Aug 072011
 

I really should be writing serious posts on philosophy, especially on some good issues raised recently in comments, but as I’ve been hit by a great wave of work this week I’m reduced to watching stuff on bloggingheds.

Though I’m pleased to see that at least consciousness about a pair of articles about the abuse of psychotropic drugs I blogged about a little while back are filtering out into the larger world.

The book science journalist John Horgan refers to, Robert Whittaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic, looks likely to be near the top of my overlong “to-read” list.

The whole diavlog is likely to be of interest to many readers of this blog, especially to those interested in the problem of just how much (or little, really) human suffering psychiatry seems to relieve, and how much (perhaps) it creates.

As an aside, Horgan and Johnson both in the course of the diavlog discuss something called the Hamilton Depression Scale, both of which they assessed themselves on. In an act of what is probably grave personal irresponsibility motivated by excessive personal curiosity, I found an online version of it and assessed myself. Dissecting myself with that blunt little tool, I was told I had a score of 15: “Evaluation: There are signs of mild depression. Further evaluation may be warranted.”

Oh dear.

 Posted by at 17:15

  One Response to “Diavlog on problematic psychotropics”

  1. Yes, one of many reasons that antidepressant drugs fail to achieve significant results is that the very diagnosis is not based on anything resembling science.

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