by Ripke S, O’Dushlaine C, Chambert K, Moran JL, Kähler AK, Akterin S, Bergen SE, Collins AL, Crowley JJ, Fromer M, Kim Y, Lee SH, Magnusson PK, Sanchez N, Stahl EA, Williams S, Wray NR, Xia K, Bettella F, Borglum AD, Bulik-Sullivan BK, Cormican P, Craddock N, de Leeuw C, Durmishi N, Gill M, Golimbet V, Hamshere ML, Holmans P, Hougaard DM, Kendler KS, Lin K, Morris DW, Mors O, Mortensen PB, Neale BM, O’Neill FA, Owen MJ, Milovancevic MP, Posthuma D, Powell J, Richards AL, Riley BP, Ruderfer D, Rujescu D, Sigurdsson E, Silagadze T, Smit AB, Stefansson H, Steinberg S, Suvisaari J, Tosato S, Verhage M, Walters JT; Multicenter Genetic Studies of Schizophrenia Consortium, Levinson DF, Gejman PV, Kendler KS, Laurent C, Mowry BJ, O’Donovan MC, Owen MJ, Pulver AE, Riley BP, Schwab SG, Wildenauer DB, Dudbridge F, Holmans P, Shi J, Albus M, Alexander M, Campion D, Cohen D, Dikeos D, Duan J, Eichhammer P, Godard S, Hansen M, Lerer FB, Liang KY, Maier W, Mallet J, Nertney DA, Nestadt G, Norton N, O’Neill FA, Papadimitriou GN, Ribble R, Sanders AR, Silverman JM, Walsh D, Williams NM, Wormley B; Psychosis Endophenotypes International Consortium, Arranz MJ, Bakker S, Bender S, Bramon E, Collier D, Crespo-Facorro B, Hall J, Iyegbe C, Jablensky A, Kahn RS, Kalaydjieva L, Lawrie S, Lewis CM, Lin K, Linszen DH, Mata I, McIntosh A, Murray RM, Ophoff RA, Powell J, Rujescu D, Van Os J, Walshe M, Weisbrod M, Wiersma D; Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2; Management Committee:, Donnelly P, Barroso I, Blackwell JM, Bramon E, Brown MA, Casas JP, Corvin AP, Deloukas P, Duncanson A, Jankowski J, Markus HS, Mathew CG, Palmer CN, Plomin R, Rautanen A, Sawcer SJ, Trembath RC, Viswanathan AC, Wood NW; Data and Analysis Group:, Spencer CC, Band G, Bellenguez C, Freeman C, Hellenthal G, Giannoulatou E, Pirinen M, Pearson RD, Strange A, Su Z, Vukcevic D, Donnelly P; DNA, Genotyping, Data QC and Informatics Group:, Langford C, Hunt SE, Edkins S, Gwilliam R, Blackburn H, Bumpstead SJ, Dronov S, Gillman M, Gray E, Hammond N, Jayakumar A, McCann OT, Liddle J, Potter SC, Ravindrarajah R, Ricketts M, Tashakkori-Ghanbaria A, Waller MJ, Weston P, Widaa S, Whittaker P, Barroso I, Deloukas P; Publications Committee:, Mathew CG, Blackwell JM, Brown MA, Corvin AP, McCarthy MI, Spencer CC, Bramon E, Corvin AP, O’Donovan MC, Stefansson K, Scolnick E, Purcell S, McCarroll SA, Sklar P, Hultman CM, Sullivan PF.Nature Genetics. 2013 Aug 25. doi: 10.1038/ng.2742. [Epub ahead of print]
Schizophrenia is an idiopathic mental disorder with a heritable component and a substantial public health impact. We conducted a multi-stage genome-wide association study [GWAS] for schizophrenia beginning with a Swedish national sample [5,001 cases and 6,243 controls] followed by meta-analysis with previous schizophrenia GWAS [8,832 cases and 12,067 controls] and finally by replication of SNPs in 168 genomic regions in independent samples [7,413 cases, 19,762 controls and 581 parent-offspring trios]. We identified 22 loci associated at genome-wide significance; 13 of these are new, and 1 was previously implicated in bipolar disorder. Examination of candidate genes at these loci suggests the involvement of neuronal calcium signaling. We estimate that 8,300 independent, mostly common SNPs [95% credible interval of 6,300-10,200 SNPs] contribute to risk for schizophrenia and that these collectively account for at least 32% of the variance in liability. Common genetic variation has an important role in the etiology of schizophrenia, and larger studies will allow more detailed understanding of this disorder.
Genetic studies of patients with psychiatric illnesses are beginning to be published with increasing frequency, and I don’t know what they mean. Everything about this study is huge. It involved about 60,000 subjects, about a third identified as having chronic schizophrenia and two thirds being controls [even the author count is huge at 67]. It’s hard for a mortal to read the paper and understand even how the analysis is done. They located twenty-two SNPs statistically associated with schizophrenia, thirteen previously unidentified. But when they say things like this, my eyes begin to cross:
We estimate that 8,300 independent, mostly common SNPs [95% credible interval of 6,300-10,200 SNPs] contribute to risk for schizophrenia and that these collectively account for at least 32% of the variance in liability.
And when they end with:
Common genetic variation has an important role in the etiology of schizophrenia, and larger studies will allow more detailed understanding of this disorder.
like 60,000 is some kind of pilot project, I find myself speechless at larger studies. It’s not what many thought, looking for the schizophrenia gene. It’s 8,300 independent, mostly common SNPs … to account for 32% of the variance. Like 22 down, 8,278 to go? I’m not trying to poke fun about that. It is whatever it is. But there are a few points worth making. This is obviously a very complex task, and the answers to be found are well down the road. Whatever the methodologies for generating this data and analyzing it, the mechanisms for validation are going to be a huge task as well, requiring a lot of expertise. As an aside, I would doubt that the ongoing projects like iSPOT or EMBARC proposing to find genetic markers that predict antidepressants response have sufficient power for success. I’m unaware of any strong evidence that points to their existence in the first place, but even if there were, the size of the cohort needed to find it would likely be much larger than these studies. A second point has to do with translation. This, from the paper:
Our GWAS for schizophrenia suggests candidate genes involved in calcium channels. A calcium channel functional complex has also been suggested as a mechanism in the etiology of bipolar disorder and autism. These results suggest hypotheses for clinical translation. Multiple approved medications act at calcium channels, including some antipsychotics [for example, pimozide] along with adjuvants for treatment non-response for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder [for example, the calcium channel blockers verapamil and nifedipine]. It is possible that drugs that act on the protein products of CACNA1C and CACNB2 for a different therapeutic indication could be repurposed for the treatment of schizophrenia…
The whole idea of translation, speeding drugs from the bench to the bedside, seems out of sync with where we are right now, either in psychiatry or our understanding of psychotic illness. Finding SNPs that separate from placebo may well be a genuine advance in the quest to explain the familial factors in psychosis, but it sure doesn’t help understand what the 8,300 SNPs estimate means. And the track record of genetic studies of this type is that they frequently don’t pass the test of independent replication. We all know that the pressure of the NIMH/psychiatry translational agenda has been heightened by the "empty pipeline" of CNS drugs from the pharmaceutical industry.
The balance between restraint and exuberance in psychiatric drug research has been out of whack for a long time. We’re barely on the edge of catching up on the restraint side with the push for data transparency in clinical trials and the focus on gross scientific misbehavior on the part of industry and people in our own ranks. But these genetic studies involve technologies and sample sizes that call for really specialized skills and resources to vet – no task for old men with Excel Spreadsheets. We mere mortals wouldn’t know where to start. Right now, I would prefer that the NIMH Director be writing a blog that discussed how we are going to insure that the data coming out of these genetic studies is vetted and revetted and its implications are very carefully evaluated instead of saying this [In Vitro Veritas?]:
Over the past 6 months we have turned a corner in our studies of the genetic basis of schizophrenia and autism. For years the field of psychiatric genetics has struggled: family and twin studies demonstrated that these disorders were heritable, but findings from small studies reporting specific risk genes could not be replicated. With larger samples and better tools, we have gone from famine to feast, with almost too many genetic findings to follow up. A new report has just described 13 new genetic findings associated with schizophrenia, resulting in over 100 common variants now identified as risk factors…
Both Dr. Insel and the army of authors and scientists involved in this work have every reason to be excited with these findings. But that’s all the more reason for caution. The track record in the search for magic bullets in psychiatry is nothing to get excited about, and the borrowed concept, translation, may actually be the opposite of what is needed here. In the past, the desperateness of the patient’s illnesses and the expense of care were forces pushing reckless treatment. In recent decades, the pressure of ideology and commercial profit have been added to the mix. This article had too much speculation about implications and not enough talk about plans for replication to my liking. And Dr. Insel’s blog was more in the range of the charge of the light brigade than the kind of strategizing we need from the NIMH about how to validate and proceed with the new science of genomics. It’s the National Institute of Mental Health, not the National Institute of Drug Discovery [or the National Institute of Clinical Neuroscience]…
The real goal of the modern eugenics agenda:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/17916-science-as-social-control-political-paralysis-and-the-genetics-agenda
More evidence of the real agenda beyond the never ending fraudulent eugenics agenda in the United States since the 1930’s to justify and promote the interests of the current robber barons, which was also the main cause of the German Nazi Holocaust:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/great-dna-data-deficit-are-genes-disease-mirage?utm_source=www.GreenMedInfo.com&utm_campaign=0cef575241-Greenmedinfo&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_193c8492fb-0cef575241-86984349
Dr. Nardo, I give you much credit for remaining skeptical about this ongoing over enthusiasm about never ending bogus gene and heritability findings to push a “blame the victim” agenda exposed by many including Dr. Jay Joseph in his excellent books, The Gene Illusion, The Missing Gene and many other works.
I believe that “translation” means “field experiment.”
The difference between the so called heritability and genetics of so called schizophrenia, a “scientific delusion?”
http://mancpsychsoc.blogspot.com/2011/10/schizophrenia-is-arguably-80-heritable.html
http://www.amazon.com/Schizophrenia-Scientific-Delusion-Mary-Boyle/dp/0415227186
Mickey,
Let’s all applaud the effort that’s going into understanding the biological basis of schizophrenia and manic-depression , etc., and hope, though many more studies like this, lightning strikes and some young scientific genius out there who can translate this into meaningful knowledge (and understandable English). Looking at the history of medicine, I can only be a hopeless romantic when it comes to serendipity.
However, these GWAS studies of schizophrenia (and other conditions) will occupy many, many future news cycles with increasing regularity. . They have done so since the first big ones in 2009 (published in Nature). I am liking the claim that 32% of the variance is being accounted for by al those snips, which is a big improvement over the single digit claims about genes and diseases in many such studies. But the magnitude of possible interaction effects may make this too complex and too expensive for us to figure out.
I would urge everyone to recall the remarks of NY Times science reporter Nicholas Wade in his 2009 blog when the first batch of such studies came out. At that time he chided the declaration of victory by those intrested in hyping the results and instead boldly asserted that such studies heralded “the Pearl Harbor of schizophrenia research:”
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/hoopla-and-disappointment-in-schizophrenia-research/?hpw&_r=0
The paths from genome to proteome, etc., are what need to be translated, and nothing in GWAS studies such as thig can lead directly to drug development in our present state of ignorance. Catching evidence of molecular changes (proteins, small molecules) “upstream” in the pathways might lead to novel treatments, or at least allow us to develop differential molecular profiles for diagnostic purposes (and to see if there are 2 or 20 or 200 or 10,000 identifiable paths to the heuristic schizophrenia phenotype).
GWAS studies are a new procedure based on new technologies, and just like the early years of functional neuroimaging, everyone who does such a study is almost guananteed to get a prize (just like in T-ball). Ask any dead salmon.
What studies like this will actually shake down to mean in 5 or 10 years is anyone’s guess. But I am thrilled we are taking schizophrenia and other psychiatric diseases seriously enough to keep trying to crack the mystery.
Schizophrenia and Heredity: Why the Emperor Has No Genes
http://jayjoseph.net/docs/models.pdf
For a little historical perspective, including why GWAS is only one approach to the heritability of schizophrenia and has its limitations with respect to other types of genetics studies, see the following (also from 2009):
http://www.schizophreniaforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=1532
Florence – excellent links. Thank you.
Pseudoscience in Biological Psychiatry by Dr. Colin Ross and Dr. Alvin Pam
http://www.antipsychiatry.org/br-pibp.htm
Bibliography of Dr. Jay Joseph’s articles on the ongoing “gene illusion,” the “missing gene,” and the “crumbling pillars of heritability/genes” in “mental illness.”
http://jayjoseph.net/publications
Dr. Neil McLaren on “Twin Separation Studies: pro and con for biological basis of psychiatric disorders” and why the biological paradigm in psychiatry is ideology rather than science.
http://www.futurepsychiatry.com/
New book, Genetic Explanations: Sense and Nonsense edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674064461
Sheldon Krimsky and Jeremy Gruber gather a team of genetic experts to argue that treating genes as the holy grail of our physical being is a patently unscientific endeavor. Genetic Explanations urges us to replace our faith in genetic determinism with scientific knowledge about how DNA actually contributes to human development.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674064461
I fail to see why we should “applaud the effort that’s going into understanding the biological basis of schizophrenia and manic-depression” when these so called disorders or social constructs along with the junk science DSM have been declared totally invalid even by Dr. Thomas Insel, Head of the NIMH, which is too little too late since many experts have been exposing this truth for decades.
http://csw.fsu.edu/articles/mad-science-psychiatric-coercion-diagnosis-and-drugs-book-launch/
Even Dr. Allen Francis admitted that defining mental disorders is “bullshit” since also admitted that there is no definition of mental disorder. Dr. Francis exposed his narcissism when he claimed that “the collective fantasy of science behind the DSM was good for psychiatry and patients.” Dr. Paula Caplan shows the truth of all the destroyed lives due to the life destroying stigmas of the DSM, and especially the bipolar fad, on her web sites and in her books like They Say You’re Crazy, Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis, etc.
A critique of the original creators of the DSM by a psychiatrist on the web site, Narcissists Suck:
“Some of the individuals who first developed the DSM are well known among psychiatric circles to have severe NPD themselves. The interests of one DSM “innovator” in particular were in statistics and in ways to categorize knowledge generally. At the time in the 1960s, a dedicated system of classification of mental disorders was lacking. Previously these disorders were given codes in a manual called the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) along with all other medical disorders. Seeing an “opportunity,” one DSM originator chose to go to medical school and specialize in psychiatry exclusively in order to have the credentials to create a classification system. Medicine and psychiatry were merely means to another end. The womb of the DSM resided in an obsessive individual who possessed a prominent dearth of humanity and who by the same token could have easily chosen to classify machine tools, toads or sea shells. In addition, for the initial DSM there was very little consensus. It is the product of just a few individuals. This was the inauspicious inception of the run-away train we now call the DSM.
Another critical point to remember is that the primary impetus for a classification of mental disorders was for research purposes – not for clinical utility. That is why it is a diagnostic and STATISTICAL manual. The use of medications in psychiatry began in earnest in the 1950s creating a need to do clinical trials. A system was needed to enable researchers to group individuals together diagnostically. One cannot for example do a trial of a drug for schizophrenia without defining the population for which the medication is purported to be effective. Thus the birth of the DSM and its subsequent revisions has been influenced in no small way by changes in the field of psychiatry and in pharmaceutical technology.
The pharmaceutical industry is not the only one that has influenced the evolution of the DSM. Since the 1980s, the health insurance industry has exerted an increasingly formidable influence on the way mental health disorders are viewed. Because it determines the reimbursement of treatment services, it creates demands on the field for the EXPLICIT purpose of decreasing expenditures. This industry has clearly had an impact on how individuals are diagnosed. In stage one, personality disorders were excluded from any reimbursement. The DSM then responded by creating all sorts of other reimbursable categories into which a psychiatrist could “fit” that patient. More recently the insurance companies for reimbursement considerations have created strata of severity of mental illnesses in which, for example, major depression, schizophrenia and full-blown bipolar disorder are reimbursed more fully than other less debilitating “disorders” such as adjustment disorders, anxiety disorders, etc.”
http://narcissists-suck.blogspot.com/
(Must scroll down the page to find this comment)
This helps explain why the traumatized abuse victims and psychopathic/narcissistic bullies who abuse are both stigmatized with bipolar disorder with the latter only labeled if caught or their crimes are so outrageous they can’t be covered up.
I think wordpress allows you to ban by IP address. I would recommend trying that.
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I’m not sure what to make of these gene studies.
In theory, gene sequencing should work, even if the patients have more then one disease.
I’m a little curious what “Credible interval” is. I saw this in the above study. I looked it up, and it’s from something called “Bayesian statistics”. I’ve never heard of that.
I share the same concern for way the NIMH depicted the sate of things. There was no visible plan or approach to properly replicate or otherwise improve the data collected, which appears to be overly broad and poorly replicated. It was mostly cheerleading.
Psychotropic drugs, like all other drugs, cause gene switch changes. The pathways they interefere with have feedback mechanism controlled directly from gene switches. Other pathways are subsequently indirectly affected, resulting in additional gene switch changes. I have read it is difficult to reliably induce the same gene switch changes with antispychotic drugs, making it somewhat difficult to study what changes they cause. Psychotropic drugs are probably poorly stuided in this regard.
I thought it was bizzare when the directer of the NIMH explained a study that showed evidence antipsychotics prevent recovery over placebo by about 23% when used off-label for maintenance therapy, and yet Dr. Insel did not reccomend this use end, nor call for a replication. A carefully worded article on how to be more careful with risk/benefit assessemnt for prescriptions was all that came out. There must be pretty strong and excessive industry influence for response like that.
For a goverment department funded by Tax money, it must be hard to do things not supported by the ‘evidence’ from the industry. My guess in gene sequencing won’t go anywhere until a leadership role tells them what to do.
TinCan
Thomas Bayes was an 18th century mathematician who developed a method that essentially updates probability as evidence accumulates. A friend sent me a book, The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy, that was fascinating [and is on Amazon used for $5]. The credibility interval is similar to the more familiar confidence interval, but it’s different. I’m a tourist in the land of statistics rather than an inhabitant, but there’s a discussion of the difference in the Wikipedia entry that might help.
32% of the variance explained or accounted for by genetics. That’s a nice chunk. I hope this finding can be replicated. But does this mean that 68% of the variance is accounted for by non-genetic, or, possibly, “environmental” (including psychosocial) variables?
Tom,
That’s a really good point. I first encountered that language in Dr. Nemeroff’s Grand Rounds at NYU, and because of the source, had something of a skeptical reaction. I’m not sure how they arrive at those figures and haven’t yet run across an answer.
I think someone here led me to the following article:
http://www.psmag.com/health/the-social-life-of-genes-64616/
It’s a long article that starts with a study done on bees, but it addresses DNA and gene expression biologically, and in doing so, demonstrates that the sociological has an impact on gene expression even in bees and cichlids; of course, the social world is far more consequential to the well being of humans.
Human connection appears to be a powerful force in immunity and mental resilience. Loneliness has a very negative impact on gene expression.
Dr. Niall McLaren points out in his blog I cited above that Dr. Jay Joseph provides a quotation from the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald from the early twentieth century,
“Among scientific articles there are to be found not a few wherein the logic and mathematics are faultless but which are for all that worthless, because the assumptions and hypotheses upon which the faultless logic and mathematics rest do not correspond to actuality.”
I would say this quotation applies to the endeavors of the NIMH in that what they pass off as science is really mere ideology when they have stated their conclusion that so called mental illness is a brain disorder/disease before doing the research again. Given that biopsychiatry has been lying for decades that DSM stigmas are genetic and have found nothing that is valid or replicable, I see no reason to trust any new similar claims because they have actually proven that such genes do not exist per several articles I posted above. Like the boy who cried wolf, after so many fraudulent claims of finding the bipolar, schizophrenia and ADHD genes only to be exposed as false, it seems obvious that any similar claims are dubious at best.
Dr. McLaren does a great job in his blog cited above demonstrating the both the NIMH and biopsychiatry are not at all scientific, but ideological.
Let’s do a thought-experiment:
You (any one of you) are granted complete dictatorial power over medical research in the US.
With the eager blessing of many in Congress, you have the authority to immediately stop all research in psychiatry, abolish the DSM, defund and close down NIMH, ban the prescription and sale of all psychiatric drugs, and put any psychiatrist on trial for crimes against humanity, even if they are now retired.
Would you?
Would you do none of these things, all of these things, some of these things (and if so, which ones and why)?
Alas, like every human who has ever lived, each of us is stuck in our historical moment. We try our best with the tools we have in our all-too-brief lifetimes.
In science, all claims to truth are provisional (and, ideally, potentially falsifiable). Truth is a process. Science, at its best, is a bit of a street fight. the more extraordinary the claim, the more it is challenged (or should be . . . ). This includes such well-supported findings such as the speed of light (and how it is claimed to be the same throughout the cosmos — or else all of our fancy equations in the Standard Model are in big, big trouble).
Would the solution to so much frustration, bitterness and skepticism be to simply stop everything?
If not, and if you were Dictator of US Medical/Psychiatric Research in the US, what, in your opinion, would be the course to take? What should be studied (if anything), what methods (if any) are acceptable? Criticism is an important part of the scientific process, but is criticism constructive and does it lead to alternative proposals?
Should we just simply stop all psychiatric research NOW? Politics and economics have always been a part of life, and especially modern scientific medicine (which we wouldn’t have in the US without lots of philanthropoic and Federal funds, cost accountants, expensive equipment, and so on). I suspect that maybe so much of the frustration is with science itself, that our expectations for salvation from science are too high, or that it is, after all, in the end, a human social activity with all of its nasty human vices blended in.
I’m all for sharp critiques. But shall we propose some thoughtful alternatives for those idealoges posing as scientists? Shall we stop the train altogether? What is to be done (to quote V.I. Lenin)?
Good thing certain people weren’t around when Hitler and the Nazi Holocaust occurred. Decent people believed such criminals including The Nazi Doctors described by Dr. Jay Lifton should be subjected to the Nuremburg Trials for such crimes against humanity as they should be today.
Unfortunately, since the U.S. psychiatrists had created the horrific eugenics agenda with the robber barons of their day, it was difficult for them to be too hard on the Nazis who brought their evil, inhuman, deadly psychiatric theories to fruition that they continue today in the guise of genetics and other so called medical specialties.
There are many very excellent alternatives to the life destroying, brain/body damaging biopsychiatry paradigm created when psychiatry sold out to Big Pharma all too well described in Robert Whitaker’s excellent book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, Dr. Peter Breggin’s Toxic Psychiatry and tons of others. Dr. Loren Mosher’s excellent work with Soteria for which he was marginalized to make way for the biopsychiatry/Big Pharma cartel that only benefited psychiatry and its cohorts in the power elite while preying on and destroying countless lives is now being resurrected with Open Dialogue, the Voice Hearing Movement and many other life enhancing alternatives that do lead to recovery rather than destruction of lives.
All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to say and do nothing.
Dr. Peter Breggin’s article on “Psychiatry’s Role in the Holocaust” and how the same gross human rights violations by biopsychiatry with their ongoing eugenics agenda continue today:
http://www.waynemorinjr.com/Germany%20Psychiatry%20Murder%20of%20Mental%20Patients.pdf
I greatly admire Dr. Peter Breggin for being the conscience of psychiatry in spite of the many attacks unleashed upon him by Big Pharma and its cohorts. The fact that he has survived and thrived while being more than validated in his views shows that sometimes justice does prevail. One can always count on Dr. Breggin to be there to speak to Congress, appear on television, write articles, books and web sites among other noble efforts whenever the latest brain/body atrocities of biopsychiatry are promoted as great advances. His promotion of “empathic therapy” is certainly a life saving alternative to the current DSM/APA paradigm.
I would ban the prescription and sale of all psychiatric drugs. Let the rest fend for themselves. It would be interesting to see how psychiatrists might occupy their days and the NIMH redefine its agenda without reliance on drugs.
Dr. Breggin has done a lot of good, but like all heroes, has huge flaws as well.
“Why ARE so many people being labelled bipolar? More and more celebrities say they have it, but here a top psychiatrist warns the disorder is far too readily diagnosed, leaving many trapped on ‘zombie’ pills
•What it means to be bipolar has undergone a transformation”
•Once seen as rare and disabling, it now vaguely refers to ‘mood swings’
•The drugs used to treat the condition are powerful, harmful – and profitable”
By Dr Joanna Moncrieff
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2430129/Bipolar-Why-ARE-people-More-celebrities-say-theyve-got-.html
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bitterest-Pills-Troubling-Antipsychotic/dp/1137277432
I am posting this information from Mad In America because I have noted the unwarranted explosion of the latest fad epidemic of bipolar disorder in several posts causing much harm to all too many people who are then prescribed toxic cocktails of lithium, neuroleptics, so called mood stabilizers and can include SSRI’s, Xanax and others that can literally put their very lives at risk not to mention their relationships, careers, reputations, marriage, children and other critical areas of their lives. Dr. David Healy has written about bipolar mania and bipolar biobabble extensively to debunk this latest fraud fad in biopsychiatry as well as a great critique of it in his book, Mania, to counter Dr. Nassir Ghaemi’s attempts to stigmatize everyone on the planet with this life destroying bipolar stigma.
Ironically, Emile Kraepelin worshipped by the biopsychiatrists who created the DSM paradigm to push such poison drugs for Big Pharma have failed to acknowledge that Kraepelin was also a great advocate of the eugenics theories of his times that led to the Nazi Holocaust per the article on the topic per Dr. Peter Breggin above and psychopathy, which continues to influence this crowd to this day.
Dr. Joanna Montcrieff is a famous psychiatrist and member of the Critical Psychiatry Network and author of the book, The Myth of the Chemical Cure and co-author of De-Medicalizing Misery along with many articles. Her latest book is The Bitterest Pill: The Troubling History of Antipsychotics I cited above with a link to Amazon.
Given the article above, the NIMH genetics research cited in this article becomes all the more dubious when one considers the so called “bipolar” people being studied are mostly pretty much normal people with life problems, crises, abuse, losses and trauma for the most part misdiagnosed with bipolar as many experts admit. Thus, there is little wonder why so many vague gene associations appear to be involved.
The Taint of Eugenics in NIMH-Funded Research by Robert Whitaker
http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/01/the-taint-of-eugenics-in-nimh-funded-research-today/