A major 2018 study (Lancet: 21 February 2018) has claimed that antidepressant medication works. Researchers analyzed data from 522 trials involving 115,477 people and declared that the 21 most common antidepressants tested were effective at reducing the symptoms of depression.
Well, first off, it was NOT a real study. It was a review (a so-called meta-analysis). These are always dangerously biased. There is NO objectivity.
Secondly, we know from several previously studied papers that up to 70% of medical “scientific” trials are manipulated in what amounts to fraud. Thirdly, the authors of any review such as this are plain biased: they choose only the studies which make their point, with a few “contrary” studies to pretend they are being even-handed. Last, but not least, they needed over 500 studies to come up with what is really a very small advantage anyway.
Don’t forget also that the industry just buries studies that had a negative finding; meaning that if they were included too [like in the 2008 review: Effectiveness of antidepressants: an evidence myth constructed from a thousand randomized trials? Philos Ethics Humanit Med. 2008] the dismal results would be clear.1 Sorry, but this study virtually PROVES there is no meaningful science behind antidepressants. I prefer to go with the hundreds of well-executed actual clinical trials, with real patients, showing the effect of antidepressants is zero (or less than zero: meaning worse for the patient).
One of the tricky questions is what is meant by “effective”? I recall a fascinating study decades ago in which the authors had 3 sets of questions: one for the doctors, one for family members and one for the patients. The results were startling: 100% of doctors said the drug was effective, about half the patients said they felt improved; most of the family-member questionnaires revealed the patients were WORSE!
I have made the point repeatedly in my new exciting book REAL SECRETS TO TRANSFORMING MENTAL HEALTH that most “treatments” are simply to shut the patient up, to subdue him or her, which stops the complaints but leads to a life of psychological poverty (read: chemical lobotomy).
Call Me Cynical (Please!)
Was this study rushed out to counteract the damage caused by another critical report, a few months earlier? Call me cynical (‘cos I am) but YES.
This is what a 2017 publication in Frontiers of Psychiatry had to say, based on the best evidence:
“The strong reliance on industry-funded research results in an uncritical approval of antidepressants. Due to several flaws such as publication and reporting bias, unblinding of outcome assessors, concealment and recoding of serious adverse events, the efficacy of antidepressants is systematically overestimated, and harm is systematically underestimated. Therefore, I conclude that antidepressants are largely ineffective and potentially harmful.”
“What’s more, they may cause severe harm. In children, adolescents and young adults up to 25?years, several meta-analyses of short-term randomized-controlled trials have confirmed that antidepressants, relative to placebo, significantly increase suicide risk. Moreover, there is now increasing evidence from several randomized-controlled trials and a few well-controlled observational studies that antidepressants may increase suicide risk in adults of any age.”1
Well the thugs at Big Pharma were not going to take that lying down. So they mounted this “super study”, which relies only on the same unreliable, biased pseudo-science they’ve been using all along. IN OTHER WORDS: NO NEW DATA FROM WHICH TO JUDGE.
And is suicidality and violent mass shootings and aggression factored in to the estimates of efficacy? Of course not. We don’t mention those.
Here’s another way these flawed trials are just plain crooked:
“With respect to trial dropout rates, a hard outcome not subjected to observer bias, no difference was observed between antidepressants and placebo. The discontinuation trials on the efficacy of antidepressants in maintenance therapy are systematically flawed, because in these studies, spontaneous remitters are excluded, whereas half of all patients who remitted on antidepressants are abruptly switched to placebo.”
Translation: those who get well anyway are excluded because that takes away from the supposed benefits of antidepressants. Talk about write your own rules!
“The bottom line is that research funded by the pharmaceutical industry is systematically biased toward their marketed products. That is, the estimated efficacy of pharmaceutical products is significantly higher when the research was funded by the industry compared to non-industry funding, but this difference is not attributable to differences in the study quality. For instance, research funded and conducted by the National Institutes of Mental Health largely failed to demonstrate a clear difference between antidepressants and placebo, despite adequate sample sizes and strong randomized-controlled methodology…”
Or one might say BECAUSE OF proper scientific technique, there was no difference! Again, call me cynical.1
Child Abuse by Psychiatrists, Encouraged By Big Pharma
They are now stepping up the campaign to attack our children. Get ‘em early; a lifetime of addiction; mega-profits! Great business model! But evil beyond sin and crime.
On February 19, 2015, the Wall St. Journal reported:
“Psychiatric drugs are now being given to infants and toddlers in unprecedented numbers.”
“An analysis of 2013 IMS Data, found that over 274,000 infants (0-1 year olds) and some 370,000 toddlers (1-3 years age) in the U.S. were on antianxiety (e.g. Xanax) and antidepressant (e.g. Prozac) drugs. This report also found over 1,400 infants were on ADHD drugs.”
“A 2014 Georgia Medicaid analyses…when extrapolated nationwide by the New York Times found that over 10,000 toddlers were put on ADHD treatments [amphetamine-type drugs].”
“Prescriptions of powerful antipsychotics such as Risperdal for infants and very young children have also sharply risen. Office visits for childhood bipolar disorder have risen 40-fold over the past decade in the U.S.”
The doctors who prescribe these dangerous and highly harmful drugs are worse than street dealers. What street dealer would try to sell a drug to a parent for her one-year-old child?2
I suppose one might question what sane parent would allow their child to be put on violent, life-extinguishing medications? But under pressure from some big-shot psychiatrist, I can see poor old Mum folding up and “doing what is right for the child”.
What’s The Answer?
The answer is the total destruction of psychiatry. We don’t need it. It’s a fake science. All existing psychiatrists (with very few exceptions) go back to med school and real causes of real disease conditions.
The infamous Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V the so-called “Bible” of psychiatry) should be publicly burned and the editors, writers and staff deposed. Because there is not one—NOT ONE—objective diagnosable disease anywhere in this manual.
It’s all opinion, with no laboratory tests to back any one of the 300 conditions listed. But there is an even more important reason it’s wrong…
Almost no patients are mentally ill. Almost all have undiagnosed physical problems which are going undetected, BECAUSE PSYCHIATRISTS ARE NOT BOTHERING TO LOOK. They would rather take 2 -3 minutes and diagnose depression, bipolar, anxiety state or schizophrenia, and then prescribe drugs. An easy dollar. The patient buys into it because he or she has their mind forcibly shut down by disastrous, toxic medications that continue to get industry and professional support, using shady scientific propaganda methods. Once on these medications, the patient has a hard time fighting back, because the meds cause ghastly withdrawal symptoms, which they are then told is their actual disease, for which they are being treated.
Does this sound like a severe indictment of the profession of psychiatry? I hope so.
I am going to go further and tell you I have written what my friend Norman Shealy calls “The most important book in the whole history of psychiatry”. I have put my heart and soul into this book (literally). I bled to get it to you. And now it’s available, at last. Here presented for you is the first PRIVILEGED EDITION.
You can get it to read in your hand, on your computer, or on a tablet or smartphone.
It’s corny to say it’s a MUST READ. But really, what are you going to do if this progression towards mind control and elimination of mental (and physical) freedom continues its grip on society?
We are all in danger of being grabbed and doped, especially if we protest that this is wrong. You could find yourself being declared criminally insane, just for objecting to modern psychiatry. There’s a diagnosis in the infamous DSM-V, which is Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), which could get you imprisoned in an asylum. It means you won’t accept being told what to do or accept that authority knows better than you…
You know, like Jesus, the Founding Fathers or Albert Einstein!
So here’s a link to some more information and to buy this special PRIVILEGED EDITION. It’s a short first print run. Better go over there now and grab yourself a copy quick!
A note on shipping. This is a HUGE book (over 460 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches). It weighs a bunch and shipping must be a factor for you to consider. We don’t mark up shipping costs (our fulfillment company adds only $2 for their work in packing it). The rest is down to the United States Post Office (USPS), which is farcically inefficient and very costly.
SOURCES:
1. Front Psychiatry. 2017; 8: 275. Published online 2017 Dec 7. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00275
2. Via Jon Rappoport: info@nomorefakenews.com