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[sSRI-Research] Washington Post: Calif. Hunger Strike Challenges Use of

Antidepressants

 

Raising Doubts About Drugs

Calif. Hunger Strike Challenges Use of Antidepressants

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1957-2003Aug

29.html

 

By Kimberly Edds

Special to The Washington Post

Saturday, August 30, 2003; Page A08

 

PASADENA, Calif., Aug. 29 -- After two weeks, four mental health

advocates are still on a hunger strike, protesting the widespread

use of prescription drugs to treat mental illnesses and

challenging psychiatrists to document their rationale for

prescribing them.

 

 

Over the last few decades, doctors have embraced the view that

depression, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses result

from imbalances in brain chemistry, and they have treated such

illnesses with drugs intended to rebalance that chemistry. In

recent years, the use of antidepressant drugs has grown

dramatically in the United States, with the number of

prescriptions nearly doubling since 1998, according to the

pharmaceutical consulting company IMS Health.

 

As more people turn to antidepressants, mental health experts

and patient advocates are beginning to raise questions about

side effects and the potential for addiction.

 

The strikers are calling on some of the strongest voices in the

psychiatric profession, including the American Psychiatric

Association and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, to

provide concrete evidence that mental illnesses are the result of

brain chemistry imbalances. They also want to call attention to

alternative treatments.

 

" Millions of people are signing up for these prescriptions

because they are convinced they have a chemical imbalance.

But there is not one piece of evidence that can back that up, " said

David Oaks, executive director of MindFreedom Support Coalition

International, or SCI, an organization of current and former

psychiatric patients that organized the strike.

 

A spokesman for the American Psychiatric Association referred a

reporter to a letter the association's medical director, James H.

Scully, wrote to Oaks on Aug. 12. " In recent years, there has been

substantial progress in understanding the neuroscientific basis

of many mental illnesses, " it said. " Research offers hope and

must continue. "

 

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) did not respond to

several requests to comment, but Oaks made available an

e-mail he received today from Rick Birkel, NAMI's national

executive director.

 

" NAMI has never stated to my knowledge that 'mental disorders

are caused exclusively by biological factors,' " it said. " Instead,

we are saying that biological or genetic vulnerability appears to

be pre-requisite to serious mental disorder. "

 

Birkel added that " mental disorders result from complex

interactions of many factors, including environmental forces,

stress, personality, social support, illness and injury. "

 

Birkel's e-mail reflects a growing consensus in the psychiatric

establishment. Most psychiatrists say that complex mental

disorders are like arthritis and other chronic physical ailments --

no less real because they cannot be spotted with laboratory

tests.

 

The hunger strikers, who include three former mental patients,

said that the responses were not satisfactory and that they

wanted a study and a diagnostic lab test that proves the

connection. Until then, they plan to continue their protest.

 

They began with six hunger strikers, but two, including Oaks, left

because of health difficulties. The remaining four have been

downing daily a dark red brew of juices from garlic, beets, kale

and carrots, and spending their time answering supporters'

e-mails and making phone calls to media outlets.

 

Hunger striker David Gonzalez said he spent two years confined

in an inpatient facility after being diagnosed with major

depression and, later, manic depression, and that he was

forcibly drugged during that time. He said the drugs impaired his

eyesight and memory.

 

" When someone has cancer, they don't lock the door behind

them, and they show them the tests, " Gonzalez said. " But when

someone has a mental illness, they lock the door behind them

and show them no tests. When they lock that door behind me, I

want to know why. "

 

Oaks said he, too, had been confined in institutions and forcibly

drugged for what was diagnosed as schizophrenia. He

recovered, he said, through the love and support of his family,

rather than drugs.

 

" People do not know what it's like to be on these drugs, " Oaks

said. " If you want to take it and it obliterates your pain, that's one

thing, but when you are pushed to be on it, it's like a wrecking

ball to your thoughts and feelings. "

 

Studies have shown that daily exercise, psychotherapy and even

changes in diet and nutrition are as effective as, if not more

effective than, prescription drugs, said Stuart Shipko, a

Pasadena psychiatrist and panic disorder specialist who serves

on an SCI scientific panel. But there is not widespread support

for such treatments.

 

" We're overdiagnosing. How many of these supposed mental

illnesses are really just problems in your family life? They're

anxious, and they're being put in a chemical straitjacket, " Shipko

said.

 

 

© 2003 The Washington Post Company