detoxing from antidepressants

THE BIBLE

Antidepressants may be avoided by exercising: STUDY CONDUCTED IN 1999

With antidepressant prescriptions at an all-time high in this country, one wonders if physicians were listening nearly a decade ago when researchers at Duke University showed that exercise is just as effective in alleviating depression as the most popular antidepressant medication. If the doctors know, they apparently aren’t telling their patients – because Internet message boards and forums are filled with pleas for help from folks all trying to get off antidepressants. Someone should tell them there’s little they can do to avoid antidepressant withdrawal unless they enter a medical drug detox center.

Pathologies of the Diagnostic Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)

Americans have an obsession with classifying and labeling every behavior as abnormal. However “many psychiatric “conditions” exist only as labels in the minds of psychologists” (Null, 2002). If everyone has a mental disorder they could be institutionalized and controlled like good little soldiers marching in a perfect line with uniforms on all moving at the same time, with the same haircut, the same polished shoes, the same goals, and the same objectives like a line of identical controlled robots. “You’ll find that any normal behavior can be diagnosed as mental illness, and any adverse reactions to environmental influence, peer pressure and social unrest has earned a psychiatric label. If you don’t wake up on time, if you sleep poorly, if you drink coffee or smoke cigarettes, or if you give up these things, if you stutter, if a child fidgets or loses things or can’t wait their turn in a game, if you’ve ever been intoxicated, if you’ve had trouble with arithmetic or with grammar or with punctuation or writing expressively – all of these are now considered mental illnesses according to psychiatrists. Even teenagers who argue with their parents are, according to the DSM IV, suffering a mental disorder called oppositional defiance disorder” (Null, 2002). The DSM is premeditated to maximize conformity, promote pharmaceutical sales, and minimize individuality. (Link)

Antidepressant fraud
Dr Joanna Moncrieff, Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at University College London, said: “It is high time that it was stated clearly that the serotonin imbalance theory of depression is not supported by the scientific evidence or by expert opinion. Through misleading publicity the pharmaceutical industry has helped to ensure that most of the general public is unaware of this.”

Q&A on Antidepressants with Dr. Joseph Glenmullen….. Our New Hero?

Prozac Backlash

Getting off Antidepressants

As bad as her panic attacks were, 27-year-old Melissa Hall says that going off the antidepressant medication she originally took as treatment was also a nightmare.

Although she followed a doctor’s advice and tapered off the Paxil, she says she experienced severe dizziness, nausea and electric shock sensations, which left her virtually incapacitated.

“I didn’t work for two months,” she says. “I just laid on my couch waiting for the dizziness and nausea and everything to go away.”

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Despite anecdotal reports, there have been very few studies on the subject, and experts can’t say how many people may experience some form of withdrawal.

“We see withdrawal symptoms that can be so severe,” says Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of Prozac Backlash, “that patients feel held hostage to the antidepressant.”

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Compounding the problem, some experts say, is that many patients who go off the drug mistake withdrawal symptoms for a return of the original symptoms they were using the drug to treat. It is then very common for patients to restart the medication.

“This is chasing one’s tail by medicating withdrawal side effects,” says Dr. Glenmullen, which often results in needlessly prolonging exposure to the drug.

~ by boatsie on December 11, 2008.