Transcript RANZCP 36TH Congress THE NEED FOR

SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM 15th of October
Gothenburg, Sweden.
Psykofarmaka – risker och alternativ
Pharmaceuticals – risks and alternatives
The social causes of human distress:
Implications for how to respond
Professor John Read
University of East London
Causes and solutions
If the causes of human distress, disorientation and
despair are genetic flaws and chemical imbalances
then perhaps drugs are the answer ?
If the causes of human distress, disorientation and
despair are mostly to be found in negative human
interactions, perhaps the answer is positive human
interactions ?
www.isps.org
20th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS
Liverpool, August 2017
www.isps2017uk.org
Hearing Voices Network
www.intervoiceonline.org
Public believe mental health problems
caused primarily by adverse life events
South Africa
Egypt
Fiji
Malaysia
Ethiopia
Bali
England
Germany
Italy
Mongolia
Australia
China
Turkey
Japan
Switzerland
Greece
Brazil
Ireland
India
Russia
New Zealand
Service users’ causal beliefs
In an international study 297 of 306 ‘typical
schizophrenics’ (97%) did not believe they had an illness.
Dismissed as ‘lack of insight’,
a ‘symptom’ of the illness ‘schizophrenia’
(Murray and Dean 2008: 285).
Now called ‘Anosognosia’:
“Anosognosia, or lack of awareness of illness, thus has an anatomical
basis and is caused by damage to the brain by the disease process”
http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/our-reports-and-studies/2143
UK psychiatrists’ causal beliefs
• 2813 UK psychiatrists (Kingdon et al, 2004)
‘primarily social’
0.4%
‘primarily biological’ 46.1%
‘a balance of both’ 53.5%
For every British psychiatrist who thinks
schizophrenia is caused primarily by
social factors there are 115 who think it
is caused primarily by biological factors
So who is right?
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ALL OVER THE
WORLD, including service users, carers
and the majority of mental health workers
or
BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRISTS AND
DRUG COMPANY EXECUTIVES
No single cause
Causes, usually in combination, include:
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Genetic predisposition ???????
Brain differences (but can be caused by environment)
Maternal prenatal health and stress
Birth complications
Rape and physical assault
War combat
Child abuse (sexual and physical)
Child neglect (emotional and physical)
Parental loss
Bullying
Poverty
Urban living
Ethnicity (poverty, isolation and racism)
Heavy early cannabis use
Much touted “Depression Risk
Gene” may not add to risk after all
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2009
• a meta-analysis, re-analyzing data on 14,250
participants in 14 studies
• …. found a strong association between the number of
stressful life events and risk of depression across the
studies.
• However, the presumed high-risk version of the
serotonin transporter gene did not show a relationship to
increased risk for major depression, alone or in
interaction with stressful life events.
No evidence of genetic predisposition
(Hamilton, 2008, American Journal of Psychiatry)
• ‘The most comprehensive genetic association
study of genes previously reported to contribute
to the susceptibility to schizophrenia’ found that
‘none of the polymorphisms were associated
with the schizophrenia phenotype at a
reasonable threshold for statistical significance’
• ‘The distribution of test statistics suggests
nothing outside of what would be expected by
chance’
Poverty
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30 years ago the relationship between ‘schizophrenia’
and poverty was described as ‘one of the most
consistent findings in the field of psychiatric
epidemiology’ (Eaton, 1980).
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Deprived children are four times more likely to develop
‘non-schizophrenic psychotic illness’ but eight times
more likely to grow-up to be ‘schizophrenic’ (Harrison,
Gunnell, Glazebrook, Page, & Kwiecinski, 2001).
Even among children with no family history of
psychosis the deprived children were seven times
more likely to develop ‘schizophrenia’,
Relative poverty
Wilkinson & Pickett ‘The Spirit Level’ (2009)
Effects of child sexual abuse
• Mullen et al.(1993 – Br J Psychiatry)
After controlling for mediating variables:
Genital CSA
Suicide
Attempt
8.6
Intercourse
25.6
Odds Ratios:
Psychiatric
Inpatient
3.5
12.0
• Read et al. (2001)
Childhood abuse better predictor of suicidality in 200 adult
psychiatric outpatients than a current diagnosis of
depression
Long-term Effects of Child Abuse
After controlling for mediating variables (poverty etc.) child
abuse is predictive of:
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Conduct disorder
ADHD
Childhood Depression
Psychosis / ‘Schizophrenia’
Dissociative Disorders
P.T.S.D.
‘Borderline Personality Disorder’
Depression
Substance abuse
Eating Disorders
Sexual Dysfunction
Prevalence of Child Abuse in
Psychiatric Inpatients
‘Models of Madness’ chapter 16
Average child abuse rates from review of 40
inpatient studies
• Female inpatients:
Sexual abuse:
50%
Physical abuse:
48%
Either sexual or physical: 69%
• Male inpatients:
Sexual abuse:
28%
Physical abuse:
51%
Either sexual or physical: 60%
More subtle types of childhood
maltreatment
Averages from six studies of people
diagnosed ‘schizophrenic’
Emotional Abuse ….. 47%
Emotional Neglect … 51%
Physical Neglect …… 41%
(Read et al., 2008, Clinical Schizophrenia)
Parental Loss
Morgan et al., 2007
390 people with a first episode of psychosis, compared to a
control group
2.4 times more likely to have been
separated from one or both parents
before age 16
3.1 times more likely to have had a parent
die
12.3 times more likely to have had their
mother die
Users of mental health services
who were abused as children:
• higher global severity of disturbance
• earlier first admissions
• longer and more frequent hospitalisations,
• longer in seclusion
• receive more medication
(and less likely to be helped by medication)
• more likely to self-mutilate
• more likely to kill themselves
Shevlin et al. 2007
Schizophrenia Bulletin
UK, n = 8580
People who had experienced three types of
trauma (sexual abuse, physical abuse etc.) were 18
times more likely to be psychotic than nonabused people
People who had experienced five types of
trauma were 193 times more likely to be
psychotic
Meta-analysis
Childhood adversity and psychosis
VARESE F, SMEETS F, DRUKKER M, LIEVERSE R, LATASTER T,
VIECHTBAUER W, READ J, VAN OS J, BENTALL R.
‘Childhood adversities increase the risk of psychosis: A meta-analysis of
patient-control, prospective- and cross-sectional cohort studies’.
Schizophrenia Bulletin (2012)
• Analysing the most rigorous 41 studies ….
• people who had suffered childhood adversity
were 2.8 times more likely to develop psychosis
than those who had not (p < .001 level).
• Nine of the ten studies that tested for a doseresponse found it.
Meta-analysis
Childhood adversity and psychosis
odds ratios for
each adversity:
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sexual abuse
2.4
physical abuse 2.9
emotional abuse 3.4
neglect
2.9
bullying
2.4
parental death 1.7
number
of studies
20
13
6
7
6
8
What causes brain differences?
Evidence that schizophrenia is a
brain disease
• Overactivity of hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis
• Abnormalities in neurotransmitter
systems (especially dopamine)
• Hippocampal damage
• Cerebral atrophy
• Reversed Cerebral Asymmetry
The effects of early childhood
trauma on the developing brain
• Overactivity of hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis
• Abnormalities in neurotransmitter
systems (especially dopamine)
• Hippocampal damage
• Cerebral atrophy
• Reversed Cerebral Asymmetry
Implications for treatments
Public prefer talking therapies to
medication, including for schizophrenia
Australia
Austria
Canada
China
England
Germany
Hong Kong
India
Italy
Japan
Russia
Slovakia
South Africa
Switzerland
Turkey
Epidemic of antidepressants
Top 5 prescription rates in 2013:
1 Iceland
2 Australia
3 Canada
4 Denmark
5 Sweden
In USA one in eight adults receive at least one
prescription per year (one in 6 women)
Jury Awards $11.9 Million in Paxil
Suicide Malpractice Case
Ithaca, New York OCTOBER 06, 2016
“A jury has awarded $11.9 million in a suicide case
involving the antidepressant Paxil (paroxetine). The patient
killed himself in jail after a psychiatrist restarted him on the
SSRI antidepressant”.
“This verdict confirms the significant body of scientific
evidence indicating that psychiatric drugs can cause
violence and suicide”.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/10/prweb13743675.htm
Online survey of 1,829 New Zealand
adults taking antidepressants
(Read et al., 2014)
Any
Severe
Sexual difficulties
Feeling emotionally numb
Feeling not like myself
Reduction in positive feelings
Caring less about others
62%
60%
52%
42%
39%
14%
13%
11%
8%
5%
Suicidality
39%
8%
Withdrawal effects
Addiction
55%
27%
25%
6%
The Experiences of Anti-depressant and
Anti-psychotic Medication Survey
Any one over 18 who has taken
antidepressants or antipsychotics
www.psychmedicationsurvey.com
Cochrane review of Risperidone
(Rattehalli, Jayaram, & Smith, 2010).
• “Risperidone appears to have a marginal benefit in terms
of clinical improvement compared with placebo in the
first few weeks of treatment but the margin may not be
clinically meaningful.
• Global effects suggests that there is no clear difference
between risperidone and placebo
• Risperidone causes many adverse effects and, these
effects are important and common.
• People with schizophrenia or their advocates may want
to lobby regulatory authorities to insist on better studies
being available before wide release of a compound with
the subsequent beguiling advertising.”
Drug company influence
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Research Funding
Scientific journals
Educational/training institutes
Training for doctors
Drug licensing bodies
Lobbying governments
• More recently, the internet…..
The pharmaceutical industry and the
internet
(Read, J. 2008, Social Science & Medicine)
• The top 50 ‘schizophrenia’ websites
• 58% of the websites received funding from
drug companies.
• Drug company funded websites were significantly more
likely to…..
1. espouse bio-genetic rather than psycho-social
causal explanations,
2. emphasise medication rather than psycho-social
treatments,
3. portray ‘schizophrenia’ as a ‘debilitating’,
‘devastating’ and ‘long-term illness’
Dr Steven Sharfstein
President, American Psychiatric Association (2005)
‘If we are seen as mere pill pushers and employees of
the pharmaceutical industry, our credibility as a
profession is compromised.’
‘As we address these Big Pharma issues, we must
examine the fact that as a profession, we have allowed
the bio-psycho-social model to become the bio-bio-bio
model.,
Professor Mike Shooter
President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK) - 2005
“I cannot be the only person to be sickened by the
sight of parties of psychiatrists standing at the
airport desk with so many gifts with them that
they might as well have the name of the drug
company tattooed across their foreheads”.
Implications for primary prevention
The 2012 meta-analysis calculated that the
‘estimated population attributable risk’ was
33%.
So if the six childhood adversities reviewed
were eliminated the number of people with
psychosis would be reduced by a third.
Can medication do that?
George Albee
1922-2006
Past President - American Psychological Association
George Albee, 1996
“We must join with persons who reject racism,
sexism, colonialism, and exploitation and must
find ways to redistribute social power and to
increase social justice.
Primary prevention research inevitably will make
clear the relationship between social pathology
and psychopathology and then will work to
change social and political structures in the
interests of social justice.
It is as simple and as difficult as that!”
www.isps.org
20th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS
Liverpool, August 2017
www.isps2017uk.org
Hearing Voices Network
www.intervoiceonline.org
The Experiences of Anti-depressant
and Anti-psychotic Medication Survey
www.psychmedicationsurvey.com