as I use many of those constants. The universe is finite and nothing in it is infinite, hence plank's length and time. Hell, I would even argue that some dimensionless constants like pi are dimensionless because the spatial dimensions cancel out through division. It's geometric in nature obviously, but if you applied the dimensions it would be a radial spatial dimension divided by a cartesian spatial dimension . . . yielding a dimensionless constant . . . however it's use is still to translate spatial dimensions from radial form to cartesian form, which would make this dimensionless constant still pertaining to spatial dimensions . . . that is unless you are working in purely abstract mathematical models outside the realm of the boundaries of the universe, then it's just geometric in nature. If you really wanted to learn things, I could outline theorems that aren't even published yet. LoL, you're preaching to the quire son.

I really digressed . . .

Anywho, this is the reason why psychiatry is a pseudo-science, because it is NOT black and white . . . there are far to many subjective variables for it ever to be a science. But that doesn't make the practice invalid within it's own context.

Pharmacology IS a science and it works on probabilities. It is OK for a science to work on probabilities, quantum physics is BASED on probabilities.

Psychiatry is the "art" of bringing pharmacology to the individual patient, in the attempt to work past the probabilities to an individualized solution. This IS a valid practice, regardless if you want to call it a science or not . . . that label is IRRELEVANT.

Your arguments would be correct if someone was trying to assert that psychiatry/psychology are a science. However I am not. If you can move past that simple argument and look at the arguments for the premise I present in the context of a pseudo-science then MAYBE you might see that it actually makes logical sense.

The practices of psychiatry and psychology DO yield ACTUAL results, even if they are not scientific ones. As much as I hate to say it, there is a world outside of science.

Christ, when I was in school I never thought I'd be arguing in defense of a pseudo-science . . . but your logic is just wrong and it's wrong through false comparative reasoning by comparing psychology to science.

You can either re-evaluate or you can continue using a false comparison of standards and ignore real world results over being blinded by a handful of incidents that may or may not even be caused by medication in the first place. Your argument is far to simple and clean cut, and it does not fit in regards to mental therapy.

Either way, I've made my case and this has become far to repetitive . . . so good night.

One last thought, Aristotle's "scientific method" was designed for more than just our core objective sciences. It was originally designed for philosophy and other subjective pursuits of knowledge . . . and before Aristotle there were the seeds of psychology which is true, but there was also the seeds of science . . . after all the Greeks were already relatively technologically advanced.

So your statement of comparison is in essence wrong. If you want to use comparative reasoning . . . you would do well to have a good grasp of the facts.

"You can either re-evaluate or you can continue using a false comparison of standards and ignore real world results over being blinded by a handful of incidents that may or may not even be caused by medication in the first place."

Thats the point right there, we dont know if they were or were not caused by these drugs because we dont have proper science involved in the mental illness pharm industry.

"The practices of psychiatry and psychology DO yield ACTUAL results, even if they are not scientific ones. As much as I hate to say it, there is a world outside of science."

I agree it yeilds results. The question is when do you know with a high level of certainy a pill will have an adverse effect on a persons mental state of mind, long term or short term? So that you can then know if it should be prescribed or not. In this context I believe the amount of reliability on a pseudoscience to judge the effects of drugs on the brain is by far inept.

If we are talking about lab rats... results sure thats fine the rats die we get new ones. When you're talking about people (WHICH WE ARE) then the relavence of the reliability SHOULD be extremely important and by giving the entire field creditability you are enabling a potentially hazardous plague of self-induced mental illness onto humanity.

"before Aristotle there were the seeds of psychology which is true, but there was also the seeds of science"

Oh yes seeds of pyschologists around 387 BCE, I believe Plato was the first one to suggest it, Aristotle thought the brain was in the heart. Scientists came more then a thousand years later around 965, an aribic man named Alhazen. I am sure pyschology was ment to be a science and history just forgot to call it that... right.

And again you confuse pharmacology with psychiatry.

I'm also done hearing about your "high probabilities of adverse effects" argument without seeing numbers. The % chance of adverse effects are published in every PDR (physicians desk reference, as you are probably unfamiliar) . . . and these are accurate probabilities used by all medical doctors.

So if you want to make the argument of "high % chance of adverse effects", then it's time for you to back that up with numbers.

That's your homework for tonight, class dismissed.

"And again you confuse pharmacology with psychiatry."

The discussion is centered around these drugs, their effects on the mind and how you can measure them within safe limits to individuals taking them not if pharmacology is a science or not you are just merely distracting the subject to aid your pay check.

'I'm also done hearing about your "high probabilities of adverse effects" argument without seeing numbers. The % chance of adverse effects are published in every PDR'

Physicians' Desk Reference has the same problem, they are not able to test the mental effects on the patients without subjective data, which means they will not have scientific results for these types of drugs. Any chance of adverse effects which cannot be picked up by the PDR would be enough for us to, at the very least, question the relavence of the benifits verse the POTENTIAL adverse effects. Neigher benificial nor adverse effects on the mind can be measured without entirely unscientific and inaccurate results. Any results gained would be purely subjective and thus not enough to put my life on the line, I dont know about you.

Thus once again people should not be the lab rats for big pharm companies.

If I were to understand the potiential harm to our society these drugs may cause and speak as you do, I would not be able to sleep, even with a big fat pharm industry pay check... sleep well and if you cant because of your concionous then dont take pills just quit and fix it!

Seriously, the "scary big pharma" and the "you must be on the payroll" arguments is a major retreat in logic for you. I do not work in any field even remotely related to pharmacology or even in the mental health field for that matter. To assume otherwise, is silly.

Since we failed to do our homework, I have brought the answers to class today. Today's lesson, Prozac:

Below you will find a less the 1% probability that the drug will cause mania or even hypomania. Making this drug a valid candidate for therapeutic purposes. This data is collected from a double blind study consisting of over 10,000 patients. This is as the science of pharmacology, this is not a pseudo science in any way shape or form.

To deny these findings is to demonstrate fully how little you understand this scientific subject. To say that these studies are invalid, is to remove any doubt if you are a scientist or mere an enthusiast with a "we can not know" philosophy.

Furthermore, if a patient in the study is able to report these effects to the researchers, then it would be folly to assume that the patient could not or would not report the effects to a psychiatrist . . . making it within the psychiatrists ability to monitor the well being of the patient's physical and mental health.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.oralchelation.net/data/Lilly/lilly3.htm

PRECAUTIONS:

General

ANXIETY AND INSOMNIA--In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for depression, 12% to 16% of patients treated with Prozac and 7% to 9% of patients treated with placebo reported anxiety, nervousness, or insomnia.

In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for obsessive-compulsive disorder, insomnia was reported in 28% of patients treated with Prozac and in 22% of patients treated with placebo. Anxiety was reported in 14% of patients treated with Prozac and in 7% of patients treated with placebo.

In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for bulimia nervosa, insomnia was reported in 33% of patients treated with Prozac, 60 mg, and 13% of patients treated with placebo. Anxiety and nervousness were reported respectively in 15% and 11% of patients treated with Prozac, 60 mg, and in 9% and 5% of patients treated with placebo.

Among the most common adverse events associated with discontinuation in US placebo-controlled fluoxetine clinical trials were anxiety (

(PDR on Prozac precautions continued)

ALTERED APPETITE AND WEIGHT--Significant weight loss, especially in underweight depressed or bulimic patients, may be an undesirable result of treatment with Prozac.

In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for depression, 11% of patients treated with Prozac and 2% of patients treated with placebo reported anorexia (decreased appetite). Weight loss was reported in 1.4% of patients treated with Prozac and in 0.5% of patients treated with placebo. However, only rarely have patients discontinued treatment with Prozac because of anorexia or weight loss.

In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for OCD, 17% of patients treated with Prozac and 10% of patients treated with placebo reported anorexia (decreased appetite). One patient discontinued treatment with Prozac because of anorexia.

In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for bulimia nervosa, 8% of patients treated with Prozac, 60 mg, and 4% of patients treated with placebo reported anorexia (decreased appetite). Patients treated with Prozac, 60 mg, on average lost 0.45 kg compared with a gain of 0.16 kg by patients treated with placebo in the 16-week double-blind trial. Weight change should be monitored during therapy.

ACTIVATION OF MANIA/HYPOMANIA--In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for depression, mania/hypomania was reported in 0.1% of patients treated with Prozac and 0.1% of patients treated with placebo. Activation of mania/hypomania has also been reported in a small proportion of patients with Major Affective Disorder treated with marketed antidepressants.

In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for OCD, mania/hypomania was reported in 0.8% of patients treated with Prozac and no patients treated with placebo. No patients reported mania/hypomania in US placebo-controlled clinical trials for bulimia. In all US Prozac clinical trials, 0.7% of 10,782 patients reported mania/hypomania.

SEIZURES--In US placebo-controlled clinical trials for depression, convulsions (or events described as possibly having been seizures) were reported in 0.1% of patients treated with Prozac and 0.2% of patients treated with placebo. No patients reported convulsions in US placebo-controlled clinical trials for either OCD or bulimia. In all US Prozac clinical trials, 0.2% of 10,782 patients reported convulsions. The percentage appears to be similar to that associated with other marketed antidepressants. Prozac should be introduced with care in patients with a history of seizures.

SUICIDE--The possibility of a suicide attempt is inherent in depression and may persist until significant remission occurs. Close supervision of high risk patients should accompany initial drug therapy. Prescriptions for Prozac should be written for the smallest quantity of capsules consistent with good patient management, in order to reduce the risk of overdose.

I agree with all the physcial problems of the study but I feel they fail to address any long term and short term mental illnesses associated with the drugs that may not have shown physical manifestations.

You are saying that because these studies show that prozac and other drugs only have a small amount of mental illness related adverse effects is pretty blinded. Once again this study would involve asking the patience and studying their behavior, just as before it is subject data and could change depending on the weather that day.

When you say "we will never know" that is untrue. I am not advocating that the human race will never have the ability to see into a person's mind. What I am saying is untill you can truely know more about an individual other then asking them "How they feel" and the behaviors they exhibit you are pretty much guessing.

That is still psudeoscience because the scientific process that is being used is flawed at the point where it assumes all mental illnesses will exhbit behaviors and within the time frame given for the study. Not to mention when you are talking about a group of 10,000 people you have no clue what will happen when released onto millions of people since each person has their own reaction to the drug. The idea that we can control a persons mind without even knowing what is happening is just ridiculous.

Pharmaceutical industry profits in 2002 alone were 36 billion never mind 2009. I wonder if thats enough to hire someone to type for a few scraps of food during a recession? I bet you arent gona be against single payer but your buddy suddenly appears who is... its just obvious ok. Maybe you guys should try not to give it away but thats not your style I know.

http://www.citizen.org/documents/Pharma_Report.pdf

Also many of the problem that are given pills are very common and happen to almost everyone at some point in their life, to what degree is absolute unmeasurable to any reasonable degree of accuracy and also have treatments which do not involve taking mind altering drugs. These types of things people have lived with for a very long time without dying and living reasonablely comfortable after it subsides. The problem is that many times these are caused because the person is already taking other mind altering drugs and the doctor, caring only about his pay check, is all too happy to keep dishing out the pills. In a society that rewards harming those around you, allowing such pills with unknown pyschological effects to be in the public domain is extremely unethical, not to mention very irresponsible. To argue that they have a reasonable understanding and therefor it is "Good enough" does not cut it when there is a high chance there are many adverse effects that do not show manifest physically or in the questions asked by the shrink.

Jay S. Cohen M.D. -

From almost the day that they were introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, sudden, unexpected suicides and homicides have been reported in patients taking serotonin-enhancing antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. I'm not surprised this problem hasn't disappeared, nor will it unless we look deeper.

I never hesitate to say that these drugs -- selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) -- help millions of people. But any drug that can cause positive changes in people's brains can also cause negative ones unless care is taken to avoid it. We do not take such care. So it was no surprise to me when, in August 2003, more headlines appeared. These were based on reports by British authorities and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about unpublished studies showing an increased risk of suicide in children and teenagers taking Paxil (1-3).

Prior reports of suicidal and homicidal acts in adults taking SSRIs have been explained away by drug industry defenders and mainstream doctors, who claim that suicide is common in depression anyway. And that no type of antidepressant helps everyone. Some depressed patients don't get better and choose suicide. That's true sometimes, unfortunately. But these reports describe more impulsive, violent acts than expected. As I said fifteen years ago at the time of the first reports and again in Over Dose in 2001 (4), SSRIs could create a unique combination of side effects that might severely impair judgment and impulse control. This has been described by others as well (5-16).

Psychosis After Three Days of Treatment
One of my first cases with Prozac involved a 35 year-old woman with a job and family, who had a mild depression with no suicidal tendencies. This changed after just three days on Prozac, when she became acutely psychotic. Any psychiatrist will tell you that excessive doses of antidepressants can cause brain dysfunctions including disorientation, confusion, and cognitive disturbances. This was commonly seen with old-time antidepressants like Elavil and Tofranil (17). But more than the older drugs, SSRIs can also cause a severe degree of agitation or restlessness that may become intolerable and reduce impulse control (5-6A). Impulsive behavior, especially if coupled with impaired cognitive functioning, can be dangerous.

Antidepressants can also trigger similar, manic-like symptoms in people whose depression is part of a manic-depressive syndrome, which often gets overlooked when people are given SSRIs. "Some of these individuals may have serious adverse reactions to antidepressants including irritability, aggression, and mania," wrote Dr. Ronald Pies, professor of psychiatry at Tufts University (18).

http://www.medicationsense.com/articles/oct_dec_03/suicides_homicides.html

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Please note how long this doctor has been fighting the pharmaceutical industry. It was wrote in 2003 and he had already been fighting this battle for over 13 years! You're telling me that they just rolled over and everything is fine? Come on!

LOL, to continue the assertion that I'm on the payroll is absolutely silly and shows a resignation of failure. If you look at any of my posts, they all hold to the same logical patterns.

You ignore the evidence and the data, and there is no more of a logical argument I can make to an irrational mind. You REALLY do not understand this field at all my friend.

Not all sciences have the same standards for what is usable in data collection techniques and they are not all going to be mathematical. "History" for example is even on the verge of becoming scientific when you analyze the work of Jared Diamond.

You live in a very narrowly defined world of what is acceptable scientific findings and what is not . . . and the scientific community would not agree with you on pharmacology.

After 20 some posts, I'm done. As I'm sure you would agree, there is really nothing left to say to person whose mind is set in its ways. It's been fun, good luck with everything, and I'll see you around. =)

Knowing all of the mental side effects is impossible and the people doing the research are bias towards the pharm industry which means there is no accountability when they make a mistake.

When it comes to a persons life I want the scientific process to rule over this nonesense about "subjective" data, which means you can just pretty much make it up as you go along without anyone being able to say your "subjective" opinion was a criminal act. If you want to cling to such irrational data and still call yourself logical then you shouldnt wonder why I question your integrity.

Obviously you are basing your opinion about subjective data on the notion that the pharmaceutical researcher is going to tell the truth as well, even when he is most likely getting money under the table for his lack of effort. This is yet ANOTHER glaring reason to be very careful if you take ANY mind altering drugs. the Pharmaceutical industry does not have to try very hard to manipulate research when the data is just subjective anyways. This proves that trying to cure mental illness with a drug is not only deadly but also very profitable.

Here is some more proof of research manipulation by the Pharm industry. The problem with subjective data is you are damned if you do and you are damned if you dont depending on popular opinion which can also be changed as we have seen here although admittedly a very poor effort , in my opinion.

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Clinical Trials Controversy Spotlights Flawed System
Jim Rosack
The ongoing controversy surrounding SSRIs in children is now threatening the very foundations of clinical drug research on the efficacy and safety of all of the drugs physicians prescribe.

Under the frequent—and often hyperbolic—headlines in major newspapers throughout the United States, the debate on whether SSRIs really cause children and adolescents to become suicidal has boiled down to a critical realization: Physicians now face a crisis of confidence in the American-bred system that conducts clinical research and, it would seem, publishes only the most marketable results.,

Physicians in the trenches are beginning to wonder what exactly they really know— or perhaps don't know—about the drugs they are prescribing and how that knowledge base affects what is written on the prescriptions that bear their signatures.

Many of the concerns raised recently have been heard before. In this last year, however, they have risen to a level that seriously challenges physicians' comfort level with prescription drugs. Particularly disconcerting are new allegations that question the integrity of not only the scientific evidence base, but also the system that produces the data and the researchers who analyze it.

In April the British Medical Journal published a paper by Jon Jureidini, M.D., head of the department of psychological medicine at Women's and Children's Hospital in North Adelaide, Australia, and colleagues. The article reviewed the evidence base for efficacy and safety of antidepressants in children and adolescents. The authors included in their review published clinical trials, as well as some unpublished data made public by the U.K. Committee on Safety of Medicines. At best, Jureidini's conclusions were direct and to the point, but by some people's estimation the conclusions seemed inflammatory, with abundant references to the individuals who led the research or wrote the articles, rather than to the research methods, data analysis, or conclusions.

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/14/1

absolutely

To hell with pills, I say if it isnt life threatening then live your f'n life already and stop trying to make a f'n pill make you not have to deal with reality. Why cant we just try to help people through hard times instead of relying on a substances that havent been tested correctly?

If you read... he did stop taking them and that was the problem. These things place a person into an artifical state of mind where they can be lazy and not deal with their actual issues. When the drug stops working the behavior comes flooding back. Imagine if the kid had someone to help him instead of just throwing drugs at him... there was obviously no one who cared about him or they would have known he wasnt going to his meetings.