Antipsychotic Drug Treatment: Difference Between Fact and Fiction

I feel like a CNN News reporter introduction.

Fact: The drug industry brings in $33 billion annually, since 2015,  from a combination of antipsychotic and anti-depressant drugs sold in their generic forms. Americans represent only 5% of the world’s population, yet consume 66% of the world’s psycho-pharmaceutical medicines. Psycho pharmaceuticals are the most profitable sector of the drug industry. The global market for mental health drugs was $80.5b in 2010.

Fiction: There is no cure for schizophrenia: the only treatment is antipsychotic drugs for life.

Fact: The BEAM surgery procedure patented by Dr. Jose R. Mackliff has eliminated the symptoms of schizophrenia in over 110 patients with up to 22 years history of schizophrenia since 2006. The elimination of symptoms can be seen two days after the surgery and only increases over time.

Fiction: Antipsychotic drugs are necessary for life for the schizophrenic person.

Fact: Although antipsychotic drugs are continued in reduced dosages over a year’s time after BEAM surgery, they are only necessary during the adjustment period of the brain adapting to normal amounts of cerebral dopamine. Once this homeostasis has been achieved, many patients can be safely removed from all antipsychotic drugs.

Fact: The method of treatment for schizophrenia specified in the DSMV manual (the billing bible used by the American Association of Psychiatry) is medication management only.

Fiction: Talk therapy has not been found to be effective in the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. Medication management alone is the prescribed treatment in the DSM5 manual (billing bible) used by psychiatrists.

Fact:

Talk therapy benefits schizophrenia patients and reduces their need for heavy use of antipsychotic drugs, a large study finds.

Currently, treatment for many of the two million Americans with schizophrenia involves strong doses of antipsychotics, which can cause severe side effects such as significant weight gain or debilitating tremors, The New York Times reported.

A study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health found that schizophrenia patients whose treatment involved more one-on-one talk therapy and family support and smaller doses of antipsychotic drugs showed greater recovery over the first two years of treatment than those who received the standard drug-centered care. National Institute of Mental Health, 2009.

Fiction: Antipsychotic drugs have been tested by the FDA and drug industry at the dosages and length of time for which they are prescribed.

Fact: Drug company’s efficacy studies for antipsychotic drugs are for as little as six weeks and in the case of Seroquel, only tested at dosages as high as 600mg daily. According to the International Consensus of Safe Dosages of Antipsychotics, the mean dosage world-wide for Seroquel is 1,000 mg daily; their recommended safe dosage is 800 mg daily.

Fiction: Psychiatrists receiving payments from drug companies for prescribing their drugs are not influenced in their clinical decision making by these payments.

Fact: My son’s psychiatrist, a recognized expert in schizophrenia in Marin County, received payments for years for prescribing Seroquel under its patented name. This doctor prescribed as high as 2,000 mg daily to a patient with paranoid schizophrenia, and told me that he does just fine. This is 1400mg higher than the highest dosage tested by the drug company, and 1200mg higher than the International consensus for safe dosage.

It wasn’t until 2015 that a suicide ideation or suicide warning was put on the label. This occurred after I sent to the psychiatrist a 2009 MedWatch report of suicides that occurred under Seroquel. My son committed suicide in 2014, seven months after being put on 1000mg daily dosage of Seroquel.

Fiction: Antipsychotic drug treatment can improve the life of schizophrenics over time; they just need to stay on the medicine.

Facts: 75% of people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia stop taking their medicine within the first year and a half; specifically because of the terrible side effects that they are not educated about by their psychiatrists. (New York Mental Health Department, 2010) These side effects include: movement indifference (lay in bed all day), Akathisia, inner restlessness, tardive dyskinesia, parkinson type movements, cognitive confusion and lack of concentration, sexual impotence, flattened emotions, and a feeling of being “dead” (described by young people with schizophrenia).

Opinion: I believe that it was this experience that caused my son to take his life at the age of 21. The standard DSM treatment for schizophrenia is medication management; that is the doctor manages the symptoms of the antipsychotics, not the disease itself. The doctor doesn’t talk with the patient about their concerns, their quality of life, the dismal side effects.  It’s strictly a “hands off” approach, particularly designed to avoid liability or legal suits.

Fiction: There is a low risk of suicide in those taking antipsychotic drug medication.

Fact: The statistics for suicide amongst people with schizophrenia is 10 to 15%. The rate for males is 60% higher than for females.

Fiction: If treatments such as BEAM Procedure for schizophrenia were real treatments, people in the United States would know about them and be lining up for the treatment.

Fact: The drug industry with its powerful lobby groups in the United States would never allow any study or evaluation of treatments outside of the United States that don’t explicitly rely on antipsychotic drug treatment. A powerful business interest is behind the drugs they approve and treatment models they control through the DSMV diagnosis manual, the billing bible for psychiatry.

Fact: The drug companies don’t talk about the long-term cerebral neural damage which occurs in those who take antipsychotic drugs over a lifetime. These damages are very real and irreversible. They can even lead to increased psychosis.