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E-mailDr Michael Corry's response letter (News, 13 September), to queries over his claims on anti-depressant side-effects, should be emblazoned on all broadsheet front pages for a week of Sundays.
When is the blatant, patent and grotesque over-use of anti-depressants (along with many other so-called 'medications') going to be finally faced down?
Ali Bracken's forensic undercover work for the Sunday Tribune has been illuminated many times in different ways over the past 10 years and more. Her discovery that this is an enmeshed, vested self-interest scenario is not entirely new. Far from it.
Pharmaceutical companies essentially and pervasively rule the roost. Their selective, self-fulfilling research funding awards are greedily gobbled up by researchers, academic journals and medical practitioners – as well as by gullible politicians, who have their eye on the national pharmaceutical employment spree on offer.
Recently, on RTé's Liveline, a young man, described his fortuitous "escape" to prison, away from a psychiatric hospital, where he was a guinea pig for a "blur" of medication. Prison, he related, afforded him the framework to get himself sorted out, and now he's doing well. What testament is this to the current medication bias in psychiatric care?
Drugs of many kinds can be helpful in certain situations, cautiously prescribed for strictly circumscribed periods of specific relevance. Anti-depressants should not be thrown around like snuff at a wake, just because there is no real motivation (or awareness, for that matter) to tackle underlying realities with any degree of authentic exploration.
Well done Ali Bracken and well done too to Michael Corry, who has been articulating this for years. Well done also to anyone else who ventures to openly question and challenge current misguided medication practices. Let maturity, honesty and selflessness prevail over selective science, corporate greed, medical misguidedness and political kudos.
The vulnerable people on the receiving end deserve better.
Patrick J Cosgrove,
Co Waterford.
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Dear Mr Patrick Cosgrove (I hope you are not too offended with my omitting your seemingly essential, slightly snooty middle initial, "J", which sets the tone for your comments). Your comments are, in my (informed) opinion, very extreme and potentially misleading to "the vulnerable people" you have quoted. You may never know how many depressive relapses leading to harm which your very extreme comments may cause if people are persuaded by your words to stop helpful medication. I hope you have a strong conscience. In any case, what concrete evidence do you have for your comments and specifically why do you feel you are qualified to make them. My suspicions are that your comments may be armchair opinions borne out of reading theory and hearing occasional unrepresentative anecdotal stories. Be very careful what you write.
Sincerely,
Thomas Jones