Mad with Medication

The following is an excerpt from a recent Full Measure report. World renowned psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin gives us the ins and outs of psychiatric drugs – and whether or not they work at all.

Antidepressants and other drugs for psychiatric conditions are credited with improving and saving countless lives. But what if that’s not the whole story? We get another view from psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, author of “Medication Madness” and director of the International Center for patient-oriented psychiatry. He says his profession has gone mad with medication.

Dr. Breggin:

"I was appointed by a federal court to be the expert for all the combined suits against Eli Lilly concerning Prozac, so I was the first person to go inside the corporation and look at all their records. Prozac was essentially approved in combination with addictive sedatives. It was also obvious early on that the drug had amphetamine affects. The chief investigators said and wrote, ‘This drug has amphetamine like effects. We need to put this into the label. It can make depression worse, can make people agitated, make them angry, might increase the suicide rate.’

"But the FDA wouldn't allow into the label what its chief investigator into adverse effects was telling them. So from the beginning, it was all a house of cards. And as for it's being useful, I looked it over, carefully analyzed the statistics and said the drug actually doesn't work. It's about as good as placebo.

"Now placebo will help anywhere between 40 and 80 percent of people, so it's a huge effect and especially with depression, because depression is not about a biochemical imbalance. It's about hopelessness. Depression is part of the human experience."

You can watch the full story here: http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/conscience-of-psychiatry

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