How bad are psychiatric drugs for the brain

Infinite_Jester wrote:

If someone has schizophrenia and they are stabilized with medication it really makes no sense to take them off their medication so they can return to a psychotic state unless you are presupposing that the source of schizophrenia is not brain activity

There are times people diagnosed with schizophrenia come off their psychiatric medications because they no longer need those psychiatric medications to be stable. The medications may, in fact, start to cause only deleterious, rather than beneficial, effects.

For instance, the people who recover from schizophrenia by feeding their bodies with micronutrients may begin to experience overdosed symptoms from their medications, thus necessitating dosage lowering and eventual weaning off the psychiatric medications. Others may experience this same effect from removal of all gluten from their diet, (or a combination). For others it may occur from treating other underlying problems either emotional or physical.

Here are examples of books about two types of recovery from schizophrenia, one having an emotional cause and the other a physical cause.

Healing From Schizophrenia by Lia Govers
It's Not Mental by Jeanie Wolfson and Robert Fredericks, MD

ALL drugs are bad. The only thing they are capable of curing is viruses, with cough syrup medication, and even that can cause brain damage to you.

I'm flattered that you took interest in my post Jaspar but I don't agree with what your saying.

Jaspar wrote:Infinite_Jester wrote:

If someone has schizophrenia and they are stabilized with medication it really makes no sense to take them off their medication so they can return to a psychotic state unless you are presupposing that the source of schizophrenia is not brain activity

There are times people diagnosed with schizophrenia come off their psychiatric medications because they no longer need those psychiatric medications to be stable. The medications may, in fact, start to cause only deleterious, rather than beneficial, effects.

I think you intentionally misread my post. I wrote "if someone has schizophrenia" and you responded by writing about "people diagnosed with schizophrenia". There is an important distinction which I think you are bluring. A person can be misdiagnosed with schizophrenia in which case non-gluten diets, micronutrients or jazz dancing may make them get better. I've been told many times before that there are people who have recovered from terminal cancers by undergoing some homepathic treatment. Of course, if they indeed recovered from terminal cancer by eating lettuce they must not have had terminal cancer. The same criticism applies here because in many cases people are misdiagnosed as having psychiatric disorders. The inter-rater reliablity rating, that is the measure of agreement between clinicians about what disorders person X has, is usually at best in the high 80%. This means, unfortunatly, many people are misdiagnosed and may go on to "recover" from disorders they never actually had. Given the fact that the primary diagnostic feature of schizophrenia is an ambigious symptom (psychosis) it's entirely probable that this happens quite frequently.

To be clear. You took the antecedent condition of my argument "has schizophrenia" and subsititued it for "diagnosed with schizophrenia" and went on as though this were not an important distinction which is erroneous.

Jaspar wrote:
For instance, the people who recover from schizophrenia by feeding their bodies with micronutrients may begin to experience overdosed symptoms from their medications, thus necessitating dosage lowering and eventual weaning off the psychiatric medications. Others may experience this same effect from removal of all gluten from their diet, (or a combination)

Micronutrients are awesome however, I am currently unaware of any empirical research that has verified that micronutrients are an effective treatment for schizophrenia. If you would like to cite empirical research from a peer reviewed academic journal that supports this claim I would love to read it.

Jaspar wrote:
For others it may occur from treating other underlying problems either emotional or physical.

Again, you are setting up a false dichotomy between somatogenic (physical cause) and psychogenic (mental cause). I can't disprove with premises or observations that our minds are not floating around like metaphysical helium balloons exerted influence over our bodies but, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that an active brain produces private experience and that for every private experience there is corresponding brain activity. The only way to support the emotional/physical dichotomy is to commit yourself to some form of dualism. Descrates and Spinoza did not may a very case for this and the wealth of evidence from modern neurobiology seems to correspond much better with materalist monism so I'm in favor of the latter.

Jaspar wrote:
Here are examples of books about two types of recovery from schizophrenia, one having an emotional cause and the other a physical cause.

Healing From Schizophrenia by Lia Govers
It's Not Mental by Jeanie Wolfson and Robert Fredericks, MD

These sound like very interesting books but, they are both personal accounts. When I support conclusions about the cause of and treatment for mental disorders I make those based on empirical research that has been published in peer reviewed academic journals. The reason for this is that peer review protects me as a consumer of information from falsification, errors and poor methodology. Also, personal accounts have a population of one as their sample which is not enough to support any conclusion about the cause of or treatment for mental disorders. For example, My grandmother has lived into her 90's and she smokes a pack of cigarettes everyday. Should we conclude that smoking is not unhealthy?

I'm open minded to all kinds of unconventional treatments for mental and emotional suffering. Ronald Laing had once helped a group of about 12 persons with schizophrenia make significant recoveries just by talking to them. If I remember correctly they were all released from hospital because they had done so well and everyone was like "how the...?" However, if the unconventional treatment you are suggesting is based on unreasonble premises or goes against the facts (I mean really goes against the facts as in the streets are littered with people who have gone of their meds not recovered) then I think it is dangerous and irresponsible to promote it.

Take Care, IJ. (Sorry to be a dick )

Infinite_Jester wrote:My grandmother has lived into her 90's and she smokes a pack of cigarettes everyday. Should we conclude that smoking is not unhealthy?

Sounds fair to your grandmother.

Black Widow wrote:

Infinite_Jester wrote:My grandmother has lived into her 90's and she smokes a pack of cigarettes everyday. Should we conclude that smoking is not unhealthy?

Sounds fair to your grandmother.

Your right! Cigarettes are not carcinogenic because my grandmother hasn't died from cancer. Why do we bother with empirical research. We should just generalize from single cases. This sounds like sound philosophy of science to follow. (sarcasm)

Sorry I'm teasing but you know it's true. (I hate arguing about these things... )

There is actually a moral I wanted to bring up.
It is not always about truth, but about what the person thinks.
For example, people like me don't trust anybody.
So obviously, doctors have few if any authority over my opinion.
I would have to redo their research, and obviously, I do not have the time or skill to do that.
So I don't trust shady business.
And then there is the problem of the patient.
Does the patient want to keep his/her mind as it is?
Taking drugs is serious stuff, if you think about it.
It is not very much different than cutting the hand of a thief or practicing lobotomy or genital mutilation.

So the moral was, like your grandma, my smoking is none of science's business.
You see what I mean? the truth is irrelevant to make me change if I choose to smoke.
All it can do is annoy me.

Black Widow wrote:So the moral was, like your grandma, my smoking is none of science's business.
You see what I mean? the truth is irrelevant to make me change if I choose to smoke.
All it can do is annoy me.

I agree. The empirical sciences can't really support conclusions about how someone should behave because questions about how someone should live their life or what is morally permissable and what isn't can't be settle by observations. However, the question about whether or not psychiatric medications are causally efficaious at treating certain mental disorders or whether or not smoking is unhealthy is settled by observation not rational discourse. Therefore, the conclusions about causal efficacy and the long term effects of smoking are not really moral problems. Instead, they are questions which the empirical sciences investigates and settles. Smoking is unhealthy. Psychiatric medications have a measurable efficacy that varies depending on many factors but for the population I have been talking about, those with schizophrenia, they work better than any other treatment that exists (which is actually really sad because these drugs are horrible for your body and the side effects are awful).

Sorry for annoying you Black Widow or anyone else on the forum. My intention isn't to be dick but, to explain why psychiatric drugs are not actually bad for the brain when given to the appropriate population under justifiable circumstances.

Infinite_Jester wrote:Sorry for annoying you Black Widow or anyone else on the forum. My intention isn't to be dick but, to explain why psychiatric drugs are not actually bad for the brain when given to the appropriate population under justifiable circumstances.

I agree with you, and you did not annoy me, I was just talking generally.
There is a bias in those type of discourse, that is what I was aiming at.

They did not find that smoking was a problem until people with sensitive noses started complaining.
Now people want drugs, and they will find reasons why they work and why the side effects are not that bad.
But the main thing I was saying that was for you.
When you do into those type of discourse, you have to know the bias of your audience.
You seem to have done some philosophy.
You should know how those things are done in the majority of cases.
The conclusion is done and then the justification is given.

Anyway, this is my last post on this site.
It was nice talking to you Infinite_Jester,

Best wishes.