‘I don’t believe in God, but I believe in lithium’ is the title of Jamie Lowe’s moving account of her manic depression (now usually referred to as bipolar disorder) in the New York Times (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/i-dont-believe-in-god-but-i-believe-in-lithium.html?referrer=). The piece reminds us how devastating and frightening this condition can be, so it is understandable that the author put…
In a belated new-year blog, I thought it would be useful to set out what I think someone needs to think about if they are considering taking a drug for a mental health problem, especially if they think they might end up taking the drug for a long time. These are the questions you might…
There are some things to applaud about the recently released update of the NICE bipolar guidelines (1,2), not least the recognition that the diagnosis has been inappropriately applied to children with behavioural problems. Hopefully this will help curtail the worrying trend of using toxic bipolar drugs in this age group. As usual, however, the Guidelines…
German psychiatrist, Stefan Leucht and colleagues, have produced another really important paper (1). The results indicate that the small differences usually found between antidepressants and placebo are far below the sort of differences that would be clinically detectable or meaningful. Leucht et al have conducted the first thorough, systematic attempt to provide some empirical evidence…
A long overdue debate is raging about the chemical imbalance theory of depression. Having been deluged with this idea for two decades now, the general public has come to believe that it is a scientifically proven fact. An LBC radio presenter recently announced that he had suffered from depression and he knew it was a…
The FIAT (Financial Incentives for Adherence Trial) study, published last year, highlights the paradoxical nature of our current attitude to the use mind-altering drugs. In this randomised controlled trial people with ‘psychotic disorders’ were paid £15 a time to take an injection of an ‘antipsychotic’ drug (1). The payment increased rates of compliance only marginally,…
Evidence that antipsychotics cause brain shrinkage has been accumulating over the last few yearsbut the psychiatric research establishment is finding its own results difficult to swallow. A new paper by a group of American researchers once again tries to ‘blame the disease,’ a time honoured tactic for diverting attention from the nasty and dangerous effects…
One of the strongest memories I have from the time when I was a medical student in the 1980s is of a young woman who was brought into a hospital in northern England. Confused and frightened, she poured out a profusion of fragmented ideas about having a gadget implanted in her body and feeling that…
Antidepressants have been in the news recently. The general feeling seems to be that although they are being overused and may have some unpleasant side effects, they certainly ‘work,’ at least in some people (1). So what is the evidence that antidepressants ‘work’? If you compare them with a dummy tablet or placebo in a…
Drugs are frequently prescribed for people with emotional and behavioural problems – problems we currently label as ‘depression,’ ‘schizophrenia,’ ‘bipolar disorder’ and ‘ADHD.’ In trying to understand more fully what these drugs actually do to people, I have formulated two different ‘models’ of drug action: the ‘disease-centred’ model, and the ‘drug-centred’ model. The disease-centred model…
Joanna Moncrieff 