Book Description
Medical visits are often less effective and satisfying than they would be if doctors and patients better understood the communication most needed for attainment of mutual health goals. Here, professors and Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Medical School join forces to help us understand this vital issue, and the means to best facilitate communication that brings more effective medical care and happier, healthier consumers. The verbal and nonverbal exchanges that take place between doctor and patient affect both participants, and can result in a range of positive or negative psychological reactions--including comfort, alarm, irritation, or resolve. "Talk," on verbal, non-verbal and withholding levels, is shown by extensive research to have far-reaching impact. Roter and Hall set out specific principles and recommendations for improving doctor-patient relationships. They describe the process of communication, analyze social and psychological factors that color doctor-patient exchanges, and detail changes that can benefit both parties. Here are needed encouragement and principles of action vital to doctors and patients alike.
Book Description
The drug's manufacturer, Novartis, claims that Ritalin is the "solution" to this widespread problem. But hidden behind the well-oiled public-relations machine is a potentially devastating reality: children are being given a drug that can cause the same bad effects as amphetamine and cocaine, including behavioral disorders, growth suppression, neurological tics, agitation, addiction, and psychosis. Talking Back to Ritalin uncovers these and other startling facts and translates the research findings for parents and doctors alike. An advocate for education not medication, Dr. Breggin empowers parents to channel distracted, disenchanted, and energetic children into powerful, confident, and brilliant members of the family and society.
Customer Reviews:
Needed this book years ago........2007-04-13
Any book that can be a warning against stimulants is a very good thing. I know from personal experience what Adderall can do and other stimulants. It is not a problem for everyone but I know one thing I would never give stimulant medication to my child. Never. Life depending on any stimulants is no life. This book is just trying to give people some knowledge before it's too late.
Dear NICKNO.......2006-03-25
You have NO idea what you are talking about, WE who DO have children DO NOT WANT them sitting still for 6 hours a day. you have missed the picture.you are a complete moron, who obviously have no children . before you spout off get your facts straight.
you can't judge if you haven't experienced it.You have no idea the heart break parents go through with their children who need spiecial help.and im not saying we do or do not use the drugs, You just dont know sh$#.and about the book, who the hell really knows the truth???????
If you are wondering about what to do for your child, read this book!.......2005-11-08
I read this book after my son started having trouble in first grade and was sent to the principal so many times he had earned his way up to 3 days of in-school suspension. His infractions, although inappropriate, didn't seem incredibly bad to me (humming in the bathroom, putting a spider on his private area during show and tell, batting a girl with the long sleeves of his teacher's shirt, saying "middle finger", spitting out water over another child's desk and backpack), and in-school suspension didn't seem to be changing his behavior either.
However, my son has always been active and moving, and definitely does not respond well to pure authority. I suspected ADHD and took him to a doctor. I grew up with a chiropractor as a father and didn't want to put him on drugs, but thought maybe it would be necessary.
I also have a Ph.D. and checked out armfuls of books about ADHD and began reading. I picked up whatever was newest and available in the library, with no regard to ideology. I read lots of the books and identified with many things my son was doing. I took my son to a psychologist who said he probably had a bit of ADHD and maybe some sensory integration issues. But she pointed out that the trouble was at school. "You wouldn't be here except for school, right?" she asked. That's right. Our son is challenging but we manage him just fine at home and have a very happy home life. The psychologist gave me pause about just where the problem lay.
Then I read Talking Back to Ritalin. And I got mad. You mean, there is absolutely no evidence for these claims in all these other books I read that there is anything wrong with the brains of kids diagnosed ADHD? You mean that these stimulant drugs don't really 'attach' to the deficient receptors and 'correct' the imbalance, like all the other books were claiming? They claimed this, but where was their proof? They had no citations, no hard evidence behind these claims, nothing! Dr. Breggin, on the other hand, was reporting the available scientific evidence. The real stuff, that the doctors publish in journals, not what they say in books for the public. Now I haven't read those articles, but when he quotes Barkley who admitted that there is no way technologically to tell the difference between brains of 'normal' kids and 'ADHD' kids, it's pretty convincing that nothing has really been found.
And he makes sense. My latent unease over drugs became horror that I might have possibly done this to my son. Breggin quotes one study (p. 29) where 122 kids were put on stimulants for 1-23 weeks, and 9% of the children developed tics, including one who developed an irreversible Tourette's syndrome! Is this the kind of probability of a drug CAUSING a problem that I want to subject my kid to?
I saw school administrators and doctors talking about medication, for my son with his problems, as if it were harmless. Doesn't sound harmless to me. Stunts growth? Causes loss of appetite? Is as addictive as cocaine? Causes a rebound effect after they come off it, that could make them behave worse? Flatlines kids so they don't feel emotions? This is a drug that should not even be talked about with kids like mine, who just like to move and explore!
Read this book. You owe it to yourself to hear the other side of the story, because there is a LOT out there about the medication side. Maybe you won't be convinced, but for me, this guy has the scientific evidence on his side, and it all makes sense too.
Oh, and by the way, I watched my son's teacher, and was dismayed to find a very negative attitude. A voice inside me said, "Get him out of this classroom." I did, and he is now with another teacher who is calm, kind and loving, and he is doing great. I'm shaking with fear from what I might have done to my son because of this great big drug-company-pushed engine.
Excellent! - Thorough and well reasoned argument.......2004-08-26
I think this book is one of the best researched in the alternative view about drugs. It gives well reasoned arguments that aught to give pause for the knee jerk phenemoma that is going on with Stimulant drugs and our youth.
Yes Dr. Breggin is thoroughly biased, but that is a given for all human beings. Being biased in itself is not a bad thing, because it often is simply the expression of passion and certainty. Bias is a problem when there are no clear arguments or good reason to support the bias. Dr. Breggin is always quite thorough in supporting his point of view.
To be fair, he gives almost no credibility to the opposite view. Since I happen to mostly share his bias, it is not something I have a problem with.
While it is apparent that for many children, stimulant medications have effects and do help, the question is really about the cost of that help for the long term. Should we be using these drugs as the first and often only solution? If we can help these kids without resorting to drugs, wouldn't that be best? Once that diagnosis is surrendered to along with a lifetime of stimulant medications, is that the best option? That is what Breggin is getting at here, are we really looking at this thoroughly or simply swallowing what we are told?
I'm biased against the drugs because I've been successfully treating adults and children with ADD, ADHD, OCD, etc with homeopathic medicine for several years now. Many of my collegues in homeoapthy report similar success.
There is a good book out called "Ritalin Free Kids" By the Ullman's that goes into some depth about homeopathy - one of the best solutions for ADD, ADHD, etc. The book, "Impossible Cure" (Amy Lansky), is also a wonderful primer for those interested in researching homeopathy.
The only dissappointment I have for Breggins' books in general, is he is simply not thorough enough for my tastes in talking about solutions. There are many kids who have VERY disturbing problems in this spectrum, and some of his solutions are too simplistic and not realistic. It is with some of these extreme cases that we see homeopathy really shine, in a way that drugs can't match. There must be other alternative methods as well that really work. So that is my only concern with this book, lack of research into alternative solutions.
Let psychiatry rebut this point for point.......2004-03-04
I am a licensed clinical social worker with seven years' experience working with troubled children, and am now director of a large therapeutic foster care program. From my practical experience, and from my reading, the negative reviews of this book, calling Breggin unscientific, ranting, etc. have got it exactly wrong. The "literature" supporting Ritalin and other stimulants is biased and only intermittently scientific - more like ad copy than fact.
It is easy to see why stimulants dominate the treatment of ADHD. Drug companies spend over $20 billion a year on promotion - more than they spend on research.What does this money buy them? David Healy, internationally known psychiatric researcher and writer, claims about 50 percent of all psychiatric journal articles are ghost written by employees of drug companies, and that 30% of The American Psychiatric Association's income comes from drug company subsidies, grants and advertising. Around 70 percent of all drug research is funded by the drug companies themselves, and most of the rest, funded by the government, is heavily influenced by drug companies' extensive lobbying machinery.
Major journals (including The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet) have lamented the control of research and publishing by drug company money: The New England Journal of Medicine editorialized, stating they could hardly find reviewers for their psychiatric drug articles who did not have conflicts of interest due to financial ties with drug companies. Studies funded by drug companies, that don't support the companies' drugs, are rarely published.
The bottom line: professionals and the public are bombarded with a stream of "research" and "information" financed and spun by the people who make and sell these drugs. The conflict of interest is palpable.
Many people lack access to effective non-drug ways to deal with "ADHD." But this is no proof that the drugs are especially effective and safe - it just shows the advantage of having billions of dollars to finance and promote the drugs.
I have a challenge for readers who dismiss Breggin's book: Read half a dozen responsible critiques of biopsychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Try David Healy's The Creation of Psychopharmacology, also Healy's Let Them Eat Prozac (soon to come out in the U.S.), Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash, Fisher and Greenberg's From Placebo to Panacea - Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test, and Elliott Valenstein's Blaming the Brain - The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health.
These are not works by new agers who think crystals heal schizophrenia. They are by respected academics, researchers and clinicians (and not all of them, especially Healy and Glenmullen, are against psychiatric drugs).
But read these books, and note the claims and evidence they cite about the drugs. Now, here's the challenge: look in mainstream psychiatric literature for any serious attempt to address these claims. I've read over forty books, pro and con, on psychiatric drugs - and I've yet to find pro-drug literature that addresses 98% of these arguments, not in general, and not point by point.
This is a matter of informed consent. See if Peter Breggin's words in Toxic Psychiatry are not at least very plausible: "In the world of modern psychiatry claims can become truth, hopes can become achievements and propaganda is taken as science".
Yes, Breggin is angry. He pulls no punches and gives no quarter. But he deserves serious consideration - he has been qualified as an expert witness in numerous product liability cases against drug companies around the country. Try to find, anywhere, point by point refutations of the specific claims he makes in this book. Except for a few points, biopsychiatry's silence on Breggin's claims is deafening. Ask an "authority" on ADHD whether, as Breggin claims, the pannel of experts at the NIH Consensus Conference on ADHD DID or DID NOT conclude in their final report, "..there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction," and ask the "authority" who it was that later took it upon himself to edit that statement to muddle the wording, but without changing its bottom line. And ask if it is true that the conference organizer, Peter Jensen, later admitted in a 2000 article that the experts at this conference found NO proof that "ADHD reflects a disordered state."(See Breggin, page 16).
If, after looking into the issue, you decide to give your child Ritalin, so be it. But each parent, child and professional deserves to know the whole story - something you will not get reading standard psychiatric literature.
Average customer rating:
- Dr. Breggin is refreshingly one-sided, in a land where medications RULE!
- Big Pharma quackery
- could have been better
- An excellent book if you are uninformed about the downsides
- Breggin is courageous and right on
|
Talking Back To Prozac: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Today's Most Controversial Drug
Peter Breggin
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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ASIN: 0312956061 |
Amazon.com
Are you one of the thousands of Americans "listening to Prozac"? Chances are you at least know someone who is. It's time to take a closer look at this supposedly "safe" drug. Peter Breggin picks through the studies used to justify Prozac's safety, often uncovering flaws and shoddy science. He details the FDA approval process, including who on the panel was paid by whom. The key players and the details will surprise you.
Book Description
Millions of Americans are on it to treat everything from serious depression to shyness, obesity, PMS, and back pain. They've been told it has few, or no, side effects. But what is the dark side of Prozac? Has the FDA told you everything it knows about the drug's potentially dangerous side effects? What essential facts must you have if you are already taking Prozac, or are considering taking it? Find out:What Prozac's label won't tell youThe truth about serious and life-threatening reactionsCases of sexual dysfunction from Prozac, particularly in menIf Prozac can lead to violence, murder, or suicideThe panic and anxiety Prozac can cause-not cureWhat Prozac has in common with cocaine and amphetamines
Customer Reviews:
Dr. Breggin is refreshingly one-sided, in a land where medications RULE!.......2007-01-17
I was diagnosed with depression in 1997 and was prescribed Zoloft which I took for a year. Thanks to this book I was able to QUIT and have been drug-free for 10 years! Yes, the drugs "work" if chemically altering your mood is your goal in life! SSRIs act just like cocaine and other stimulants in the brain. They do the same mood-lifting things only without all the side ('fried') effects of major stimulants. (And they are just as hard to quit, with their own withdrawal symptoms!) IS THAT THE KIND OF CURE YOU WANT?
Or are you willing to listen to what your depression is telling you and CHANGE WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED IN YOUR LIFE? Depression does NOT come out of nowhere! It's a VALID REACTION to life, giving you ACCURATE SYMPTOMS of real distress, whether you choose to believe them or not! But in our day & age, it's not fashionable to ADMIT that we're not happy with our lives -- "I have everything I could want, why am I feeling like this?" We medicate ourselves instead because it's so much easier to say "I have a medical condition that requires medication", and by golly, the majority of people "feel better" when they're taking antidepressants! Amazing wonder drugs capable of fixing most 21st-century emotional woes!!
Look around, folks!! Should we accept that most of our friends and co-workers (and SELVES) are "ON MEDS!" just so we/they can have a decent life? It's the breakdown of families, of close-knit communities, of real relationships and friendships and meaningful human interactions which are driving this epidemic. We need more people learning the old forgotten skills of helping one another to COPE. But that's messy and inconvenient-- not the American way!!
Big Pharma quackery.......2006-03-14
Peter Breggin has done the world a favor by exposing the fraud and profit motives of the $20 billion dollar anti-depressant industry. Instead of respecting natural feelings over a wide-array of societal problems, people are instead being encouraged by corporate shamans to take the dope they push. Interestingly, the sellers of these drugs are free to make a fortune while cannabis sellers are put into prisons, and often prescribed the corporate drugs while they are incarcerated! I imagine that if Eli Lilly held a patent on marijuana, we'd see ads promoting pot use on tv tomorrow.
If people find some relief from Prozac, more power to them; but drug companies have applied marketing skills where what's more often needed is skilled therapy. ("New Dimensions Broadcasting" provides weekly interviews with healers that don't require manipulations of our brain chemistry). Predictably, drug-free approaches to mental health are given short shrift by Big Pharma. Everything from changes in diet, altered media consumption, meditation, political empowerment, community involvement and much else can provide the peace of mind so many are longing for in this maddening world. There's even a book that suggests philosophy could be used to think through our mental dis-ease ("Plato, Not Prozac"). I've purchased several copies of "Talking Back to Prozac" to share with people who are questioning the wisdom of taking powerful psychoactives, or putting their kids on them.
The work of Breggin and a growing number of Big Pharma critics came to mind when I read this headline from the March 9, 2006 issue of the satirical newspaper, "The Onion": Wonder Drug Inspires Deep, Unwavering Love of Pharmaceutical Companies. The story reads - "The Food and Drug Administration today approved the sale of the drug PharmAmorin, a prescription tablet developed by Pfizer to treat chronic distrust of large prescription-drug manufacturers. Pfizer executives characterized the FDA's approval as a 'godsend' for sufferers of independent-thinking-related mental health disorders. 'Many individuals lack the deep, abiding affection for drug makers that is found in healthy people, such as myself,' Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnel said. "These tragic disorders are reaching epidemic levels, and as a company dedicated to promoting the health, well-being, and long life of our company's public image, it was imperative that we did something to combat them.'"
could have been better.......2005-08-11
Dr. Breggin's book casts a very illuminating light on the flaws of the drug approval process in America and the shortcomings of the antidepressant Prozac. I am disappointed when reading others reviews though that most people are more intent on rating Prozac and not the book. The book is extremely one-sided. I was taught as far back as elementary school that essays should be constructed with Pro and Con arguments. The author, while pointing out many cases of individuals unhappy with the drug, fails to discuss anyone who's life has been positively affected by Prozac. As far as his citations go...they appear to be very selective...he backs up things here and there but if this were a scholarly work it would be rejected in the peer review process. He also makes many ridiculous claims that made me laugh...e.g "Although alcohol has been widely used throughout human society since before recorded history, only in the last decade have we begun to face the scope of its deadly impact on human behaviour and society" (Page 93 chapter 4, hardcover edition). I am fairly certain that people have known about alcohol's destructive effects for as long as it has been used....maybe Dr. Breggin just figured it out. The book started out well...but as I read more and more...the strength of his points began to be washed out by his fervor and he appeared to me to become more and more of a zealot than a person providing any sort of a fair, unbiased review of a drug...too bad...could have been a very good book.
An excellent book if you are uninformed about the downsides.......2004-08-26
This is a classic only because Peter Breggin does his homework. I am a biased reader because I am a Naturopathic physician who treats depression with homeopathic medicine (a far superior solution to drugs).
But my bias aside, I think the book has great merit because Breggin really raises good and sound questions about the so called science behind antidepressants. He makes the process of getting a drug passed explicit and shows how corrupt the process is. In addition, the often difficult process of getting questionable drugs off the market is explained. A process that is often at the expense of the patient and to the benefit of Big Pharma.
Breggin is not so great about coming up with solutions however. Deep longstanding depression is not always amenable to psychotherapy. At least those are a lot of the patients that I'm referred. People who have tried many things without success - therapy, counseling, drugs, etc.
I see homeopathy work with many, though of course not all, of these intractable cases. There must be other effective natural means to help people resolve deep seated depression as well. So this, in my mind is the major weakness in Breggin's books, he is not looking past his own nose about solutions.
Clearly drugs are not a true solution, but counseling on its own is often not enough either. Besides going to see a skilled homeopath (not so easy to find), people have also mentioned dietary changes, community support, friends, family, and other methods as being helpful. So that would be what would fill this book out and make it complete.
Breggin is courageous and right on.......2004-04-03
The negative reviews call Breggin unscientific, fear mongering, etc., but Breggin was just ahead of his time. In the past year, English regulators have warned against SSRI use (except Prozac)in youths and adolescents, basically due to the dangers Breggin warns of in this book. Recent headlines in the U.S. report the FDA is also recommending similar warnings about agitation and suicidality resulting from use of SSRI's in children and adults.A 2004 network evening news headline story recounted how a senior FDA scientist recently reviewed SSRI trials and concluded that suicidal ideation occurred twice as often in the SSRI group as in the placebo group (and then the FDA tried to suppress the public revelation of the conclusions of their own scientist).
The truth is the drug companies knew from the start that SSRI's pose serious dangers of agitation, akathisia and suicidality. It's been years since anyone on the inside seriously believed the Serotonin imbalance theory of depression. This information has been available all along and was deliberately suppressed by the drug companies. Now, ten years later, people are beginning to wake up, acting as though this is brand new news.
Go online to Prevention and Treatment, Volume 5, articles 22 through 32, published by the American Psychological Association, for extensive discussion of the fact that the FDA trials barely showed any difference between the SSRI's and placebo.
Better still, read Let them Eat Prozac, by David Healy, soon to be available in the U.S. Healy is a total psychiatric insider, an SSRI researcher and perhaps the world's leading authority on the history of the development of SSRI's. He's not an anti-psychiatrist. He's just pro-truth. He cites chapter and verse, and his conclusions are basically the same as Breggin's.
The negative reviewers simply miss the mark. To judge the value of Breggin's books, you need do one thing: List his specific factual claims, and then try to find in mainstream psychiatric literature any attempt to rebut those specific claims, point by point.
Not "he's dangerous," or "he's a zealot," or "he's unscientific," but actually point for point. For instance, Breggin charges that many Prozac patients in the FDA trials were also put on Benzodiazepines because Prozac alone made them so agitated they couldn't sleep. Look for mainstream psychiatry to a) state whether Breggin's claim is actually true, b) explain why that isn't a serious comment on Prozac, and c) answer Breggin's claim that where Benzo's were used, if the patients on Benzo's were excluded, the Prozac group was no more effective than placebo.
Healy makes many of the same specific points, and more. He exposes the systematic way the drug companies distorted their research and saw to it that both the scientific literature and popular promotional material contained the same distortions.
Breggin was right, and his critics, who accuse him of being shrill and unscientific, are describing themselves more than they describe Breggin.
Average customer rating:
- Read this book
- moving and thought-provoking
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Talking with Doctors
David Newman
Manufacturer: Analytic Press
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ASIN: 0881634468 |
Book Description
Without any warning, in September 1999, David Newman was told he had a rare and life-threatening tumor in the base of his skull. In the compressed space of five weeks, he consulted with leading physicians and surgeons at four major medical centers. The doctors offered drastically differing opinions; several pronounced the tumor inoperable and voiced skepticism about the effectiveness of any nonsurgical treatment.
Customer Reviews:
Read this book.......2006-01-16
This is a beautifully written, very complex narrative by a young psychotherapist/artist of his journey into and out of life-threatening illness (at age 44, with 3 young children, he discovered he had a supposedly "inoperable" malignant brain tumor). In part it is a commentary on the current state of medicine, as the author grappled as a layperson to make sense of the conflicting opinions of the doctors he consulted and to decide whom he should entrust with his life. It is also a meditation on trust and human communication in general. The author has a psychoanalyst's (or a writer's) senstivitiy to the undercurrents and the unspoken in his conversations with doctors. He also has a writer's ear for the many ironies he encounters (for instance, the doctor who broke the news to him instructed his office manager to "Give him back his co-pay"). While the author portrays the physicians he encounters as imperfect, in his hands these imperfections are part of their humanity. This is underlined when he writes about the impact his illness had on his relationship with his own patients. In the end, the author expresses his gratitude for having been saved by a multitude of "human hands." A deeply rewarding book.
moving and thought-provoking.......2006-01-13
David Newman tells the story of seeking treatment for a tumor at the base of his skull, describing his efforts to talk with a series of doctors to figure out who he should work with and what should be done to deal with this threat to his life. The story unfolds in brief chapters, and the reader is swept up in the complex, confusing, terrifying, and exhausting process of trying to sort through conflicting medical opinions delivered to him by doctors who often have difficulty communicating clearly and coherently with him. A psychotherapist, Newman examines his interactions with these doctors as human encounters, seeking to understand not only how his own emotional responses affect the consultations but how the doctors' feelings enter the situation, often outside their awareness and often with unfortunate effect. Newman accomplishes all this in writing that is spare, direct, precise, and, at times, even darkly funny. He tells a personal story in a personal way and uses it to examine the complex issue of how doctors and patients must speak if they are to work together effectively.
Book Description
Medical visits are often less effective and satisfying than they would be if doctors and patients better understood the communication processes conducive to the attainment of mutual goals. The verbal and nonverbal exchanges that take place between doctor and patient affect both participants and can result in a range of positive or negative psychological reactions--including comfort, alarm, irritation, or resolve. "Talk" is broadly interpreted and is shown, on the basis of extensive research evidence, to have far-reaching impact. Roter and Hall set out specific, scientifically established principles and recommendations for improving doctor-patient relationships. They describe the process of communication, analyze the social and psychological factors that color doctor-patient exchanges, and detail changes that will benefit both parties. In recognizing the critical importance of the social process to sound medical care, the authors offer needed encouragement and principles of action to doctors and patients alike.
Book Description
Spoken language is the most important diagnostic and therapeutic tool in medicine, and, according to Dr. Cassell, "we must be as precise with it as a surgeon with a scalpel." In these two volumes, he analyzes doctor-patient communication and shows how doctors can use language for the maximum benefit of their patients. Throughout, Dr. Cassell stresses that patients are complex, changing, psychological, social and physical beings whose illnesses are well represented by their own communication. He proposes that both listening and speaking are arts that can be learned best when they are based on the way that spoken language functions in medicine.
Accordingly, Volume I focuses on the workings of spoken language in the clinical setting. It analyzes such important aspects of speech as paralanguage (non-word phenomenon like pause, pitch, and speech rate), how patients describe themselves and their illnesses, the logic of conversation, and the levels of meanings of words.
Volume II is a practical, detailed, how to guide that demonstrates the process of history taking and how the doctor can learn the most from the information that the patient has to offer. His arguments are amply illustrated in both volumes by transcripts of real interactions between patients and their doctors.
Eric J. Cassell, M.D., an internist and clinical director of the Program for the Study of Ethics and Values in Medicine at Cornell Medical School, is widely recognized in the medical field for his contributions to communications in medicine and for his writings on ethics. Talking With Patients is the result of more than ten years of research. His first book, The Healer's Art, has achieved the status of an underground classic.
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