This post follows on from Repairing Ruptures in Clinical Care and the Future of Health App-Ointments. It also links to An Appleby a Day and Tangled up in Bureaucracy.
Repairing Ruptures had a lot of comments from Lucy. One of them kicks things off here.
Lucy’s Struggle
Since waking up to the adverse effects of psychiatric drugs, I have written countless letters to psychiatrists and GPs, telling them about my experiences of psychiatric harm and trying to inform them of the dangers of antidepressants. I sent Katinka Newman’s book to several psychiatrists. An article in a major newspaper covered my experiences of postnatal psychosis and I took part in a short film to give hope to people suffering with mental ill-health – sadly, it was before I realized the drugs were the cause, but my intentions were honourable.
I’ve spoken to groups of mental health professionals about the hell of my experiences. I have tried to warn friends and family about the dangers of antidepressants through my writing, social media posts and discussion. As a practice nurse, going against mainstream thinking, I’ve told numerous patients and colleagues about the potential adverse effects of antidepressants and the dangers of withdrawal. I’ve written to psychiatric teams many times to challenge inappropriate diagnoses and polypharmacy but have mostly been ignored.
I’m just one of tens of thousands of psychiatric survivors who are helping to get the message out there. We may not be an organized group (YET!), but many of us are busting a gut to challenge the status quo, even though it is massively triggering to do so – pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones we risk making ourselves ill in the process.
See Shane Cooke’s Discarded by GSK.
As Lucy says, she is just one of many. She expects that their collective efforts will or should make a difference, but they likely won’t. As an observer of this scene for over 30 years, my view is things are getting worse not better. The Ruptures and Futures posts paint a grim picture. A.I. is more likely to support company narratives rather than empower ‘us’,
Thalidomide in 1962 illustrated that powerful forces can be quickly ranged against any acknowledgement a drug can cause a problem. Readers might wonder at an apparent alliance between Putin and Trump now, but this is less surprising than the alliance between ex-Nazis and Israeli scientists mobilized to defend thalidomide 60 years ago.
Despite this, it was still a matter of common sense centered on a rules-based-order that doctors would recognize novel problems a new drug caused soon after its release, and medical journals would report their observations, and clinical practice would become better in the sense of having more drugs with most of their drawbacks commonly accepted, giving doctors and patients more resources to draw on when treating serious conditions.
But this Scientific Stream that kept most of us living in a temperate medical climate has turned into a Guff Stream that has upended prior assumptions. Something has turned medicines which once held the promise of enabling us to live the lives we wanted to live into Probity Blockers – vehicles to get us to live lives some corporate behemoths want us to live. Probity blockers that increasingly put obstacles in the way of us living the lives we want to live.
We can no longer depend on our doctors to be made of The Right Stuff.
Unless that is…. Unlike the decades long struggle Lucy and others face, Pride in Practice below illustrates that perceptions of medical common sense can be rolled over very rapidly. Doctors can be injected with The Right Stuff. Are there lessons here for Shane and Lucy?
Pride in Practice
Medical generalists now face patients sent their way by gender partialists (or ADHD, sleep or other partialists – see Futures) diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’ or ‘gender incongruence’. The partialist may have prescribed hormones or blockers but is sending the person back to a generalist for continuing prescriptions.
Good generalists, until recently, ordinarily did not want to rush into a prescription whether it be for hypnotics, stimulants or hormones. They wanted to see the person more than once and perhaps make a referral to a partialist when there was some chance the partialist would agree there is nothing wrong.
Which, until recently, respirologists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists and others asked by a generalist to see one of us and give a view did. They were likely to respond that there is nothing wrong with this man’s heart, lungs or eyes. More recently the partialist might add a note – Functional Neurological Disorder? FND means hysteria, or psychosomatic problem. Unable to see a problem in our chest, heart or eyes, the easy option for a partialist is to locate it in our mind.
(The real hysteria here stems from partialism, which, while boxing doctors into a restricted view of a medical issue, primes them to view themselves as experts whose views count outside their limited area – when they don’t or shouldn’t).
An FND diagnosis gets us out of the partialists hair but condemns us to endless medical input from a system that will never again take us seriously.
Some generalists opt against shared care for gender dysphoria cases – opt not to work with gender partialists. They are likely to say something like we have had no training in this complex area. This translates as – if you, a partialist, want to go ahead and prescribe and monitor that’s fine but it’s not for us.
One problem with this is that the partialist has raised the expectations of the person referred and they are likely to be confused by a generalist’s refusal to engage. The partialist’s letter may stress the risk of suicide if the system doesn’t respond as required. An understandably confused person, or their family, may consider a complaint to the service company that employs these generalists or a complaint to a medical registration board.
Another problem is the gender transition movement has reached out to politicians and others. This has led to Quality Marking. In Britain generalist clinics can have Pride in Practice Certificates and Gold Awards, which are gained on the back of hard to refuse appeals to be respectful to trans people who consult them.
Mary and Shane’s psychotropic withdrawal group get zero support from their local health services in North Wales whose health services have spent the better part of a decade in Special Measures – this means they were Black Marked as a failing service with their mental health services failing in particular.
However some years ago, this badly failing service shot up from 199 to 72 on Stonewall’s list of LGBT friendly institutions. The service had set up a special facility to provide residential care for transgender people with dementia. The media were briefed that this was needed as their transition might make these folk more confused than others later in life.
Regulators give the impression they will come down heavily on people who claim a treatment benefit without evidence. You will never hear a regulator say – of course herbs or vitamins work.
Off-label prescribing – using a drug without several controlled trials showing it works for condition X – is a mortal sin these days for regulators, managers, politicians, critics of medicine and many doctors.
But June Raine, when the acting head of Britain’s regulatory agency, said to a group of patients and their families who have Enduring Sexual Dysfunction linked to isotretinoin that surely doctors can remedy anything – these days they can even turn men into women.
Puberty-blocking drugs like Lupron (Made in AbbVie) are endorsed on all sides as is their use off-label to stop teens developing normally.
Around 2016, Medical Registration Boards like the General Medical Council in the UK, issued Guidance on Good Practice for Gender Medicine – stressing that generalists essentially should do what partialists recommend. Failing to do so would put patients at risk of suicide. There is no such guidance for the much higher risk of triggering a suicide by failing to support people withdrawing from antidepressants.
The British Medical Journal ran feature articles stressing (and ignoring) the same points entertaining no explanation other than a failure of a doctor to comply would mean they were transphobic. The New England J of Medicine has done and continues to do the same to this day – see The Corruption of the NEJM.
I had spent a decade before that seeing transgender folk, older men mostly, for two reasons – one is they were decent people and the other was that most of my colleagues refused to see them so the only one willing to see them was me. This was before a cat was thrown among the pigeons by the rapid onset of rapid onset gender dysphoria in young women, who started transitioning and soon after de-transitioning.
Amazed at the Tsunami that came our way around early 2016. I wrote to the GMC and BMJ – see link – ending with this point that looked pretty obvious.
Gender Identity issues in the United States now come wrapped in Title IX issues and the actions of the Office of Civil Rights. Over the weekend, there have been developments with the White House wading into the issue. They may have set up an open goal for Donald Trump to shoot into later this year. The issues are this big.
Reasonable Expectations
The outcome I noted in 2016 took longer to materialize than I expected but has since arrived in dramatic fashion.
In contrast:
- In 1999, I thought we’d have the suicide on SSRIs question sorted within a year of the Forsyth case – Nope. Helped I hoped by the BMJ – Nope.
- In 2000, I was fired by the U of Toronto for saying it was wrong that I, as an expert witness, should have access to company data that none of my colleagues could see. Incompetent enemies are sometimes the best possible friends. This firing helped put the hazards of the SSRIs on the map more than writing articles for the BMJ ever did. I thought we’d have things sorted soon. No joy.
- In 2001, the Tobin case and its verdict against GSK, would sort things. Nope.
- In 2004, New York’s Attorney General took a fraud case against GSK. Eliot Spitzer said this would change medicine for the better. If anything things are worse.
- In 2012 GSK resolved a US Dept of Justice case for $3 billion, leading GSK to play a part in creating All-Trials. Sold as bringing Sense to Science, All-Trials has entrenched the ability of corporations to imprison us in the lives they want us to live rather than liberate us to live the lives we want to live.
- In 2015, despite the efforts of a BMJ editor, with links to GSK, to block the publication of Study 329, the article was published. The Restored Study 329 is a great symbol of just how much the reality in which we are living is at odds with the claims for that reality. A great symbol of how the establishment has become a major purveyor of misinformation. Could the system survive this – Yes it could.
Mary, Shane, Lucy and thousands of others crippled by drug induced harms, as Lucy notes, have reasonable expectations of being met sympathetically by doctors and treated decently but they aren’t.
Folk with drug induced injuries hold a gateway to Nobel Prizes. Observations like those of Anne-Marie – see Antidepressants, Alcohol and Anne-Marie – that her SSRI caused an alcohol use disorder are as good as Arvid Carlsson observations of patients’ observations that led to the creation of SSRIs – see Restoring the Magic to Medicine. People with PSSD have a condition that opens a door to a major new understanding of how medicines work and the same holds true for the enduring sexual dysfunctions other drugs cause and enduring visual and balance problems antidepressants in particular cause..
Yet, Mary, Shane, Lucy and others don’t seem to be able to prize open an entry into the system the way the gender dysphoria community has. Why the difference? Is it because sex attracts interest where suicidality and dependence don’t?
Parallel Universe
Around 2000, a bright woman introduced me to Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD). She asked if the bromide in her citalopram hydrobromide might have caused her problem. She had found bromides were used by the British army in World War I to kill libido. The Brits didn’t want a coalition of the willing between British men and French women. Although impressed with her research, I had to tell her bromides would not cause what she was describing.
She had been off citalopram for over 3 months and could take a hard bristled brush and rub it up and down her genitals and feel nothing.
This nailed the SSRI cause and PSSD effect for all time, There is no condition in medicine that can cause this severe form of what SSRIs can cause while you are on them.
Sex and drugs was surely an irresistible combination for the media. Nope.
The print and televisual media wanted nothing to do with the topic – they didn’t want to deter people from taking their drugs. See An Appleby a Day. The media, it seems, felt no responsibility toward the adolescents who were starting to take these drugs and might end up never being able to make love for the rest of their lives.
Many of my colleagues in Wales in 2016 figured people who wanted to change gender and insisted they were changing sex were insane but none of them ever detained a trans person in hospital or told the person they were insane and needed an antipsychotic as has happened to people around the world with PSSD.
In mid-February 2021, five years after predicting that the transgender tsunami might lead to a Trump triumph, I was left wondering if an event also involving DJT and sex may have triggered consequences a lot faster than I expected and might impact on the prescription-drug-induced-harm cause.
I gave a Sex and Evidence Based Medicine lecture for the Therapeutics Initiative in Vancouver. A good talk that starts with the sex lives of Eels.
Perhaps it can be better appreciated by cool heads now than it was in the moment. It contained a key slide aimed at making it impossible for folk to ignore, dismiss or forget the reality of PSSD. This caused uproar. The T.I. censored it in the version of the talk posted on their website. The full talk in its original and gory glory is in Sex and Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) link above.
In an echo of the Toronto Affair, a week later I got fired from a clinical post in Guelph. My first reaction was to link the firing to the lecture. I had circulated my colleagues in Guelph with details of the lecture a week before it happened. Some quiet medical lifers perhaps didn’t want a whiff of scandal and PSSD and the questions it poses about EBM is a scandalous story.
The dudes firing me made no mention of the Sex and EBM lecture. They said my practice was almost too good – if I was doing it privately and people could choose to come and see me rather than be streamed to someone else. Every service should have one of me but it was too awkward administratively for them to fit into the Guelph set-up those who:
- Wanted a doctor willing to consider tapering their medication burden – tapering in the sense of TaperMD – this was the reason I was hired.
- Wanted a doctor willing to contemplate the possibility that an adverse event they thought they were having actually was a treatment related adverse event.
- Didn’t necessarily want to be put on a medicine on the basis of one interview only.
- Figured it might be useful to be able to get hold of their doctor by email or phone at the drop of hat if need be – by phone or at weekends.
The early morning firing squad hadn’t thought through what they were going to do with the patients I was due to see later that day or the following day. They had no resources to pick up the care of the 300 other people who had passed through my hands that year. So I wrote to the recently seen, and due to be seen soon again, folk saying that I would not be able to continue seeing them but that I was not deserting them and they should have confidence in the things we had discussed as the management figured far from doing anything wrong, my care had been what some might call exceptional. The letter forestalled management lies.
The management explanation seemed incredible. In contrast the impression that the real reason was the Sex and EBM lecture seemed all too credible.
But there was another angle. The leader of the firing squad had trained with, and was a great admirer of, Neal Ryan – the main architect of Study 329.
Under-diagnosis
Just as Legal Systems make Verdicts, Doctors make Diagnoses. Many doctors view the Trans Tsunami as a classic case of Over-Diagnosis.
Looking at the suicidality, homicidality, sexual dysfunction, alcohol use disorder and other problems triggered by antidepressants, many doctors again point to over-diagnosis – too many people are being inappropriately put on these pills for mood or anxiety disorders or other problems. They are being diagnosed with disorders they do not have.
This likely sounds a not unreasonable point of view.
In 1990, 3 Boston clinicians diagnosed Prozac induced suicidality in 6 of their patients. Eli Lilly fought back claiming there was no evidence base to these diagnoses even though they did not get company doctors or other experts to assess these patients. Assisted by BMJ, FDA and other regulators, NICE and other Standards of Care, and Suicide Prevention Programs, they made this diagnosis essentially illegitimate.
Lilly’s argument – that only the doubly-blind can make a diagnosis – is obviously ridiculous.
And
- Within 18 months of the original article, 20 or so clinical groups, some very distinguished published similar observations to the Boston group.
- There was clear evidence in a deeply, likely intentionally misleading, BMJ article that the doubly-blind RCTs supported the position of those with Eyes Wide Open.
- Arvid Carlsson, the creator of SSRIs, agreed they could cause suicide.
Soon After
- Juries said it’s obvious these drugs can cause suicide and homicide.
- There was clear evidence company efforts to hide the truth breached regulations.
- SSRI companies were charged with fraud.
- SSRI companies were fined billions.
- It was clear the bulk of the literature on these drugs was ghost-written and even published in distinguished journals made claims directly the opposite of what the data showed when accessed.
Those who are injured by treatments and their doctors or anyone taking their side now have a operate in a world of Vampire Medicines. The Double Blind means the chemicals that used to come with warnings and precautions now cast no shadow.
There was an old medical adage –
You are a Case of Valium I am going to give you Anxiety,
which became You are a Case of Prozac, I am going to give you Depression.
We need an update on this adage. Suggestions welcome. Here is a starter.
You have become suicidal or have sexual problems,
stop going to your Doctor (Google) to get a Diagnosis
Double-Blind Cure © Billiam James 2020
Patrick D Hahn says
Our sex change industry seems to have flipped Blackstone’s ratio on its head. In their view, it’s better to maim and sterilize a hundred young people than to forgo doing the procedure on the one man who might conceivably have benefited thereby.
Dr. David Healy says
Patrick
Thanks for this. For those who don’t know Blackstone’s ratio dates back to the 1760s which basically said it is better than 10 guilty people go free than one innocent person suffers (is executed).
But is it the sex change industry or Regulators and Medical Registration Boards etc who have done the flipping? The sex change industry as in pharma haven’t done any flipping on this one. The sex industry as in pornography I expect is using trans people these days but has an iron clad rule – not to go near anyone under 18. There have always been some surgeons willing to do operations like removal of a normal leg for apotemnophilia – they like the challenge of reconstructive surgery – but I can’t see them being organized enough to do the flipping.
There has been an extraordinary flip but who has engineered. The flip is mostly linked to young women. Is this the latest ‘fashion’ and do we need to look at this industry in order to work out how to make treatment induced injuries fashionable?
David
Dr Pedro says
Things, can only get better
re Prescribing of medicines used to “improve” mental health in England:
Between October to December 2024:
There were 24 million antidepressant items prescribed to an estimated 7 million identified patients.
The number of hypnotics and anxiolytics items increased by 1.4% to 3.4 million, and identified patients increased by 1.0% to 1.0 million.
The number of items prescribed of drugs used in psychoses and related disorders was 3.5 million, an increase of less than 1%. There were 664,000 identified patients, an increase of 1.1%.
For CNS stimulants and drugs for ADHD, the number of items increased by 8.0% to 870,000. There was a 6.1% increase in identified patients, to 248,000.
Drugs for dementia items increased by 2.0% to 1.2 million, and identified patients increased by 1.8% to 273,000.
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/statistical-collections/medicines-used-mental-health-england/medicines-used-mental-health-england-quarterly-summary-statistics-20242025/medicines-used-mental-health-england-quarterly-summary-statistics-october-december-2024
chris says
Does the NHS keep any statistics on people specifically harmed by these drugs other than yellow card scheme?
It would be good to know what percentage of those drugs prescribed went on to harm in the short, medium and long term, the drugs used to treat the harms and those harms being diagnosed as new mental illness fueling the whole hell go round.
Dr. David Healy says
Chris
They don’t diagnose drug induced injuries – so no they cannot keep any statistics on this.
Worse again, the doctors who sit on mental health review tribunals have no training in detecting drug induced adverse events, they dont even begin to think that the mental illness they are being asked to give a view on might in fact be largely a treatment induced state and they are making things worse by not discharging the person from the section of the mental health they are under.
It is difficult to see a way the system can get to grips with the problems it is causing
D
Katie B-T says
I’m sorry to hear what happened in Guelph. You helped those 300+ people that year and countless others over the years.
I do agree it is getting worse. And it is amazing how resilient to change this problem is.
An issue I thought would be easier to deal with was getting one hospital system to accurately record my current medication list and list of allergies and adverse medication reactions. I have made 26 attempts since October and the information is still wrong. It’s only wrong now in two ways rather than countless. I think it was luck that most of it is fixed. I got to see 26 examples of the rotten barrel problem that is the healthcare system.
Lucy Green says
Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour had a very interesting piece 30 minutes in yesterday (Tuesday 11 March 25) about severe adverse effects of prescribed dopamine agonists (including aripiprazole) for Restless Leg Syndrome. The story seems to have hit the press more generally yesterday, with articles in the BBC News, Telegraph, Daily Mail, etc. The main adverse effects reported are risky sexual behaviours, gambling and compulsive spending. Worth a listen. bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0028sww
Dr. David Healy says
Lucy
This is relatively old news – the new angle is it is featuring women in particular. There is a RxISK Guide on Dopamine Agonists from over a decade ago. And there are lots of RxISK posts on compulsive gambling and other problems on dopamine agonists including Aripiprazole which is a partial agonist. See
Abilify from the Inside Out
Dopamine and Addiction: Junkies of the Third Age
Dopamine Agonists
Gambling on the Side Effects of Antidepressants
Antidepressants and Compulsive Shopping
There was a Court case in Australia in 2011 where Terry Martin was acquitted because the judge said it was obvious that his dopamine agonist had caused his compulsive and disinhibited sexual behaviour
It shows you what we are up against when problems like this have been firmly established for nearly two decades but somehow the message has not got through to doctors
David
chris says
I refuse to go on the BBC but would be interested to know if any of them ended up in prison or with a bi polar diagnosis and forced medicated?
Anne-Marie says
Prisons are full of people on meds. I was shocked and had to spend one night on a hospital wing waiting for a bed to see the hospital wing was full of mental health patients. The nurse said the prison was a dumping ground for NHS Mental Health. He said they had all been failed by the NHS and it was very sad. He was a really nice nurse doing his best in a bad situation.
chris says
‘He said they had all been failed by the NHS ‘
With the increasing evidence and our own experiences many of which are extreme and harrowing I think we can say in many cases not only failed but the cause of incredible suffering and insidious changes in character.
It is interesting to me that the BBC can see and report the harms of these dopamine agonists but the blinds go shut to akathisia induced suicide and violence.
Dr. David Healy says
Chris
You might be making things worse. Will tell you how but first as noted in response to Lucy the BBC is reporting on the harms of dopamine agonists 15 years or more after a series of verdicts when older men including senior judges and politicians were acquitted in legal cases on the basis that the drug had caused the problem. So there is legally established cause and effect and has been for ages and only novel twist to this story is its about women. They aren’t however reporting SSRI induced alcoholism leading to women killing people in car crashes etc – despite being told about this and it being part of Canadian Guidelines now.
So how does this link to you. Howls of outrage are needed from time to time – although people like Simon Wessely can twist them into death threats against people like him who are just trying to do the right thing.
But have a look at this message from Louis Appleby – which Marion Brown drew to our attention over on DH.org
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OUspT6Fns5g
LA – is telling politicians and the media etc we are doing wonderfully in the UK and one bit of well-intentioned interference from you guys could jeopardise all that. He slips in the message to the media – don’t report suicides – and whatever you do don’t link them to an antidepressant or other psychotropic drug.
Now he perhaps opens the door to you and me and others by saying we need to have good prescribing – if you can see a lead like this or anything else in what he is saying to build on, let me know. We might (but likely won’t) get somewhere selling a message that we want to give you better antidepressants or make you antidepressant experience a better one
Just venting will likely get us nowhere – especially venting against the profession that are doing a wonderful job as is. Who is anyone going to believe – you (or me) or Appleby?
D
chris says
Wonder if they will have a debate on akathisia, why it’s not recognized, who mostly causes it, what it actually is and how it can be stopped and not made worse, and its total relevance to the subject of assisted suicide.:
https://www.rcgp.org.uk/News/rcgp-position-on-assisted-dying
chris says
To be honest David my mind is with these people. I was certainly in a worst state that this chap…
Just came across this blog it is very typical of the reality of people who end up in a psych hell hole. They are in a very genuine crisis and find there is no real help. Their anxiety and fear goes through the roof. They have no knowledge of the issues taked about on here..
drugs, drug harms and the web of marketing lies nor that far from getting better the medication maywell make them worse in the short term and most likely in the long term:
https://wil-vincent.co.uk/so-what-the-hecks-been-going-on/
Dr. David Healy says
Chris
I know your mind is with the endless stream of people being damaged and killed. And there is enormous value in fishing out people who have been shot and thrown into the river assumed dead. But we also need to locate the spot where the executions are taking place. This does not mean mental health wards and family doctor surgeries/clinics – it means the mindset that means these docs and others don’t see they are killing people.
The comments over on An Appleby a Day show another narrative that needs undoing. We have Appleby and Pariente saying we practice EBM with RCTs which are the gold standard and because of this we know that ADs save lives – but the RCT data shows more suicides on treatment – which is incompatible with statements about saving lives. Pariente and Appleby are never asked about the ghost-writing of the medical literature – the lack of access to company data etc. Why is none of this being asked?
D
chris says
“This does not mean mental health wards and family doctor surgeries/clinics – it means the mindset that means these docs and others don’t see they are killing people.”
Was going to respond to this yesterday because it is profoundly important, how ever I can be impulsive and I wanted to make sure from my memory, you know actors can lock on to a memory of the past to get to an emotion.
Tom’s GP didn’t have the information to know how to proceed as is the case with very many health workers and that is a massive problem. It’s why I contacted NICE and I think it’s pretty cheap of them to expect a member of the public to fill in a form giving personal details over such a massively important issue when they have already acknowledged it’s an important issue. They need to address it asap and correctly so, but we know they won’t..
Stakeholders.
But these are mental health workers:
“Ms McLellan described seeing CCTV footage of her daughter outside a mental health hospital, where she begged for help from staff. “I’ve got video footage of her turning to them begging for help. Six minutes of footage of her literally begging them just to [let her] see any health professional,” she told The Independent.”
I have a lot of experience to say just about everyone who worked in that environment that is to say the ‘wards’ knew full well the drugs were the problem and that includes the cleaners. They may have not known the words akathisia or tardive dyskinesia but they well knew it was the drugs. The psychiatrists know full well they are inducing akathisia so do the nurses they don’t care, they mostly hate the patients and just want to get through a shift without anyone bothering them. Some of them have their favorites and will let them outside to smoke while others get totally ignored.
Rebecca McLellan was totally ignored that’s what happens, but they know the harm was being caused by themselves or colleagues they just want rid of the problem they don’t want to be around it or face up to it. That’s what akathisia does.
I want the public to know psychiatrists and psych nurses know full well the harm neuroleptics antipsychotics do to people. They know full well people are dying and being chemically tortured by their actions.. I experienced it. It’s full on evil. The doctor who did it to me got away with lying about it in my records claiming I was never subject to polypharmacy when their own documents stated I was. The second time I had akathisia they made sure not to give me a hard copy treatment plan with the medication on but they sure as hell subjected me to the same drugs that caused akathisia the first time round so they full well knew what they were are doing.
Appleby he well knows clearly from his email correspondences, why is he covering it all up, because it’s massive and has been going on for decades. You know that, like to be elliptical and inferenced and I want to put it in plane English so everyone reading this gets it clear.
Dr. David Healy says
Chris
I’m sure there was a lot of brutal warders in concentration camps to take an extreme example but neither you nor I would figure they were primarily responsible. The climate was set from the top and the climate brought out the worse in people running the system. It’s fine to say folk in the system should stand up for decency and look after the people in their care. And I agree but this ain’t easy to do.
My view is that few of us are good or bad. While we retain responsibility, the system shapes us for good or bad.
Doctors aren’t any better people than anyone else working in the system and face a situation where talking up about akathisia or related harms or making the case that this patient’s problems are caused by us working in the system rather than an illness they have faces being sacked – as happened to me in Guelph – referred to medical registration boards as has happened to me on 4 occasions (I’m losing count) – shunned and not asked to present at professional meetings – ignored by a media who have been told having Healy on a program will cost lives – you will have blood on your hands.
I’m absolutely sure the examples you provide happen – I’ve seen them first hand. And I’m sure the way management works at the moment the staff behaving like this will get away with it – maybe even promoted while those who complain will get fired.
But should we blame the docs or nurses or psychologists who keep their heads down? Or should we look for a way to bring what the system is doing into view? I figure we need to look at the system – and there are levers. The BMJ should be a journal with enormous clout but they have lawyers who advise them against investigating any of these things. Get a body like BMJ to shift course and a bunch of the rest of us will rediscover our inner humanity.
This can’t remain at words while people like you are being damaged or dying needlessly. There has to be action but what action? It’s one thing to jail a Lucy Lethby but we still haven’t done anything about the management systems that failed to keep the most vulnerable of all – babies – safe
David
ANON says
For all the good professionals out there, I really do feel sorry for you.
As in any profession, you are always going to get rouges who do not do the right thing!
Imagine, if you were diagnosed with an illness that mimicked something else, and you get dragged through unnecessary procedures and put on a treadmill of unnecessary medications.
It can easily happen because it happened to me!
The below article highlights very well, how some people can be misdiagnosed which eventually leads to a disastrous fate for willing victims!
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/farid-fata-doctor-who-gave-chemo-healthy-patients-faces-sentencing-n385161
This Doctor got caught out however, how many Doctors get away with their disgraceful and unethical behaviors?
He is not the only person using people as cash cows!
ANON says
How can one survive in a system when there is so much corruption.
You took a stand, challenged them and came out stronger.
In any profession, if you keep your head down, you are part of the problem, as far as I am concerned.
If everyone had the courage to speak up and do the right thing, you would see that there would be a big change/shift, in how situations get handled.
There has to be enormous changes with policies and the Law.
I know of some places, if you speak up you get rewarded.
It would be wonderful if all cases were like the one below:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-27244206
instead of nightmares like below:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-06-23/whistleblower-nurse-fronts-bundaberg-hospital/1599220
If we had a safe place where we can go to and speak up about the quality-of-care and other pertinent matters, it would just make everyone who has worked so hard to do their job with dignity, respect and integrity. They all work: ‘ hand in glove’, if you go and speak to an organization who professes to care.
Someone, please prove me, otherwise!
Harriet Vogt says
The obvious point about gender dysphoria & reassignment is that it is politicised with defensive stonewalls. Along with religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, marital status, pregnancy, and maternity – the protected characteristics of the 2010 Equalities Act in the UK.
We all bristle at discrimination against the intrinsic qualities of another human being.
I sometimes wonder how much the drive or, at some extremes, fashion for gender fluidity is a need for fundamental differentiation, when so much rebellion has already been done and dusted by Boomers (and Emmeline Pankhurst) – sexual, gay and women’s liberation. In terms of sexual identity what’s left to rebel about?
Of course it can be taken so far as to feel trivialised – ‘fisherthem’ (eh, what’s that?) was my favourite – and ‘chest feeding’ seemed a bridge too far. Apparently some who’ve transitioned and had ‘top surgery’ can still chest feed – but those of us who kept our original mammary glands can’t mention our breasts.
https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/having-a-baby-if-you-are-lgbt-plus/chestfeeding-if-youre-trans-or-non-binary/
People who have been iatrogenically harmed or bereaved – have had their intrinsic qualities as humans brutally altered. From trusting patients to desperate humans struggling to survive medical injuries.. From blithely loving partners and parents to bleak souls.
It’s absolutely right to conceptualise, as Jim Gottstein and many patients do, coercive psychiatry, as a debasement of human rights. In the same way, iatrogenic harm is disablement – destroying people’s ability to work, support themselves and their families, be sexual beings – to function as a person. With no justice or compensation. In the world of safeguarding, this would be classified as abuse.
‘Abuse is defined as a single or repeated act or lack of appropriate actions, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust, which causes harm or distress to a vulnerable person.’
https://patient.info/doctor/safeguarding-adults-pro
It’s been instructive to watch the self-defined Mad community on X campaign ferociously against the UK government’s plan to slash disability payments. Wrapped up in shamelessly transparent manipulation from Wes, ‘It’s wrong that people have been written off’. Interestingly the UK government has backtracked from its original plan to freeze PIP (personal independence payment), the primary support for those who are disabled.
David asks:
‘But should we blame the docs or nurses or psychologists who keep their heads down? Or should we look for a way to bring what the system is doing into view?
This can’t remain at words while people like you are being damaged or dying needlessly. There has to be action but what action? It’s one thing to jail a Lucy Lethby but we still haven’t done anything about the management systems that failed to keep the most vulnerable of all – babies – safe.’
I’m stumbling around looking for direction in a similar zone, I think. How do we inject more politicisation into prescribedharm? More militancy? More of the power of the LGBTQ+ community? Prescribed harm is disablement and abuse.
Dr. David Healy says
H
Glad you picked up the Trans component. Among the striking points in the Cass review of transgender treatment programs was the unwillingness of doctors and other therapists to engage with the harms that cross sex hormones can cause. This should be no brainer when women taking estrogens and progestins can have terrible problems from them, the outcomes cannot be good if you start throwing androgens into the mix and then finasteride and spironolactone – not to mention Lupron for peripubertal children.
The argument from the therapists is that they don’t want to jeopardise the therapeutic relationship – don’t want to deter people from getting the benefits that treatment can offer. Where have we heard that before?
We’ve heard it from MHRA who don’t want warnings on antidepressants that might deter people from seeking the benefits. Before Trans and Tavistock MHRA and FDA were and are and there is no Cass review of the damage they are causing.
What is now called Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) began as an effort to stop people being taking in by fashions – things like stripping varicose veins. But EBM has now become the driving force behind fashions for things like ADHD. And the Trans movement has cross-dressed itself in the clothes of EBM with Guidelines and insults – for transphobia read misinformation (or see post on Venomagnosia).
See Probity Blockers and Trans-Medicine.
D
Harriet Vogt says
D
Your comment set off the scent hound in me.
I re-waded through the Cass Report, a political policy document really. Negligible attention paid to the adverse effects of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones in the doc- buried under the poor long term evidence critique.
I found the tone kind of unacceptable – patronising, using pathologising language taken from ICD and DSM – ‘gender dysphoria’ etc. Most of the young people – already saddled with diagnoses, significantly autism – were looking to self-define – some were questioning, others certain they wanted to transition. As usual, their own words are the real story:
‘I just wanted to get my bloody hormones…I had a trans history, I was clearly aware of what I wanted and what care was on offer’.
‘What are the benefits, what have people who’ve been through each process thought about it, what are the side effects, what are the possible drawbacks, what is the timescale, how reversible is it, what the process actually involves…”
Looking into suicides in the young trans community, I came across this truly awful but telling study – repeated regularly apparently. You’re bound to know it. New to me – but I’m a relative novice in this space: ‘Suicide by Children and Young People,’ https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=37566
It’s structured like its parent piece, the ‘Suicide Prevention Strategy for England’ – same lead contributor (LA-LA) – a tragic totting up of all the factors that anyone might guess could lead a young person to suicide. Abuse, bullying, physical ill health (including acne interestingly), disrupted family environment, looked after children (the kinder word for ‘in care’), bereavement, contact with police, self-harm , use of alcohol illicit drugs, ‘mental health’ diagnoses etc. etc.
Unsurprisingly, given 31% of the under 20’s had been given a diagnosis of ‘mental illness’, forty-seven (16%) were receiving antidepressants -usually SSRI or SNRI drugs in 41 (14%).
But their possible role in suicide is diminished – thus:
‘Illicit drugs were detected in 44 (15%) individuals.Prescribed and over the counter drugs were detected OUTSIDE THEIR THERAPEUTIC RANGE in 15 (5%).’
Likewise for those who suicided amongt 20-24 year olds:
Twenty-eight (26%) were receiving antidepressants, and in most cases these were SSRI/SNRI drugs.
‘Toxicological analysis detected alcohol in the bloodand/or urine in 42 (40%) cases. Twenty-nine (27%) had an alcohol level above the drink driving limit. Illicit drugs were detected in 29 (27%) individuals. PRESCRIBED AND OVER THE COUNTER DRUGS WERE OUTSIDE THE THERAPEUTIC RANGE IN 8 (8%)
But – surely everybody knows that the adverse effects of these – and most drugs presumably – can be more intense and enduring than their significant presence in the blood stream? So that’s how they bury it. And guess what is missing from subsequent editions.
If the system is serious about the prevention of suicide – and it’s increasing amongst the young as we know – it needs to stop being politically economical with the truth.
H