The above perspective by Cathy Wield can be read in full here.
What follows is my comment [as posted]:
Dear Cathy,
Thank you for writing what I consider to be a most important personal account and perspective on modern day psychiatry.
Like you, I share experience of psychiatry from both the patient and professional side. I worked as an NHS psychiatrist in Scotland for over 25 years. It was whilst training in psychiatry in Aberdeen that I developed anxiety and sleeplessness. This was half-way through the 5 year long ‘Defeat Depression Campaign’ – the primary sponsor being the pharmaceutical industry – which successfully ‘educated’ both healthcare professionals and potential patients that depression, anxiety and other conditions resulted from a ‘chemical imbalance’. Following this mass ‘education’ I gave what I believed was informed consent and agreed to start an SSRI antidepressant. Within 4 months of taking this drug I found myself physiologically dependent on it. Over several decades I tried to ‘discontinue’ this prescribed drug, but however slowly I tried to do so, and by whatever method recommended to me by the few healthcare professionals who accepted that my symptoms were due to drug withdrawal, I did not manage. So here I am, a quarter of a century later, still dependent on a prescribed drug and living with the side-effects which only get greater as I age.
In 2005, as a direct result of withdrawal from my SSRI, I developed akathisia, suicidality, severe anxiety and profound anhedonia. I was admitted to hospital and tried on a wide range of different psychiatric drugs before being given ECT for what was wrongly termed as “treatment resistant depression”. I very nearly did not survive. Only by finally returning to the SSRI that I had first been prescribed for anxiety did I gradually get better enough to function. My family had suffered hugely, my children were then young and my wife, who worked as a GP had to support both them and me. It took me nearly 2 years to get back to working as a Consultant Psychiatrist. Back at work I found that some of my psychiatrist colleagues treated me differently. I was now identified as a psychiatrist “living with major mental illness” and I found that this sometimes resulted in the validity of my professional inputs being questioned. It was disappointing to find that a profession that claims to minimise the stigma attached to mental illness may often use that very stigma as a tool to undermine.
For sharing my story and for being a determined advocate for full transparency in relation to vested interests involved in science [1], I have faced gas-lighting and bullying. In many instances this has been from senior psychiatrists who continue to be leaders for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Indeed, British psychiatry has shown itself to be most defensive and willing to further label anybody who does not say positive things as “anti-psychiatrists”, “demonizers”, “villains” and “pill-shamers”. Surely this polarization is unhelpful, unscientific and harmful to progressive learning. This defensive attitude always reminds me of this BMJ opinion, by Dr Richard Smith [2]
“Psychiatry seems to have lost its way, as, I believe, has all of medicine. The response should not be to refuse to listen to criticisms, but to listen to and use them as a stimulus to deep examination of current practice.”
References:
[1] A Sunshine Act for Scotland
[2] Richard Smith: Psychiatry in crisis? BMJ Opinion, July 2016: