ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http:h//www.ahrp.org/cms/

FYI

"Biological psychiatrists have looked very closely for a serotonin imbalance or dysfunction in patients with depression or obsessive compulsive disorder and, to date, it has been elusive," says Dr. Wayne Goodman, Chair of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee.

Psychiatry's drug prescribing practices rest on a myth debunked by Jeffrey Lacasse and Jonathan Leo in their article in PLoS Medicine. Not a single representative of mainstream psychiatry has come forward to rebut them.

Lacasse and Leo lay out the case against psychiatry's bedrock justification for prescribing psychotropic drugs. For decades psychiatry's leadership and chorus of followers have claimed that depression is caused by a "chemical imbalance" in the brain, and that SSRI antidepressants normalize that "chemical imbalance."

But such claims have been overturned In the absence of evidence. As Lacasse and Leo have shown, not a single peer reviewed article validates the theory of a chemical or biological marker abnormality in persons diagnosed with depression--or, for that matter with any psychiatric disorder.

Thus, neurologist, Dr. Frederick Baughman argues, in the absence of a confirmed disease, no medical intervention is justified.

Evidence does exist showing that the drugs have serious adverse effects which, for some individuals, cause permanent damage.

Furthermore, some of the prescribed drugs are controlled class II substances--which means they are highly addictive!

We are led to ask: What is the justification for giving psychiatrists a license to prescribe psychotropic drugs in the absence of evidence that:

1. A pathological abnormality is present;
2. The prescribed intervention (drug) is proven safe;
3. The intervention is proven effective to treat the pathology;
4. The benefit / risk ratio is favorable for those for whom it is prescribed.

See: Jeffrey R. Lacasse, Jonathan Leo. Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature, PLoS Medicine, Dec 2005 at:

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/...

See also: http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/67/94/

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org


I think that the psychiatric industry is in need of an enema. This should start things rolling.

ML,

Leonard