Posted by LostBoyinNCBecksDark on October 23, 2007, at 20:30:53
We are commonly told that "mental illness is treatable" and that depression improvement rates are in the 70% to 80% improvement area. This is a lie that psychiatry pushes. If you define improvement as treatment to remission (being normal again), the NIMH STAR*D study proved that remission rates using psychopharmacology is actually poor.
STAR*D was carried out by NIMH...the National Institute for Mental Health. NIMH is part of NIH and this is all funded by the taxpayer, via the federal government. So no, you cant come back and say STAR*D was funded by scientology or anti-psychiatry groups. STAR*D was planned, funded and carried out by mainstream psychiatry itself.
The results were published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. This is psychiatry's flagship professional journal that nearly all psychiatrists subscribe to and read. It aint some crackpot anti-psychiatry journal...its the journal written FOR psychiatrists, BY psychiatrists.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/7/1293
"Robert Hierholzer, M.D.
Fresno, Calif.To the Editor: The less than spectacular remission rates for depression recently reported in The Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study (1) will likely be of no surprise to experienced clinicians. I, for one, am relieved to find that the frustratingly poor remission rates that I’ve witnessed for many years among my depressed patients (most of whom are characterized by features associated in the study with lower remission rates) are in accord with a well-designed effectiveness study such as STAR*D. The STAR*D study is a welcome change from the era of efficacy studies in which patients like mine were largely excluded."
Eric
poster:LostBoyinNCBecksDark
thread:790966
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20071019/msgs/790966.html