Articles for Healthcare Practitioners

Especially when one considers that pharmaceutical companies underwrite 30% of the American Psychiatric Association budget and spend multi-millions of dollars on sophisticated advertising and public relations campaigns to promote these drugs. Another alarming fact is that pharmaceutical companies are quietly acquiring managed care companies as well as companies that administer the prescription-drug component of health insurance plans. This translates into more pressure for drug therapy. And what about conflict of interest?

Even more troubling is the fact that many of these drugs are being prescribed by general physicians who are not trained in understanding relevant symptoms or providing critical support services that should accompany drug treatment. Often, the only knowledge physicians have about these drugs comes form reading marketing literature provided by the drug companies themselves.

Even when tranquilizers, antidepressants and other mood-altering drugs are prescribed by trained psychiatrists, it is often done without considering options to drug therapy. For the most part, psychiatrists then simply monitor the patient by requiring 15-minute office visits every few months. The bottom line is that most doctors don’t stop to consider whether there are other effective, non-invasive lifestyle, and psychotherapeutic strategies that might be employed. They simply don’t know any better than what the pharmaceutical companies tell them. So the treatment of choice is to tell the patient to pop a pill. And not just one pill or one kind of pill.

The FDA and Drug Approvals

Now consider how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approve these drugs. The drug companies themselves are responsible for conducting drug trials and reporting the results to the FDA. Drugs like Prozac, Xanax and others, although prescribed to millions of people on a long-term basis, are approved by the FDA based on test results with as few as 100 subjects taking the drug for as little as four weeks. Internationally known psychiatrist and author Peter Breggin has long been an outspoken critic of this process. In his books Toxic Psychiatry and Talking Back to Prozac he describes in detail the serious flaws in these studies and in the drug approval process itself.

Breggin reports that Xanax, originally purported to be a safe, nonaddicting, antianxiety drug, was tested on 226 subjects for a period of eight weeks. In reading the actual research report he found that the drug company counted only the first four weeks of the study. The drug company discarded results from subsequent weeks, which showed that in a comparison between subjects receiving the drug and those receiving a placebo (sugar pill), the drug subjects experienced "severe withdrawal and rebound reactions, including an increase in anxiety and in phobic responses, plus a 350 percent greater number of panic attacks." Xanax has since been proven to be highly addicting and associated with death when combined with alcohol or other sedatives."

Chemical Imbalances" are Unfounded

Would it shock you to know that the case for psychiatric drugs has never been proven? In fact, there is no real proof that chemical imbalances exist in the brain or that they cause "mental illness." Current theories about serotonin levels and their effects on mood are based on inference only. As we practitioners know, there are no medical tests to measure these supposed chemical imbalances. In his book, Broken Brains or Wounded Hearts, Dr. Ty Colbert extensively examines the evidence supporting the medical model of mental illness and concludes:

Warning: Withdrawing suddenly from psychiatric medications can cause serious emotional and physical side effects and should be undertaken with medical supervision.

Treating the Symptoms Not the Cause

Prescription drugs as a treatment for stress, anxiety and mild to moderate depression are only a "Band-Aid" approach. Although drugs may provide short-term relief, it reduces people’s motivation to understand and overcome their underlying problem. In some cases, people are being prescribed medication when they are going through normal stresses of life — as if it were abnormal to feel grief when we lose a loved one or a job, or to feel anxious when we make life changes like getting a divorce or raising children. For some people, taking a pill translates into a personal belief that there is something elementally wrong with them, or that they are incapable of solving their own problems. It encourages people to numb out their bad feelings, just as they would with over-eating, smoking, alcohol, and street drugs. At its worst, taking pills teaches people that they are helpless to cope with their feelings without the help of mood altering drugs.

Not everyone wants to or needs to take a pill to manage stress, nor is it in their best interest to do so. The current "instant fix" being prescribed by physicians is leaving people feeling powerless over their own bodies and hopeless about their ability to control their lives. There is a better way. Not only is there a better way, but it could save billions of dollars in unwarranted medication and treatment costs as well as help people regain control over their lives.

Holistic Approaches: A Better Way

Emerging scientific evidence proves that there are safer, more effective approaches that support treating the whole person rather than just their symptoms. The term "holistic" often refers to the whole person integration of mind, body and spirit. Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) research supports a holistic approach to stress that recognizes the mind-body-spirit connection in both an individual and social context.

In their book, Controlling Stress and Tension, leading researchers Daniel Girdano, George Everly and Dorothy Dusek offer their definition of holistic stress management as "a concept of controlling stress and tension encompassing the complete lifestyle of the individual," one which "...incorporates intervention at the physical, psychological and social levels simultaneously." Their solution supports a preventive approach which recognizes that perceptions, behavior, emotions, personality, environment, social interactions and spirituality all play a role in the body’s response to stress.

Mind-Body Programs

Pioneers Herbert Benson and Jon Kabat-Zinn were the first to prove the effectiveness of therapeutic approaches incorporating the interplay between mind and body into stress management techniques that work. Even without addressing the spiritual component of the mind-body-spirit connection their results are impressive.

Patients entering Benson’s Mind/Body Clinic at New England Deaconness Hospital in Boston, MA and Kabat-Zinn’s Stress Reduction Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, MA experience a wide variety of problems including asthma, gastrointestinal disturbances, premenstrual syndrome, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, insomnia, cardiac disease, cancer, AIDS and many other illnesses. As program participants they are given instruction in relaxation training, exercise, nutrition and stress management. Outcome studies for both of these programs prove that this kind of approach is more effective than traditional medical protocols alone.

Patients with chronic pain report significant reductions in pain and related symptoms such as anxiety and depression. Those with hypertension experience significant decreases in blood pressure and need fewer medications. Migraine and headache sufferers have fewer and less severe headaches. One study showed that insomnia was cured in 75 percent of participants while the remaining 25 percent experienced improved sleep. Another study showed that women suffering from premenstrual syndrome experienced a 57 percent decrease in the severity of symptoms. After completing the program, patients with anxiety or depression are less anxious, depressed, angry and hostile. On the job, people also experienced reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety and hostility as well as fewer medical symptoms and sick days, improved performance and lower blood pressure. Patients with AIDS and cancer experience decreased symptoms and better control of the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy.