[cardguy]

Peter Hitchens gives an even shorter overview of his concerns in his latest weekly column.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2...igger.html

Here are the key extracts from a book he has being covering on his blog:

Quote:

He has spoken to a wide selection of experts.

And he shows that most of what we believe about modern mental health medicine is wrong.

I plan to put a much longer review on my blog, but in the end the book’s the thing. You will gasp with amazement at the sheer nerve of the medical profession, as you turn its pages. Here is what it shows:

There is no objective scientific diagnosis (and so no objective treatment) for almost all so-called mental illnesses.

They are defined every few years by a committee, which once described homosexuality as a sickness (and now doesn’t).

It is currently seriously considering creating an illness called ‘Complicated Grief Disorder’, for those who grieve over a bereavement for more than six months.

There is no scientific proof, repeat, none at all, repeat none whatever, for the idea (still believed by millions) that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, though this is the whole basis for most antidepressant prescriptions.

Drug companies control the research into their own products. They fail to publish results that suggest their pills don’t work. They doctor results to make their pills look better than they are.

In most cases, there is no significant difference in effect on depression between antidepressant pills and dummy sugar tablets. But the pills do have potent side effects (often these are most radical when people stop taking them, which is why they should only be given up under medical supervision).

Government regulation of this behaviour is feeble.

Many of the medical experts who recommend these pills, in the media and to other doctors, receive large fees from the drug companies, without disclosing this. Many medical journals gain substantial income from large orders for reprints, which come from the drug companies.

The profits from this industry are colossal.

Doctors who fail to toe the line lose valuable consultancy work, and in one case a leading psychiatrist had the offer of a major professorship withdrawn after he delivered a lecture criticising antidepressants.