Posted by chujoe on June 18, 2010, at 16:32:10
In reply to Lou's request-dephahm » chujoe, posted by Lou Pilder on June 18, 2010, at 6:17:01
Here is one critique of Whitaker's argument, form a commenter at Salon:
>>This interview is riddled with scientifically questionable. As just one particularly egregious example, the author ignores a major Finnish study published in Lancet last year which shows a clear survival benefit for schizophrenics treated with antipsychotics relative to those that are untreated. And another: his concerns about tardive dyskinesia betray an out of date familiarity with psychiatric practice, as this side effect, caused by now infrequently used first generation antipsychotics, is rarely seen nowadays.
A number of other contentions are equally unsupportable.
This sort of crap is a reminder of how often journalists get in over their head, and how blissfully oblvious they often are to that very fact. Evaluating psychiatric literature without any scientific training predictably produces drivel. The fact that 40% of schizophrenics that are off meds get better without treatment compared to 5% that are on meds does not reflect on the medications! Rather, it is a predictable result of the well-known fact that somewhere around 5-10% of schizophrenics have one psychotic break and never have another relapse. Predictably, these schizophrenics either never take meds or take them only for a very short period during their acute psychosis. Those that are on meds are on meds precisely because they repeatedly end up in inpatient psychiatric units most often due to aggressive and/or paranoid behavior towards others and because they become unable to care for themselves. These patients are part of the much larger subset of schizophrenics who have frequent relapses. They stay on treatment because they have a more severe form of disease, and need the meds to reduce sx and increase function!<<
Here is another:
>>It's disturbing that an award-winning science writer would use logic like this. 10-25% of patients receiving ADHD treatments have mania or psychosis. The meds cause it! 40% of patients with schizophrenia not on medications show recovery vs. 5% of patients on medications. This could mean the medications make people worse, or it could mean that doctors are correctly recognizing when patients have recovered/might recover/are less ill and are not prescribing. In fact, contained in the study is an analysis suggesting that factors associated with better prognosis were connected with recovery and not being medicated. Finally, there were only 64 patients with schizophrenia in the study. There are an estimated 2.2 million people w/schizophrenia in the U.S. alone. This is reminiscent of Mbeki in South Africa claiming anti-retrovirals cause HIV. Illnesses like these are tragedies, this makes it worse.<<There have been other critiques of W's approach to the subject and I'll post them if I can find them online. But beyond his misuse of the facts and inability to understand statistics, Whittaker seems completely uninterested in the actual suffering of actual people. There are plenty of things wrong with the mental health delivery system in the US and this sort of thing detracts from the real issues.
poster:chujoe
thread:951306
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20100321/msgs/951441.html