Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4540
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Psychiatric drugs harming Canadians: report
CBC News Online 2006 May 1
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2006/05/01/psychiatric-drugs060501.html
Notes:
Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:
“ …psychiatrists should be required to review patients’ medications twice a year to see if they can be reduced or stopped.”
This is an excellent plan.
How many poor people are out there who are needlessly drugged to the eyeballs simply because no-one bothers to check to see if they still need (or ever needed) the drugs they are on?
Full text:
Psychiatric drugs harming Canadians: report
Last Updated Mon, 01 May 2006 11:27:16 EDT
CBC News
Psychiatric patients are commonly drugged without their consent and many suffer long-term damage as a result, the Canadian Alliance for Rights in Health Care claims in a report released Monday.
The report recommends giving patients a greater say in their mental health treatment.
The report, based on public hearings into the use of psychiatric drugs, says psychiatrists should be required to review patients’ medications twice a year to see if they can be reduced or stopped.
A panel of academics and professionals worked at arm’s-length from the organizers of the hearings, then made 40 recommendations based on what they heard about the dangers of psychiatric drugs.
Doctors regularly give medications ranging from antidepressants to anti-psychotics, sometimes forcing them on patients, without telling them about side-effects or considering alternatives such as counselling, said Dr. Bonnie Burstow, who chaired the panel and helped draft the recommendations.
“The law needs to change so that somebody watches the watchers, so that one doctor all by himself cannot decide someone is going to be on drugs the rest of his life “ said Burstow, a professor of counselling psychology at the University of Toronto.
Panel heard from patients
The panel heard from 24 patients, including Patricia Poulin, who recounted her experience when she was hospitalized at age 15 after being sexually abused.
Poulin, now 29, said she was given no information about the cocktail of drugs she was prescribed over the next two years.
She says even more drugs were prescribed as she became more upset, but that the reasons for her distress were not addressed.
“[The doctor] said either you take them by mouth or I’ll have them injected. So I took them,” recalled Poulin, now a graduate student in Toronto.
The report’s authors call for independent research into drug safety, and for safe houses for patients trying to get off them.
Mental-health workers also need to be educated about what constitutes informed consent and alternatives to medication, the report said.
Pills are often prescribed when talk therapy might be the answer, agreed Dr. Allan Abbass, director of education at Dalhousie University’s psychiatry department in Halifax.
However, Abbass noted that drugs are necessary in some cases, particularly if alternatives like psychotherapy aren’t available. “Definitely there’s some people in some situations where medication is extremely important,” said Abbass.
The report is being released to federal, provincial, and municipal governments.
