Page 83 - Winter2014

All Thumbs Book Reviews

wane, during the next thirty years the number examining published and unpublished research Whitaker also
of disabled mentally ill rose to over one million and conducting interviews with experts, Whita- reviews
and the number of adults and children disabled by ker found that these medications actually create
mental illness in the U.S. continued to skyrocket. imbalances which become permanent over time. puzzling
The introduction of Thorazine was followed That’s why it’s so difficult and dangerous to stop Harvard
by tranquilizers and other “magic bullets” such taking them. The side effects of drug withdrawal studies which
as antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety can be fatal.
drugs, stimulants and psychotropics. After the Whitaker also reviews puzzling Harvard showed that
“second generation blockbuster” Prozac arrived studies which showed that outcomes for schizo- outcomes for
on the scene in 1988, the number of mentally ill phrenics have worsened in America and that schizophrenics
continued to rise, not decline. It seemed that the sufferers are no better off than a century ago.
mentally ill became chronically ill on the new Other literature showed that outcomes for these had worsened
“magic bullets.” patients were much better in poorer countries in America and
By 2007 the number of disabled mentally where drugs were used in only 16 percent of that sufferers
ill had grown to more than four million adults. cases. Because schizophrenia is such a costly
From 1987 to 2007 psychiatric drug companies, disease to treat (with most funds used to cover were no better
by means of willing medical experts, marketed drug costs), and because it affects more than two off than a
these drugs to children and adolescents for million Americans and costs thirty-five billion century earlier.
ADHD and other behavioral problems. There dollars annually, the question becomes: what is
followed a thirty-five-fold increase in young going wrong?
people qualifying for disability checks from the Before the advent of psychiatric drugs in
government, from about sixteen thousand in 1987 the late 1940s and 1950s, about seventy-five
to five hundred sixty thousand in 2007. In twenty percent of cases first admitted to hospitals for
years the number of disabled mentally ill children schizophrenia recovered and returned home to
rose thirty-five-fold. Of those dependent upon their families in three years, with little or no
SSI (social security supplemental income), chil- readmission. What closed the asylums and state
dren comprised fifty percent in 2007. Children hospitals was Medicare and Medicaid programs
in foster homes seem to be specifically targeted begun in 1965, which provided federal subsidies
as needing psychiatric drugs. for nursing home care but no such subsidy for
Today medical doctors prescribe antidepres- care in state mental hospitals. States seeking
sants to pregnant and nursing moms, even though to save money began shipping their chronically
the medications appear in the fetus in measure- ill patients to nursing homes. Those patients in
able amounts. The newborn may start off life nursing homes were maintained on psychiatric
today with a bloodstream full of antidepressants drugs and remained chronic cases.
and nourished by a breastmilk cocktail spiked According to Whitaker’s findings, it appears
with psychiatric drugs. that when people are diagnosed with mental
At the beginning of his career, Whitaker illness in America it is nearly certain that they
was a “believer in the conventional wisdom” that will become chronically ill and take psychiatric
psychiatric drugs fix what is broken. For over medications for life. Because of their medica-
fifty years psychiatrists have been preaching that tion's effects, they will lose twelve to twenty
the biological cause of mental illness is a “chemi- years of life expectancy compared to people not
cal imbalance” in the brain and that psychiatric taking the drugs. In addition, those who take
drugs restore this balance. But no laboratory tests psychiatric drugs can develop cognitive deficits
or scans can show proof of this “truth.” From as well as tardive dyskinesia (TD). This condi-
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