J Moncrieff

..Psychiatry needs to disengage from the industry if it wants to make genuine advances in understanding psychiatric disorder and help reverse the harmful social consequences of the widening med-icalisation of human experience...

..This study raises questions about the view that psychiatry was transformed into a modern medical enterprise in the 1950s and 1960s by the introduction of disease specific drugs...

..Therefore, the idea that the symptoms of psychosis or schizophrenia are caused by the overactivity of dopamine is not supported by current evidence...

..The increasing popularity of atypical antipsychotics makes it important to examine the origins of the assumptions on which modern drug treatment is based...

..Increasing rates of prescriptions for antidepressants, antipsychotics and stimulants have been reported from various countries...

..If withdrawal induced adverse effects could be effectively managed, the success of drug discontinuation might be much greater than usually assumed and might outweigh the disadvantages of continued treatment...

..To examine the evidence that discontinuation of long-term antipsychotic medication, including clozapine, may provoke a psychotic episode...

..People with schizophrenia are often found to have smaller brains and larger brain ventricles than normal, but the role of antipsychotic medication remains unclear...

..This article offers suggestions to develop a drug-centred model and discusses its potential impact on clinical practice...

..The integrity of the double blind design, its effect on results and the heterogeneity between studies, require further exploration in antidepressant trials...

..It is suggested that the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatric profession have helped to establish the notion of the efficacy and specificity of antidepressant drugs...

..CONCLUSIONS: It may be inappropriate to combine studies in meta-analysis, given the degree of heterogeneity between their findings. The benefits of clozapine compared with conventional treatment may not be substantial...

..We explored the subjective effects associated with olanzapine, risperidone and older antipsychotics...

..The decline of the asylum-based system of care has been accompanied by a broadening in the scope of psychiatric concerns with a greater emphasis on milder mental disorders such as neurosis and depression...

....

..Response rates based on continuous data do not add information, and they can create an illusion of clinical effectiveness...

..These feelings in turn drive increasing consumption, encourage people to accept more pressured working conditions and inhibit social and political responses...