Is the unswerving faith many doctors seem to have in largely untried medications.

I was diagnosed with depression, and prescribed many different drugs over five years. The best situation was the drug that made me sleep all the time. At worst I lost my job, got into a disastrous marriage, lost my sex drive, and attempted suicide. All of the medications had side effects that were worse than the original symptoms, which never went away. Most of the time the physicians' reaction to the side effects was to prescribe more medications.

My sister was helped immensely by prescription antidepressants, so I don't think they are all or always bad. Doctors just don't know enough about them to prescribe them the way they do. The doctors who insisted that the boy in the story had to have the experimental drugs really should lose their license to practice. (And I don't care if the drugs weren't officially classed as "experimental", they clearly were.)

The point is, doctors need to stop pretending drugs are always the answer, and to be more responsive to the patients' adverse reactions. Ending the pharmaceutical company kickbacks would be a step in the right direction.

feels inclined to blame or sue someone else for their bad decisions and choices. What idiot WOULD NOT get a 2nd and perhaps a 3rd opinion from other physicians before engaging in a treatment regime of this nature? Sorry, Ms. Bauer needed to be more proactive in this process. Examaple: On a fucking pack of cigarettes it gives explicit warnings but this stop idiots from blaming someone else or suing for their bad decisions? No. Is going to a fast food restaurant considered a good health choice? No, but obese idiots still sue for their own bad choices. They call it a 2nd opinion for reason.

To whoever wrote the headline - do you have any idea how much damage you could do? Every bipolar person I know HATES taking their meds, and looks constantly for reasons to stop taking them.

Excuse me, but this is one bipolar who doesn't mind taking the meds because I remember life before them. Fifty-four years of life before them. Rages, tantrums, inattention, involuntary celibacy, hypersexualism, adultery, drunkenness, Buying Stuff, and this feeling that life was really not mine but was happening to me anyway. Well, it still is not what I'd like to have, but it's better than that. I know damned well that without what I take I'd be so over the edge you'd have to look under the overhang to find me...three seconds before I let to and fell into my own personal chasm.

I spent 54 years not knowing I was not normal. I spent 54 years not knowing my parents were crazier than shithouse rats because they with both bipolar at a time when only a few could be diagnosed and then locked up in Payne Whitney or McLean, if they were rich, or in Rockland State or Creedmoor if they were like we were. Plus the family shame of saying you were (shhhh!) "mental in the head." Just like cancer: you whispered it.

The pharma and psychiatric industries in this benighted country have earned all the opprobrium heaped upon them. What in hell is Abilify except some crap on ashtrays and pen holders in my shrink's office? Another drug. Yet another drug. Prescribed like rock candy to people who need more than the goddamned psychiatrist's willingness to "experiment"--a word that makes me think of Mengele's experiments with twins or kids with blue eyes.

Crack dealers or dope pushers will not lock you up, tell you that their poison is medicine and then force you to take it while charging your parents or insurance company 500 - 1000 dollars a day to subject you to treatment worthy of a gulag or a gitmo. This is criminal activity which is legal and sanctioned and subsidized.

The grandaddy of all psych meds was phenothiazine, a yellow dye and insecticide that calmed people right down when they were given a less than lethal does of the nerve poison. From that came the "typical" anti-psychotics thorazine, haldol, stellazine, mellarill etc.

Nerve posions do not improve brain function.

Flouride and flourine are toxic to the thyroid and guess what is in the SSRIs folks? The beneficial effects of these drugs come from the toxic effects on the thyroid as well as the weight gain, libido problems etc.

If you have a serotonin imbalance just eat beans, salmon and turkey, but NO! that would be bad for business so take a poison pill instead. It won't kill you, just your mind and who the hell needs that?

The VT shooter was on drugs. Most of these incidents involve people being treated for depression and other psych problems and these shooters are whacked on drugs. The news media will not report it because that is bad for business and bad for their sponsors. The news media knows about this and will not report it.

George Bush senior ran the Lilly drug company between 1976 and 1978 and it took him being vice presidnet for Prozac to get approved.

We know the horror stories when it come to the very bad reaction that these drugs have on people but what is even more troubling is the effect that these drugs have on those who are still able to function despite the toxic burden on their nervous system. What is the net effect of having a culture where a significant percentage of the population is whacked on psych meds? Its a tough question because when you are crazy you are generally the last one to notice it and that is true of societies and cultures just as it is for people.

America acts like just another school shooter and Iran is next in our target sight.

I am very familiar with the desire of psychiatrists to prescribe the med that will be most profitable to them and the pharmaceutical company. My wife is bipolar and has been hospitalized five times during or just after manic episodes. The last time (two years ago) she had gone off her tried and true med and got into a creative frenzy. She ended up being arrested and committed. The psychiatrist at the hospital dosed her with Zyprexa (a most evil drug that causes obesity and diabetes). It effectively got her off her high very quickly (good). Being a scientist with strong autistic interest in understanding everything, I went to the web and typed in Zyprexa. Of course I was horrified at the side effects, and so was my wife. We immediately dumped the psychiatrist and went back to her old med. It too has unpleasant side effects, but they are nothing like Zyprexa's. She is in the process of carefully, with a counselors help, of getting off all meds, because the side effects are a real threat to her long-range health. That is true of all meds, no matter what the illness, mental or physical. If the ill person can find any way of getting off meds he or she should do it.

My wife is normally a very sweet, creative, and fun person. But she has to watch her creative projects very carefully, so she does not get into a frenzy as a result.

I was mildly autistic as a child, but luckily was pretty smart. By the time I was 25 I had figured out how to act like a normal person by observing the actions of "normal" people. It's second nature to me now to look people in the eye, do small talk, and all the other bullshit things that constitute "normality", and even kind of fun. One of the side effects of that learning experience is that I am very aware of people's self-serving actions, especially greedy professionals.

Despite our limitations my wife and I managed to raise quite competent children, who are quite competently raising their children.