[lbo-talk] The epidemic of mental illness

[Bryan Atinsky]

In March 2010, after my family was killed in a car accident, I (obviously) had severe depressive and anxiety symptoms...completely unbearable... I tried a behavioral psychologist, a Lacanian therapist (in Israel), I tried some "natural supplements" (not ridiculous homeopathy) that a psychologist suggested had clinical evidence of effectivity on symptoms... I still felt the extremely unbearable shitty self. I did NOT want any SSRI because I have always been wary, hearing of their side effects and ineffectively and difficulty of coming off of them.  But therapy alone wasn't effective and the actual or placebo effect of the supplements was unobservably subtle to say the least. The only thing that had any effect was Xanax, but that lasts 4 hours and then back to the unbearable. So finally I talked to my psychiatrist and took a prescription for Celexa. For two weeks I wasn't feeling any better (well, except when I would take Xanax), but then within 3-4 days especially the anxiety symptoms started to suddenly disappear, and then a few weeks after that I just needed Xanax here and there when thinking about my wife and kids gets a bit too unbearably emotional. Seems weird that the placebo effect of the supplements would be sooo significantly less than the Celexa if it were merely placebo. I would venture to guess from that experience that the SSRI was significantly (non-placebo) effective in my case on my symptoms...doesn't mean it has the same result with everyone, and doesn't mean that serotonin imbalance was the cause of my symptoms (that cause would be the loss of my family)...but I don't really care...it was/is effective in contributing to making my life bearable for the moment...

Bryan  

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 16, 2011, at 7:14, lbo83235 <lbo83235 at gmail.com> wrote:


> On Jun 16, 2011, at 6:30 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
>> On 6/15/2011 10:38 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>>> Fascinating article about mental illness and psychoactive drugs.
>>> 
>>> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/epidemic-mental-illness-why/?page=1
>> 
>> Jan read parts of the article to me. I would agree with it. I don't know much about anti-psychotics (and I didn't ask Jan whether the article included lithium, but I've become convinced that SSRIs at least are pure poison.
>> 
>> It may be a case of more or less unregulated capitalist firms simply not recognizing any limits
> 
> It's pure market creation. Take a population of disoriented, stressed, over-worked individuals (raw material), and pass them through an increasingly refined industrial process of ever-proliferating diagnoses. Voila - turns out there are "diseases" and "syndromes" everywhere - because we're constantly refining our ability to "extract" them. Meanwhile, every new chemical compound wants to find a market - something to treat. It's a near-perfect analog of the old "pass a law, create a business" line.
> 
> Last time I was in the US, the parade of happy-smiley drug ads on TV with their horror-show, fast-talk disclaimers at the end seemed like something out of Bladerunner. Completely fucking surreal.
> 
>