The doctor's magazine, Pulse, recently published an article "50% hike in antidepressant use in UK children". (9th March 2016). The increased use of antidepressant drugs for children, 'according to an international study' was actually 54%, and this rise took place between 2005 and 2012.
The Pulse article said that the World Health Organisation (WHO) was ‘very concerned’ by the rise in use of these drugs in children .... which it said was ‘not justified’.
However, this increased use of antidepressant drugs is not confined to Britain. Similar increases (60% in Denmark, 49% in Germany, 26& in USA, 17% in Holland) were recorded over the same period.
The Pulse article tried to defend GP's by pointing out that the increased prescriptions were made by 'secondary care specialists', but also added that that there was rising pressure on mental health services which led to British doctors being forced to prescribe.
Yet doctors have known about the dangers of prescribing these drugs to children for many years now. In 2005 I wrote this about antidepressant drugs.
"In the UK nearly all antidepressants were banned for children in 2004, due to the increased risk of suicidal ideation. The USA however, still allows children to take these deadly, mind-altering drugs."
So even when conventional doctors are told that pharmaceutical drugs are dangerous they continue to prescribe them! Why do they do this? Do they not know that the drugs are dangerous? Do they forget the instructions given to them by drug regulators? Do they not care about the damage caused to patients?
Or could it be that the pharmaceutical cupboard getting bare?
There are signs of increasing desperation in the activities of the conventional medical establishment. If doctors cannot use antidepressant drugs, what can they do? If talking therapies are not available in sufficient quantity, owing to demand, do they have anything else to offer?
So is the mental health epidemic now so large that it is forcing our doctors to prescribe drugs that they know can be harmful to patient health?
The failure of conventional medicine is manifesting itself in many ways, but two in particular are worthy of note here.
The Pulse article said that the World Health Organisation (WHO) was ‘very concerned’ by the rise in use of these drugs in children .... which it said was ‘not justified’.
However, this increased use of antidepressant drugs is not confined to Britain. Similar increases (60% in Denmark, 49% in Germany, 26& in USA, 17% in Holland) were recorded over the same period.
The Pulse article tried to defend GP's by pointing out that the increased prescriptions were made by 'secondary care specialists', but also added that that there was rising pressure on mental health services which led to British doctors being forced to prescribe.
Yet doctors have known about the dangers of prescribing these drugs to children for many years now. In 2005 I wrote this about antidepressant drugs.
"In the UK nearly all antidepressants were banned for children in 2004, due to the increased risk of suicidal ideation. The USA however, still allows children to take these deadly, mind-altering drugs."
So even when conventional doctors are told that pharmaceutical drugs are dangerous they continue to prescribe them! Why do they do this? Do they not know that the drugs are dangerous? Do they forget the instructions given to them by drug regulators? Do they not care about the damage caused to patients?
Or could it be that the pharmaceutical cupboard getting bare?
There are signs of increasing desperation in the activities of the conventional medical establishment. If doctors cannot use antidepressant drugs, what can they do? If talking therapies are not available in sufficient quantity, owing to demand, do they have anything else to offer?
So is the mental health epidemic now so large that it is forcing our doctors to prescribe drugs that they know can be harmful to patient health?
The failure of conventional medicine is manifesting itself in many ways, but two in particular are worthy of note here.
- Disease epidemics are stretching conventional health services, not only in mental health, but for conditions such as autism, arthritis, ADHD, allergy, cancer, diabetes, dementia, and many other diseases (all of them, by the way, caused at least in part by pharmaceutical drugs).
- The failure and ineffectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs, such as antidepressants, and the paucity of any viable alternative for conventional doctors.
Most of the drugs that conventional doctors have relied upon for years are now no longer available to them, including two of their old stalwarts, antibiotics and painkillers.
Antibiotic drugs
Just as doctors are now prescribing antidepressants drugs to children when they should not be doing so, they have done the same with antibiotics drugs for decades. One by one resistance has built up rendering them useless, and now there are only a handful that are still known will work. For decades doctors have prescribed them. For decades, drug regulators have told them not to do so. But conventional doctors have had nothing else to offer patients, nothing else that worked. Conventional medicine is in a state of panic about the imminent total demise of antibiotics.
Painkilling drugs
Similarly with painkillers. In September 2013 I reported on 'The Failure of Painkilling Drugs'. This blog was triggered by another 'Pulse' article, written by a doctor who said that GP options for managing persistent pain had declined markedly over the past decade, but that crisis point had been reached. As I commented at the time,
"The GP goes on to talk about the rise of fall of co-proxamol, selective Cox-2 inhibitors, and traditional NSAIDs. And now, she bemoaned "the safety of yet another analgesic called into question, especially the one most often prescribed". She refers, of course, to Paracetamol."
The sad fact is that conventional pharmaceutical drugs either do not work, or they no longer work safely. And the sooner we realise this, the better it will be for all of us.
So what do doctors do, when faced with sick patients? They give them whatever they have, and increasingly they are drugs they know full well to be not only ineffective, but unsafe, harmful to our health.
The saddest fact, however, is that the conventional medical establishment cannot be honest with us. Instead of our doctors saying to us, "Sorry, I have nothing to give you, our drugs no longer work, or they are dangerous" they prefer to continue giving us ineffective and/or dangerous drugs.
It is a sad reflection of the medical profession, who are still thought to be, by many people, the most honest and trusted of all professional groups.
