Robert Whitaker: "Academic psychiatry hasn't been honest in what it tells the public about psychiatric medications"

Author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, Robert Whitaker discusses the opinion letter written by Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac on the "Defense of Antidepressants" in the Sunday July 10 NYT.

Robert Whitaker discusses the Kramer opinion letter:


Excerpt

"Dr. Kramer might also have discussed the findings from the STAR*D trial funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. This was the "largest antidepressant trial" ever conducted, and the one-year results are now known. Only 108 of the 4,041 patients who entered the trial remitted and then stayed well and in the trial throughout the follow-up period. The remaining patients -- 97% of the total - either failed to remit, relapsed or dropped out of the trial.

But there was no discussion of these longer-term results in Dr. Kramer's op-ed, which became the most-emailed New York Times article on Sunday. As a result, the Internet buzzed on Sunday with a prominent story from arguably the leading newspaper in the United States, which assured readers that all is well in the land of antidepressants. These drugs "work -- ordinarily well, on a par with other medications doctors prescribe," Dr. Kramer wrote.

As I noted in Anatomy of An Epidemic, the real problem we have in this field of medicine is that academic psychiatry hasn't been honest in what it tells the public about psychiatric medications. If the medications are to be used wisely, and in an evidence-based manner, we need to have an honest discussion about what science is telling us about the drugs. But on Sunday, in this essay "In Defense of Antidepressants," the American public has been treated to yet another dose of misinformation."