FIDDAMAN BLOG: RCP Remove Damning Antidepressant Document From Website

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

RCP Remove Damning Antidepressant Document From Website

"Figures Don't Lie, but Liars Figure" ~ Mark Twain

As soon as Wendy Burn and David Baldwin pass their remedial maths exam, they have some serious explaining to do.

In a recent letters to the editor publication in the British media (pic below), Burns, president of the Royal College of Psychiatry (RCP) and Baldwin, RCP psychopharmacology chair, claimed: "We know that in the vast majority of patients, any unpleasant symptoms experienced on discontinuing antidepressants have resolved within two weeks of stopping treatment." Yet, their own survey shows at least 63% of respondents reported difficulties withdrawing from the SSRI drugs Wendy and David frequently defend.

Click on image to enlarge

I'm unsure what type of maths training one needs to become a doctor, but it appears Burns and Baldwin skipped the maths requirement as both believe 63% is not a "majority."

Their claim prompted many questions from people on Twitter who 1) know how to count and 2) have struggled to withdraw from drugs marketed as "antidepressants."

Burn went wild on Twitter with her frequent tweets claiming antidepressants work and people using them shouldn't be 'shamed'. (Fig 1) Though it makes for a well-orchestrated PR tactic to try and muster the troops by claiming unknown others are trying to attack and "shame" them for drug consumption, I've yet to see anyone publicly shaming others for following doctors' orders.

Fig 1

Burn went on to claim "most people can stop them without problems." She backed up her claim by adding a link to a 2003 paper entitled, "Relapse prevention with antidepressant drug treatment in depressive disorders: a systematic review."

Enter James Moore, creator of the popular Facebook forum, "Let's Talk Withdrawal" and host of Mad In America's successful podcast series. Moore pointed out that Burn's claim did not jive with RCP's own "Coming Off Antidepressants" leaflet featured on RCP's website. Despite being president of RCP, Burn is apparently clueless regarding her organization's public information. (Fig 2)

Fig 2

After regurgitating a 2003 study in desperate attempt to back her claims, Burn later backtracked stating...

Burn then quickly vanished from the conversation.

Less than 24 hour hours later, RCP had removed its "Coming Off Antidepressants" leaflet from its own website despite RCP's claim "We hope that you find the information given in this leaflet useful"

Thanks to Moore's quick thinking, he had already downloaded RCPs damning leaflet that contradicts the claims made by RCP's president and psychopharmacology committee chair.

Last week we frequently heard Burns and other RCP spokespersons, such as Carmine Pariante, shouting from the rooftops "Extra, extra, read all about it: 'groundbreaking' study shows antidepressants work better than placebo." Pariante further claimed that the findings 'put to bed' the controversy surrounding antidepressants. For most, the controversy has never been whether or not they figured better than placebo in clinical trials. The controversy is whether or not they can cause severe withdrawal problems, psychosis, and both suicidal thinking and completed suicide.

Back to RCP's own antidepressant withdrawal survey and today's abrupt removal of their website leaflet.

The survey, carried out by RCP in 2014 and last reviewed in 2017, showed a staggering 63% of respondents experienced withdrawal when stopping drugs marketed as "antidepressants."

Of their findings, RCP wrote:

"People in our survey reported that the symptoms generally lasted for up to 6 weeks. A small percentage of symptoms lasted longer than this. A quarter of our group reported anxiety lasting more than 12 weeks."

In all, 866 people participated in the survey, a quarter of which equates to 216. Contrast this figure to the article penned by RCP's president and psychopharmacology committee chair who state, "We know that in the vast majority of patients, any unpleasant symptoms experienced on discontinuing antidepressants have resolved within two weeks of stopping treatment."

Some questions we need to ask RCP include:

1. Why does a study published by the RCP in 2014 and reviewed in 2017 bear no significance when RCPs President and psychopharmacology chair address the media?

2. Do Wendy Burn and David Baldwin suffer from amnesia or do they merely fail to understand basic mathematics? i.e.; 63% is more than half.

3. Why did RCP recently remove this survey and accompanying leaflet from its website days after announcing the "controversy surrounding antidepressants has now been put to bed" and 24 hours after James Moore showed Burn that her claims did not tally with her own organization's findings?

4. Most importantly, RCP's leaflet regarding SSRI withdrawal stated: "We hope that you find the information given in this leaflet useful." Given that only yesterday RCP believed its info for those suffering from SSRI withdrawal was important, why did RCP remove its useful info today? Is there a new study published in the last 24 hours that shows zero percent of the population suffers from SSRI withdrawal? I don't think so.

Doctors take a Hippocratic Oath to First Do No Harm. Although 63% of people who suffer from SSRI withdrawal is clearly a majority, the point is that even if this figure were only 1%, does RCP not feel an ethical obligation to help all its members help all their patients? The Hippocratic Oath is not based on majority percentages; rather, it is based on individual doctor/patient relationships.

Here's the 4-page leaflet...