@ClinpsychLucy I would respectfully like to disagree. You were a lead author for a report on “The Power Threat Meaning Network” where the following claims were made. “Evidence for biological causation is not only absent in relation to the diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia’....” (page 153) (1/)
@ClinpsychLucy And “..there is no consistent evidence for primary biological influences...” (p154). These two statements seem to suggest that you don’t believe that biology plays a big role. Also, when referring to medication for conditions such as ADHD and schizophrenia, the report uses..(2/)
@ClinpsychLucy ..very negative language. As if medication is forced on people and it regularly has massively harmful side effects. Current ONS data on deaths by poisoning from both antipsychotics and antidepressants show that the numbers dying from the use is relatively small and has not (3/)
@ClinpsychLucy ...increased substantially in the last 25 years. (ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peop…. Page 265 of the report also states that “..psychiatric medication is a major public health concern on its own.”
But the sources quoted to back up this somewhat hyperbolic (4/)
But the sources quoted to back up this somewhat hyperbolic (4/)
@ClinpsychLucy ..assertion (I am always wary of hyperbole in scientific reports) are somewhat out of date. On p268 of the report, this assertion is repeated but with a further claim. “..one of the biggest public health issues, the extent to which psychiatric drugs create and perpetuate (5/)
@ClinpsychLucy disability over the long term..” The claim is backed up on p173 of the report, where the results of a study from 1981 showed that “some post-mortem studies show an increased density of dopamine receptors amongst people who were given schizophrenia diagnoses”. The report then.(6/)
@ClinpsychLucy ..explains this finding with a finding from an even older study (1974) which explains that the consequences of reduced dopamine levels in the brain is a compensatory strategy. 3 problems with this. 1. The studies quoted are very old so suggest a measure of ‘cherry picking’ (6/)
@ClinpsychLucy ..(I also couldn’t find the full reference for the 1981 study by Cross et al so couldn’t look at the original study to check what was meant when the report states “some”.) 2. There seem to be too many unknowns to assume that there is a correlative link between medication use (7/)
@ClinpsychLucy ...and brain changes. It is not even clear whether all the subjects took any medication. 3. Newer antipsychotics have been around since the early 90s. The side effects are less extreme and they bind more loosely to the dopamine receptors so the majority of those on (8/)
@ClinpsychLucy ..these drugs now would not have their brain affected in the way mentioned on those older studies. You can see the abstract of a 2002 study on the action of the different types of antipsychotics at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11873…. A cohort study of prescriptions of the different (9/)
@ClinpsychLucy Types of antipsychotics prescribed between 2007 and 2011 ( the latest I could find) shows that approximately 2/3 of the antipsychotics prescribed during this time were the newer sort. So this report talks very negatively about medication. Yes, we don’t fully understand how (10/)
@ClinpsychLucy These medications for conditions such as schizophrenia and ADHD work and there are side effects. But the whole premise of the report seems to be away from medication. Your own twitter feed contains links to horror stories about medication which are outliers, not the norm. (11/)
@ClinpsychLucy This would suggest that you do support the idea that medication is bad. The report is awful in a number of other ways. It puts quote marks round a lot of recognised diagnosised conditions as if the difficulties of people with these conditions can be laughed off and spoken (12/)
@ClinpsychLucy ..with some kind of ‘air quotes’. As if our we are making it up, not really trying hard enough... the focus on adverse childhood experiences as the main cause of such a wide range conditions does not really stand up ie there are those who suffer trauma as children who do (13/)
@ClinpsychLucy ..develop any condition and others with conditions who never had any adverse childhood experiences. This report just goes back to the old trope of blaming parents for their children developing these conditions. It also adds to what had become known as ‘pill-shaming’, where (14/)
@ClinpsychLucy ..those who take medication are somehow made out to be ‘not trying hard enough’ because ‘walks in the country cheer everyone else up!’ The use of the logo for the British Psychological Association on this report has lent it some legitimacy but organisations such as @AADDUK (15/)
@ClinpsychLucy @AADDUK Have complained to the BPS about the discriminatory and unscientific way the report talks about ADHD. I respectfully ask that you and other who were involved with this report look at the weight of more recent evidence which runs counter to what is in the report and rethink (16/)
@ClinpsychLucy @AADDUK ...the framework in light of the evidence. This ensures that evidence, not ideology, are used to inform diagnosis and treatment. The history of psychiatry is littered with horror stories of how conditions were treated barbarically directed by a particular ideology. Please (17/)
@ClinpsychLucy @AADDUK ...stop trying to shoehorn these ideas into such a wide range of situations, even when the evidence says otherwise. This seems like a way to avoid cognitive dissonance, not to coherently present a case. (END)
