I am an erstwhile Psychiatrist who has left the tribe to practice Integrative Medicine because of the false promises of both psychopharmacology and pharmacology in general. Writing from one who has been inside the belly of the beast, the Psychiatric profession is a prisoner of its own pharmaceutical culture, which has been renamed "Biological Psychiatry". Psychiatrists have often suffered from a complex vis a vis the rest of the medical profession in that things that are "supra-tentorial" or in the mind are often outwardly or implicitly disrespected by other medical professionals as "not real." Hence the connection to "biological therapy" becomes like a road back to legitimacy for many in the field of Psychiatry.
For whatever reason, I sniffed out in fairly short order that drugs are a shortcut to true healing and health, and could never be a solution to chronic illness. I wouldn't say I "knew" this as much as that I strongly suspected it from early in my practice. By the late 1990's I was done with the false promises of psychopharmacologic deliverance, and began a journey into more holistic and natural therapies which I now emphasize in my practice. I do think there is a time and place for pharmaceuticals, but it is very rare that their use in chronic illness produces superior outcomes to safer alternatives, from my perspective.
While Psychiatrists and even other mental health practitioners are prisoners of a culture that overvalues pharmacologic solutions to mental health problems, and have no way of punching their way out of that paper bag, the researchers are another story. They are more aware of the weaknesses of the research, but because they are financially beholden to big Pharma, they fail to properly advise the public on the shoddiness of much of what is published in the medical literature on psychopharmacology. Also, they are still under the spell of pharmacology as a panacea for all human ills, and to the extent that the research may not be supportive of this notion, they are likely to conclude that they need to do better research rather than that the whole premise of efficacy is flawed.
The Pharmaceutical companies are so biased and have so much financially riding on the premise of safety and efficacy of their products that they are quite uninterested in any belief system that doesn't include their product as part of the solution. Not only that, they appear to have so long ago slipped off the slippery slope of integrity and ethics that if a study shows poor efficacy or risk of harm, they are likely to try to suppress that study's publication and redesign a new study designed to hide the flaws revealed by the study that failed to demonstrated what they wanted. A notorious example of this is Paxil, although it could be true of other psychopharmaceuticals as well.
We are now at the dawn of a process of awakening, thanks to COVID-19, and how it has exposed the lack of integrity and false promises of the pharmaceutical industry. It will be a long slow process, which the Pharmaceutical industry and its many allies in the finance world will do its best to obstruct with propaganda, but the truth about the lies and and deceptions of big Pharma and the medical industry will likely become more and more widely appreciated in time. I look forward to the day when the pretenders are exposed and stand before us naked holding onto nothing but their discredited advertising slogans which have become like a ball and chain around their necks dragging them down.
I too am convinced that Covid is a turning point. Big Pharma got too greedy, too sloppy, and went waaay too far this time. People are waking up, but it's going to be a generational battle to regain control of our healthcare systems. Would be good to hear your take on the serotonin/SSRI controversy that erupted earlier this summer. Was listening to an interview with Dr. Joanna Moncrieff the other day and found it quite a revelation. Good luck with your new Substack! I look forward to reading more on the topic of "Biological Psychiatry".
Thanks Colin! I'm not sure what the controversy regarding SSRI's earlier this summer was. Possibly you could fill me in. I've heard many issues in the past with the SSRI's, including serious physical long term effects, suicidality, and others. Toby Rogers recently had a nice substack on Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of "Prozac Nation" - an advocate of Prozac who died prematurely of cancer. Let me know what the specifics are of the issue you are referring to and I'll do my best to give you my considered opinion.