The Banality of Health Service Evil
January 9, 2020 | 30 Comments

In the early 1960s, the American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, ran now famous experiments using university students – then largely white and middle-class – as his subjects . His research interest lay in the Nazi concentration camps and the defence used by Adolf Eichmann (featured image) in his trial in Israel in 1962 – that […]

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Healthcare or Health Service?
December 23, 2019 | 12 Comments

Up to 1800, no-one went near a doctor if they could avoid it.  At best doctors might amuse the patient while nature cured the disease – the doctor’s business was to take as much of the credit and the money as possible.  The best was rare.  In an effort to get the money, doctors liked […]

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Trust Withdrawal and Antidepressants
December 10, 2019 | 17 Comments

The images, which are a wonderful metaphor for the coming back to life, the restoration of emotions and senses that stopping an antidepressant can bring, comes from this news item – its worth clicking on the video link There have probably been more posts about withdrawal from antidepressants – especially if PSSD is included as […]

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Antidepressant Withdrawal – The Enemy Within
November 18, 2019 | 47 Comments

  National Horror Show It goes completely against the grain for almost everyone in the UK to say anything bad about the NHS.  But in the case of the antidepressant group of drugs, with the brief note the NHS has just issued alerting people to the effect that antidepressants may be difficult to stop puts […]

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Sleep Problems After Stopping Antidepressants?
November 5, 2019 | 44 Comments

It is well known that antidepressants can interfere with a person’s sleep, but it’s less clear what happens after they stop taking the drug. One of our earliest blog posts from 2012 was written by someone experiencing terrifying nightmares while withdrawing from Cymbalta. The post received a number of comments from other people reporting the […]

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Not the RxISK Manifesto
October 18, 2019 | 11 Comments

Last week’s RxISK Manifesto post featured an article then just published in BMJ. The BMJ picture that went with the article looked like this.  This gives entirely the opposite message to the article. The article says a doctors job would be a lot more interesting if they listened and encouraged anyone consulting them to become […]

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RxISK Manifesto
October 7, 2019 | 11 Comments

This post is close to identical to an article that has just appeared in the BMJ – Clinical Judgments, not Algorithms, are key to Patient Safety.   Immediately on taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), most people have some genital anaesthesia.1 This may be aggravated on withdrawal of the drug and can remain for years […]

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PSSD Patient Experiences
September 25, 2019 | 26 Comments

New paper “If you wish to have such “syndrome” continue what you are doing … read obscure studies and reviews in obscure databases and I can guarantee to you that you will have it till the end of your life!” Anyone who has experienced a serious side effect from a medication will know how difficult […]

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Business Opportunity courtesy of Impeto Medical
September 9, 2019 | 32 Comments

Some months ago we had organised for 6 volunteers with PSSD to get tested for peripheral neuropathy, using a Sudoscan, made by Impeto Medical, who are based in Paris. By chance we found that there is a genital adaptor for the Sudoscan that has been in use for several years in Paris, leading to a […]

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Device Wrecks & Regulators?
September 4, 2019 | 18 Comments

RxISK is powered by people working behind the scenes – picking at threads and sometimes finding something rather different to what they expected.  One of those who can’t resist a loose thread is Suzanne Stevens, who has been interested in our Sudoscan problem. Many of you suffering with PSSD or related PRS, PRSD and PGAD […]

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Ecclesiastical and Pharmaceutical Risk Benefit Calculations
August 27, 2019 | 6 Comments

The Catholic Church has been convulsed in recent years by sexual abuse scandals. There are two aspects to this.  One has been the harm inflicted on children from the abuse but in many instances as much if not more damage has arisen from the secondary harms these children and later adults have incurred in their […]

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Sudoscan Saga & Propecia/Finasteride Survey
August 19, 2019 | 7 Comments

Sudoscan Several months ago, we became aware of a device called Sudoscan made by Impeto Medical, based in Paris. It’s mainly used to assess peripheral neuropathy in the hands and feet. But the company also have a special adaptor for Sudoscan that has been used to test genital function and found disturbances where other tests […]

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Montelukast, Fluoroquinolone, Psychotropic Withdrawal & Toxicity
July 1, 2019 | 36 Comments

Last week’s post on Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome has attracted comments at a higher rate than any prior post in 7 years of RxISK posts. It followed a post on Asthma causing Suicide and Homicide two weeks previously, which had links to the QuarterWatch 2015 report of adverse events in children fingering montelukast and suicidality as […]

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EMA Acknowledges Persistent Sexual Dysfunction After SSRIs & SNRIs
June 11, 2019 | 48 Comments

The European Medicines Agency has just concluded a review into sexual dysfunction after the discontinuation of SSRIs and SNRIs. Before we discuss their findings, it’s worth looking back over the events of the past year. RxISK petition In 2018, we put together a petition requesting changes to SSRI and SNRI product labels to warn about […]

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Antidepressant Withdrawal Welsh Senedd Debate
May 24, 2019 | 35 Comments

Editorial Note:  For context see Welsh Government Response to Withdrawal Petition.  The image is of Janet Finch-Saunders. The cover image is of the Senedd building. Debate on the Petitions Committee Report: Petition P-05-784 Prescription drug dependence and withdrawal—recognition and support Motion NDM7053 Janet Finch-Saunders To propose that the National Assembly for Wales: Notes the report […]

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Welsh Government Response to Withdrawal Petition
May 21, 2019 | 10 Comments

  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 […]

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Neutered Britain: Sex and Drugs
May 14, 2019 | 31 Comments

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 […]

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RxISK Rorschach: Do not Go Gentle
April 9, 2019 | 47 Comments

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 […]

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Assisted Dying: Going Gentle or Not so Gentle
April 1, 2019 | 52 Comments

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 […]

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Welsh and Scottish Petitions on Antidepressant Dependence
March 21, 2019 | 8 Comments

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 sedatives. The total numbers prescribed have increased […]

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Encountering Doctors
March 18, 2019 | 9 Comments

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 […]

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Ketamine: What’s God got to do with it?
March 11, 2019 | 22 Comments

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 […]

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Bait and Switch: the Great Ketamine “Breakthrough”
March 4, 2019 | 23 Comments

  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 […]

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Could your Stimulant or Antidepressant cause Dementia?
February 26, 2019 | 25 Comments

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 […]

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Serotonin Syndrome
February 1, 2019 | 12 Comments

It is commonly recognized that certain medications should not be administered with some others. What is not well known is that several over the counter (OTC) medications and herbal supplements can be lethal if taken with SSRIs. I have a patient who was taking fluoxetine and, experiencing some difficulty with sleep, decided to take one […]

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Silent Night – in the Vatican
December 24, 2018 | 22 Comments

There is no intention in this piece to cause offence.  But there seems to be no point in being anything other than blunt.  Two thousand years ago, Aristotle could argue that politics should be moral – that we should govern the polis in a manner that fostered virtue in its citizens.  There wasn’t then the […]

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Welsh Senate Withdrawal Seminar
December 17, 2018 | 28 Comments

Last week a seminar on dependence on and withdrawal from antidepressants took place in the Welsh Senedd, overlooking Cardiff Bay. It was the initiative of and organised by Aled Jones of Prescription Drug Awareness, Support and Treatment, under the auspices of Mark Drakeford – the First Minister.  The Senedd building was a stunning setting for […]

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Lawyer Needed
December 5, 2018 | 10 Comments

Lawyer Needed For a job that will offer no pay. The case will be in the family courts and involves a divorce petition but its not clear that the lawyer needs to have any family law experience as this will be like no prior family law case. A number of posts on RxISK and davidhealy.org […]

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Skin and Drugs and Sex
October 25, 2018 | 6 Comments

Editorial Note:  This post returns to PSSD – post SSRI sexual dysfunction – PRSD – post retinoid sexual dysfunction – PFS – post finasteride sexual dysfunction and PGAD – persistent genital arousal disorder.  See our RxISK PSSD page for the many prior posts on these conditions There is also post on davidhealy.org – Khashoggi and […]

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Can Antidepressants Make You Less Attractive?
October 15, 2018 | 27 Comments

In recent years, there has been increasing concern about the problem of antidepressants finding their way into the environment. These drugs aren’t fully absorbed by the body and are present in human waste. Small concentrations are then flowing into rivers via wastewater treatment facilities where wildlife can be affected. In August 2018, several media outlets reported […]

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