The Expert told Parliament that there is “compelling evidence”
for long-term treatment with antidepressants.
This the Expert said is “maintenance treatment”.[1]
The Expert told Parliament:
“Depression is under-treated across the country and across all age groups”.
There was no mention that nearly 1 in 5 of us are now taking antidepressants.
It was then that I heard the philosopher. [2]
He spoke with a tear in his eye.
“It is by living that we learn” he said, “in the field, learning from each other”.
The philosopher said:
evidence is more than numbers and words,
and experience enlightening.
The Expert and philosopher agree Evidence Based Medicine is important and necessary
but in itself not sufficient.
Much of long-term prescribing is in truth “Experimentally Based Medicine”.
Progress has ‘hardly broken its stride’.[3]
science ceases to be Science when
numbers are hidden and the narrative is ghost-written and spread by agents of
commerce.
The Experts tell us from the Control Centre
that the seas are choppy [4],
and that we should take a back-seat [5]
Gordon Bennett is smiling:
the narrative controllers are steering
the vessels and juggernauts.[6]
Any narrative of harm is to be labelled.
It is a choppy sea strategy
in a deeply unethical ocean.
Sharing negative experience we have now become “demonisers” and “extremists” [7]
We remember that we once sought help from the Experts –
but our experience did not match their “evidence over ideology”
and we find ourselves no longer “credible”.
The Expert needs to include the philosopher.
It is by living we learn.
Now that is compelling.
[1] Geddes, J. R., Carney, S. M., Davies, C., et al (2003) Relapse prevention with antidepressant drug treatment in depressive disorders: a systematic review. Lancet, 361, 653-661. [2] Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) [3] Iain Banks, poem “3” [4]autha [5] Dinah Miller, MD, 9 April 2019: “Concerns about discontinuation/withdrawal syndromes from antidepressants - whatever its merits - needs to take a back seat . . ..” [6] The Narrative Controllers [7]Demonisers and extremists