Antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs have not caused disability rates to fall as one might expect, but instead, these drugs have caused disability rates to skyrocket according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO, and in his book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.

Number of people on government disability went from 1.25 million in 1987 to 4 million 20 years later

Whitaker notes that in 1987 when Prozac was introduced, there were 1.25 million people [ in the US ] on government disability due to mental illness.

As of 2010, twenty years later, there are 4 million people on government disability due to mental illness.

“So here we have this new embrace of a medication that is said to be a wonder drug and what do we see, we see disability rates do to depression and disability rates do to bipolar illness are skyrocketing [ because of these drugs ],” Whitaker says.

In an interview that Robert Whitaker did in Salon, he noted that,

In the late 1970s, Jonathan Cole — the father of American psychopharmacology — wrote a paper called “Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?” that signaled that antipsychotics weren’t the lifesaving drugs that people had hoped.

In it, he reviewed all of the long-term harm the drugs could cause and observed that studies had shown that at least 50 percent of all schizophrenia patients could fare well without the drugs.

He wrote, “Every schizophrenic outpatient maintained on antipsychotic medication should have the benefit of an adequate trial without drugs.”

This would save many from the dangers of tardive dyskinesia — involuntary body movements — as well as the financial and social burdens of prolonged drug therapy.

The title of the paper poignantly sums up the awful long-term paradox.

Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, who used large doses of niacin to treat schizophrenia, also wrote about this many years ago, noting that schizophrenics do better in countries where they don’t use drugs than in countries where they do use drugs.

“[T]here is a historical story as to why our country is deluded, our society is deluded, and believes in this chemical imbalance story [of depression]” according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

Whitaker noted that in the 1970’s, psychiatry felt like it was under siege because there were non-MD’s — social workers, counselors, psychologists — who were all competing for the same patients.

He also notes that anti-anxiety drugs were seen as addictive and harmful.

So, starting in 1980, they put out the DSM3 — [ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ] — “which put psychiatry and psychiatric disorders into a medical model” and they touted using drugs for these conditions because social workers, counselors, psychologists [ non-MD’s ] could not prescribe drugs, so this would eliminate their competition.

The drug industry became influential in psychiatry starting in 1980 when the American Psychiatric Association, at its annual meeting, started allowing pharmaceutical companies to sponsor symposiums according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

People “can have some very severe withdrawal symptoms” when they stop an antidepressant according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

(Note: This happened to my mother in 1994 which I describe below.)

Britain has recently changed its recommendations, saying that antidepressants should not be used as first-line therapy for depression, that they are just not that effective, and they have all these side effects according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

Doctors in Britain are now writing prescriptions for exercise for depression.

The number of doctors writing prescriptions for exercise was 4% in 2007, and now is 25%.

Antipsychotic drugs cause problems by blocking dopamine receptors, which causes the body to pour out more dopamine which increases the vulnerability to psychosis according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

“[T]here is some evidence, that really pretty consistent evidence, that the longer you’re on antidepressant medications… the harder it is to get off,” according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

“[T]here is some evidence, that really pretty consistent evidence, that the longer you’re on antidepressant medications… the harder it is to get off,” according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

“In other words, your vulnerability to relapse when you come off it increases.”

Long-term use of antidepressants increases recurrence of depression according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

Long-term use of antidepressants turn a short-term illness into a chronic illness according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

He noted since most people recover from depression on their own, the initial rationale for using drugs was to see if they could help people recover faster.

However, what doctors started noticing was that when depressed patients were given antidepressants, they were relapsing more frequently.

So the question became are these drugs turning a short-term illness into a chronic illness?

85% of people with depression who are not given drugs are well after a year according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

However, in those given antidepressants, only 15% do well long-term.

There is evidence suggesting that long-term use of antidepressants cause cognitive decline according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

Whitaker notes that ”... as one researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital said when we look for it, we find that it’s quite common.”

Long-term use of antidepressants increase the risk of converting depression to manic depression, that is, from unipolar depression to bipolar depression according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

One study found that exercise-alone worked better than drugs-alone or drugs-plus-exercise, and that adding drugs hindered long-term recovery according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

There is no scientific evidence that people with depression have a chemical imbalance. This was promoted to market the drugs, but is not based on science according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

Data from the World Health Organization shows that outcomes for schizophrenia patients are better for poor countries of the world like India, Colombia and Nigeria than for the rich countries, and only a small percentage of patients in those countries were medicated according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

(Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, who used large doses of niacin to treat schizophrenia, wrote about this many years ago, that schizophrenics do better in countries where they don’t use drugs.)

For mild to moderate depression, the drug-treated group doesn’t do any better in any sort of clinically significant way in terms of relieving depression in the short-term than the placebo group according to author and journalist Robert Whitaker as he noted in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

Before antidepressants were used, people with depression, even with major depression, usually got better noted author and journalist Robert Whitaker in a 2010 interview that he did with Joseph Mercola, DO.

He noted that in 1974, Dean Skyler, head of the depression section at the National Institutes of Mental Health wrote, “Most depressive episodes will run their course and terminate with virtually complete recovery without specific intervention.”

Whitaker noted that someone else wrote, “Depression is on a whole, one of the psychiatric conditions with the best prognosis for eventual recovery with or without treatment. Most depressions are self-limited.”