Mental health funding lacks transparency

9% of the population of Australia is taking psychiatric drugs, 5% are on antidepressants. In USA 6% are on antipsychotics making them the most commonly prescribed drugs but information on our percentages is not available in Australia. About 1% of the population suffers from schizophrenia, http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm 0.5% to1% from bipolar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder (found by the WHO's epidemiological studies over scores of years and across cultures) and biological depression is rare and treatable. 40% of these tiny percentages of persons who do suffer from genuine schizophrenia or bipolar also have genetic mutations: they are hard to treat and require close monitoring with special care. The small number of persons being treated for mental illness diagnosed and confirmed before medication, comprise a tiny minority of those I see. It is the population with side effects that manifest as the huge increase in demand (and costs) since the first of the new generation drugs, Prozac, was introduced in 1990. An adverse response to the first drug or illicit substance should suggest that the patient might have a diminishing metabolism genetic polymorphism. This information can be gained, in retrospect, by taking a good history and a buccal swab. This problem is the outcome of the education of psychiatrists by the pharmaceutical industry, which fund key opinion leaders, guideline writers, beyondblue, Lifeblood, Sphere all organisations that provide psychiatric education that serves their commercial interests and are all funded by the Pharma Collaboration. This is in conflict with the altruism, the need to put patients first, that one associates with the practice of medicine and is in the realms of the unthinkable. http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/mental-health-takes-industry-pills/2006/08/07/1154802820416.html http://www.mhca.org.au/index.php/our-work/mhcapharma-collaboration Drug-company-funded Key Opinion Leaders write tomes on “intractable schizophrenia.” The relationship of drug side effects and genes shows that most persons so diagnosed are suffering from side effects, and only a few from side effects superimposed on pre-existing mental illness. www.trsconsensus.com.au Mental illness should first be diagnosed before treatment that has similar side effects is introduced. This also accounts for deteriorating outcomes in serious (read medicated) mental illness. The evidence from epidemiologists is that the death rate and suicide rate (and violence) have increased hugely for treated serious mental illness and are 20 times as high now as they were before we started medicating willy-nilly with no regard for genetics. I quote again from Akathisia Homicides http://www.dovepress.com/articles.php?article_id=7993. "Deteriorating outcomes in mental illness, deaths, violence, and suicide rates have been documented by epidemiologists and have increased up to 20-fold since 1924. http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/188/3/223.long http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21172095 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Do%20nations’%20mental%20health%20policies%2C%20programs%20and%20legislation%20influence%20their%20suicide%20rates http://www.arafmi.org/resource/tracking-tragedy-report-homicide-serious-injury-and-suicide-2008 http://www.epi.msu.edu/janthony/EpidemiologyReviewsPathopsychology/McGrath2008.pdf Some people taking psychiatric drugs develop akathisia and some people who develop akathisia kill themselves or others. Yet the drugs can be effective in persons suffering serious depression, provided their doses are adjusted according to their ability to metabolise them normally and there is informed monitoring.
http://www.mjainsight.com.au/view?post=mental-health-funding-lacks-transparency&post_id=7889&cat=issue-3-30-january-2012

The courts have become the sole policing body for the medical profession

Major lawsuits, with the major judgments that go with them, may not completely keep negligent physicians from practicing, but they are the one way that currently exists to deter these individuals from practicing their inept brand of medicine. "

Over the years, we have given a lot of thought to why the medical profession adheres to this code of silence. What is it about this profession that causes it to protect its own at the expense of the public?"

Harvey F. Wachsman: Lethal Medicine

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co

why doctors did not react as individuals to such an incomprehensible assertion

“I cannot help but wonder how such a situation came to develop… If I had been told by a physician, no matter how senior, that infants don’t feel pain, I would never have believed it. What constitutes the difference between my reaction and that of the thousands of physicians who did believe it?” Jill Lawson, 1988

In a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine she questioned why doctors did not react as individuals to such an incomprehensible assertion.

The reasons why doctors traditionally take so long to question dogma are complex but we are known to be a rather conservative group of people. As late as 1974, experiments were still being conducted to ascertain whether infants felt pain.

http://www.mjainsight.com..._id=8674&cat=comment

our ignorance of the mechanisms for primary hyperhidrosis and of the effect of sympathetic ablation

Cell body reorganization in the spinal cord after elective surgery to treat sweaty palms

The amount of compensatory sweating depends on the patient, the damage that the white rami communicans incurs, and the amount of cell body reorganization in the spinal cord after surgery.
Other potential complications include inadequate resection of the ganglia, gustatory sweating, pneumothorax, cardiac dysfunction, post-operative pain, and finally Horner’s syndrome secondary to resection of the stellate ganglion.
www.ubcmj.com/pdf/ubcmj_2_1_2010_24-29.pdf

After severing the cervical sympathetic trunk, the cells of the cervical sympathetic ganglion undergo transneuronic degeneration
After severing the sympathetic trunk, the cells of its origin undergo complete disintegration within a year.
http://www.date.hu/acta-agraria/2002-08i/welento.pdf

cross-inhibitory control of various afferent in the spinal cord

In conclusion, our results suggest that cross-inhibitory control by various afferents in the spinal cord may exist in the feet as well as in the contralateral hand. The release of cross-inhibitory control by T3 sympathicotomy results in vasoconstriction and a decrease of skin temperature on the contralateral hand and the feet.

The basic neuronal network for this reciprocal organization is probably located in the spinal level (15). Therefore, the reduction in the contralateral skin temperature may be explained by cross-inhibitory control of various afferent in the spinal cord.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722005/

Contralateral temperature changes of the finger surface during video endoscopic sympathectomy for palmar hyperhidrosis
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8832515