Michael Moore Interview: Possible GAME CHANGER

[Mike Irwin]

Over prescription is an issue with these drugs.

But it's been an issue with just about EVERY drug.

We're currently looking at the end of effectiveness of many antibiotics because doctors over the years simply threw these miracle drugs at anyone and everyone.

Have a runny nose? Take antibiotics just in case. Have a cold or flu? Antibiotics.

Didn't matter if the complaint had anything to do with a bacterial infection.

Far too many people make it sound as if overprescription is something new and sinister and driven ONLY by doctors who want to push drugs to everyone they can.

Sorry, but the patient, or the patient's caretaker, often has a lot of culpability in that.

If both parties are looking for the quick fix from this new miracle drug, what do we expect is going to happen?

 

[tyme]

once again just about any medications can cause severe side effects.

So if a side effect of SSRIs happens to be (in very rare cases) homicidal behavior, that's just another severe side effect? Nothing to see here, move along?

Not directly on-topic, but there's an interesting report about the VA tech shooter, available by googling for "mental health history of cho site:virginia.gov".

I would like to see someone like Breggin or Tom Cruise ( h is intense training as an actor makes him qualified to comment on such matters apparently) locked in a room with a violent, delusional schizophrenic and see how long it takes them to ask for psychiatric drugs for their charge.

Tom Cruise's opinion on psychiatry is driven by his cult religion. I don't think Breggin would object to the use of drugs to manage your hypothetical patient, but he'd probably argue that long-term treatment should focus on therapy rather than drugs.

 

[Mike Irwin]

"So if a side effect of SSRIs happens to be (in very rare cases) homicidal behavior, that's just another severe side effect? Nothing to see here, move along?"

So you are telling us that you have 100% absolute proof that SSRIs CAUSE homicidal idealization?

You'd be the very first, then, because certainly no one else can agree on whether these (and MANY MANY other drugs not related to SSRIs) CAUSE these incidents, or whether that's a process of the illness the individual already has.

There's a phrase that covers that... Correlation does not imply causation...

It seems, though, that you might be falling on the side of an argument that the gun grabbers have used for years...

If it saves just one life, banning guns (these drugs) is worth it!

You know what the counter argument to that is, of course...


"Tom Cruise's opinion on psychiatry is driven by his cult religion. I don't think Breggin would object to the use of drugs to manage your hypothetical patient, but he'd probably argue that long-term treatment should focus on therapy rather than drugs."

You really don't know much about Dr. Breggin, do you... He advocates pretty much the complete abandonment of pharmocological treatment of mental illnesses. His primary course of argument is that the side effects outweigh any potential benefits of drug therapy.

Only problem is, his recommended courses of treatment, while effective for SOME psychiatric disorders, is completely and totally ineffective for others, such as schizophrenia.

Hell, he's even said that schizophreics are responsible for their own problems because of cowardice and failure of nerve.

Sounds like something you'd hear out of a WW I doctor talking about shell shock...

There have been attempts to treat such illnesses with alternative therapies -- diet, exercise, education, conventional talk therapy, etc.

And all have been pretty dismal failures because the sad truth is that some of these diseases REQUIRE pharmacological treatment. There's simply no other way.


Oh, and regarding Tom Cruise? Doesn't matter where his ideas come from. He's expounding on topics where he has no knowledge, yet because of his fame and standing in the community, some will see him to be a voice of authority, no different than Dr. Breggin.

Breggin and the Scientologist "church" are not associated, to the best of my knowledge, but they are complimentary, so it doesn't really matter who got what from whom in this case.

 

[tyme]

If there are studies that show gun ownership linked to increased suicidal ideation or homicidal ideation, let's see them. I don't know how anyone could conduct such a study in an acceptable manner. The only possible method of action is purely psychological, and that's usually what studies try to exclude; you'd be looking for what in another context would be a placebo effect.

Using a gun in a homicide, and being driven to homicidal fantasy and to homicidal action by a gun, are distinct, right?

Maybe you missed my rants in this thread earlier, in which I think I adequately covered the "correlation is not causation" issue.

I don't know where that leaves us. The method of action of these drugs might plausibly cause changes leading to suicide and homicide. It's enough to make me worry. Other people think that the good these drugs do outweighs any possible (but effectively untestable) chance that they might be contributing to homicides, and anyway, "You can't prove it."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22415223
Forget the age correlation. Look at the introversion inverse correlation with SSRI effectiveness. (I think that's what the abstract says... increased introversion means lower effectiveness?) Maybe that's worth investigating? Maybe the homicidal/suicidal cases come from that same introverted cohort? If SSRIs are less effective there, maybe that could inform a practical change in prescription suitability that we could all agree on?

 

[Evan Thomas]

Just for the record, the video linked in the OP was produced by Dr. Gary Null, who is an anti-psychiatry (duh), vaccines-cause-autism, HIV-denying proponent of the notion that cancer can be treated with "natural" products. He's a "Doctor" courtesy of a Ph.D. from a study-by-mail diploma mill. His bachelor's degree came from a similar institution. Details here.

You can buy lots of swell products, including videos in which he articulates all of the above positions, on his website. He's also semi-famous for suing the contractor who made one of his own nutrition supplements, after he nearly died from taking it.

Unfortunately, it seems that the magnetic underpants he used to sell are no longer available.

Such is the company Michael Moore is keeping these days.
.......................

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22415223
Forget the age correlation. Look at the introversion inverse correlation with SSRI effectiveness. (I think that's what the abstract says... increased introversion means lower effectiveness?) Maybe that's worth investigating? Maybe the homicidal/suicidal cases come from that same introverted cohort? If SSRIs are less effective there, maybe that could inform a practical change in prescription suitability that we could all agree on?

From the abstract of the article you linked:

Statistical analysis showed that SSRI treatment may be 3.03 times more advantageous for MDD outpatients who are younger than 39 years. The patients with an elevated score of above 66T on the Social Introversion Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 scale are approximately 0.37 times as likely to be SSRI responders as are patients with a Social Introversion score less than 66T. Thus, it seems that in MDD outpatient age is the strongest predictor of response to SSRIs.​

What this actually says, in normal-human language, is that (in a very short-term study -- 8 weeks ain't nuthin' with these drugs) age was a good predictor of outcome, and introversion was not. Do the math: age was 8 times better as a predictor than introversion. There was a small inverse correlation with introversion scores, but one would have to read the actual article to know whether that correlation was statistically significant.

Short-term, retrospective study, small effect, no indication of whether or how they controlled for dosage, or for who was on which meds... I'm not convinced there's an introversion effect, and if there is a real effect, it's very small.

That said, I do agree that more caution should be used in prescribing these drugs to children and teenagers. The observed effect on suicidality is enough to warrant such.

 

[Pfletch83]

Since this discussion is about drug use and how the big pharma stuff hasn't been working.

Why not look to nature?

I think this is a very good argument for Marijuana legalization.

The known side effects are few and even the side effects are very mild when you compare them to what we have on the market now.

 

[tyme]

The patients with an elevated score of above 66T on the Social Introversion Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 scale are approximately 0.37 times as likely to be SSRI responders as are patients with a Social Introversion score less than 66T.

With no knowledge of the MMPI (other than having taken the MMPI-A once), I'm assuming higher scores on the introversion scale mean more introverted.

If a highly introverted person is .37 times as likely to be an SSRI responder, that means SSRIs don't work as well for that group, right? If introversion were not correlated positively or negatively, they wouldn't be able to state a figure like 0.37 comparing SSRI effectiveness between groups with higher introversion and lower introversion, right?

 

[Evan Thomas]

If a highly introverted person is .37 times as likely to be an SSRI responder, that means SSRIs don't work as well for that group, right? If introversion were not correlated positively or negatively, they wouldn't have much confidence in that 0.37 figure, right?

I think you meant to write: "less likely," above.

But the conclusion given in the abstract is that "... it seems that in MDD outpatient age is the strongest predictor of response to SSRIs."

And in any case, there's not really too much you can say about a weak correlation found in a pretty minimal study. Not saying they're wrong, just that I don't find the result for introversion very convincing.

Even assuming it's correct: let's look at it as crudely as possible, with some rounding of numbers, and assuming that the response to SSRI's is an either/or proposition. If younger people are three times more likely to have the drug work for them, then for every 10 older people for whom the drugs work, there will be 30 younger people for whom they work. On the other hand, if the difference for introverts and extroverts is 0.37, for every 10 introverts for whom they work, there will be not-quite-14 extroverts, who are now probably driving said introverts even more nuts .

So, is that a reason not to give SSRI's to those poor, suffering introverts? I hardly think so. And it's certainly not a basis for setting social policy.

 

[Tom Servo]

He's expounding on topics where he has no knowledge, yet because of his fame and standing in the community, some will see him to be a voice of authority, no different than Dr. Breggin.

The same could be said of many celebrities who lobby for gun control. As a culture, we often have a problem distinguishing eloquent voices from competent ones.

 

[tyme]

I think you meant to write: "less likely," above.

No. 0.37 times as likely was a quote from the abstract.

I still don't think your bolded text in post 45 is right. I think it's saying 1:0.37 or 2.7:1 effectiveness ratio between low-introversion and high-introversion patients.

 

[Evan Thomas]

With no knowledge of the MMPI (other than having taken the MMPI-A once), I'm assuming higher scores on the introversion scale mean more introverted.

If a highly introverted person is .37 times as likely to be an SSRI responder, that means SSRIs don't work as well for that group, right? If introversion were not correlated positively or negatively, they wouldn't be able to state a figure like 0.37 comparing SSRI effectiveness between groups with higher introversion and lower introversion, right?

Yeah... It is "as likely." Sorry about that. And I did get the MMPI-scoring thing backward...

That said, what makes this hard to interpret is that they report only the age results as a strong predictor, with younger people about 3 times as likely to respond positively.

I find it odd that they described their findings in such an apples-and-oranges way. Why wouldn't they report the introversion results the same way: people who scored low on the introversion scale were 2.7 times as likely to respond positively to the medications? If so, there's not much difference in the predictive value of the two measures.

Or they could have said that older people were 0.33 times as likely to respond to treatment, and that introverts were 0.37 times as likely to respond. (If in fact that's what they found.)

If that was the case, I don't see why their conclusion in the abstract wasn't that both were good predictors, but that age was a teeny bit better. Confusing. I was reading the numbers from a zero baseline, in which any positive number would indicate a positive correlation with response to the drug, rather than a baseline of 1; so, in effect, I took 0.37 as a percentage...

I guess I shouldn't try to analyze this stuff while watching a football game.

 

[tayronachan]

It is hard to believe there are still some people out there that haven't caught on that it's the psychotropic drugs that are behind these shootings. Why have they only happened in the last 18 to 20 years? Why is the MSM so quiet about that, and why have none in Congress and the MSM mentioned the psychotropic drugs? Could it be because the MSM recieves ad revenue from Big Pharma, and politicians recieve campaign contributions from Big Pharma? Adam Lanza was on Fanapt. There is not as much info out there about that now as there was just a few days after the event at Sandy Hook. But you can still find it.

"Another School Shooting, Another Psychiatric Drug? Federal Investigation Long Overdue"

Fact: Despite 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.

I'd have to call the shootings "false flags through negligence" to get the hi-cap semiautos out of The Peoples hands.

 

[Evan Thomas]

Tayronachan, can you provide a link to your source for the above?

Adam Lanza was on Fanapt. There is not as much info out there about that now as there was just a few days after the event at Sandy Hook. But you can still find it.

The Fanapt story was a hoax perpetrated by a convicted felon (recently paroled after spending ten years in Federal prison for conspiracy and wire fraud convictions) who traveled to Sandy Hook in violation of his parole, and claimed to be Adam Lanza's uncle. He even posted videos of his trip to his Youtube page...

He's now back behind bars. See this article for details.

Why is the MSM so quiet about that, and why have none in Congress and the MSM mentioned the psychotropic drugs? Could it be because the MSM recieves ad revenue from Big Pharma, and politicians recieve campaign contributions from Big Pharma?
<snip>
I'd have to call the shootings "false flags through negligence" to get the hi-cap semiautos out of The Peoples hands.

Be a bit careful with this stuff. The moderators here tend to frown on conspiracy theories...