by Citizens Commission on Human Rights International
A study about a new “blood test” that can supposedly be used to determine teens have “Major Depressive Disorder” is being heralded by the press as a breakthrough in legitimizing psychiatric disorders as medical conditions. We’re going to cut to the chase—it’s not even close to a breakthrough. It’s the same old tactic psycho/pharma has used for decades; since they can’t prove mental disorders are medical conditions by any scientific/medical standards, they’ll just prove it in the press, which apparently requires no scientific evidence to come up with headlines such as this— “Scientists develop first blood test to diagnose depression.”
We’re going to make this simple: No they haven’t. Not even close. Here are the facts about this new “breakthrough” study:
1) Psychiatrists conducting this study based their entire theory of being able to diagnose depression with a blood test by testing rats. We’re not sure how these psychiatrists know the rats are depressed to start with, but we do know they seem to believe human behavior mirrors that of small furry animals with tails.
2) By testing the blood of the rats, they came up with 26 “genetic markers” that they believe could be associated with depression.
3) Now this part is important—The authors of the study admit, “There are still no valid, reliable and feasible peripheral blood bio markers that can diagnose Major Depressive Disorder” (in layman’s terms this means there is no scientific proof that depression is due to any biological cause such as genetics, therefore isolating any genetic factors are meaningless).
4) They then tested a total of 28 kids for the “rat” factor, (26 genetic markers they found in the rats) and found 11 of the biomarkers they believe could be tied to depression in the kids.
That’s it. That’s the study. That’s the major “breakthrough” in psychiatric research. Test some rats, guess at some genetic factors and they’re off to the races with headlines such as this; (ABC) “Using a Blood Test, Researchers ID Depression in Teens” – Or this one, (Chicago Tribune) “First Blood Test to Diagnose Depression in Teens“ or this one, “Researchers Develop Blood Test for Depression. ” Now, knowing the “facts” about this study, consider that 20 million kids are already taking mind altering, life-threatening psychiatric drugs based solely on this type of junk science – psychiatry’s pathologizing behaviors as disease in order to market drugs. Enough.
Stop the psychiatric labeling and drugging of kids.
Read the Full Article and Comment Here: http://www.cchrint.org/2012/04/17/depressionbloodtest_bogus/
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Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
by Irving Kirsch Ph.D.
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