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Why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine

The pharmaceutical industry’s influence on psychiatric research and practice has been profound and has resulted in exaggerated claims of the effectiveness of psychotropic medications and an under-reporting of harms. After the regulatory approval of fluoxetine, the pharmaceutical industry began promo...

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Autores principales: Cosgrove, Lisa, D'Ambrozio, Gianna, Herrawi, Farahdeba, Freeman, Moira, Shaughnessy, Allen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10160434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37151963
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1167910
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author Cosgrove, Lisa
D'Ambrozio, Gianna
Herrawi, Farahdeba
Freeman, Moira
Shaughnessy, Allen
author_facet Cosgrove, Lisa
D'Ambrozio, Gianna
Herrawi, Farahdeba
Freeman, Moira
Shaughnessy, Allen
author_sort Cosgrove, Lisa
collection PubMed
description The pharmaceutical industry’s influence on psychiatric research and practice has been profound and has resulted in exaggerated claims of the effectiveness of psychotropic medications and an under-reporting of harms. After the regulatory approval of fluoxetine, the pharmaceutical industry began promoting (and continues to promote) a chemical imbalance theory of emotional distress. In the last decade, there has been an increased awareness about the limits of this theory and the risks of psychotropic medications. Nonetheless, the medicalization of distress, the sedimented belief in “magic bullets,” and the push to “scale up” mental health treatment have contributed to the meteoric rise in the prescription of psychiatric drugs and of polypharmacy. A major premise of this paper is that the conceptual framework of medical nihilism can help researchers and clinicians understand and address the harms incurred by inflated claims of the efficacy of psychotropic medications. We propose that psychiatry, and the mental health field more generally, adopt a model of ‘gentle medicine’ with regard to both the diagnosis of and treatment for mental health conditions and focus greater attention on the upstream causes of distress.
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spelling pubmed-101604342023-05-06 Why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine Cosgrove, Lisa D'Ambrozio, Gianna Herrawi, Farahdeba Freeman, Moira Shaughnessy, Allen Front Psychiatry Psychiatry The pharmaceutical industry’s influence on psychiatric research and practice has been profound and has resulted in exaggerated claims of the effectiveness of psychotropic medications and an under-reporting of harms. After the regulatory approval of fluoxetine, the pharmaceutical industry began promoting (and continues to promote) a chemical imbalance theory of emotional distress. In the last decade, there has been an increased awareness about the limits of this theory and the risks of psychotropic medications. Nonetheless, the medicalization of distress, the sedimented belief in “magic bullets,” and the push to “scale up” mental health treatment have contributed to the meteoric rise in the prescription of psychiatric drugs and of polypharmacy. A major premise of this paper is that the conceptual framework of medical nihilism can help researchers and clinicians understand and address the harms incurred by inflated claims of the efficacy of psychotropic medications. We propose that psychiatry, and the mental health field more generally, adopt a model of ‘gentle medicine’ with regard to both the diagnosis of and treatment for mental health conditions and focus greater attention on the upstream causes of distress. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-04-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10160434/ /pubmed/37151963 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1167910 Text en Copyright © 2023 Cosgrove, D'Ambrozio, Herrawi, Freeman and Shaughnessy. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychiatry
Cosgrove, Lisa
D'Ambrozio, Gianna
Herrawi, Farahdeba
Freeman, Moira
Shaughnessy, Allen
Why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine
title Why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine
title_full Why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine
title_fullStr Why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine
title_full_unstemmed Why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine
title_short Why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine
title_sort why psychiatry needs an honest dose of gentle medicine
topic Psychiatry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10160434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37151963
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1167910
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