Yesterday The Lancet published a comment piece authored by five senior UK psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists, including Professor David Nutt and Professor Guy Goodwin. The article is entitled: ‘Attacks on antidepressants: signs of deep-seated stigma?’ and can be viewed online here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(14)70232-9/fulltext?_eventId=login
The article is free to view; however registration on the site is required.
Once again, it strikes me how this particular school of psychiatry seems to ignore the vast majority of research. I think what this article exemplifies is not a stigmatisation of critical psychiatry towards mental illness, but a desperate attempt to cling on while at the same time ignoring the vast majority of concerns people have about antidepressants. Unless general psychiatry can come of this rather ignorant and damaging pedestal, which it seems to have been on for a long time, then the stigmatisation of the mentally distressed will indeed continue and the gap between ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’ will continue to exist.
“a new nadir in irrational polemic?”
(They always tell you who they are and what they are doing when the patient goes into reaction).
Patient is grandiose, using emotive terms, narcissistic in presentation. Whilst it was possible to engage with patient, Mr Psychiatry was difficult to interrupt which is a symptom of his illness. Patient still has illusory thoughts about being called a drug pusher and taking bungs from academic boards in Geneva, Switzerland. An MHA 1983 assessment was done in his villa in Ibiza and both medical professionals agreed that the patient would benefit from a prolonged stay on a ward where his condition is expected to deteriorate. Throughout assessment he complained bitterly about the Council Tax on his private practice in Clerkenwell and not being reviewed for a new consultancy post. Grandiose sense of self, angry and irratible. Mr Psychiatry will remain in the red zone until further review.
So four weeks after the launch in Parliament they “reply”, if it can be called that. You must be correct in your position to cause the patient to become so irrascible and manic after his first dose of medicine. Well done. Keep on keeping on.
Even the way in which “Mr Psychiatry” and colleagues have written their article in the Lancet exemplifies a gap between them and others, which is brought on by their own profession. As you said Tom, “a new nadir in irrational polemic?” I would like to think my understanding of the English language is somewhat good, but even that took some making sense of. It just shows once again the different planet that psychiatry, or the larger part of it, seems to be on. Looking at the whole argument here, which stems beyond Nutts article, it seems psychiatry is unhappy and frightened at the interference with other professionals from other professions (and indeed from their own within). These days a psychiatrist may see their ‘patient’ once every 4 to 6 weeks for a 15/20 minute appointment, and like tarts enough to make a holistic assessment of a human being and their suffering, and what had lead up to it? Psychiatry is to blame for this situation: the situation which is patients frightened of psychiatrists and drugs, psychotherapy getting more funding increasingly, even clinical psychologists getting prescription rights in certain places, all because psychiatry has ignored the very people they are supposed to ‘care’ for and ‘understand’. Perhaps if psychiatry would pay more attention to the person, and not ‘the patient, Mr specimen A’, then the profession would not receive so much criticism. I know 150 years go psychiatry did some pretty god awful things in the institutions, but at least psychiatry once sat down with a patient to ask who they are. Those days are gone, and only very few psychiatrists practice in this way. The big question now is, will psychiatry reform to pay more attention to their ‘people?’ If not, then frankly other professionals, who I think have better success, will continue to criticise you in the way they do. In a general sense, the only progression medicine has provided for mental illness is from skull drills to happy pills. As blunt as it may sound, wake up, listen and act upon what your patients, other very well suitably qualified allied professions are saying, stop ignoring everyone and existing in ones own vacuum and pay attention to the world and the people in it. Perhaps then psychiatry will have a better success.