Nutt Case: Top British Psychiatrist’s Pro-Drug Stance

     In February this year, prominent British psychiatrist David Nutt published a “personal view” in Lancet Psychiatry, a publication ranked second of the most influential psychiatry journals. It was titled “Drug Development in Psychiatry: 50 Years of Failure and How to Resuscitate It.”

     What does Nutt claim is the reason for that failure?

     Not the number of randomized trials that have shown that psychiatric drugs do more harm than good. Not the revelation that it’s almost impossible to get off these drugs without horrible withdrawal ordeals. Not the studies that show that suicide rates double for those who are taking antidepressants.

     Nope. It’s those pesky anti-psychiatry folks who are at fault.

     “Unlike other branches of medicine,” Nutt claims, “psychiatry is in constant battles with lobby groups that oppose its very existence as a medical specialty.” According to Nutt, anti-psychiatry lobby groups “deny the concept of mental illness being due to alterations in brain function, from which it follows that they do not believe in pharmacological treatments and actively campaign to have them banned or not approved in the first place.”

     What? He still claims that the “chemical imbalance” theory behind mental disorders is actually true.

     In other words, the failure of psychiatry is the fault of those who have shown that there is no test that’s ever been done that shows that there is any chemical imbalance behind mental disorders. He ignores the valid research of his fellow British psychiatry professor Joanna Moncrieff who has conclusively documented that there is no research in support of the hypothesis that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin in the brain.   

     Therefore, Nutt says, more, not fewer drugs are the answer…except that there isn’t enough new investment being made in them?

     And why is that? It’s simple, he says. “Anti-psychiatry sentiments fuel litigation against companies that sell psychiatric medicines,” he says, and “the persistent threat of such campaigns is a deterrent to some companies from investing in new psychiatric treatments.”

     How about the fact that that punitive litigation has been successful because there is plenty of evidence, presented successfully in courts, which supports the claims of those people who have won their suits because of proven harm that’s been done to them by psychotropic medications?

     Is he really suggesting that these recent settlements were somehow not justified: the $3 billion settlement against GlaxoSmithKline over Paxil for promoting it for other uses and not reporting safety issues with it; the $2.3 billion settlement with Pfizer over their antipsychotic Geodon; or any of a number of other settlements against Big Pharma companies which altogether totaled in the billions of dollars?

     His solution to this failure of psychiatry…which is no fault of psychiatry itself?

     A widening of public– private funding partnerships is needed so that more research can be funded for more psychotropic drugs. He even touts the “highly evidenced medical potential” of street drugs like psilocybin, LSD, and Ecstasy, methamphetamine, or MDMA for treating mental illness. Bring on not just more pharmaceutical drugs, but street drugs as well.

     That’s nuts…or in his case, Nutts.

     Nutt was previously the UK’s main drug adviser to the government, but he was sacked in 2009 for claiming that taking Ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse. That was pretty nuts, too.

     You would think by this time Nutt would quickly be dismissed as the quack that he is – which is saying something in the already quackery-ridden field of psychiatry. Instead, by publishing his whacky views, a supposedly reputable publication such as The Lancet spreads his delusions and creates a ripple effect of reinforcing his nutty opinions throughout the psychiatric community.

     Maybe they’re all as nutty as he is.