Antidepressants and Psychotic Behaviour
Before 1973 it was illegal in the United States to profit from providing any aspect regarding general health care for citizens? The Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 passed by Nixon changed everything. Is the health insurance business a racket?
Yes, literally, and this is why the shameless pandering to robber baron corporations posing as “health providers” is such an egregious, and obvious, tactic to do nothing more than plump up insurance company profits. Who can be blamed for this outrageous state of affairs? Believe it or not, the downfall of the American health insurance system falls squarely on the shoulders of former President Richard M. Nixon.
Yes, literally, and this is why the shameless pandering to robber baron corporations posing as “health providers” is such an egregious, and obvious, tactic to do nothing more than plump up insurance company profits. Who can be blamed for this outrageous state of affairs? Believe it or not, the downfall of the American health insurance system falls squarely on the shoulders of former President Richard M. Nixon.
In 1973, Nixon did a personal favour for his friend and campaign financier, Edgar Kaiser, then president and chairman of Kaiser-Permanente. Nixon signed into law, the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, in which medical insurance agencies, hospitals, clinics and even doctors, could begin functioning as for-profit business entities instead of the service organizations they were intended to be. And which insurance companies received the first taste of federal subsidies to implement HMOA73, (gasp) why it was Kaiser-Permanente.
What are the odds? And to perfectly cement HMOA73 as the profiteering boondoggle that it actually was, the law Nixon mandated also included clauses that encouraged medical providers to not CURE afflictions, but to PROLONG them by only treating the symptoms.
There’s no money to be made in CURING sickness. But the sky’s the limit when it comes to forcing people to endure repetitive doctor visits, endless (and often useless and redundant) tests, and, of course, let’s not forget the ever-increasing demand for American-made prescription drug. Have you noticed recently that the words “prolonged coma” and DEATH have wormed their way into the fast-spoken side-effects list of just about every new drug you see on television or hear on the radio?
Death! From the medicine that’s supposed to cure you! You know what? Any patient would rather take restless legs over DEATH but for some strange reason they are kept in the dark about alternatives, by those who appear to masquerade as health care professionals but in actuality proved to be state-sponsored drug dealers in a white coat with a stethoscope. It could be debated and argued whether patients are being prescribed drugs due to genuine medical need or for profits, which are shared by the doctor and pharmaceutical companies by some clandestine under the table unwritten by implied arrangement. No statement can be a blanket truth because from medical school doctors are taught what to prescribe and must toe the line to pass their exams to qualify before they can practise medicine.
Death! From the medicine that’s supposed to cure you! You know what? Any patient would rather take restless legs over DEATH but for some strange reason they are kept in the dark about alternatives, by those who appear to masquerade as health care professionals but in actuality proved to be state-sponsored drug dealers in a white coat with a stethoscope. It could be debated and argued whether patients are being prescribed drugs due to genuine medical need or for profits, which are shared by the doctor and pharmaceutical companies by some clandestine under the table unwritten by implied arrangement. No statement can be a blanket truth because from medical school doctors are taught what to prescribe and must toe the line to pass their exams to qualify before they can practise medicine.
Things appear to have become an arms race between insurers, who deploy software and manpower trying to find claims they can reject, and doctors and hospitals, who deploy their own forces in an effort to outsmart or challenge the insurers. And the cost of this arms race ends up being borne by the public, in the form of higher health care prices and higher insurance premiums.
Of course, rejecting claims is a clumsy way to deny coverage. The best way for an insurer to avoid paying medical bills is to avoid selling insurance to people who really need it. An insurance company can accomplish this in two ways, through marketing that targets the healthy, and through underwriting. Rejecting the sick or charging them higher premiums. If one cares to investigate an obvious pattern might emerge.
In light of a long list of mass shootings over the past several years, the causative role of psychiatric drugs in violent events will undoubtedly have to be evaluated and addressed at some point.
Still, questions about the safety, or lack thereof, of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs really need to be addressed regardless of whether they were instrumental in any particular case. A Canadian judge has ruled that a teenage boy murdered his friend because of the effects of Prozac.
When will such side effects be taken seriously? Just how many people have to kill themselves or others before a drug is considered too dangerous to be prescribed?
In a paper titled “Antidepressants and Violence, states that "Problems at the Interface of Medicine and Law,” 5, David Healy, a British professor of psychiatry at Cardiff University and an authority on side effects of psychiatric drugs, write
”Legal systems are likely to continue to be faced with cases of violence associated with the use of psychotropic drugs, and it may fall to the courts to demand access to currently unavailable data. The problem is international and calls for an international response.”
Good Heath published a searing account from one of the book's authors, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, about the 20 years he was prescribed these drugs, medication he didn't need, and the hell of coming off them. In an excoriating assessment of the drug industry and psychiatry, experts claim the evidence of antidepressants is flawed and say these drugs have never been shown to correct a chemical imbalance. Yet millions are being prescribed drugs that are potentially extremely harmful. 'The drugs have failed to deliver what patients want, which is for the treatment to work for specific mental or emotional problems. So, there is no justification for widespread, life-long use. 'People are kept on these drugs for years. Clinicians claim this is to prevent a relapse, but the side-effects of stopping can be so severe it is preferable to stay on them.'
Research on animals has found that antidepressant can shrink the connections between brain cells and that these don't grow back after the drugs are stopped. There might just be a case of accepting the risks of these potentially dangerous side-effects if SSRIs were really effective in relieving depression.
The argument is that depression is due to low levels of the feel-good chemical serotonin, so SSRIs slow the rate the brain breaks it down so there is more to boost mood.
However, no research has shown a link between serotonin levels in the brain and depression. 'The disease model has been a disaster,' says Professor Gøtzsche.
'I have never seen any convincing evidence showing a psychiatric disease is causing brain damage, but have seen plenty that medication causes brain damage.'
Even so, the theory is often used to warn patients that if they stopped taking the drugs and felt dreadful this was a sign that their disease was coming back.
Another more plausible explanation is that, since SSRIs and other psychiatric drugs are well-known to be addictive, the distressing symptoms are the result of going cold turkey.
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