For Context to this post - See Welsh Senedd Withdrawal Seminar and Welsh and Scottish Petitions on Antidepressant Dependence. From Stevie Lewis Dear All, At the back end of last week I received the Welsh Government's response to the Petitions Committee's recommendations - see HERE. As you'll see from the attached, they have accepted 9 of the 10 … [Read more...] about Welsh Government Response to Withdrawal Petition
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Neutered Britain: Sex and Drugs
An article in the BMJ last week triggered a flurry of newspaper interest. Sex is a surefire generator of column inches as it were. Stories appeared in all the major broadsheets. Rather surprisingly I didn't put two and two together until the Daily Mail took the tried and trusted tack of talking about one of our problems - happening in another country. The Americans, they … [Read more...] about Neutered Britain: Sex and Drugs
Xarelto and Sex
Editorial Note: This extraordinary post from Spiros might help explain the very similar problems that follow SSRIs, Finasteride, and Isotretinoin. There have been several other reports to RxISK of comparable problems on rivaroxaban - Xarelto. This drug causes many more problems than the sexual one described here. We would be interested to hear from anyone else suffering from … [Read more...] about Xarelto and Sex
RxISK Rorschach: Do not Go Gentle
Last week's RxISK post on Assisted Dying proved something of a Rorschach test. People read diametrically opposite messages into it. It was written at the same time as Something Stupid This Way Comes and cross-referenced this. This I thought made it clear that there is no such thing as Treatment Resistant Depression (TRD). TRD is a phenomenon created by antidepressants - … [Read more...] about RxISK Rorschach: Do not Go Gentle
Assisted Dying: Going Gentle or Not so Gentle
Assisted dying has become a hot topic. For large parts of human history when people came toward an end, they might have been left in an outhouse by relatives or consigned themselves to a hut in the woods. Children too. When born, Spartan children were taken outside and their hands placed on the eaves of the house - if they didn't cling on, the bodies were … [Read more...] about Assisted Dying: Going Gentle or Not so Gentle
Welsh and Scottish Petitions on Antidepressant Dependence
Scottish and Welsh Parliaments Debate Psychiatric Drug Dependence and Withdrawal Over the last decade, the UK has seen dramatic increases in the number of people prescribed psychiatric drugs. In the British National Formulary, the prescribers bible, Chapter 4 represents Central Nervous System drugs including antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, antiepileptics and … [Read more...] about Welsh and Scottish Petitions on Antidepressant Dependence
Encountering Doctors
Editorial Note: The image goes with a study headlined Doctors stop listening to patients several seconds into a conversation. This post is from one of the many PSSD sufferers who behind the scenes has been helping push research on this awful condition forward. It would be a lot easier if doctors did listen. Just as the brain and the human nervous system are largely … [Read more...] about Encountering Doctors
Ketamine: What’s God got to do with it?
The fuss about ketamine has generated interest in where it has come from. There were probably multiple beginnings. One was with Stan Grof, who moved from Prague to Baltimore in 1967. His interest in therapy led him to a focus on early life experience. This stemmed from work with LSD and psilocybin in the 1950s and 1960s, under the influence of which many people volunteered … [Read more...] about Ketamine: What’s God got to do with it?
Bait and Switch: the Great Ketamine “Breakthrough”
Post by Johanna Ryan Maybe you heard the exciting news last month about a game-changing new treatment for depression. It offered new hope to millions who were not helped by existing drugs, the headlines said – the first real breakthrough in depression treatment since Prozac, some thirty years ago. The product was Janssen’s esketamine nasal inhaler, described … [Read more...] about Bait and Switch: the Great Ketamine “Breakthrough”
Could your Stimulant or Antidepressant cause Dementia?
Quixotic Challenge A few years ago, a friend, Alan Baumeister, embarked on an interesting journey. Alan had been Head of Psychology in Louisiana State University. He has been actively involved in the history of the mental health field and psychological inputs to it for a long time. Louisiana is the state that hosted Robert Heath in Tulane University in the 1970s who it … [Read more...] about Could your Stimulant or Antidepressant cause Dementia?