[limericklad2]

hi folks , my names mike , im living in ireland
ive been getting anxiety alot these past year or so and now i suffer from panic attacks.. i dont no if i going insane or what . i feel so much changes due to these disorders.

if anyone has both had these , please tell me what you are or was going tru as i sumtimes feel as i dont no what to do

ive lost my best mate of 15 yrs cos i didnt tell him what has happened me n i suffer mood swings , all of which i never new existed untill i experienced it.. i understand y my mate stopped being my friend , if i think im going insane, i totaly understand him tinkin the same .. i just wish i had told him the way i was suffering..

if anyone has anything to share , feel free .... mike, ireland

[livid]

You're not going insane. These thing are way more common than most people think. I've experienced both.
The panic attacks could be signs of social anxiety disorder (or several other things)... if they normally happen when you are in a public place with lots of motion and noise around you SAD would prob be the diagnosis you'd be given in most cases.
Paxil used to be the most widely used drug to treat this, possibly along with an anti anxiety med like ativan (lorazepam). They usually opt to use anti depressants because they are not habit forming, but my experience was the "cure" was worse than the symptoms.
You mentioned mood swings. If these include VERY pronounced "highs", meaning times when you are really "up" in your mood, often followed by bouts of depression that can last for weeks, even months, it's possible that you have bi-polar disorder. I have this... they use different meds to treat this than general anxiety disorders.
You should talk to your doctor, and consider seeing a psychiatrist. Don't let the stigma of that stop you from seking help. Having finally found the right treatment has greatly improved my life.

I'd also like to say that if your partner had no understanding that you may be experiencing a rough time in your life it may be for the best for you that he is no longer there. Life has ups and downs, and people who love you will be there thru anything.
At the very least, know there are tons of people out there who are feeling these things too.

[Gert]

Hello,

I have recently come off: Effexor 2 x 150 mg, Risperdal 2 mg, Gabapentin 2 x 300 mg, and Trazodone 50 mg.

During the course of treatment I experienced a number of side effects in increasing number and intensity. Whenever I complained about a symptom or side effect a new drug was added to the regimen or the side effects were attributed to "my" worsening condition. Each time my wife and I were assured that the side effects were not related to the drug. Despite our direct questioning of the Doctor, Psychiatrist and Therapist the drugs were denied as the cause of the symptoms.

Eventually I literally succumbed to the stuperous acceptance of my condition. I objected on a number of occasions to the drug regimen based on what was happening to me. My wife, because she was convinced by the medical professionals objected to me coming off the medications. The medical professionals told me I needed to keep taking the drugs.

The side effects included: Headaches, nausea, tinitis, dizziness, disorientation, forgetfulness, rumination or obssessive thinking, flat affect, numbness of feeling, mild to unresponsive catatonia, sexual dysfunction, Akathisia (restless agitated state of internal torment), seizures (electric shocking in the head), confusion, problems with vision, insomnia, somnolence, weight gain, personality change, despite years of sobriety started drinking to alleviate the side effects (esp. the seizures and numbness of feeling), increasing irritability, eventual suicidal ideation, eventual hospitalization for suicidal ideation, a blood disorder characterized as Polycythemia (the blood hormone GBHT responsible for making blood cells is over producing red, white and platelet cells leading to a thickening of the blood) and more...

Although I have not been given a diagnosis of Polycythemia the condition and symptoms are the same and after two separate blood tests confirming a problem I am awaiting a referral to Hemaetologist.

The reason that I initially sought help in the first place was for low mood in response to a custody battle with my former wife which ultimately resulted in her being able to move our children thousands of miles away. This was a difficult adjustment for me given that I was the primary care giver for our children as the mother was career oriented. After having had an in home assessment accompanied by a battery of tests by a Psychologist it was recommended by the Psychologist that she not move the children away because of the likely hood of her having future problems in raising the kids. After having spent $15,000 on the pre-court negotiations my lawyer asked me for $30,000 to go trial. I was unable to continue. Today, the Psychologists predictions appear to be panning out.

Anyways, my second wife who has attended almost all of my appointments with medical team in charge of my care had to eventually ask me to leave because I had evntually become unable to present as a decent human being. I had become irritable and was becoming increasingly angry.

I have stopped taking all my medications now and I am doing better. My wife and I are back together. I am still having to deal with a lot of anger at what has been done to me.

Today, we are researching the medications. What I have found to date are numerous horror stories involving a lot of people who have been adversely affected by the medications they have been taking.

I was a University educated, professionally employed male with a decent reputation in the professional community. Now, my reputation and credibility has been ruined. This is a difficult thing to overcome in the small town where I live.

Despite having had no diagnoses prior to this course of treatment, and without a face to face assessment I have been given 7-8 different DSM IV labels: Bipolar II Depressive, Avoidant and Dependent Personality Disoreders, Substance Abuse Disorder and a couple of others.

Further, their was no indication of a psychological problem in the assessment by the psychologist in the 6-700 questions I answered testing my suitability as a parent. In April/May of 2004 during a medical examination for job which specifically asked about Personality and Affective Disorders my Physician indicated none.

Most of my side effects are documented. I suppose I will have an easier time of it than others to seek redress to my current situaion, however, given the resistance by my care providers to date I still expect it to be a somewhat onerous process.

It was rather interesting to note the retrenchment of the medical model position by my therapist the other day when I broached the subject of what the medication has done to me. She was immediately defensive and began soliciting information about possible litigation and thoroughly cross examined me in regards to looking at my records.

Anyways, the research that I have done to date indicates, substantiates that all of the side effects I complained about can be caused by the medications that I was taking, further, there have been a number of lawsuits against the drug companies, including criminal cases, for the side effects caused by their medications.

If anyone has any advice about how I might proceed to rectify my situation I can be contacted at: onewomanonelove@hotmail.com

Take Good Care

Topic

[Miles]

Gert, yours is indeed a tragic story and another illustration of the violation of basic human rights by so-called "healthcare professionals."

You state, "The reason that I initially sought help in the first place was for low mood in response to a custody battle with my former wife which ultimately resulted in her being able to move our children thousands of miles away." Not to minimize your suffering, but the unfortunate dilemma in which you found yourself is one of many problems in daily living we all experience at some time or another. Because there is no brain disorder or biological basis in what you present as your reason for seeking "help," the prescribers of the antidepressants you cite are guilty of "treating" your "life adjustment problems" with medications that DO NOT work.

The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/IV, published in 1985, says "The tricyclic-type drugs are the most effective class of anti-depressants." But in his book Overcoming Depression, published in 1981, Dr. Andrew Stanway, a British physician, says "If anti-depressant drugs were really as effective as they are made out to be, surely hospital admission rates for depression would have fallen over the twenty years they've been available. Alas, this has not happened. ... Many trials have found that tricyclics are only marginally more effective than placebos, and some have even found that they are not as effective as dummy tablets."

The most fundamental point to be made about the most frequently used major antidepressants is that they have no specifically antidepressant effect. Like the major tranquilizers to which they are so closely related, they are highly neurotoxic and brain disabling, and achieve their impact through the disruption of normal brain function. Only the "clinical opinion" of drug advocates supports any antidepressant effect of so-called antidepressant drugs.

There are no "safe" psychiatric drugs. Each has numerous harmful short term and largely unknown long term effects. Each psychiatric drug which was orginally heralded as the new "safe" wonder drug, was found to have severe harmful side effects, including addiction, and withdrawal symptoms, among others. Psychiatric drugs obtain their result by causing brain dysfunction.

The overt reaction of your therapist when you discussed your response to the meds with her attests to the criminality of her profession. In what other discipline do we tolerate such pseudo-science as that practiced by healthcare "professionals?" It's all quackery disguised as medical practice.

Pay no attention to the DSM IV labels that have been affixed to you. In recent years, the types of behavior that are labeled as diseases have increased dramatically. Modern psychiatry is ready to treat not only acute depression and schizophrenia, but moodiness, anxiety and poor self-esteem, feelings most of us have experienced at one time or another. Since many of us have suffered from at least some of the symptoms that characterize the new illnesses, their status as disorders raises the prospect of defining us all as mentally ill. The proliferation of disease categories is beginning to blur the distinction between health and illness, between person and patient. And by offering to relieve us of the moods and anxieties that are part of everyday life, doctors are providing something other than cures for given ailments: They are ready to help make us better than normal.

This extraordinary expansion of psychiatric illnesses coincides with our increasing interest in biological determinism. Indeed, the two trends reinforce one another. The new field suggests that characteristics once believed to be individual and fluid are, to the contrary, hard-wired into us. Biologists and geneticists are encroaching on the field of psychiatry, hypothesizing that biochemical deficiencies, often caused by a genetic defect, are triggering depression, aggression and anxiety. Although they concede that family dynamics may be relevant, they put nature firmly over nurture. In their view -- and in contrast to the accepted psychiatric thinking of most of the 20th century -- biology matters most. Not surprisingly, this orientation is generating in the public a kind of genomic anxiety, which recent reports on cloning only exacerbate. Perhaps we really are puppets at the end of a DNA string -- our temperaments, like the possibility that we'll develop cancer, defined by our genes.

I wish you well in your journey to good health. I would focus my legal efforts more on the prescribers than the manufacturers.

Regards,
Miles

[Gert]

Dear Miles,

Excellent stuff. Thanks.

[Miles]

You are most welcome Gert. The American Psychological Association (APA) and pharmaceutical manufacturers together are the prime purveyors of the current biomedical-reductionist thinking in psychiatry. More calamitous may be the fact that Western culture has bought into this tripe.

Below is a copy of a psychiatrist's letter of resignation from the APA (note his reference to the APA as the "American Psychopharmacological Association.") It is indeed a fascinating read and speaks expressively to the many limitations of, and pseudo-scientific thinking in modern psychiatry.

Yours in Personal Freedom,
Miles
+++++++

Loren R. Mosher M. D.
2616 Angell Ave
San Diego, CA 92122
Ph: 619 550-0312
Fx: 619 558 0854

December 4 1998

Rodrigo Munoz, M.D., President
American Psychiatric Association
1400 K Street N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Rod:

After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this action is my belief that I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization's true identity requires no change in the acronym.

Unfortunately, APA reflects, and reinforces, in word and deed, our drug dependent society. Yet, it helps wage war on "drugs." "Dual Diagnosis" clients are a major problem for the field but not because of the "good drugs" we prescribe. "Bad" ones are those that are obtained mostly without a prescription. A Marxist would observe that being a good capitalist organization, APA likes only those drugs from which it can derive a profit--directly or indirectly.

This is not a group for me. At this point in history, in my view, psychiatry has been almost completely bought out by the drug companies. The APA could not continue without the pharmaceutical company support of meetings, symposia, workshops, journal advertising, grand rounds luncheons, unrestricted educational grants etc. etc. Psychiatrists have become the minions of drug company promotions. APA, of course, maintains that its independence and autonomy are not compromised in this enmeshed situation. Anyone with the least bit of common sense attending the annual meeting would observe how the drug company exhibits and "industry sponsored symposia" draw crowds with their various enticements while the serious scientific sessions are barely attended. Psychiatric training reflects their influence as well; i.e., the most important part of a resident curriculum is the art and quasi-science of dealing drugs, i.e., prescription writing.

These psychopharmacological limitations on our abilities to be complete physicians also limit our intellectual horizons. No longer do we seek to understand whole persons in their social contexts--rather we are there to realign our patients' neurotransmitters. The problem is that it is very difficult to have a relationship with a neurotransmitter, whatever its configuration. So, our guild organization provides a rationale, by its neurobiological tunnel vision, for keeping our distance from the molecule conglomerates we have come to define as patients. We condone and promote the widespread overuse and misuse of toxic chemicals that we know have serious long term effects: tardive dyskinesia, tardive dementia and serious withdrawal syndromes. So, do I want to be a drug company patsy who treats molecules with their formulary? No, thank you very much. It saddens me that after 35 years as a psychiatrist I look forward to being dissociated from such an organization. In no way does it represent my interests. It is not within my capacities to buy into the current biomedical-reductionistic model heralded by the psychiatric leadership as once again marrying us to somatic medicine. This is a matter of fashion, politics and, like the pharmaceutical house connection, money.

In addition, APA has entered into an unholy alliance with NAMI (I don't remember the members being asked if they supported such an organization) such that the two organizations have adopted similar public belief systems about the nature of madness. While professing itself the "champion of their clients" the APA is supporting non-clients, the parents, in their wishes to be in control, via legally enforced dependency, of their mad/bad offspring. NAMI, with tacit APA approval, has set out a pro-neuroleptic drug and easy commitment-institutionalization agenda that violates the civil rights of their offspring. For the most part we stand by and allow this fascistic agenda to move forward. Their psychiatric god, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, is allowed to diagnose and recommend treatment to those in the NAMI organization with whom he disagrees. Clearly, a violation of medical ethics. Does APA protest? Of course not, because he is speaking what APA agrees with but can't explicitly espouse. He is allowed to be a foil--after all he is no longer a member of APA. (Slick work APA!) The shortsightedness of this marriage of convenience between APA, NAMI and the drug companies (who gleefully support both groups because of their shared pro-drug stance) is an abomination. I want no part of a psychiatry of oppression and social control.

"Biologically based brain diseases" are convenient for families and practitioners alike. It is no fault insurance against personal responsibility. We are just helplessly caught up in a swirl of brain pathology for which no one, except DNA, is responsible. Now, to begin with, anything that has an anatomically defined specific brain pathology becomes the province of neurology (syphilis is an excellent example). So, to be consistent with this "brain disease" view all the major psychiatric disorders would become the territory of our neurologic colleagues. Without having surveyed them I believe they would eschew responsibility for these problematic individuals. However, consistency would demand our giving over "biologic brain diseases" to them. The fact that there is no evidence confirming the brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to continue to support by my membership.

I view with no surprise that psychiatric training is being systemically disavowed by American medical school graduates. This must give us cause for concern about the state of today's psychiatry. It must mean--at least in part--that they view psychiatry as being very limited and unchallenging. To me it seems clear that we are headed toward a situation in which, except for academics, most psychiatric practitioners will have no real relationships--so vital to the healing process--with the disturbed and disturbing persons they treat. Their sole role will be that of prescription writers--ciphers in the guise of being "helpers."

Finally, why must the APA pretend to know more than it does? DSM-IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document. To its credit it says so--although its brief apologia is rarely noted. DSM-IV Has become a bible and a money making best seller-its major failings notwithstanding. It confines and defines practice, some take it seriously, others more realistically. It is the way to get paid. Diagnostic reliability is easy to attain for research projects. The issue is what do the categories tell us? Do they in fact accurately represent the person with a problem? They don't, and can't, because there are no external validating criteria for psychiatric diagnoses. There is neither a blood test nor specific anatomic lesions for any major psychiatric disorder. So, where are we? APA as an organization has implicitly (sometimes explicitly as well) bought into a theoretical hoax.
Is psychiatry a hoax--as practiced today?

What do I recommend to the organization upon leaving after experiencing three decades of its history?

1.. To begin with, let us be ourselves. Stop taking on unholy alliances without the members permission.
2.. Get real about science, politics and money. Label each for what it is-that is, be honest.
3.. Get out of bed with NAMI and the drug companies. APA should align itself, if one believes its rhetoric, with the true consumer groups, i. e., the ex-patients, psychiatric survivors etc.
4.. Talk to the membership--I can't be alone in my views.

We seem to have forgotten a basic principle--the need to be patient/client/consumer satisfaction oriented. I always remember Manfred Bleuler wisdom: Loren, you must never forget that you are your patient's employee. In the end they will determine whether or not psychiatry survives in the service marketplace.

Sincerely,

Loren R. Mosher M. D.

[Gert]

Hello Miles,

Once again, good stuff. The M.D. sounds a lot like Peter Breggin M.D. who essentially reasserts the information you provided in your original response.

You have not mentioned him in your correspondences so I was wondering if perhaps you may not have read his stuff. If you have then good, but in case you have not he has a site at: www.breggin.com

There he talks about the same ideas while scientifically validating the chimera of Psychiatry using the Pharmacological Industry's own pseudo science.

Yes, I agree and would willingly advocate for a redress to the scientific dishonesty foisted on the pretense of helping.

The coupling of the Pharmaceutical Companies with Psychiatry wielding the blunt instrument of the DSM IV and their prescriptive proclivities does seem to suggest an impropiety on the grandest of scales. However, nothing improves hindsight better than time and research.

Had I been given informed consent at the outset I would never have embarked on the regimen of drug therapy, for yes, what I agree was an adjustment difficulty, in the first place. However, once hooked in and tranquilized (Breggin likens Neuroleptics to a lobotomy), what could I do, especially when your wife is convinced by illusory professionalism of Psychiatry.

Glad it's over and that I am now able to start rebuilding a life with my family...