There’s plenty of controversy surrounding psych meds. Some people (the ignorami) claim the meds are simply means for Big Pharma to rake in billions of dollars, possibly because of all the commercials airing on prime time TV that advertise everything from Abilify to Cymbalta to Seroquel. You can thank George Bush for that one. And given that “risk of suicide” is a well-known side effect of taking antidepressants, it’s understandable people are somewhat wary of taking meds.
But there’s a Danish nut who’s very much in the fringes, shouting to the world that psychotropic meds are not only potentially lethal, but that they have absolutely no benefit whatsoever. He is, of course, not the first. And worst of all, he claims, they’re killing off the elderly.
Mad Scientist
Research director at Denmark’s Nordic Cochrane Centre Professor Peter Gøtzsche just published his controversial views in the British Medical Journal where he claims that an excess of half a million people in the West over 65 die each year from taking psychotropic medication. It’s a bold statement. Though some scientists are starting to become increasingly concerned about the prescription of antipsychotics to help with dementia-related agitation, the majority of the medical community hasn’t jumped as far off the end of the deep end as Gøtzsche.
But he goes further, claiming psych meds aren’t just deadly, but also that they’re totally useless.
“Animal studies strongly suggest that these drugs can produce brain damage, which is probably the case for all psychotropic drugs,” he said. “Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal.”
As a clinical trials “expert,” he claims all drug trials are funded by Big Pharma and therefore produce fudged results. He also insists that the suicides that take place during clinical trials are grossly under-reported in the studies.
What about the results from trials that show antidepressants help people who are depressed be, well, less depressed? Gøtzsche says it isn’t that the meds are working, it’s that there’s a placebo effect. He adds that many participants in the studies were on meds prior to the study, then ditched them, going into withdrawals that led to psychobiological instability. Once these poor guinea pigs got back on the meds—new ones not yet proved to work—they simply were curbing the withdrawal symptoms, not experiencing any actual relief from symptoms.
And it’s not just the antidepressants that Gøtzsche is worried about—he also claims the efficacy and safety of ADD and schizophrenia medication is cause for extreme concern.
“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm,” he says. “They should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients.”
No shit it’s difficult. Especially when psych meds can help you feel normal.
The Naysayers
To go on record with such bold claims did, of course, garner a decent amount of backlash. Allan Young, a Professor of Mood Disorders at King’s College in London, along with his buddy John Crace, a psych patient and writer for The Guardian, called bullshit on Gøtzsche. Both wrote up a rebuttal in the same journal where Gøtzsche posted his rant. Young and Crace argue that there is a vast amount of research proving the drugs actually help people with mental illness.
That’s a no brainer for many people who have been diagnosed with depression, subsequently put on meds and, as a result, watched the bell jar lift from a foggy, sad and malaise-ridden mind. Young and Crace remind us that the fifth leading cause of disabilities throughout the world is mental illness. They also add that psych meds remain under scientists’ microscope long after the clinical trials come to a close, so the efficacy and safety of the pills is constantly scrutinized.
“For some critics, the onus often seems to be on the drug needing to prove innocence from causing harm rather than a balanced approach to evaluating the available evidence,” they wrote. “Whether concerns are genuine or an expression of prejudice is not clear, but over time many concerns have been found to be overinflated.”
Utter Bullshit
I say that with any contentious issue, it’s always good to pull back, consider all sides, weigh the evidence, take a deep breath or maybe a shower, eat a doughnut and then return to the argument at hand and develop a measured perspective.
The truth is, psych meds help many people with mild, moderate and severe mental health problems to have a better quality of life. Do the meds work for everyone? Not necessarily, and some people can’t even tolerate them physically. I’m lucky—the medication I’ve taken has always done precisely what it’s supposed to do. Of course, that may be a sign of how desperately I need it. Regardless, I’ve known people who have gotten depressed on antidepressants and manic on mood stabilizers. My sister’s suffered horrid side effects from some of the antipsychotics she takes for schizophrenia, and she’s had to weed through other meds that don’t agree with her.
Despite the downsides, and despite the risks, it’s clear that psych meds help many people. I certainly don’t feel “brain damaged” and I’d rather go through life stable and not institutionalized while taking a little risk. It’s worth it to me.
It’s a grey area, but one thing is certain: the mad scientist Gøtzsche making such sweeping and reductive claims isn’t helping anyone get better. Maybe he’d be better off trying to piece dead people together to bring them back to life.
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