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Readers of this book, having come this far in the text, cannot be surprised to learn that outcomes for bipolar disorder have dramatically worsened in the pharmacotherapy era. The only surprising thing is that this failure was so openly discussed at the APA meeting. Given what the scientific literature revealed about the long-term outcomes of medicated schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression, it stood to reason that the drug cocktails used to treat bipolar illness were not going to produce good long-term results. The increased chronicity, the functional decline, the cognitive impairment, and the physical illness—all of these can be expected to show up in people treated with a cocktail that often includes an antidepressant, an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a benzodiazepine, and perhaps a stimulant, too. This was a medical train wreck that could have been anticipated, and unfortunately, as we trace the history of this story, the details will seem all too familiar.
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Robert Whitaker (Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America)