• AmiceseOP
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      12 years ago

      Yep! (I know some references are blog posts, but mad in america makes good summaries; and also I should get to work on compiling sources I used.)

      General

      • Studies from drug companies have publication bias.[1]
      • Most pro-psych studies cherry picked their samples to be drug addicts.[2]
      • Pro-psych studies did not account for the active placebo bias.

      Antipsychotics

      • Damage the brain.[3]

      Antidepressants.

      • Are only as effective as placebo.[4] [5]
      • Chemical imbalance theory (it wasn’t even a theory tbh, it was just a marketed hypothesis) was disproved.[6]

      Stimulants.

      • Under reputable clinical trials, stimulants do not have any real efficacy.[7]
      • Holy shit I’m just finding out that psycho-stimulants can cross the blood-brain barrier![8] [9] (I’m pissed about this one.)

      As mental disorders cannot be objectively falsified through testing; it is impossible to discern a control group from people with a “mental disorder”. proper clinical trials unsurprisingly show this through the drugs being as effective as placebo.

      I’ll edit this comment if I find flaws.


      1. Selective publication of antidepressant trials and its influence on apparent efficacy: Updated comparisons and meta-analyses of newer versus older trials ↩︎

      2. https://www.reuters.com/article/health-us-trials-idUKTRE72H31320110318 ↩︎

      3. [https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/07/randomized-controlled-trial-confirms-antipsychotics-damage-brain/] ↩︎

      4. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/] ↩︎

      5. [https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/08/antidepressants-placebo-caution/] ↩︎

      6. Moncrieff, J., Cooper, R.E., Stockmann, T. et al. The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence. Mol Psychiatry (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-022-01661-0 ↩︎

      7. [https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/09/no-evidence-long-term-safety-efficacy/] ↩︎

      8. Sachkova, A., Doetsch, D. A., Jensen, O., Brockmöller, J., & Ansari, S. (2021). How do psychostimulants enter the human brain? Analysis of the role of the proton-organic cation antiporter. Biochemical Pharmacology, 192, 114751. doi:10.1016/j.bcp.2021.114751 ↩︎

      9. Treatment for Stimulant Use Disorders: Updated 2021 [Internet]. Rockville (MD): Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 1999. (Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 33.) Chapter 2—How Stimulants Affect the Brain and Behavior. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK576548/ ↩︎

      • Helix 🧬
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        22 years ago

        Thank you a lot for those links. Your post has been very interesting and informative, I’ll probably take quite some time to review all of it.

        Some of the articles you linked are either peer reviewed by few people or have few citations. On the other hand, especially #4 as a review article of several studies was very interesting. It also shows that there’s truth in your statement “Studies from drug companies have publication bias”, which I myself always suspected.

        Your links “only” show some of the medication isn’t effective or may cause long term harm, not all of them. The claim that “Psychiatric drugs are straight up placebos that cause harm[]” isn’t completely supported by your links. If you’d tone it down to “many psychiatric drugs are equally effective as placebos and most of them cause harm” I would be more inclined to support that claim.

        One example: Antipsychotics like Haloperidol are often used only for a very short time to keep patients from harming themselves or others and to stop the synapses from firing, so to speak. There’s some risk-reward tradeoff to be analysed there. If you say that all psychiatric drugs are ineffective, you also say that Haloperidol isn’t effective and giving people placebos would be the proper response in an acute psychosis, which is probably something most clinical doctors in psychiatry wouldn’t agree with.

        Re #7: Is ADHD really a mental disorder? Isn’t it classified as developmental disorder or developmental disability? The site’s name is a bit unfortunately chosen, but apart from that their content seems to be at least worth a look.

        I wish there was a simple table or list of all tested (types of) medication with their reported efficacy and a pro/contra list of using them, like the review article about antidepressants, but easier to digest. If you have more links and more information, I appreciate you throwing them my way. Maybe I’ll throw some of them into my own wiki.

        • AmiceseOP
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          2 years ago

          Thank you a lot for those links. Your post has been very interesting and informative, I’ll probably take quite some time to review all of it.

          You’re welcome :)

          Some of the articles you linked are either peer reviewed by few people or have few citations.

          Peer review by few people is not inherently scientific on it’s own; peer reviewed can be performed with biased reviewers.

          Peer review is a technique to fix errors not found by the author of the studies.

          On the other hand, especially #4 as a review article of several studies was very interesting. It also shows that there’s truth in your statement “Studies from drug companies have publication bias”, which I myself always suspected.

          Yeah that’s unfortunate to find out.

          Your links “only” show some of the medication isn’t effective or may cause long term harm, not all of them. The claim that “Psychiatric drugs are straight up placebos that cause harm[]” isn’t completely supported by your links. If you’d tone it down to “many psychiatric drugs are equally effective as placebos and most of them cause harm” I would be more inclined to support that claim.

          Technically you’re right.

          However, psychiatric drugs fundamentally cannot be effective in treating psychiatric disorders. Psychiatric disorders are formed from assertion and lack objective testing for potential disproval. (This is why Psychiatry is not a science.)

          This is why I claim that all psychiatric drugs won’t be effective; we can’t test for their effectiveness on psychotic people, because psychosis lacks objective testing.

          One example: Antipsychotics like Haloperidol are often used only for a very short time to keep patients from harming themselves or others and to stop the synapses from firing, so to speak.

          First problem is

          “often used only for a very short time”

          Not really. Antipsychotics are used for way longer than “a short time”.

          " keep patients from harming themselves or others"

          Antipsychotics harm people; and they aren’t that effective.

          " and to stop the synapses from firing, so to speak."

          Synapses are supposed to fire; neurons pass signals to each other through synapses, so synapses are neccessary for the brain.

          There’s some risk-reward tradeoff to be analysed there. If you say that all psychiatric drugs are ineffective, you also say that Haloperidol isn’t effective and giving people placebos would be the proper response in an acute psychosis,

          I absolutely would.

          which is probably something most clinical doctors in psychiatry wouldn’t agree with.

          I disagree. As psychiatric disorders cannot be objectively falsified (through testing); humans cannot potentially disprove the claim that antipsychotics are effective at treating Psychotics.

          Re #7: Is ADHD really a mental disorder? Isn’t it classified as developmental disorder or developmental disability? The site’s name is a bit unfortunately chosen, but apart from that their content seems to be at least worth a look.

          ADHD is classified as a developmental disorder; but that doesn’t make it a developmental disorder. Otherwise, this would be a etymological fallacy.

          1. ADHD lacks any objective testing, it relies on subjective testing; I cannot test for ADHD through objective scan.
          2. ADHD does not require and use any objective analysis. For developmental disorders, there would be objective analysis to test for it’s existence in children.
          • For example, Down Syndrome is a developmental disorder because it affects the development of a human, through a triplication of chromosome 21. The result is that DS affects the development of people different frrom regular development. As the cause of down syndrome is in chromosome 21, it can therefore be detected through genetic testing.

          It’s the same reasoning for why I don’t consider Autism to be a developmental disorder.

          I wish there was a simple table or list of all tested (types of) medication with their reported efficacy and a pro/contra list of using them, like the review article about antidepressants, but easier to digest. If you have more links and more information, I appreciate you throwing them my way. Maybe I’ll throw some of them into my own wiki.

          Yep. Found some websites.

          https://www.antidepressantstatistics.com/ https://rxisk.org/drug-search/