15-Year Follow-Up Schizophrenia Study: NoDrugs = Better Chance at Recovery

Recent public disclosures about the harmful effects of FDA-approved psychotropic drugs and corroborating evidence from patient outcome and mortality studies reveal that psychiatry's fixation on drugs as the treatment of choice is a toxic prescription for debilitating adverse effects; an impediment to recovery; and premature death.

A 15-year prospective follow-up study compared recovery outcomes in schizophrenia patients treated with antipsychotics and those untreated or treated without drugs was just re-published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases (May 2007). [1] It was funded by the US Public Health Service and the National Institute of Mental Health.

The findings from this 15-year study confirm previous international outcome studies [2]: 40% of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia who were NOT on antipsychotic drugs showed periods of recovery and better global functioning compared to only 5% of patients taking antipsychotics (p=.001). "These analyses indicated that in addition to the significant differences in global functioning between these groups, 19 of the 23 schizophrenia patients (83%) with uniformly poor outcome at the 15-year follow-ups were on antipsychotic medications."

The indisputably significant findings from this 15-year prospective study provide documented evidence for the overthrow of psychiatry's harm producing, drug-focused paradigm of care. This paradigm condemns people to chronic disability impeding rather than fostering recovery.

The investigators, Martin Harrow, PhD. and Thomas Jobe, MD, Department of Psychiatry, at the University of Illinois, Chicago, evaluated the outcome of 145 patients with a DSM-III psychiatric diagnosis, including 64 with schizophrenia and a control sample of 81 nonschizophrenia patients. Patients were evaluated on premorbid variables, assessed prospectively at index hospitalization, and then followed up 5 times over a period of 15 years (at 2 years following hospitalization, 4.5 years, 7.5 years, 10 years and 15 year). At each follow-up, patients were compared on symptoms and global outcome. One hundred and ten of the 145 patients (75.9%) were evaluated at all 5 follow-ups over the 15 years, and another 23 patients (15.9%) were evaluated at 4 of the 5 follow-ups. In controlled clinical trials the drop out rate in short 6 week studies is 65% and more, in the CATIE study the drop out was 74%. Thus, the significance of the findings of this naturalistic study is enormous.

The investigators addressed the following clinically significant issues:

1. In a naturalistic research design, which includes patients in treatment and those not in treatment, can schizophrenia patients not on antipsychotics function better and show periods of recovery?
2. Which particular types of schizophrenia patients go off medications for a prolonged period, and do factors associated with this influence subsequent outcome and recovery?
3. Do schizophrenia patients who do not remain on medications differ in (a) premorbid developmental achievements and (b) prognostic potential or in personality and attitudinal factors?

Best recovery outcomes were demonstrated by patients who had stopped taking antipsychotic drugs-and they showed significantly better global functioning than those who continued to be treated with antipsychotics at 4 of the 5 follow-ups (p=<.001) Curiously, an earlier version of the study was published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin in 2005, but the findings were largely ignored, no doubt, because they pose a financial threat to the pharmaceutical-dominated psychiatric establishment. [3]

The findings confirm that the poor outcome findings in the CATIE study, which assessed only patients on antipsychotic drugs, are due mainly to the drugs' ill effects. [Link]

The poor recovery of patients treated with antipsychotic drugs goes a long way in explaining a recent analysis of government mortality data. It shows that patients treated in the American mental health system die 25 years prematurely. [4]

At this juncture, a compelling body of evidence documents psychiatry's colossal failure: 1. A series of international studies consistently show that patients taking antipsychotics have worse clinical outcomes than those who do not. [2] 2. U.S. government sponsored studies: --Schizophrenia CATIE study reported that 74% of patients couldn't tolerate the antipsychotics and dropped out within 18months; --An analysis of mortality rates among patients in 8 state mental health systems reveals that their lives are cut short by 25 years. 3. Evidence from secret company documents uncovered during civil liability suits and state Attorneys General lawsuits provide evidence of the drugs' debilitating effects.

When added up the harm produced by the drug-centered treatment paradigm is a public health catastrophe whose magnitude is comparable to a pandemic-millions of people-including children and the elderly-have suffered harm from FDA-licensed psychotropic drugs.[5] [Below a sample of recent living testimonials]

The cumulative evidence is indisputable: the drugs cause harm without any credible demonstrable benefit-and without a scientific rationale. Psychiatrist Kenneth Kendler, co-editor-in-chief of Psychological Medicine, acknowledged (2005): "We [psychiatrists] have hunted for big, simple neuropathological explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them. We have hunted for big, simple neurochemical explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them. We have hunted for big, simple genetic explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them" (pp. 434-435).[6]

Despite the lack of clear evidence for neuropathological, neurochemical, or genetic explanations for psychiatric disorders, the beliefs in such are heavily perpetuated by psychopharmacologists and physiological psychiatrists who are heavily invested in the drugs and their industry benefactors. Psychotropic drugs that have consistently been shown to cause ham-to impede rather than improve patient recovery-and to undermine vital physiological function of hormonal, endocrine, cardiovascular systems. The body of evidence should give Congress pause about its misallocation of public funds-harmful treatments should not be subsidized by taxpayers. [7] [Link]

A superb critical review of the published disconfirming literature of psychopharmacology, written by psychiatrists and neuroscientists whose criticism of currently held beliefs about mental illness and the paradigm of treatment, are mostly drowned out by this industry-dominated field. Dr. Thomas Murray, Director of Counseling at North Carolina School of the Arts, calls upon the counseling profession to "be cautious about supporting the psychiatric-medical model, or any model, when it is not prepared to produce its own body of research to test the assumptions of that model." He encourages counselors to "get a balanced view about psychopharmacology and the medical-model in general.to call into question the uses of technology (e.g., brain scans), research methodology, and treatment efficacy of these medications based on the examination of the existing research. Specifically, I suggest counselors investigate rigorously the uses and consequences of these medications regardless of their support or skepticism." [8]

And most importantly, Murray admonishes counselors to "examine the consequences and the impact of associating with and imposing particular assumptions about the biological etiology of mental disorders on clients without evidence that such approach serves their best interest."

References:

1. Martin Harrow, PhD, and Thomas H. Jobe, MD. Factors Involved in Outcome and Recovery in Schizophrenia Patients Not on Antipsychotic Medications: A 15-Year Multifollow-Up Study, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol. 195, No. 5, May 2007 [Link]
2. Lehtinen V, Aaltonen J, Koffert T. Two-year outcome in first-episode psychosis treated according to an integrated model. European Psychiatry 15 (2000):312-20; Lehtinen K. Finnish needs-adapted project: 5-year outcomes. Madrid Spain, World Psychiatric Association International Congress, 2001; Seikkula J, Aaltonen J, Alakare B. Five-year experience of first-episode nonaffective psychosis in open-dialogue approach. Psychotherapy Research 16/2 (2006): 214-228; Leff J, Sartorius N, Koren A, Ernberg G. The International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia. Pscyhological Medicine 22 (1992): 131-45; Jablensky A, Sartorius N, Ernberg G, Ansker M. Schizophrenia: manifestations, incidence and course in different cultures. Psycghological Medicine 20, monograph supplement (1992):1-95.
3. Colton CW, Manderscheid RW. Congruencies in increased mortality rates, years of potential life lost, and causes of death among public mental health clients in eight states. Prevalence Chronic Disability, April 2006. [Link] See also: Mentally ill die 25 years earlier, on average By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY, May 3, 2007 [Link]
4. Martin Harrow, Linda S. Grossman,3 Thomas H. Jobe,4 and Ellen S. Herbener. Do Patients with Schizophrenia Ever Show Periods of Recovery? A 15-Year Multi-Follow-up Study, Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 31 no. 3 pp. 723-734, 2005.
5. Gianluca Trifiro` MD, Katia M. C. et at All-cause mortality associated with atypical and typical antipsychotics in demented outpatients, Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety 2007; 16: 538-544. . See also, a series of investigative reports in the national press documenting the harm producing effects of psychotropic drugs-in particular the antipsychotics: USA TODAY: New antipsychotic drugs carry risks for children 5/2/2006 [Link] Boston Globe: Bipolar labels for children stir concern Hull case highlights debate on diagnosis Rebecca Riley's parents are accused of deliberately poisoning her with her prescription medication. February 15, 2007 [Link] THE NEW YORK TIMES: Psychiatrists, Children and Drug Industry's Role May 10, 2007 [Link] l; USA TODAY: Mentally ill die 25 years earlier, on average. May 3, 2007 [Link]
6. Kendler, K. S. (2005). Toward a philosophical structure for psychiatry. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162, 433-440.
7. Robert Whitaker, Mad in America, Perseus, 2002; Anatomy of an Epidemic: Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol.7, No. I, Spring 2005 online at: [Link]
8. Thomas L. Murray, Jr. The Other Side of Psychopharmacology: A Review of the Literature Journal of Mental Health Counseling, Vol. 28/No. 4/October 2006/Pages 309-337.

[Link]Psych meds drove my son crazy At 17, my son was a funny, odd autistic boy. But a misdiagnosis turned him into a violent, unpredictable man, and drove our family to the brink. By Ann Bauer May. 18, 2007

This is a story with a hopeful ending. Lucky, even. But be forewarned, you have to get through a lot of hopeless, unlucky crap before you find it. Here's how it all starts: My first-born son has autism. Now that isn't hopeless or, in my opinion, unlucky. Autism isn't sick or crazy. It's rigid and routine, a little eccentric. Autism is multiplying columns of numbers easily while being unable to look anyone in the eyes; listening to only one band's music, and always in the same order, for a period of six weeks; refusing to eat anything orange. It's also being able to remember the exact date and time you ate a bison burger in Chamberlain, S.D., when you were 6. But there's a really charming side to all this, a wonderful tilted perspective on life that, if you're a parent of autism, you come quickly to enjoy. I was a parent like this.

Until he was 17, my son was unique and funny and odd. He was difficult in some ways but incredibly easy in others. He washed the family's dishes precisely, went to bed at exactly the same time each night, and sorted our mail into careful piles. He did fairly well in school -- above average in math, a little below in social studies -- and spent his weekends playing tournament-level chess. He was a loner, but sweet and articulate and very close to his only brother.

Then junior year came. He met a girl, he went to a dance, he thought life was better. And for a night it was. Then the dance ended, the girl decided she was interested in someone else, and the boy became depressed.

Was this cause for alarm? I thought not. Teenage boys routinely get depressed over girls and fickle friends and school dances. It was painful, but I assumed it would blow over. When it didn't, after six months, I took him to a psychologist who recommended a psychiatrist who put him on a newfangled antidepressant she said would have the added benefit of controlling some of his obsessive tendencies, like stacking the dishes and sorting the mail.

I didn't want to control those things -- to me, these weren't symptoms, they were characteristics of my son. And I'd fought for 17 years to keep him drug-free. But the psychiatrist and the psychologist and several family members insisted: He'd become unhappy, his routines were getting in the way of his developing a social life. This pill, they said, would help him.

Instead, he gained 30 pounds and began to lose his mind. It happened slowly, over a period of months. First his grades began to fall. There were some random episodes of violence -- nothing major, just an out-of-control moment here or there. A tendency to stand up from the dinner table, after a full meal, and walk to Arby's for a snack. Eerie giggles that seemed involuntary. A flat expression on his once-curious face.

Senior year, he started an after-school job at an auto parts factory but lost it when he couldn't keep up with even the elderly workers. He stopped speaking to his brother entirely and even hit him several times. He lost interest in music, computers and chess.

Together, my ex-husband and I took our son to a highly respected neuropsychology clinic housed in a suburban office building. The doctors there even looked like bankers; they wore regular clothes and carried clipboards and fancy pens embossed with the names of drug companies, rather than stethoscopes.

After meeting our son twice, they conferred with the original psychiatrist (who, we discovered later, was employed by the same large healthcare conglomerate) and came up with an altogether new diagnosis. This wasn't autism at all, they told us, but "psychomotor slowing" -- a form of schizophrenia. Our son was just unlucky, they said sadly, the victim of two devastating neuro-behavioral disorders. Completely unrelated. It was critical that we begin treating him immediately; they couldn't stress this strongly enough. We were given a prescription for a brand-new antipsychotic medication with the inspiring name Abilify that was direct-to-consumer advertised in Newsweek and Time magazine. It featured a woman gazing into an azure sky and copy promising the drug would work on the brain "like a thermostat to restore balance."

We were skeptical. But the experts were firm: He would continue to deteriorate if we didn't catch this now. Did we want our son to end up institutionalized? In jail? Sick to our stomachs and desperate, we gave him the drugs. Then he got much, much worse.

He stayed with me on weekends, and twice during the workweek he would come to my house for dinner. We would sit at the table -- my husband (his stepfather), his brother and sister and I -- but my once-reserved older son would only stand over us acting crazy. Humming, shifting foot to foot, screaming if anyone touched him or tried to move him to the side. Often, he would talk back to the people who were speaking to him inside his head, telling him to do things. He would not, however, say a word to us.

He wasn't eating meals. But he was eating -- constantly. After graduating from high school, during the period when he was still holding the voices at bay, he'd started a government job through a disability work program. I'd given him a car and helped him open a checking account during this period of lucidity. Now, he began stopping at fast food restaurants on his way home from work to consume nachos, burgers, brownies and lattes. He ate with his hands and wiped them on his clothes, which he'd quit washing. He stopped bathing altogether.

We discontinued the Abilify, tapering it off as directed. Two days after taking the final pill, he got out of bed at 2 p.m. and stood in one place for a solid hour. My husband had taken our daughter roller-skating; our younger son was at work. It was just me, alone with this 6-foot-3-inch man I'd given birth to but no longer knew. I put my hand on his back and tried to push him forward, toward his shoes. And he turned to look at me -- his eyes empty and cold -- then grabbed me by both arms and beat me until the neighbors heard me screaming and called 911.

You think you know what crazy is, but you don't. Not unless you've been there. In the movies, it might be depicted as quaint or flat-out violent. But whichever way it goes -- Hannibal Lecter or the wacky old ladies of "Arsenic and Old Lace" -- crazy is portrayed as consistent, interesting, narratively coherent. Not so in life. In reality, crazy is like war. It's tedious for long periods of time, until it turns around and is devastating. It's random, senseless, all-consuming, financially draining, destructive, ugly, sickening and gross.

It's standing in the front yard wearing nothing but torn underwear and trying to control the thoughts of people who drive by. It's saying yes to every question, no matter what the real answer. It's drinking compulsively, straight from the faucet, then spewing a stream of clear-water vomit like a geyser.

This riveting true life account can be read at: [Link]

~~~~~~~~~~
The (Michigan) Northern Express [cover story] Are kids being overdosed? Anne Stanton

Does Your Toddler Really Need an Anti-Depressant? Report shows that thousands of Michigan preschoolers are being prescribed psychiatric drugs Activist Ben Hansen looks like a regular Traverse City nice guy. He's handsome with a neatly trimmed gray beard, often dressing in a casual flannel shirt and a Tiger's ball cap. He lives in a tiny house in Traverse City on the tiniest of incomes.

But don't let his modest appearance fool you. He is asking big questions of pharmaceutical companies, or pharma, our country's most powerful industry. And what he wants to know is this: Why are thousands of foster children and poor children on Medicaid - children who are too young for kindergarten -being put on antipsychotics,anti-depressants, anti-hyperactive medicine, as well as pills that eliminate the tremors caused by these medications?

Hansen's window into this trend is data compiled by the Michigan Department of Community Mental Health (MDCH), which oversees the Medicaid and foster care programs. Entire article at: [Link]

Northern Express Is our pill-popping society losing its mind? Anne Stanton

Ironically, the first time Maddie Jones ever felt truly crazy was the time she took an anti-psychotic medicine.

Last summer, Jones (not her real name) didn't have a job and went to bed each night, terrified that she might lose her Leelanau County home. Jones was taking 300 milligrams of Effexor for depression - a high dose, but she still felt incredibly down. So she started seeing a renowned Traverse City psychiatrist.

"He started prescribing all these drugs, willy-nilly," Jones said. "He'd say, 'That didn't work, so try taking two. Hmm, that didn't work. Let's try taking that other one.' "Then came the week from hell. I was really bonkers. I felt I had to flee my own house. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't eating. I was talking really fast all the time. I was way out of it. I actually took photos of all the drugs because I thought I was losing my mind."

Jones asked another doctor to help wean her off from one of the two antidepressants, one of the two sleeping pills, and the antipsychotic, Seroquel. Now she's on one anti-depressant and only one "sleeper." She feels much better. "I think there are psychiatrists who are legal drug pushers, and he's one of them."

Ben Hansen, a passionate anti-drug activist, knows of stories like Maddie Jones all too well. Last week, he was on the phone with a foster care caseworker who suspected a boy died from a drug overdose. The child had developed a neck twitch -possibly due to psychiatric medications he was taking - and his doctor prescribed an ADHD medicine. Days later, the boy died. When the caseworker learned a reporter had been apprised, he quickly emailed that the cause of death was still unknown.

Hansen has spent the past eight years trying to sound the alarm over the nation's deepening addiction to mind-altering medication. Complete article at: [Link]

Earlier|Later|Main Page