Medications compromising Covid Infections
April 2, 2020 | No Comments

IN THE MIDST OF THE SARS-CoV-2 PANDEMIA, CAUTION IS NEEDED WITH COMMONLY USED DRUGS THAT INCREASE THE RISK OF PNEUMONIA. Joan-Ramon Laporte, M.D. Emeritus Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Toxicology Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Fundació Institut Català de Farmacologia. WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Pharmacoepidemiology. jrl@icf.uab.cat David Healy […]

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Causes Sexual Dysfunction, Suicide and Birth Defects?
March 3, 2020 | 34 Comments

Everyone who reads RxISK posts will know that SSRI and related drugs (some antibiotics, painkillers, antihistamines and most antidepressants) can cause sexual dysfunction. This has been known since 1961. And that they can cause suicide.  This has been known since 1959. And that they can cause birth defects. The first publication by an Australian obstetrician, […]

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The Politics of PSSD
February 18, 2020 | 28 Comments

Members of the British parliament In October 2019, we were contacted by a British PSSD sufferer who had done some excellent work in getting his Member of Parliament (MP), Steve McCabe, interested in the condition. We were informed that Mr. McCabe wanted to get a large group of MPs together to try and get some […]

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Gateway to the Soul
February 3, 2020 | 75 Comments

Read the accompanying Sex, Withdrawal and Boundaries post first.  We are looking for anyone interested in the material raised there to comment on or add to the set of questions below. We are so insensitive to the fact that our skin and gut principally, but also bladder and maybe the inner linings of our lungs, […]

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Sex, Withdrawal and Boundaries
February 3, 2020 | 31 Comments

“Do you think studying monolayers of cells will tell you why you fall in love with a girl?” The quote comes from Rudolf Hess, who won the Nobel Prize for physiology in 1949.  His students remembered him as telling them never to study a neurotransmitter or even a cell without thinking about where this bit […]

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What’s Sex Got to Do with It
January 23, 2020 | 27 Comments

This post gives the text of an article that has just been published online in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine – see Here. Another version of the material is in video form – Antidepressants and Sex: a Strange Story. Background In June 2019, in response to a petition, the European Medicines Agency […]

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The Banality of Health Service Evil
January 9, 2020 | 39 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 | 15 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 | 18 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 | 57 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 | 32 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 | 37 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 | 49 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 | 53 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 | 23 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 | 27 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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