by Steve Cook
Doctors have been dishing out antidepressants in the UK like sweets until Brits are doped up on these drugs more than almost any other country – except perhaps the USA.
This evident recklessness of the medical profession can be put down to irresponsibility on the part of many doctors, and gullibility on the part perhaps of many more. They have tended to swallow or go along with the marketing hype (lies) of a psycho-pharmacy that has insisted for decades that these drugs were safe and effective.
Of course the more caring of doctors and many more public groups and campaigners were not duped by these false claims nor by the dodgy science or outright blandishments used to support them.
The truth of course will always win through in the end, although in this case fortunately not before many Brits have died or had their lives ruined by drugs they were assured would “help them”.
But the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has at last given up on resisting or hiding the overwhelming evidence and a growing catalogue of injury, misery and death. It has now changed its position and admitted that the side effects of these drugs are indeed ‘severe’. Better late then never at all, I suppose. it is a pity they let so many people be harmed before they got around to it.
And at last they are telling Doctors to warn millions of patients about the severe side effects of antidepressants.
The RCS also now admits that coming off antidepressants can cause undesirable side effects lasting for very long periods. Such side effects – including suicides and murderous rampages – have been obvious to many groups and even sections of the the media, for quite some time.
We don’t doubt that it was obvious to the psychiatric industry too but they chose to try to keep a lid on it and deny the public the truth.
The problem psychiatry has of course is that none of its “treatments” work in terms of making people actually well. In terms of helping with depression and so forth, magnesium supplementation – to take just one example -is known to be far more beneficial and safe. But you can’t patent magnesium and there is no money in it for the psycho pharmacy. And the antidepressants, working like any other mood changing drug such as heroin and so forth, at least made it look as if they were curing their patients – as long as you ignored the serious physical and mental side effects (such as suicide and – sic – depression!), the diminishing benefits of long term use, the dependency and the severe dangers of trying to withdraw from the drug. Without being able to drug their patents into a stupor it was difficult for psychiatrists to maintain the illusion of healing and the pretence of being doctors.
But in the end even the RCP could not hold back the tidal wave of truth that threatens to now engulf the whole discredited industry. Decades too late, they are now advising a modicum of restraint that could at least rein back the profligate and reckless over-use of their pills.
The RCP has also admitted that the potential harms of withdrawal are so serious that all patients should be warned of the risks when they are first prescribed the drugs. You would think that doctors would have been doing that already wouldn’t you? You know, “here, take this pull but I should warn you it might ruin your liver, give you brain damage, make you suicidal and generally f*** you up.” But no, such things were evidently not important enough to mention.
Withdrawing from antidepressant, for anyone who has experienced or witnessed it, can be an utter nightmare. Again, this was known for years by everyone apparently except the manufacturers and their pushers in the medical profession. Various governments – not surprising considering the power of the pharmaceutical lobby and so forth – colluded in the deception, with health officials playing down the difficulty of withdrawing from antidepressants, with years of insistence that side-effects were ‘mild'[a bare-faced lie] and “last no more than a week or two” [another bare-faced lie].
But the Royal College has now changed its tune and admits, with slightly less understatement than previously, that “some patients” experience “severe” side effects that can last for months. In a telling U-turn, it has said the risks should always be discussed with patients when they are prescribed the drugs. It called on NHS watchdog NICE to change its guidance to reflect this position. One assumes that said watchdog must have been asleep on post for the past few decades in so far as its guidance did not reflect the real and glaring dangers long before now. Unless of course it was taking its orders from the RCP or the pharmaceutical industry or some such thing.
Given the disinformation about these drugs, the denial of the bleedin’ obvious, governments asleep at the wheel and chronic negligence by the blokes glibly filling out the prescriptions, it is not surprising that Britons use more antidepressants than almost every other country in the Western world.
And that, given the harm it has done to millions of our fellow citizens, is enough to depress anybody.
The RCP and psychiatric industry are currently engaged in a PR damage-limitation exercise to make themselves look caring and concerned and not-at-all-criminal but it is worth remembering that in the back of all this lie years of deception and cover-up, the vilification of people and groups who sought to raise the alarm and warn the public and several whopping great falsehoods, namely:
When someone feels down, they are mentally ill [they are not] due to a brain defect [unproven, false, no such defect exists] or chemical imbalance [a made-up scientific -sounding platitude since discredited] the only answer to which is a drug [antidepressant] that will somehow and in ways undefined correct their brain chemistry [false, unproven] and “make them feel better” [so do heroin or cocaine] whilst being harmless [apart from the brain damage, liver damage, loss of contact with reality, loss of impulse control, suicidal ideation, lowered IQ etc etc] and which can be discontinued safely without severe withdrawal [if you have worked in rehab and seen what happens to people who come off their psych meds as I have, you will know this is a total lie].
So now at least we have a modicum of truth on the line thanks to the tireless efforts of many campaigners to alert the public and despite the efforts of psychiatry’s pals in government and the media to keep it covered up.
In the not too distant future, when the whole truth finally sees the light of day and the swathe of carnage wrought by these subversives is finally known and understood, the world will be a happier, brighter place.
We are looking forward to it.
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