This post links to a RxISK Reducing the Risk of Treatment Induced Suicide Resource. The immediate idea for this Resource came from an article by Katinka Newman on the Downward Spiral many prescription drugs can cause.
Five years ago RxISK posted lists of drugs that can cause a downward spiral. Three years ago a mother of a 14 year old boy – see Mentally Hijacked by Doxycycline – wrote thanking us for what we had done and are doing here. Becoming agitated on Doxycycline, her son Googled RxISK and it may have saved his life.
Both Post and Resource have been written by David Healy MD FRCPsych with medical and legal input.
Up to 500 Medicines can cause any of us, even the most balanced people with no prior medical history of any sort, to become suicidal, homicidal, severely agitated or confused – See Drugs that Cause Depression Agitation and Suicidality.
Some of the 500 come with clear warnings – in some countries. With some, companies mention the problem in the drug’s label doctors see, but these labels appear designed to mislead doctors. For some, there are clear medical articles establishing cause and effect.
What do warnings, recognition or established cause and effect mean? They mean these medicines even when used as prescribed can cause suicidality, homicidality, agitation or confusion.
If you are on one of these drugs and are suicidal, homicidal, confused or agitated, they do not mean that the drug for sure has caused this in your case.
If you are on these meds and doing well and become suicidal in response to other things that can make us all suicidal, your medicine is not likely to be the trigger for this.
Many of us, if we become suicidal, especially out of the blue for no obvious reason, visit helplines or websites to understand what might be happening and get advice or support.
The conditions, even the mental health conditions, for which we are given prescription drugs, rarely cause suicide. Our meds are more likely to make us suicidal than our condition even in the case of schizophrenia. Despite this, these helplines and websites never mention that our drug might have caused or be causing our problem.
Why do they not mention this?
The helplines or websites have been given legal advice that to raise these issues with you would be to engage in the practice of medicine, for which no-one manning these lines is trained. Even if they were doctors, assessing whether your drug is causing your problem is ideally best done by a doctor who knows you – and has seen you on and off treatment.
This is the traditional legal view of the practice of medicine.
Cause and Effect
RxISK is about to take you beyond what helplines or even perhaps what your doctor can offer.
Forty years ago the scientific practice of medicine involved consulting a doctor who brought his or her experience of seeing many patients in the same position as you to bear on assessing you. Doctors then also had a better sense of how to establish whether a drug is causing a problem than they have now.
In terms of establishing if a drug is causing a problem the basic rules are:
- Did the problem start after starting the drug?
- If the dose of the drug was increased, did the problem get worse?
- If the person lowered the dose of the drug, did the problem ease?
- If the person stopped the drug, did the problem clear up?
- If they restarted the drug, did the problem come back?
It helps if the person on treatment senses the drug has caused the problem, perhaps because:
- They’ve had this problem on this or a related drug before
- They know what problems their illness causes and this is different
- They can distinguish between suicidality caused by an illness and a drug
Things can get more complicated with antidepressants, antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines:
- The problem may only appear on reducing the dose or stopping the drug
- The problem may only appear some time after stopping the drug
- The problem may clear up on restarting the drug
Many doctors have lost the skills to recognize when treatment is causing a problem. This is partly because in clinical practice these days, you often don’t see the same doctor every time. A good doctor is better placed to help you if s/he can see, smell, or hear a difference in you from the last time s/he saw you – assuming of course s/he is looking at, listening to and smelling you rather than looking at a computer.
May Contain Nuts
There is a more important reason why doctors do not practice medicine scientifically these days and why you need access to this statement in order to work out how to move forward.
In 1990, 3 clinicians reported on 6 patients becoming suicidal on Prozac. Based on the above criteria, there was no doubt that Prozac caused these suicidal episodes.
In response, Eli Lilly who made Prozac, facilitated by the British Medical Journal, claimed their clinical trials showed no evidence Prozac could cause people to commit suicide.
In fact their clinical trials showed an excess of suicidal events on Prozac, along with what look like regulation breaching attempts to hide the problems. With access to the data it was clear Lilly’s trials showed Prozac could cause suicide.
By then however Lilly had won a propaganda war. Doctors had been cancelled – told that their views about whether a drug could cause a problem could not be believed. Only company trials could tell us what the effects of drugs are.
Close to 100% of clinical trials of the medicines we take are run by drug companies. These are ghostwritten, often to the point where studies in which the drug didn’t work and wasn’t safe are reported as showing the drug worked and had no problems, with these articles appearing in the best medical journals. Even when articles have led to fraud charges, the studies remain built into the Guidelines that tell doctors what to prescribe.
Treatment guidelines and medicine information sites that look independent of drug companies do not mention harms of treatments like suicidality. They claim this is to avoid deterring people from seeking medical help.
As a result, doctors don’t now think that drugs approved by regulators could have serious problems. Prominent warnings about hazards like suicide are treated the way people with a serious nut allergy view May Contain Nuts labels – evidence that companies and regulators are covering their backs, not evidence of a real risk.
It used to be standard practice when mentioning problems like suicide in newspaper articles or on media slots to say don’t do anything without consulting your doctor first.
I no longer say this. If you go to a doctor feeling suicidal on a new drug, there is an increasing likelihood s/he will double the dose of the medicine you are on, add another drug, or have you committed to hospital.
Scientific Practice
What should scientific medical practice look like. The scientific method involves both you and a doctor examining all details of your case aimed at achieving a consensus about the best way to explain what is happening.
It is not scientific for a doctor to tell you the medical literature or guidelines do not support your hunch that your drug is causing your problem. If your doctor says this, you need a new doctor.
Unless your doctor comes up with a suggestion that makes solid sense to you, the scientific approach in a situation like drug induced suicidality would ordinarily involve reducing the dose of treatment to see what happens – ideally with a doctor onboard and monitoring you.
If you think your doctor is unlikely to suggest this, you may be better off handling things yourself. Does this mean you are illegally practicing medicine?
No it doesn’t. Scientific medical practice requires your doctor and you to work together to achieve a consensus. An increasing number of doctors are no longer practicing medicine – they are bureaucratically following orders from above.
Over-the-counter serotonin reuptake inhibiting antihistamines are among the 500 drugs that can cause suicidality and agitation. If they don’t suit us, we usually recognize it and stop treatment without consulting a doctor. You are not illegally practicing medicine if you do this.
Medicines are prescription-only when we have reason to believe they are either more hazardous than over-the-counter medicines or we do not know the extent of their hazards.
The problems from prescription-only medicines now stem from these unavoidably hazardous chemicals but also from the misleading printed information that comes with them and a company colonization of medical minds – facilitated by medical journals and professional bodies.
Benefit – Risk
The point behind the image that opens this post is that, except in rare circumstances such as mid-stroke, or heart attack or delirious state, you are the person best placed to make a Benefit-Risk assessment.
Smoking nicotine can be better for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) than taking a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI). Arvid Carlsson, the creator of SSRIs no less, did a trial demonstrating this.
SSRIs are the first option doctors turn to for OCD. If you are worse off on an SSRI and better after switching to smoking, only you can compare the benefits. The hazards of smoking, especially for decades, are well known. The hazards of SSRIs taken for decades are less well known but as likely to compromise health as nicotine taken for decades and if you are not getting a benefit no risk is worth taking.
The trade-off is yours to make – not someone else’s.
Support Systems
If you become suicidal or agitated on treatment you have two assessments to make. First whether the drug is causing your problem. Second whether your doctor is likely to add to your problems.
You may also find yourself up against your family and friends. While you need to listen to them, it may be that the option of supporting you in striking out alone – going against your doctor and the authorities – makes them nervous.
One option is to bring someone who understands your sense of what is happening with you to the doctor or Emergency Department. Having someone else present makes it more difficult for a doctor to blow you off.
Another option is to file a RxISK Report and show the score to your doctor. The message is twofold. One message may stem from a score that points to a link to treatment. The other is that you have reported your concerns elsewhere.
Family and Friends
Someone on treatment may not know they are becoming suicidal – the change in them may be more obvious to people who know them.
This can happen if s/he has become confused, or episodically confused or disinhibited and acting out of character. If s/he is not anxious at the prospect of things that would normally make him or her anxious, this can be dangerous.
There are tricky issues here that doctors have been slow to embrace. It is traditional to deal with the patient only, but in this case we are looking at drug problems that do not just affect the person on treatment but may also lead to the death of a family member, friend or member of the public – most drugs that can cause suicide can cause homicide.
Some of you suspecting the drugs are causing the problem will find yourself bewildered by the response of the System to your probes about the drugs contributing – you will find that instead of checking if the treatment could be the problem, the System will double the dose and keep on doing so and adding more drugs in even as your family member or friend gets worse. Go to the Blog homepage and under Categories select Medical Kidnap to get some sense as to how badly wrong things can go.
RxISK Support
We hope other sites will mention the Reducing the Risk of Treatment Induced Suicide Resource, which has links to related posts and a Suicide Zone. Mention need not mean endorse – we need feedback. Let us know if you spot sites mentioning it.
Sites mentioning this Resource include:
- Antidepressantrisks.org
- Antidep Effects
Earlier this week Britain’s Medicines’ Regulator issued reminder warnings about 3 groups of drugs listed among the 500 mentioned above.
- Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics – Cipro Levaquin and others
- Finasteride – Propecia
- Montelukast – Singulair
Last week the US Department for Health and Human Services released a National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. Let us know if you spot anything in it that supports the approach being taken here which aims at supporting rather than cancelling you.
The New US Strategy does mention ‘community supports’ but are these aimed at getting you to think properly or changing the way communities think after 3 decades of having common sense views cancelled?
The HHS report mentions government supported helplines coded 988. These seem to have been contracted out to Vibrant Emotional Health. We need to hear what Vibrant’s position on your meds might be. Let us know if you can find out.
annie says
National Confidential Inquiry Into Suicide and Safety
louis appleby
1 week to go until our 10th @NCISH_UK conference. Have you booked your place yet? We will be presenting the latest UK-wide findings relating to people who died by suicide between 2011 and 2021. Tickets available here:
https://eventbrite.co.uk/e/ncish-10th-conference-tickets-861448584907?aff=oddtdtcreator
Please join us for our free half day virtual conference presenting the latest UK-wide findings relating to people who died by suicide between 2011 and 2021.
We will examine the circumstances surrounding these deaths, discuss changes in trends over time, and present our recommendations for clinical practice and policy that will improve safety. This year we also present data on certain themed topics, some of which are included because they reflect current societal concerns or groups who may be at increasing risk: autistic people and those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, in-patients aged under 25, patients aged 18-21 who were students, patients with a one-off assessment, and those who died by suicide in public locations. We will present wider findings from the centre, including our recent report into suicide by people in contact with drug and alcohol services.
We’re researching the factors that drive suicide and using it to recommend the policy changes needed to save more lives.
https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/research-policy/
National Strategy for Suicide Prevention
The 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention is a bold new 10-year, comprehensive, whole-of-society approach to suicide prevention that provides concrete recommendations for addressing gaps in the suicide prevention field.
‘Get Involved
Join the conversation. Everyone has a role to play in preventing the tragedy of suicide. Find social media material, templates, and other resources to support and participate in the shared effort.’
Dr. David Healy says
This is an man who said people concerned about the harms of drugs are a Cult – thanks to Dee Doherty for nailing this one down.
D
Patrick D Hahn says
The received wisdom seems to be something like this: There are millions of people out there whose brains just broke down, for no external cause. They were just born that way. Fortunately, psychiatry has safe and effective medicines to treat these brain diseases, but unfortunately some patients refuse to take them because of anosognosia, or stigma, or something.
Some day people will read about this and react the way we now do regarding the witch trials of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. They will shake their heads and wonder How could people have been so gullible?
Bob Fiddaman says
In medical history, some stories become widely accepted without much questioning. For example, the idea of the ‘chemical imbalance’ myth, promoted by drug companies, quickly became popular in psychiatry. It spread without much scrutiny and was even supported by Hollywood celebrities, who credited drugs like Prozac for their success. This belief became so common that it overshadowed the drug names themselves.
During the recent pandemic, there was a big push to promote vaccination worldwide. Vaccine makers got a lot of support from celebrities and the media. Just like with Prozac, the public heard a lot about vaccines, making it seem like they were the answer to all our pandemic troubles. Vaccine manufacturers didn’t need to spend much on advertising their product.
Katinka’s commendable initiative, along with your own efforts, David, to challenge these narratives, is akin to cracking open a coconut—an endeavor demanding both strength and perseverance. But, as you know, there are many challenges. Not only must you both anticipate resistance from within the medical establishment and society, but you must also confront the deeply ingrained beliefs of individuals who have succumbed to years of indoctrination. Many of those ensnared by these narratives may find themselves positioned within the very support systems you and Kantinka seek to address, complicating matters further.
However, we’re now in a crucial moment of history, to be able to speak our minds without fear of punishment. If celebrities and regular people can promote the supposed benefits of drugs and, more recently, vaccines, we can speak up about the harm we’ve experienced without worrying about being ignored or silenced. We don’t need fancy ghostwritten studies to prove our point; we can challenge those who doubt us and show where they’re wrong.
A careful look at medical language shows that phrases like “it is thought” and “it may” suggest uncertainty, so we shouldn’t just accept them blindly. Words like “likely to be of importance” and “may result” also show that medical claims are often guesses, reminding us to question the evidence carefully. This may be a point to drive home to those manning (can we still say ‘manning’?) support lines for those contemplating suicide.
Additionally, celebrities who have a huge impact, or “Celebdom,” shouldn’t be overlooked. With millions of followers on social media, they have a lot of power to influence what people think and do. Whether they’re tweeting about medical interventions or talking about politics, their words can change how millions of people see things.
Some examples:
“By recognising I was experiencing a temporary “chemical imbalance”, I could avoid blaming something else.” – Bruce Springsteen
“Depression is a chemical imbalance, whereas happiness is a product of circumstances.” – Jimmy Carr, British stand-up comedian
“People are so relieved when they understand that manic depression is just a chemical imbalance in the brain, a matter of having too much dopamine which makes a person manic. It’s a health condition like diabetes.” – Margot Kidder, actress
“I was dealing with bipolar depression and didn’t know what was wrong with me. Little did I know, there was a chemical imbalance in my brain,” – Demi Lovato, American singer, songwriter
Think about what Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Carr, Margot Kidder, and Demi Lovato have said about the ‘chemical imbalance’ idea. Even though they probably mean well, their support helps spread a story that’s more about selling drugs than real science. There are many more examples on the small project I created here – https://demandcir.blogspot.com/
The project shows how widespread this problem is, making it tough to change people’s minds. Imagine if the likes of Springsteen et al got behind Katinka’s initiative here. That would be one hell of a snowball effect.
The wall of wrong information that’s been around for so long that it’s going to be challenging, to say the least, to tear it down and replace it with accurate knowledge. It takes just a handful of major celebrities to change public opinion as evidenced with the chemical imbalance indoctrination. Sadly, many of today’s celebrities are buying into what wars and gender terms to support, or not.
Kudos to you both.
Fid
Patrick D Hahn says
Just nine days ago a news station in Portland, Oregon ran a story about a young man who experienced a psychotic breakdown. He was hospitalized, refused further “treatment,” and subsequently murdered his mother.
Nothing here about what caused this young man’s breakdown in the first place. No curiosity about whether he had experienced trauma, or a bad reaction to illegal drugs or prescribed medication.
Also no mention of what drugs he may have been prescribed after his breakdown, or how he had reacted to them. These apparently are considered unimportant details. The only lesson we are supposed to learn here is that we need tougher laws to force people to take psychiatric drugs whether they want to or not.
SMH.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pN6jcBZIKs
Johanna says
I took a look at that Suicide Prevention Strategy from the US Dept of Health & Human Services. Right away I noticed something odd: The word “medication” appears just 11 times in this document–and ten of those refer to meds as a means of suicide (along with firearms, household poisons, bridges and the like).
I think this is part of a concerted public-relations strategy developed by the major mental-health nonprofits in recent years: Don’t Talk About the Pills! Twenty years ago they would rhapsodize about the brave new drugs and the Brain Disorders they could cure. Clearly, that no longer sells, and they know it. Now it’s all about #TalkSavesLives and It’s OK To Be Not OK. Even the Out of the Darkness Walk has been re-branded as #TalkAwayTheDark.
Too bad the actual care has not changed — in fact, it’s probably getting worse. Meds alone, or meds plus occasional “monitoring” by an overworked family doc or NP, is probably the #1 form of care that those who Ask For Help will receive.
But you know what term occurs 92 times in this document? “Lived experience.” And it’s a major part of Goal #5 (postvention services) and Goal #13 (comprehensive strategies with input from those most affected).
Of course, for the most part it functions as a meaningless feel-good buzzword. But if anyone wants to take them up on this, and give them some Input from those with Lived Experience, well, fire away!
Kristina Kaiser says
As Johanna’s summary points out, the Suicide Prevention Strategy from the US Dept of Health & Human Services continues to turn deaf ears and blind eyes to treatment-induced suicidality, and suicide.
It is criminal to refuse to acknowledge and address the reality that hundreds of different pharmaceutical products–many prescribed for reasons unrelated to life challenges or DSM-created disorders–can cause psychosis, akathisia, violence, self harm, suicide, and homicide.
That the mental health and pharma industry, suicide prevention programs, and government agencies continue to ignore critical adverse drug effects makes it easier and more likely that doctors will, too. Most doctors don’t want to harm and kill those they promised to help. But refusing to acknowledge treatment-induced harm increases the likelihood that they will “First, Do Harm.”
Like thousands-probably hundreds of thousands-of others, I lost a beautiful daughter to medication-induced death. Natalie wasn’t depressed and should never have been given SSRIs. That her prescriber didn’t know about akathisia, or didn’t believe Natalie’s symptoms were medication-induced, is unacceptable and unforgivable.
Natalie’s abduction is just one story of many. The bigger story is how modern medicine lost common sense and common decency. https://rxisk.org/kidnapped-natalies-story/ As I’ve said before, the societal notion that “Mother knows best” has turned into “Mother knows nothing,” and this false perception was largely created and nurtured by the pharma/medical industry.
Dr. David Healy says
Kristina and Johanna
You’ve both caught important points here.
Medication induced suicide is probably now the leading cause of suicide. There are other triggers like relationship break-up, legal difficulties and financial problems – but none of these individually are likely to be as common as medication related suicidality. An increasing number of these traditional causes as well as now likely linked to medication in that drug induced errors of judgement may add to the likelihood of things like these going wrong but also add to the likelihood of us taking a disinhibited way out of our difficulties.
The big point to mention though is that no mental disorders except severe melancholic depression or manic states lead to suicide at anything like the rate the drugs do – untreated schizophrenia, anxiety, the depressive states that SSRIs are given for do not have higher rates of suicide than the population rates.
As regards talk therapy and the current mantra about combining talk and pill therapies – this is a meaningless refrain. The lack of reactivity that SSRI and related drugs cause inhibit talk therapy. From the 1960s therapists dealing with people on ADs could notice their facile blandness and how this disrupted any efforts at therapy.
David
Kristina Kaiser says
Absolutely. When prescription drugs rob people of emotion and morph them into a zombie like, or sometimes manic state, they can become alienated from themselves and their loved ones.
After Natalie’s death, I saw she had written “Wouldn’t it be weird if someone had no emotions at all.”
Weird? Yes. Uncommon when taking SSRIs? Sadly, no.
Another aspect to consider regarding these treatment-induced deaths is their extreme violence. I don’t have stats regarding suicide in the teenage population, nor gender differences, but I doubt it’s common for non-medicated depressed teens to light themselves on fire, blow their heads off, stab themselves multiple times, etc.
Carrie C. says
“The lack of reactivity that SSRI and related drugs cause inhibit talk therapy. From the 1960s therapists dealing with people on ADs could notice their facile blandness and how this disrupted any efforts at therapy.”
These observations are consistent with a phenomena I’ve observed in my personal experience as a recovered alcoholic/active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. While anecdotal, nearly every chronic relapser I’ve met in the rooms of AA have 2 things in common: they’re on antidepressants and/or benzodiazepines and they are ambivalent towards/unwilling to do the real work (the 12 step program of action outlined in AA’s basic text, aka, the “Big Book”) that brings about the personality change/spiritual awakening necessary for long-term recovery from alcoholism
susanne says
The media will take some persuading to look into the connection of homicides and prescribed drugs. The eye-caching stories are all – the mental illness is to blame. And that the the usually men had refused to take ‘their’ medication. Nobody is asking why not and once incarcerated they don’t have a chance of getting their voices heard.
Frankly although Inquest does great work neither do they investigate the possible link between drugs and homicides. If some information could be put together would it be useful to contact Inquest?
INQUEST responds to sharp increase in deaths involving police
28 July 2023
In the year that saw the high-profile deaths of Chris Kaba and Oladeji Omishore at the hands of the police, official statistics published today reveal the highest number of deaths recorded for five years and an increase of almost double the previous year.
The latest annual data from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) covering 2022/3 shows 23 deaths in or following police custody. This is an increase of 12 from the previous year. All but one were men.
Eleven of these 23 people had some use of force against them by the police before their deaths. Three of these included Taser discharge.
All but two of the deaths featured links to drugs and/or alcohol and over half (13) of those who died had mental health concerns. Four had been detained under the mental health act.
In addition to the custody deaths, there were:
three fatal police shootings, including the death of Chris Kaba.
28 fatalities from police-related road traffic incidents, 18 of which were police pursuit-related incidents.
52 apparent suicides following police custody.
The IOPC also investigated 90 other deaths following contact with the police in a wide range of circumstances.
Six of these ‘other deaths’ involved restraint or use of force by police, one of which included use of Taser. Around two thirds of these 90 cases involved intoxication with drugs or alcohol, and a similar proportion involved mental health concerns.
Behind the data are stories of those who have died, and the families left fighting for truth and justice. Most deaths are subject to continued investigations and inquests.
Ultimately to prevent further deaths and harm, we must look beyond policing and redirect resources into community, health, welfare and specialist services.”
Chris says
“If some information could be put together would it be useful to contact Inquest?”
Yes have done that a few times. A case worker replied that was all. think it would be good if others on here did the same. I get the sense they do not know about akathisia at all.
Dr. David Healy says
Chris
Inquest are something of a Red Herring here. The work is usually done by junior interns. Their response will be we are not trained to give a view about medical issues like these.
The other aspect to all this is that appeal courts do not retry cases. They look at whether there was anything procedurally wrong with an original trial – and even if it now looks obvious the drug caused something, they will often decide that there was nothing legally wrong in the original trial and there is no option but to leave this dude locked up for the rest of his life even if it now looks like he didn’t do whatever it was.
David
annie says
The Modern-Day ‘Fiasco’ of litigation, and a timely reminder that ‘500’ drugs leading to suicide have no recourse even when it is ‘evidence-based’ that the drugs caused the problem…
EXCLUSIVE AstraZeneca has admitted its Covid vaccine caused the condition that killed Gareth’s BBC presenter wife. So why won’t he and their son see a penny in compensation?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13376325/AstraZeneca-Covid-vaccine-condition-killed-Gareth-Eve-BBC-presenter-wife-Lisa-compensation-jab.html
Reducing the Risk of Treatment Induced Suicide
https://romainschmitt.wordpress.com/blog/
The Question that will Save Lives
susanne says
David
I disagree with your response to Chris’s comment to mine flagging up Inquest.
The organisation is powerful and has a known reputation for taking action. But they don’t just take cases to court despite the name Inquest they keep a huge data base with detailed information of the kind only relatives and friends would know about or what may be admitted as known by those who record deaths. If they can be informed with evidence of how prescribed drugs may influence suicide and homicide this could be an important addition to the record which be used in their publicity even if not in court. I have found it is sometimes worth trying again and again as the information might just reach the right person in the right place at the right time – They won’t necessarily be medically trained but would find the information about drugs useful It may hit a nerve even with unqualified juniors enough to take action. They are always short of funds so have to prioritise so if the rxisks are highlighted by enough people writing with evidence they could be great allies. They are certainly not afraid of upsetting any institutions and know they cannot be trusted , In some ways they are aware of same lessons learned by rxisk so there is not that hurdle to climb and they don’t rely on funding control. I think it’s worth trying to get the info out .to Inquest which has a proven record of acting independently and with the ‘victims’ at the centre of their work
Dr. David Healy says
S
I have tried this route before and got absolutely nowhere. You’re welcome to give it a go
D
chris says
To date I have not had time to think about this, but it sounds like a real problem. Seems to me lawyers have got to get a grip on this . They need to understand what these adverse drug reactions are and how to distinguish between real serious mental illness and a serious ADR.
Could the above be part of the legal procedure I’m wondering – that they fail to do this in by far most case’s.
Dr. David Healy says
Chris
We will hopefully be running more on just this issue in weeks to come
David
susanne says
I have tried as well Chris. Am sending this post to them as I think the way it’s puts together to include different facets (not sure how to put this) and methods of tackling them in one place gives it a powerful structure -The way links are included makes it easy to use as pointers to more information. I think It’s one of the most powerful posts in this way. Thanks to David H. It is a learning ‘tool’ for those who are not educated or convinced yet (some of those who should be will read it and keep quiet of course) -as well as a great help if groups and individuals with the same concerns can get hold of it. Maybe set up discussion groups amongst themselves….having a specific focus for some of the discussions is useful.It is a triumph on DH’s part to put this together – let’s hope it gets spread around as much as possible (one annoying thing about established groups Chris as you know is that once they have been contacted about an issue which should become part of their work – it becomes just a way of subsequently contacting us for money/donations )
chris says
I sent them the interview with Josef Witt-Doerring interviewing Mark Horowitz
because it shows a shift by younger psychiatrists, at around 120mins on wards they both recognised what they may have thought was bi-polar or psychosis was actually akathisia in the case of Mark Horowitz he accepted responsibility for the terrible state a female patient was in and wondered how many other patients really had an adverse drug reaction and not real serious mental illness. That’s not to say they are not in a terribly horrific state .
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm2aLKJiiIQ
Sorry I can’t fully focus on this really serious issue I have to do a one on one with my mother to make sure she doesn’t fall again so I’m tapping on this dreadful mobile phone while following her around.
susanne says
Thanks Chris I am not in a positision do do that much myself. Take care yourself and your mother Chris. I did the same for mine for 15years Without me she would have ended up in a ‘care home’ and died much sooner.
annie says
Murder, suicide. A bitter aftertaste for the ‘wonder’ depression drug
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jun/11/highereducation.medicalscience
Thousands of people in the UK and around the world could be physically hooked on the antidepressant drug Seroxat, the British sister of Prozac, without knowing it, according to a psychiatrist who was allowed access to the archives of its manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline.
David Healy, director of the North Wales department of psychological medicine and the UK’s foremost expert in antidepressants, found studies in archives in Harlow, Essex, which show that the company, then SmithKline Beecham, realised in the 80s that healthy volunteers were suffering withdrawal symptoms when they stopped taking the drug after only a couple of weeks.
Yet the company has failed to warn patients or doctors, he says, and it has argued that people suffering problems when they stop taking the drug have suffered a recurrence of depression and need to go back on the medication.
Warnings of physical dependency follow the increasing credence given to allegations that the Prozac class of drugs can cause a small minority of people to become violent and kill themselves or others.
Last week a jury in the US ordered GlaxoSmithKline to pay $6.4m (£4.6m) to the family of Donald Schell, 60, who killed his wife, daughter and granddaughter then himself after two days on Seroxat. Two weeks earlier, an Australian judge ruled that another drug in the class, Sertraline, caused David Hawkins to murder his wife and attempt to kill himself.
Dr Healy was given access to the archives during the Schell case and found what he considered alarming evidence of withdrawal problems. One study showed that as many as 85% of the volunteers – who were company employees with no hint of depression – suffered agitation, abnormal dreams, insomnia and other adverse effects.
On average about half the volunteers taking part in a group of studies specifically designed to detect withdrawal problems suffered symptoms which suggest they had become physically dependent on the drug.
Dr Healy believes all the drugs of the SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor) class can cause physical dependency in some people to some degree. “All the major SSRIs cause withdrawal problems although paroxetine (Seroxat – now outselling Prozac in the UK – or Paxil in the United States) may be worse than the others,” he said.
“In the case of some this isn’t an infrequent occurrence. More than 50% of people may have significant withdrawal problems that they should be warned about. This is way beyond what was happening with the older drugs.”
One of the main selling points of the SSRIs when they arrived in the early 1990s was that people did not become physically dependent on them as they had on older antidepressants – the benzodiazepines such as Valium and Librium.
But a World Health Organisation league table of the drugs that doctors think cause people most problems when they are trying to quit puts paroxetine (Seroxat) in the number one slot with twice as many reports as the next highest, another SSRI called venlafaxine (Efexor). Sertraline (Lustral) is fourth and fluoxetine (Prozac) is seventh in the table compiled by the Uppsala monitoring centre. The benzodiazepines Ativan (lorazipam) and Valium (diazepam) come 11th and 13th.
“The SSRIs are drugs for which withdrawal symptoms are most reported worldwide,” said Charles Medawar of the group Social Audit, which has battled to get the authorities to recognise there is a problem. “Yet they are nothing like as widely used as benzodiazepines were.”
The firms maintain that people who feel worse after stopping the drugs are suffering a recurrence of depression. They are advised to go back on the drugs.
But Dr Healy says any immediate return of symptoms is probably withdrawal and that if it were another bout of depression, it would be unlikely to show up for months or even a year. Some people, he says, have been on the SSRIs for as long as five years because each time they stop, they feel worse.
“The drugs are not being given to people who are severely ill,” he said. “These are people who are miserable, with lower grade mood disorders. They are people who should not be on these drugs for this length of time.”
Seroxat’s original licence was simply to treat an episode of mild to moderate depression, but the company later commissioned a study which looked at the effect of stopping Seroxat in people who had been treated successfully for depression. Half continued to take Seroxat and the other half were given a placebo.
Many of those on placebo got worse which proved, the company argued, that the drug should be given a licence for long-term use to prevent the recurrence of depression.
“Their presentation of the study to the Medicines Control Agency was intentionally or unintentionally deceitful. They were saying this was a long-term treatment for depression but what they had was a trial design that was going to produce withdrawal symptoms,” said Dr Healy.
Violent reaction
Dr Healy was given access to the papers in GlaxoSmithKline’s archives following legal representations before the Schell trial, in Cheyenne,Wyoming, in which he was a witness.
Tim Tobin, Schell’s son-in-law, whose wife and only child died, together with other family members had sued GlaxoSmithKline. The jury agreed that Schell had suffered a violent reaction to the Paxil/Seroxat he had taken.
The court heard how 34 studies of healthy volunteer company workers, carried out before the drug received its licence, showed that 25% of them became agitated on the drug. Dr Healy believes a small minority can be so disturbed by the effects of the SSRIs that they are capable of killing others or themselves.
The studies were not carried out by doctors with any psychiatric training who might have looked further at the mental problems that occurred in otherwise normal healthy individuals. Most of them were general hospital doctors with an interest in gut disorders.
Although Dr Healy was supposed to have had access to all the studies, four apparently done by psychiatrists were missing. But in a note relating to one of these the investigating psychiatrist running that research had written that he had never seen such a high level of problems in healthy volunteers.
Dr Healy has written to the Medicines Control Agency, which grants UK drugs licences, spelling out his concern over the implications of these studies.
Some of the volunteers involved, he wrote, later “went on to suicidal acts. The relationship between their intake of paroxetine (Paxil) and later suicidal acts is a matter about which neither you nor SmithKlineBeecham should be sanguine.”
GlaxoSmithKline denies both that their drug can cause people to murder and commit suicide or that there are withdrawal problems. David Wheadon, its director of US regulatory affairs, insisted Dr Healy had not seen all the data and said there was “no credence” to the 25% agitation rate that he gave in court.
Dr Healy says he examined every one of the healthy volunteer studies carried out before the drug was licensed except for some material that was unaccountably not there. During his deposition in March for the court case, the company conceded he had seen a representative sample.
On withdrawal problems, Dr Wheadon said: “This is a very rare occurrence based on the data available. It is extraordinarily difficult to ferret out if it is a withdrawal effect or resurgence of the disease being treated.”
If somebody who stopped Paxil suddenly could not sleep, he said, “I challenge anyone to be able to tell me whether that is disease or discontinuation.”
Dr Healy counters that if the person had no sleep problems before taking the drug, it is withdrawal, and that in healthy volunteers who were not originally depressed, agitation, insomnia or abnormal dreams are self-evidently caused by the drug.
chris says
Meanwhile we have this:
https://words.mattiasdesmet.org/p/suicidal-society
Dr. David Healy says
This is an interesting angle that overlaps with many of the points made in RxISK and DH posts
D
Dr. David Healy says
I’ve changed by mind – its not an interesting article. Its superficial. The fact that there were ways for older folk to die does not make a society suicidal and has nothing to do with the post.
The comments that hit the nail on the head in respect of this post are the ones that show the US HHS have a major suicide prevention program that says nothing about the risk the Drugs pose. This is like the French State going much further in advocating for boosting fertility and mentioning zilch about the risks the drugs pose to this.
People called the Samaritans are not older folk – its young people – and even the Samaritans are gagged and bound when it comes to raising the possibility that the drugs may be causing a person the problems they have.
The hint of an overlap lies in many posts, mainly on DH, which mention our turn to technologies – these include procedures, or what we could call bureaucracy. If the procedures don’t allow an issue to be raised, it cannot get raised. In resisting being completely enslaved by, dominated by technology, the adverse effects of drugs – not just suicidality – offer us all an opportunity to assert our humanity by insisting on the validity of what is happening us or the person we are dealing with if we are on the other end of a helpline.
The question, comments on this post need to stick to, is how does Katinka Newman persuade the Samaritans when she meets them to leave space for a human touch in their procedures. The chances of her being able to do so do not look great to me. She needs good ideas.
D
tim says
From Samaritans Website – Highlighted: –
‘Personal Experience’
‘We will ensure that the voice of people with experience of suicidal feelings, suicide attempts, self harm, or bereavement by suicide is central to and shapes all our services, products, campaigns and activities’.
Surely The RxISK Team, and those of us who comment here, are ‘the voice of people with experience’?
Our experience, our tragedies, our bereavements and our anguish results from decades of marketing masquerading as medicine, and the unrelenting, vociferous pro-psychotropic drug propaganda of our “professionally eminent” Key Opinion Leaders.
Prescribers are vulnerable to trusting and respecting these KOLs, and trusting the published data-manipulated results of ghost written clinical trials.
I perceive that leaves many prescribers who find it almost impossible to believe that the drugs they prescribe – (and which they believe to be ‘safe and effective) – do in fact cause all the experiences listed in the above statement.
Our loved ones, and our families could have been spared had we been allowed to know of these ADRs and chosen to avoid them. (Full, Fair and Informed Consent).
It is tragic that highly organised and influential Suicide Prevention Organisations will not, apparently, embrace this vital, evidence based preventive opportunity.
I tried to enter into email correspondence with Papyrus about prescription drug induced suicidality, without success.
We are NOT a CULT!
We all long to see a major contribution to the successful prevention of iatrogenic AKATHISIA, DISINHIBITION, EMOTIONAL BLUNTING – (and thus, the prevention of suicide and violence) – caused by drugs with such devastating ADRs.
Adverse Reactions that we have witnessed and which have devastated our lives.
This would be so much more achievable if it was Ensured That Our Voices Were Heard.
Good luck Katinka. Your courage and commitment is respected.
Dr. David Healy says
Tim
Thanks for this. You and Johanna have picked up on a central irony of what is happening. The HHS document talks a lot about being guided by those with Lived Experience as do the Samaritans and everyone else these days.
But anyone who correctly believes their drug has caused their problem is almost immediately Cancelled.
There seems to be an unbelievable amount of fear about mentioning drug harms – about mentioning what should be obvious which is that drugs that are legally made prescription only on the basis of being unavoidably hazardous can cause harms.
Katinka and the rest of of us need some clever ways to restore some common sense to the situation
David
susanne says
Chris A very interesting article . There have always been death rituals such as floating elderly persons out on icebergs to die and others which elderly people here in UK jhave always known about and use jokes to deal with the knowledge. They (we by now) are very aware of the urge to get rid of elderly(ness) As all the get fit and health messages aimed at the elderly show. It’s another huge business enterprise. It’s our responsibility .Don’t get old, don’t get infiirm
Whether it was part of the ritual or not I don’t know but let’s not forget that thousand of elderly people had DO NOT RESUCITATE notes put on their records during, but not only during, the pandemic. My friend years ago was given huge doses of morphine without relatives consent Another with dementia had a DNR without consent. We have a duty wherever we can to protect all vulnerable people some of whom have no relatives or any advocate to watch over them
Keeping it real from
The Independant
NewsHealth
Hundreds of patients including care home residents subjected to unlawful ‘do not resuscitate’ orders, CQC confirms
Care regulator review confirms blanket decisions were made at start of pandemic
Thursday 18 March 2021 07:45 GMT
23
Comments
The care regulator has found hundreds of cases where patients rights may have been breached (There was no ‘may’ about it as proven and campaigned about in first Wales where it was first discovered by relatives)
Hundreds of elderly patients have been subjected to unlawful ‘do not resuscitate’ decisions that included blanket orders on care home residents, a watchdog has found.
In a review of the use of the controversial notices during the pandemic, the Care Quality Commission said it had uncovered evidence of patents not being involved in discussions and in some cases even being denied treatment.
Care home providers told the watchdog there were a total of 508 do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) decisions that had been put in place after 17 March last year without any discussion with the patient or their family. The CQC said a third, 180, of these orders were still in place in December.
It said this raised “serious concerns that individuals’ human rights – to be involved in DNACPR decisions about themselves or their families – were potentially being breached in more than 500 cases.”
There were also fears over widespread “blanket” do not resuscitate decisions being made on entire care homes and groups of disabled patients.
The CQC said it heard evidence from “people, their families and carers that there had been blanket DNACPR decisions in place”. It was told by 119 care home providers that people in their care had been “subject to blanket DNACPR decisions” since March last year
Dr. David Healy says
see my second reply to Chris’ point
D
susanne says
I skipped through the article and found it interesting Academics sometimes float these kind of ideas which are pretty harmless . I am more in favour of promoting the idea that individuals can and do much of unheard and unpublicised ‘work’ of protecting vulnerable people. Everybody does not want to join a group or contribute to even unofficial trusted groups Often it just amounts to adding another voice which helps the organisation -but they do not want to lose control of their own voice. When engaged in this kind of ‘work’ it is too often forgotten that many have no access to helplines of google or anything else I am though willing to contact any org which may catch on all the same if their is a remote chance of getting help. I often do it as an individual and if get a positive result share it They have a place but I do not think the Samaritans are it. They play the game of running ‘consultations ‘ ‘training’ etc but they are not independent. nor people are going to have their drugs recorded by them as I did suggest above. I was involved in the campaign early on as it began near where I used to live ,to publicise the secret use of DNR’s This was successful because individuals got together and stopped what would have become a nightmare policy carried out in secret. With the knowing assistance of medics. Spreading the word through word of mouth does make a difference Fewer people automatically trust in the system to care for them .or groups set up to ‘help’ them but when the message comes from some individual they trust it gets disseminated importantly by word of mouth We ‘must’ all do what we can in as many ways as we can even if there is disagreement about the way.
annie says
David says:
The question, comments on this post need to stick to, is how does Katinka Newman persuade the Samaritans when she meets them to leave space for a human touch in their procedures. The chances of her being able to do so do not look great to me. She needs good ideas.
Thoughts on Katinka, Her Big Idea, and the Malarkey…
The Question that will Save Lives
The Pill That Steals Lives – Katinka Blackford Newman
It’s not just the Samaritans, it was the mental hospital and the general hospital –
https://www.change.org/p/get-suicide-prevention-services-to-ask-callers-if-they-are-taking-meds-that-cause-suicide
The numbers are going up; the questions are going down –
I called a Samaritan, woke him, up, it was around 2.00 am, he sounded around late 50’s.
I called him as a last resort. I was climbing the walls with akathisia after weeks off Seroxat and the prescription cascade sending me in to a spiral of distress, panic, and terror.
He was not prepared for me. He began to get ever so slightly exasperated because he didn’t understand. I can’t help you if you don’t know why you feel you might do something, he said. I said, I don’t know what is going on but I feel like something terrible might happen.
Wouldn’t that have been just the time to Ask the Question.
It was the same on admittance to the mental hospital. I wasn’t asked about medication and it turned out my doctor was doing things not advised by the psychiatrist. How would that have all come out. It didn’t ever come out.
It was the same when I was admitted to the general hospital with several serious attempts at ‘self-harm’. I wasn’t asked about medication. So what do you do when you are in the throes of acute withdrawal, you keep trying to do it, even in the hospital.
If it is managed to get an appointment with Head Office : The Samaritans
There needs to be a plan.
Why should Katinka go-it-alone?
The organization of three presentations, max 20 mins each
1. Katinka to give an overview presentation of the situation
2. David to give a presentation on the pitfalls of medications
3. Brian of AntiDepAware to give a presentation on Inquests, Homicides, Deaths
http://antidepaware.co.uk/
Why this petition matters
Started by Katinka Blackford Newman
There are over 100 different medications whose side effects can cause people to take their lives. These include antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, anti-malarial tablets, acne medication and some antibiotics.
At the moment, callers to suicide prevention services such as The Samaritans are not asked a question that could save their life.
“Have you recently gone on, changed dose or come off medication that has suicidal ideation as a side effect?”
These are the most dangerous times when taking a drug that can trigger suicide. And a suicidal reaction can happen within hours.
Most people are unaware that suicidal ideation (thoughts about killing yourself) is a lethal side effect of many drugs, particularly drugs that are supposed to help with depression.
Clinical trial data shows that for at least 2%-5% per cent of people, Antidepressants can have a paradoxical effect and cause people to become suicidal – this even applies to healthy volunteers.
With over 100 million people worldwide on antidepressants (and this is just one class of drugs that can trigger suicide) a significant number of people are becoming suicidal as a direct result of medication.
The Samaritans receive over 10,000 calls per day (one call every 10 seconds) and they are just one suicide prevention service operating in the UK and Ireland. What if volunteers for all suicide prevention services around the world were trained to ask callers if they are on a drug that can cause suicide?
As psychiatrist and leading expert Professor David Healy says “While suicide prevention services cannot be expected to offer medical advice, they could raise the possibility with callers that their problems may be caused by medication. And that if there’s a risk, they should go back to their doctor or seek further medical advice.”
“This” Healy says “could prevent thousands of people around the world from taking their lives and prevent millions from the agony caused by an adverse drug reaction”
This petition is by Antidepressantrisks.org, a campaigning website that is contacted by bereaved relatives of people from all over the world who have died from medication-induced suicide.
As well, we have many stories of people who have made a full recovery once they have realized that it’s a drug that has caused them to want to end their lives.
Please help Antidepressantrisks.org to persuade suicide-prevention services to ask this vital question.
Please sign and share this petition to support “The Question That Will Save Lives”
Almost all Mental Health articles have If you are affected by anything in this article, Call the Samaritans
They have enormous sway on Suicide Prevention and have largely captured the ‘Suicide’ market, it would be a major step forward if they Ask the Question
It would also be one-in-the-eye for doctors and hospitals who are much too lax about drug harms and if The Samaritans took the responsible route, might make them sit up and take a bit more notice.
However, if The Samaritans are a bit cowardly and reticent about getting involved in medical matters, like Appleby,
Passing the Buck – 15 for Help in a crisis
https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/help-in-a-crisis/
then what a Police Officer once said to me, comes true
‘Good luck with that, we don’t get involved with medical matters’ …
Anne-Marie says
Annie you said this to the samaritons.
I said, I don’t know what is going on but I feel like something terrible might happen.
This is exactly what everyone is trying to say who call the samaritons, police, ambulance or who ever they are trying to reach out too. Unfortunately many people are too confused, detatched or disoriented to know what to say or what is wrong but the fortunate few who do reach out are aware something is off.
This is why the question of “are you on medication” is so very important.
I have read in the past that the police now have a mental health team they can refer people too but I doubt very much the question above is being addressed either.
No-one is looking at drug side effects.
chris says
Just read this on Hilary Mantel from 2003
“Mantel was 19 when it took hold. She was sent to a psychiatrist who diagnosed overambition. Anti-psychotic medication brought on counterfeit madness – akathisia – a terrifying side-effect. Mantel writes: ‘By the time I was 24, I had learned the hard way that whatever my mental distress – and it does distress one to be ignored, invalidated and humiliated – I must never, ever go near a psychiatrist or take a psychotropic drug.’
She had Endometriosis. What chance they could ever spot akathisia worse still tardive akathisia.
Dr. David Healy says
Chris
This is fascinating – did she write anything else about steering clear of psychiatry – or perhaps even the rest of medicine also?
D
chris says
Have not read it but from the reviews, her last book –
A Memoir of My Former Self:
A Life in Writing
Harriet Vogt says
This is just a section from Hilary Mantel’s beautifully written memoir, ‘Little Miss Never Well’. Akathisia evoked – extraordinarily:
‘Do you know about akathisia? It is a condition caused by anti-psychotic medication, and the cunning thing about it is that it looks, and it feels, exactly like madness. The patient paces. She is unable to stay still. She wears a look of agitation and terror. She wrings her hands; she says she is in hell.
And from the inside, how does it feel? Akathisia is the worst thing I have ever experienced, the worst single, defined episode of my entire life. No physical pain has ever matched that morning’s uprush of killing fear, the hammering heart. You are impelled to move, to pace in a small room. You force yourself down into a chair, only to jump out of it. You choke; pressure rises inside your skull. Your hands pull at your clothing and tear at your arms. Your breathing becomes ragged. Your voice is like a bird’s cry and your hands flutter like wings. You want to hurl yourself against the windows and the walls. Every fibre of your being is possessed by panic. Every moment endures for an age and yet you are transfixed by the present moment, stabbed by it; there is no sense of time passing, therefore no prospect of deliverance. A desperate feeling of urgency – a need to act, but to do what, and how? – pulses through your whole body, like the pulses of an electric shock.
You run out into the corridor. A man is standing there, gazing dolefully towards you. It is your GP, the man at the student health service, the man with the rimless glasses and the polished brogues. The tension rises in your throat. Speech is dragged and jerked out of you, your ribs heaving. You think you are screaming but you are only whispering. You whisper that you are dying, you are damned, you are already being dipped into hell and you can feel the flames on your face.
And the answer to this? Another anti-psychotic. An injection of Largactil knocked me into insensibility. I lay with my face in the pillow as the drug took effect, and sank into feathery darkness; as I ceased to panic and fight, the hospital sheets dampened, and wrapped around me like ropes.
After I woke up I was maintained on Largactil. It was not a friendly drug; it made your throat jump, pulse and close, as if someone were hanging you.’
Harriet Vogt says
Here’s another brilliant section from ‘Little Miss Neverwell’ (mispelt I think on my previous comment’).
‘The more I said that I had a physical illness, the more they said I had a mental illness. The more I questioned the nature, the reality of the mental illness, the more I was found to be in denial, deluded. I was confused; when I spoke of my confusion, my speech turned into a symptom. No one ventured a diagnosis: not out loud. It was in the nature of educated young women, it was believed, to be hysterical, neurotic, difficult and out of control, and the object was to get them back under control, not by helping them examine their lives, or fix their practical problems – in my case, silverfish, sulking families, poverty, cold – but by giving them drugs which would make them indifferent to their mental pain, and in my case, indifferent to physical pain, too.’
Worth reading the whole, short perfect piece. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n02/hilary-mantel/little-miss-neverwell
chris says
Think change will only come with brave young psychiatrists such as Josef Witt-Doerring who are prepared to go on YouTube and say it as it is by interviewing other brave psychiatrists via their own experience. We need more brave psychiatrists to speak up.
annie says
Like this Numpty, er psychiatrist…
‘No wonder Dan Poulter MP, who defected to Labour last week from the Tories, is quitting Parliament at the next election.
For his work as a psychiatrist, which he carried out while he was an MP, he was paid £7,237 a month in addition to his £90,000 MP’s salary, which adds up to about £100 an hour. ‘
‘In 2018, Poulter became a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and continues to work as an NHS mental health doctor.[6] In June 2021, Poulter became a non-executive director for Kanabo Group Plc, a medical cannabis company based in London.[7]’
And, er, Hilary Mantel, who I found to be a fascinating women; I watched a very sad interview with her where she sat in her flat on the south coast describing how her endometriosis failed to be diagnosed and led to her infertility from eventual surgery and gaining a huge amount of weight.
She wrote a book about it
Giving up the Ghost offers to strangers and friends, and to her mother, the account of a life haunted by illness and medical incompetence, written in words that never fail her. She describes ‘an unlit terrain of sickness, a featureless landscape of humiliation and loss’.
She has spent much of her life wondering: ‘What is me and what is the drug? Endocrinology and personality are so bound together that I don’t know where I reside. I often feel like a product of clinical disasters and drugs I have been taking to cure and maintain the disease.’ She adds, devastatingly: ‘There is no me, really, any more.’
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/04/biography.features
A remarkable woman; The ‘Wolf Hall’ Trilogy…
I did write about this for the blog, some years ago –
‘Mantel is a writer who sees the skull beneath the skin, the worm in the bud, the child abuse in the suburbs and the rat in the mattress…Turning her attention to Tudor England, she makes that world at once so concrete you can smell the rain-drenched wool cloaks…This is a splendidly ambitious book…I wait greedily for the sequel, but “Wolf Hall” is already a feast.’ Daily Telegraph
Bring up the Bodies…
chris says
Like this Numpty, er psychiatrist…
Yes thanks for the laugh most are likely to run for cover –
“In October last year a psychiatrist told Waddington they were leaving the area, and the next appointment, which was on the phone, was not until 2 February, when another psychiatrist said they too were leaving, James said. Two days later his father found her dead in the loft.”
https://curementalhealth.co.uk/family-calls-for-essex-mental-health-inquiry-to-include-mothers-death/
Do you know if she talks about akathisia in Giving up the Ghost?
annie says
Astonishingly, beautifully written.
From Harriet.
‘Worth reading the whole, short perfect piece.’
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n02/hilary-mantel/little-miss-neverwell
I would also recommend The Bell Jar
‘The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s only novel, is partially based on Plath’s own life. It has been celebrated for its darkly funny and razor-sharp portrait of 1950’s society and has sold millions of copies worldwide.’
‘Nobody did it! She did it!’ And then Dr. Nolan told me the best of psychiatrists has suicides amongst their patients, and how they, if anybody, should be held responsible, but how they, on the contrary, do not hold themselves responsible. . .’
chris says
Gosh yes really something – was about to post the same quotes but Harriet got us to it.
susanne says
5, 2024
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 8: Depression and Mania (Affective Disorders) (Part Eight)
By Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD -June 19, 20234
1107
Editor’s Note: Over the next several months, Mad in America is publishing a serialized version of Peter Gøtzsche’s book, Critical Psychiatry Textbook. In this blog, he continues to detail the ignorance and denial about the increased suicide deaths caused by depression pills. Each Monday, a new section of the book is published, and all chapters are archived here.
The suicide issue in relation to depression pills has been one of the most hotly debated issues in psychiatry. But the debate should stop now. Researchers have again and again demonstrated that depression pills double suicides both in children and adults, and are even supported by foot-dragging drug regulators in this.7
It is very threatening to the psychiatric guild that the most-used drugs in psychiatry increase suicides and violence, and the textbooks reflect that, unfortunately, the organised denial continues. They were highly untrustworthy about the suicide risk, which they consistently downplayed or denied to such an extent that the advice was outright dangerous.
Monica says
Re: “the most-used drugs in psychiatry increase suicides and violence, and the textbooks reflect that, unfortunately, the organised denial continues”
What does THAT really mean? Let’s think..
These are obvious clues or signs or proofs (and there’s TONS of allied evidence) that mainstream medicine is psychopathic medicine — study the free essay The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room –The Holocaustal Covid-19 Coronavirus Madness: A Sociological Perspective & Historical Assessment
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” — Dresden James
susanne says
Ted Hughes says
The cause of Poet Sylvia Plath’s suicide was anti depressants
Slyvia_Plath
Drugs a ‘key factor’ in Plath’s suicide, claimed Hughes
Wed 8 Aug 2001
A collection of previously unpublished letters from the late poet laureate Ted Hughes to his biographer have reopened a heated debate over the cause of Sylvia Plath’s suicide nearly 30 years ago.
In a hand-written note to Keith Sagar, Hughes, who died in 1998, blames his wife’s death on an adverse reaction to the antidepressant prescription drugs she was taking. He writes that Plath mistakenly swallowed pills which prompted her suicidal feelings and this was the “key factor” in the 1963 tragedy.
Although Hughes does not name the particular drug in his letters, he claims that whilst living in America Plath had suffered an adverse reaction to some prescribed pills. When they moved to Britain, the drug was sold under a different name and prescribed by her new doctor who was unaware of her reaction. Hughes writes in the letter, “she was aware of its effects which lasted about three hours… just time enough.”
Elaine Connell, author of Sylvia Plath: Killing the Angel in the House, believes that the letter sheds new light on something that had always puzzled her: “At the time she killed herself she knew that she was writing fantastic poetry and was getting great feedback and loved her children passionately… so why kill herself? Drugs may be an explanation.”
The collection (of Ted Hughes’ letters)will be put on display in the British Library later this year.
This is what we’re up against
Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see.
Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and other established science.
Authoritarian states with no regard for the freedom of the press.
Bad actors spreading disinformation online to undermine democracy.
I
Peter Selley says
It was a monoamine oxidase inhibitor – Parnate (tranylcypromine) prescribed by Plath’s London GP, Dr John Horder – who went on to become President of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/1993/feb/16/biography.sylviaplath
“It is possible that Plath would still be alive today if she had consulted Horder earlier and started taking anti-depressants sooner.”
chris says
“It is possible that Plath would still be alive today if she had consulted Horder earlier and started taking anti-depressants sooner.”
Gosh !
chris says
Sounds like it could have been iproniazid or imipramine probably the later, were there any others on the market at the time ?
susanne says
There’s been a whole industry generated about Sylvia Plath but ‘interesting’ to see who was acknowledged by this author Brian Cooper was a psychiatrist together they have buried any reference to the cocktail of drugs Sylvia Plath was prescribed Using people to make a living out of when they can no longer respond obviously is very shabby but at least we can see how the shenanigans in medical circles operated to try to bury the cause of her death involved prescribing of a drugs by her ‘friends’ by publishing pseudo psycho -tosh
J R Soc Med. 2003 Jun; 96(6): 296–301. doi: 10.1258/jrsm.96.6.296
PMCID: PMC539515PMID: 12782699
Sylvia Plath and the depression continuum
Brian Cooper, MD FRCPsych
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Dr John Horder for his helpful comments on a draft of this paper. (You bet)
Andrew says
This article is very informative and sadly, we know that Big Pharma, often puts their commercial interests above patient health and safety. Doctors and prescribers of any medication need to be aware of this information. In psychiatry, there is much denial regarding psychiatric drug harms. Patients often know better than medical Professors. My story is similar to the author of the Pill That Steals Lives. I am a UK mental health nurse, who has experienced anti-depressant induced suicide. I came very close to death. In response to this article, patients in receipt of the drugs they are prescribed know that something is not right, when they experience adverse side effects. In my case, I knew I was experiencing akathisia and yet one of my treating psychiatric doctors labelled it as ‘agitated depression’. The same psychiatric doctor advised my GP to taper me off Citalopram 40mg daily to zero within 4 weeks! I must add that I had been prescribed Citalopram 40 mg for many years and prior to being prescribed Citalopram, I experienced a horrid withdrawal. I cold turkeyed off Seroxat. This was at the time when GSK denied withdrawal issues with Seroxat. I appeal to any parent, relative, friend, reader, carer, to note what Professor Healy has written, His wise words and expertise may well save your life or the lives of those you love dearly. May God bless Professor Healy and those who try to warn people of the clear dangers of medications. Thank you David for all you do in this area. Many GPs and Consultant Psychiatrists do not have a clue when it comes to true informed consent about these drugs. Most psychiatrists deny the link between the drugs they prescribe and self harm/suicide and homicide.
susanne says
Hello Andrew So sorry to read of your experience. Sadly all too common and unheard as you know only too well. I wonder if you have any opinion on the Critical Mental Health Nurses’ Network? Some extracts from their site.
Committed mental health nurses asking questions about mental health nursing
The Critical Mental Health Nurses Network
The CMHNN has been formed by a group of critically minded nurses and student nurses and has attracted substantial attention since its launch in April 2015. It is a network in which anyone who is interested in the quality of mental health nursing may participate.
. We are also aware that many nurses are isolated and described as having unacceptable ideas whenever they stray from the rhetoric of the ward round or MDT and the targets generated by spreadsheets. We share a view which is growing across the critical mental health landscape that mental health services are subject to a neoliberal agenda and corporate interests.
Several of the founding members of our network have found inspiration within survivor movements, activism and in particular, the Hearing Voices Network, and acknowledge a debt we have to them. There is much to learn from their expertise and we stand with all those who acknowledge that the personal is political.
We are continuing to work together to explore what might be meant by the phrase ‘Critical Mental Health Nursing’. We are interested in the content of nurse education, in learning from the critical voices in other disciplines and survivor organisations, in the current resurgence of debate about the efficacy and safety of psychiatric medications, and we want to gather examples of different and more critical nursing practice around the country and beyond.
Please contact us to share your thoughts about the future plans of the Critical Mental Health Network. We are always looking for writers who can send us posts; personal stories, referenced articles, book reviews, conference reports. As a critical network we value good questions as much as good answers. Join in! Network!
website criticalmhnursing.org
twitter @critmhn
email criticalmentalhealthnursing@gmail.com
SHARE THIS:
annie says
louis appleby reposted
Storm Skills Training CIC@storm_cic 2h
.
@ProfLAppleby shared insights on autistic people & those with ADHD who died by suicide. The number of patients who died by suicide in this group has increased over time – it’s likely to be a reflection of an increase in clinical recognition & diagnoses in this group #NCISH2024
https://twitter.com/storm_cic/status/1787823933405762021
It would be good if people googled Storm Skills Training – who are we and what do we do and tell us what you make of it. Linda Gask who got the whole thing going was very critical of the Panorama programs saying that SSRIs could cause suicide or homicide, Does anyone know what Storm Skills thinks about the risks of Antidepressants – its not clear from their website.
They are however endorsed by Appleby who thinks that anyone who thinks medicines can harm is part of a cult
chris says
The other day came across Smith–Magenis syndrome:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Magenis_syndrome
“Children with SMS are often given psychiatric diagnoses such as autism, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit disorder (ADD), and/or mood disorders.”
Dr. David Healy says
Even I didnt know what Smith-Magenis syndrome is – so its not a crime for the average doctor not to know. The problem is more why do they keep diagnosing distress or just stress as depression and putting people on meds that can only make things worse – especially younger folk.
D
annie says
‘Storm’ in a teacup
‘Talent Library’ . . .
https://www.grahammawchristie.com/talent-library/linda-gask
louis appleby
@ProfLAppleby
Not enough for @BBCPanorama to say we should wait 2 see prog: title, advert & piece @thesundaytimes already harmful.
BBC, SSRIs and ‘a Prescription for Murder’: Experts Slam Panorama Documentary on Antidepressants
https://www.newsweek.com/bbc-panorama-antidepressants-murder-james-holmes-642068
louis appleby
@ProfLAppleby
Do @BBCPanorama realise how irresponsible this could be if suicidal people stop antidepressants as a result?
BBC Panorama
@BBCPanorama
Is there a link between anti-depressants & violence? We investigate on Wednesday. Interview @thesundaytimes here: http://bit.ly/2tRVSoI
A ‘flash’ of Katinka…
chris says
There is talk of a resergence of Methylene Blue for treating parasites isn’t it also a AD. Can it cause akathisia and Serotonin Syndrome if someone takes it for parasites or what ever, who is also on an SSRI ?
Dr. David Healy says
Methylene blue is where phenothiazine antipsychotics and summer blue (imipramine) come from.
D
chris says
Good god. Rumble is full of people pushing the stuff to a load of unsuspecting.
annie says
In the Deep Vein, of Louis Appleby and The Samaritans – Rory O’Connor speaks on All in the Mind
President @iaspinfo . Director, Suicidal Behaviour Research Lab.
Professor, Author, Journal Editor, Podcast host. Book: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785043439/
University of Glasgow, UKsuicideresearch.info
https://twitter.com/suicideresearch
All in the Mind
Suicide Prevention
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001z6bf
Rory O’Connor@suicideresearch
·
We have guidance about how to co-create a safety plan on our website:
https://suicideresearch.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/safety-plan-guidance_sbrl_v1_12.05.23.pdf
Rory O’Connor @suicideresearch 6h
We have now decided on the World Suicide Prevention Day theme for the next three years:
“Changing the Narrative on Suicide”
Just all a bit of twaddle…
susanne says
When doctors and others speak out ,the consequences can be dire. Regardless of what organisational bodies do to attempt to silence them some of those who do use ethical judgements to highlight serious issues regardless of threats from managers and colleagues using the laughable whistleblowers charters /support schemes subsequently experience the nightmare of realising what a mockery it is ,how corrupt and cruel the system is.
There is nothing there for those who speak out. For those who take the ultimate ethical personal step by informing those who consult them of the potential rxisks as well as benefits of treatments – if this goes against the grain their hands are tied . Compromise , rxisk harming people against all personal and medical ethics as well as actual medical evidence or retire, resign, fight the system from outside rather than within. And so it goes on and on and…..on
NHS England’s Speaking Up Support Scheme for 2024 is now open for applications.
29 January 2024
The Speaking Up Support Scheme is available to recently and currently employed NHS workers who have experienced an adverse impact on both their professional and personal lives following a formal speaking up process.
Formerly known as the Whistleblowers Support Scheme, it was developed by NHS England in 2019 in response to recommendations from the 2015 Freedom to Speak Up review.
It is hard to think any body at all would be fooled into using this after experiencing the consequences of whistleblowing.
Cheap and nasty
Evidence from the 2023 intake showed the scheme helped reduce the negative impact experienced following speaking up. It also improved levels of hope, self-belief and optimism in participants. Asked to rate the likelihood of recommending the scheme, participants gave an average score of 4.75 out of 5.
What does the scheme offer? ( It offers the opportunity to realise how the problem will be turned back on the whistleblower by offering paid for well being type courses A type of gaslighting. )
What the scheme will offer
The scheme enables past and present NHS workers, who meet the eligibility criteria, to access a structured programme of support which includes:
health and wellbeing session
one-to-one psychological wellbeing support
career coaching
personal development group workshops
a range of practical support through group sessions.
This support will be delivered online, via virtual platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, by specialists in wellbeing and coaching support.
Hello -‘ Calling for changes to culture and law’ – anybody listening ?
Home » Campaigns » Speaking up in the NHS: Protections for whistleblowers » HCSA warns safety whistleblowers being targeted by Employer Playbook
HCSA WARNS SAFETY WHISTLEBLOWERS BEING TARGETED BY EMPLOYER PLAYBOOK
Thursday 2 May 2024
HCSA has today warned that hospital doctors who speak up on safety are targeted by a systematic employer “playbook” designed to silence or remove them.
The warning came as the union launched a new briefing for doctors on the tactics used by bad employers, ranging from ostracising them to mounting fishing expeditions to support trumped-up disciplinary charges.
The document is based on intensive HCSA research among hospital doctors who have blown the whistle on safety — in line with their professional obligations — but then faced an employer backlash and even dismissal.
This revealed a strikingly consistent “playbook” being deployed against doctors who are often left completely unaware they are being targeted.
The guide details the tactics used and offers advice to doctors on how they can spot the signs and also what to do if things go wrong. One of the key messages is to contact their union before raising safety concerns for advice on how to minimise the risks of management victimisation.
Its publication was prompted by earlier findings of an HCSA survey which revealed widespread victimisation of doctors, with 70 percent of respondents saying it was not possible to raise patient safety concerns without career detriment. It painted a picture of unaccountable managers who are failing to address safety-critical concerns raised by staff on the ground.
HCSA is also calling for changes to culture and the law to doctors being targeted with disciplinary measures and other damage to their careers simply for speaking up.
HCSA President Dr Naru Narayanan said: “What was shocking about conducting this qualitative research is how the same patterns emerge again and again across the country when a doctor is targeted after speaking up on safety. (If he still finds it shocking he shouldn’t be doing this study, it’s common knowledge)
“Hospital doctors have a professional obligation to raise these concerns, yet too often find themselves on the receiving end of coordinated efforts to silence, ostracise or force out altogether those who do so. We hope this guide will help people to spot the signs and seek help to head off the worst before it happens.
“But it shouldn’t have to be this way. The current limited protections for whistleblowers and lack of consequences for bad employers creates a completely uneven playing field. That’s why HCSA is calling for a criminal law against victimising whistleblowers and other additional protections for NHS staff, including a new independent body to track and guard against the treatment we see all too often.
Chris says
Psychiatrists and psych nurses are in an excellent position to secretly record the abuses going on and could pass on what has been witnessed anonimously to be posted publicly online.
What I witnessed was horrific and in any normal situation would be seen as serious human rights abuse . Yet the police who were always around were clueless as to what was blindingly obvious abuse.
For a start the psychiatrists would insist on seeing myself and others in the police room which was behind two locked doors. I was not let out until I signed a form agreeing to my drug abuse.
chris says
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/saint-paul-de-mausole-van-gogh-art-therapy-2485983
Would this help any of the people who have ‘undiagnosed’ akathisia. And the ‘undiagnosed’ is, in my experience really vehement denile into abuse including drug abuse?
annie says
https://x.com/angpeacock1111
Angie Peacock, MSW, CPC (ICF)
@angpeacock1111
There are SO MANY people posting about the gaslighting & severe withdrawal from “low doses” of antidepressants. So many having to take years to taper off. So many with SI from this. I work with these suffering people every day and get to hear all the ignorance in the field.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ZeqBG1Oio&list=PLDRr7-tKTGzUZmO0-WmzbA1agWLEn1erL&index=1
recovery&renewal reposted
Angie Peacock, MSW, CPC (ICF) @angpeacock1111 18h
Join @RxISK Dr. David Healy and I in Kentucky on May 24th. Almost 140 prescribers have registered so far. #akathisia #pssd #deprescribing. This one will NOT be recorded.
Register by email: geoffwilson914@gmail.com
https://x.com/angpeacock1111/status/1791194451530199065
Geoff Wilson, LCSW, LCADC, received his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Kentucky. He has been practicing in the mental health treatment fields since 1995. Geoff is in private practice and provides counseling services for individuals, couples, and families and has extensive experience treating adolescents and adults with co-occurring mental health disorders. Geoff has a variety of experience in different settings, including inpatient psychiatric, adolescent and adult residential, and various outpatient levels of care. In these settings, he has had experience treating individuals with depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship and family issues. He provides supervision for individuals pursuing their independent certification and license in alcohol and drug counseling and social work. Geoff is a nationally sought after trainer and consultant.
susanne says
He (Geoff W) provides supervision for individuals pursuing their independent certification and license in alcohol and drug counseling and social work.
Could this be a way for more prescribers to avoid being disempowered by working for State providers? But would they …….
Are there sensitivities about recording the meeting? Maybe prescribers and speakers feeling anxious about being observed/investigated… I imagine some attendees will make their own recordings though
The Kentucky Newspaper published this
https://www.wkyt.com/video/2024/03/01/watch-kentucky-doctor-discusses-increase-adolescents-being-prescribed-antidepressants/
And State by State Kentucky (and others) doesn’t sound a great place to live if using prescribed drugs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10197723/
susanne says
Obedience Pills: ADHD and the Medicalization of Childhood Kindle Edition
by Patrick D. Hahn (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
Once upon a time, the mass drugging of children was the subject of spirited debate, but that controversy seems for the most part to have died down. The goal of this book is to re-ignite that controversy.
chris says
imagine some attendees will make their own recordings though
Let’s hope and it gets to us.
annie says
Good to See this ‘Popping-Up’
Two Books –
Listening to Prozac
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/how-anecdotes-sell-drugs-on-peter-kramers-listening-to-prozac/
Let Them Eat Prozac
The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that SSRIs can safely treat depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental problems. But, as Let Them Eat Prozac reveals, this “cure” may be worse than the disease.
https://nyupress.org/9780814736975/let-them-eat-prozac/
How Anecdotes Sell Drugs: On the 30th Anniversary Edition of Peter Kramer’s “Listening to Prozac”
By Andrew Scull May 16, 2024
Listening to Prozac: The Landmark Book About Antidepressants and the Remaking of the Self by Peter D. Kramer
Reading Listening to Prozac also serves to remind us how remarkably few of the patients whose stories Kramer presents for our entertainment, and as “proof” of his favorite drug’s effectiveness, suffer from what we would ordinarily think of as serious depression. They are instead “people with mild degrees of impairment: minor depression, minor compulsiveness, sensitivity to loss, personality styles fallen from favor.” Though the book played an important role in persuading the public of the value of treating depression with SSRIs, Kramer acknowledges that “Listening to Prozac focuses on mild ailments and conditions that doctors might not diagnose at all.” Aggressive direct-to-consumer marketing of SSRIs, a practice only New Zealand and the United States permit, has meant that Kramer, and the profession at large, can prescribe Prozac to just about anyone with impunity, and without resistance.
Anniversaries are usually occasions for celebration. This one is not.
Kindly #deprescribe — taper psychiatric drugs
@Altostrata
Andrew Scull revisits Peter Kramer’s Listening to Prozac, a dishonest book that started the antidepressant gold rush.
annie says
Maryanne Demasi, PhD
6 hrs agoAuthor
I think that’s a highly sensible comment…..why are we so quick to pathologise normal human emotions?! I don’t doubt that people need help, but the pendulum has swung too far….
FDA sued for not acting on petition about antidepressant harms
It has been six years since FDA was petitioned to update antidepressant labels but so far, the agency has failed to act.
MARYANNE DEMASI, PHD
MAY 21, 2024
https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/fda-sued-for-not-acting-on-petition?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1044435&post_id=144830902&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1q23na&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Do your job!
That’s the message to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group fighting to get warning labels updated on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs).
The popular antidepressants, which are known to have a numbing effect on people, can sometimes result in persistent sexual dysfunction, even after stopping the medication – leading to a rare condition called Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD).
For some sufferers, PSSD symptoms can be severe, long-lasting, irreversible and life-altering – See Rosie’s story.
Josef Witt-Doerring, a psychiatrist and former FDA medical reviewer says he has spoken to dozens of patients with the condition who describe it as “torture.”
“It’s not just the sexual dysfunction that persists for years after stopping the drug, they also feel totally dissociated from life, almost as if they’re watching their life play out on a screen. They can’t feel anything,” explained Witt-Doerring.
In 2018, a group of physicians and researchers petitioned the FDA to “immediately require the addition of boxed warnings and precautions” on the drug labels and asked that “Dear Doctor” letters be issued to prescribers to warn of such risks.
“Even though the risk of PSSD may be rare, the condition is severe enough to sway someone’s decision to take the drug,” said Witt-Doerring.
“They might have mild depression and decide they’ll do talk therapy instead of taking the small risk of permanent sexual dysfunction. It’s important for people to have informed consent,” he added.
While the true rate of harm is unknown, a 19-year retrospective cohort analysis published last year, found 1 in 216 males taking a serotonergic antidepressant (80% took an SSRI) experienced erectile dysfunction long after discontinuing the drug.
Calling on FDA to act
US law requires the FDA to respond within 180 days of receiving a petition, but it has been six years and the agency has remained silent.
This week, Public Citizen filed a lawsuit, on behalf of Dr Antonei Csoka, PSSD researcher and scientific advisor for the PSSD Network, which alleges the FDA has behaved unlawfully in failing to act on the petition, and it asks the Court to order the FDA to issue a decision.
“The FDA needs to act in a timely way to inform the public about the risks associated with use of these drugs,” said Michael Kirkpatrick, an attorney with Public Citizen and lead counsel. “The FDA’s failure to act exposes consumers to potentially life-long harm.”
It’s not the first time the FDA has been sued for failing to grant or deny a petition.
In 2021, Public Citizen sued the FDA for ignoring a petition which called for the withdrawal of a popular hair-loss drug finasteride, after it was linked to depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation.
The FDA sat on the petition for four years.
Nine months after being sued, the FDA ruled on the petition – while it rejected the request to remove finasteride (and its generic versions) from the market, the regulator did require that patients be notified about reports of suicidal behaviour in men taking the drug.
Witt-Doerring said it’s “unacceptable” that the FDA has failed to act in the case of antidepressant labelling. As a former FDA drug reviewer with insight into how the agency operates, he speculates the hold-up may be due to legal reasons.
“Given that other regulators in Canada and Europe have acknowledged the problem, perhaps there’s some legal reason for not acting. They don’t want to be on the wrong side of history with this decision,” speculated Witt-Doerring.
In 2019, the European Medicines Agency updated the ‘Special Warnings and Precautions’ section to warn that sexual dysfunction can persist even after treatment stops.
And in 2021, Health Canada updated the product label for Canadians, after it reviewed the evidence and found “rare cases of long-lasting sexual symptoms persisting after stopping SSRI or SNRI treatment.”
The FDA must be aware of the problem because the regulator has already been alerted to the risk of PSSD by at least one drug company manufacturing antidepressants.
In 2011, Eli Lilly asked the FDA to include warnings on its own drug Prozac (fluoxetine), after reports of the condition had emerged in post-marketing surveillance. The FDA agreed and granted a label change.
Other antidepressants in the US, however, do not carry the warning. They include;
citalopram (Celexa), escitalopram (Lexapro), paroxetine (Paxil), sertraline (Zoloft), vortioxetine (Trintellix), desvenlafaxine (Pristiq), duloxetine (Cymbalta), venlafaxine (Effexor).
“It’s incredibly disappointing that despite having several years to act, the FDA has neither acknowledged nor made any proactive efforts to further investigate PSSD,” said Witt-Doerring.
“The FDA could’ve conducted patient surveys or reached out to patients who submitted case reports, but they didn’t. They’re sticking their heads in the sand, and the public is paying the price,” he added.
The FDA was approached for comment, but a spokesperson stated, “The FDA does not comment on possible, pending or ongoing litigation.”
NB: PSSD Network promotes the scientific interest in PSSD to stimulate research projects that will work towards an in-depth, biological understanding of the condition. Visit LINK:
susanne says
Register for IIPDW’s webinar — Liquids & Tapering Strips — Friday 28th June
Inbox
IIPDW
11:52 AM (4 hours ago)
Online webinar
Hosted by IIPDW
Friday 28th June
5pm – 6.30pm BST (UK time)
In a recent survey of 1276 patients from 49 countries, 88% rated “access to smaller doses (eg. tapering strips, liquid, smaller dose tablets)” as a very helpful design feature of potential withdrawal support services.
Currently, however, smaller-dose formulations are not easily available to patients wanting to reduce or stop their antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs, and different countries pose different challenges for patients wishing to access these options.
In this informative webinar two experts, Sarah Jones and Peter Groot will give an overview of the what, where and how of using liquids and tapering strips in psychiatric drug withdrawal. They’ll consider the challenges of accessing these formulations for patients and prescribers, and ways we might overcome these. They will also touch on the use of ‘DIY’ methods of achieving smaller doses, to which many patients currently resort.
After the initial talks by Sarah and Peter, they will be present for a live discussion facilitated by Dr Mark Horowitz, with opportunity for audience questions.
Get my Ticket
IIPDW’s work
Find out more about IIPDW, who we are, what we do and our vision for the future by visiting our website.
annie says
Natty Headline – Publicity for PSSD
These anti-depressants have been prescribed to millions – but have a hidden side effect that is worse than death
READ MORE: Side effect warning about antidepressants taken by millions
Have you been left sexless from antidepressants? We want to hear from you. Email us at health@dailymail.com
23 May 2024
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13448013/fda-sued-antidepressants-ssri-sexual-effects.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=social-twitter_mailonline
The FDA is now being sued by a team of scientists who say the agency has ignored their petition asking for a warning about permanent sexual side effects since 2018 and is asking the agency to warn doctors and patients about the long-term risks.
Dr Csoka is an advisor to the PSSD Network, an advocacy organization that encourages patients to tell their stories to raise awareness and hopefully find a cure for long-term sexual dysfunction.
His lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to force the FDA to issue a decision on the petition.
annie says
Andrew Witty, is in ‘Deep’ Trouble…
“You have consistently downplayed your role in this.”
“Hacking for Dummies.”
Senators Slam UnitedHealth’s C.E.O. Over Cyberattack
Several lawmakers questioned whether the company had become so large — with tentacles in every aspect of the nation’s medical care — that the effects of the hack were outsize.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/health/united-health-cyberattack-senate.html
Mr. Witty also acknowledged that the company paid a $22 million ransom to the attackers, saying “the decision to pay a ransom was mine. This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever hard to make.”
The F.B.I. and other authorities are investigating the hack.
UnitedHealth has been criticized for being circumspect about the details of the attack.
“You’ve been all over the map in terms of personal accountability,” Mr. Wyden told Mr. Witty. “You have consistently downplayed your role in this.”
Mr. Wyden said that UnitedHealth had failed to enforce the most basic kind of cybersecurity measure — so-called multifactor authentication.
Mr. Witty said that as of Wednesday, all of UnitedHealth’s “external-facing systems” were deploying that form of authentication. The company had also brought in outside groups to do additional scanning of the company’s technology, he added, and had hired Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm, as an adviser.
“This is some basic stuff that was missed,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said, holding up a copy of the book “Hacking for Dummies.”
Medicine’s Most Infamous Clinical Trial
https://study329.org/
Correspondence With GSK
https://study329.org/correspondence-with-gsk/
The Chinese authorities have accused GSK of acting like a criminal “godfather”, using a network of 700 middlemen and travel agencies to bribe doctors with £320m cash and sexual favours in return for prescribing GSK drugs.
Last year GSK paid a $3bn (£1.9bn) fine in the US to settle claims that it tricked and bribed doctors into prescribing dangerous antidepressants to children. After the settlement Witty vowed that a company-wide overhaul would prevent a repeat of the scandal.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/24/gsk-china-crisis-questions
‘were outsize.’
Brock says
Akathisia will kill me soon i have no choice left. While i absolutely don’t want to die because i have so much to live for, i want to live so badly. but I HAVE TO kill myself due to the distress this unbearable physical side effect that nobody in this world would be able to bear. It’s a physical torture.
I’m forced to take my own life 4 years after cessation of short term use SSRI. I’ve fought hard and long but it’s over i’m broken and i will be a statistic.
This is criminal at it’s worst. I hope my dear loving family can forgive me. It’s not my fault.
This is death by doctors prescription while i don’t want to die. GSK ruined me.
I love you mama