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Profiting from mental ill-health

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

There’s a reason psychiatrists prescribe drugs rather than talking therapy: the latter makes no money for pharmaceutical firms

The Guardian
By Harriet Fraad
March 15, 2011

More than one in ten Americans takes Prozac; the US comprises 5% of the world's population, yet consumes two thirds of psychological medications. Photograph: Stone/Jonathan Nourok/Getty

The New York Times recently led with a front-page splash about psychiatry’s propensity to prescribe pills, “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy”. That news is already widely known in the mental health field, but it has vast ramifications for Americans trying to maintain their sanity in our market-driven and medical system for delivering mental healthcare.

What does the turn to drug therapy mean for the mass of Americans?

Mental illness has not decreased with the change from talk therapy to drugs. In fact, as Robert Whitaker’s book diagnoses, mental illness in America has become an established epidemic. So-called miracle drugs like Prozac are taken by 11% of the population – and Prozac is only one of the 30 available antidepressants on the market. Antidepressants are accompanied by anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic drugs. Xanax, America’s leading anti-anxiety medication, is so ubiquitous that Xanax generates more revenue than Tide detergent, reports Charles Barber in his Comfortably Numb.

Anti-psychotics drugs alone net the pharmaceutical industry at least $14.6bn dollars a year. Psycho-pharmaceuticals are the most profitable sector of the industry, which makes it one of the most profitable business sectors in the world. Americans are less than 5% of the world’s population, yet they consume 66% of the world’s psychological medications.

Do these psycho pharmaceuticals work to restore mental health? Actually, the evidence is overwhelming that they fail. Antidepressants, the most popular psycho-pharmaceuticals, work no better than placebos. They work 25% of the time and stop working when the user stops taking them. In addition, they may actually harm patients in the long run. They disrupt brain neurotransmitters and may usurp the brain’s organic soothing functions.

Psycho-pharmaceuticals are less effective in the long run than talk therapy. Talk therapy, like drugs, does change brain and body chemistry; unlike drugs, though, talk therapy has no side-effects. Instead, talk therapy gives a patient tools that usually help to solve future problems. The latest research is most clearly expressed in both Irving Kirsch’s Antidepressants: The Emperors New Drugs and Gary Greenberg’s, Manufacturing Depression, both published last year. Kirsch is one of the world’s leading psychiatrists; Greenberg is one of the world’s most prestigious psychologists. Their views are echoed by many voices in the field of mental health. Why is prestigious and extensive research so widely ignored by doctors and patients alike? Our market-driven healthcare system gives us clues.

All 30 of the available antidepressants have suffered lawsuits within five years of their appearance on the market. These suits are often settled with large payments and gag clauses. The new generation of anti-psychotics are the latest case in point. Anti-psychotics were the single biggest targets of the False Claims Act. Every major company selling anti-psychotics – Bristol Meyers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca – has either settled investigations for healthcare fraud or is currently being investigated for it. Two recent settlements involving charges of illegal marketing set records for the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations. Their corporate logic is expressed in the words of Dr Jerome Avorn, a medical professor and researcher at Harvard: “When you are selling a billion a year or more of a drug, it’s very tempting for a company to just ignore the traffic ticket and keep speeding.”

There is also the widespread practice of paying physicians and psychiatrists heavy subsidies to recommend psycho-pharmaceuticals to their colleagues in small meetings at which a drug company representative is present. If doubt or criticism of the discussed drug is expressed, the doctor’s stipend stops. Another legally acceptable tool is to publish praise of a company’s drug in a scholarly article, which is often written by drug company personnel and simply tweaked by the physician whose name appears on the article. The physician is paid handsomely for such a service.

Under the pressure of legal settlements and embarrassing disclosures, eight pharmaceutical companies began posting doctors’ names and compensation on the web. ProPublica compiled these disclosures, totaling $320m, into a single database that allows patients to search for their doctor. Receiving payments for publishing articles written by drug companies is not illegal.

Two doctors, Dr Joseph Biederman and Dr Timothy Wilens of Harvard University Medical School, illustrate the close and cozy relationship between medical “scholarship” and drug companies. Drs Biederman and Wilens netted $1.6m each from drug companies for their work in recommending powerful anti-psychotic drugs for children. Biederman, Wilens and other extremely well-rewarded child psychiatrists are in part responsible for giving children the diagnosis of paediatric bipolar disorder for which anti-psychotic drugs like Risperidal and Zyprexa are used.

Experts agree that there is no long-term improvement in children’s lives from taking anti-psychotic drugs. In fact, these drugs have a substantiated pattern of metabolic problems and rapid weight gain that often leads to diabetes. The use of bipolar diagnoses and bipolar medications is one small example of how market-driven mental healthcare works in the United States. It illustrates the transformation of US healthcare into a system dominated by some of the richest corporations in the world.

Caring about profit is first, and that is why psychiatry has turned to drug therapy.

Read article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/15/psychology-healthcare

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Billion Dollar Drug Company Law Firm Restructures Connecticut Welfare System

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

By Bob Fiddaman and Shelia Matthews
March 10, 2011

For some time now, Sheila Matthews has been suspicious about her home state of Connecticut’s treatment of its most vulnerable children. As a mother of two children and co-founder of Ablechild, her instincts led her to scrutinize the dubious relationships among Connecticut’s Department of Children and Family Services [DCF], the pharmaceutical industry and a billion dollar law firm who has defended the likes of Pfizer Inc and Merck & Co., among others.

Sheila’s investigation has led her on a journey that links a non-profit children’s advocacy group, with assets over $15 million [2009] with nationally-renowned mass tort and class action defense law firms, to the Connecticut DCF – an $865 million bureaucracy, as described by the Connecticut Mirror.

The Connecticut DCF serves approximately 36,000 children and 16,000 families across its four Mandate Areas:

1. Child welfare;
2. Children’s behavioral health;
3. Juvenile Services; and
4. Prevention.

Sheila’s Ablechild has been questioning the Connecticut DCF since 2003, when Ablechild demanded that the Connecticut DCF immediately ban the use of the antidepressant Paxil in its treatment of mental disorders after multiple studies confirmed Paxil increased the risk of suicide in children and adolescents. This was more than a year prior to America’s Food & Drug Association (FDA) announcement that all antidepressants, including Paxil, should bear a black box warning regarding this suicide risk. Ablechild was disturbed that children in state custody were being prescribed this dangerous psychotropic medication. Ablechild’s public pressure paid off, and the Connecticut DCF deemed Paxil unsafe for children and adolescents, and according to the DCF drug approval list, Paxil has not been approved for use in over eight (8) years.

In August 2003, less than one month later, Ablechild reported that the commissioner of the Connecticut DCF held a ‘behind closed doors‘ meeting with Glaxo officials. This meeting was reported by the Associated Press, who wrote:

The maker of the anti-depressant Paxil plans to meet this week with Connecticut officials, weeks after the State stopped using the drug to treat young people in its care.

GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical company, is sending its regional medical director and a medical team to meet with officials from the Department of Children and Families. [Source]

Despite repeated requests from Ablechild, the Connecticut DCF refused to inform the public what was discussed at this secret meeting.

Eight years later, Sheila and Ablechild continue to raise concerns and investigate potential wrongdoings and conflicts within the Connecticut DCF. Last month, in February 2011, Sheila attended a meeting sponsored by the Connecticut Behavioral Health Partnership [CBHP], where its medical director, Dr Steven Kant, presented the Husky Behavioral Pharmacy Data. The CBHP is a state vendor that provides mental health services to DCF children. These services are paid, in part, by the State-run insurance program, HUSKY. Incredibly the pharmacy data presentation showed that dangerous psychotropic drugs, like Paxil, are still being prescribed to thousands of children and adolescents. In fact, the Pharmacy Data presentation showed that the HUSKY program, financed by taxpayer dollars, paid drug companies over $60 million for psychotropic drugs for Connecticut’s children and adolescents in 2009 alone – many of which are not approved by the FDA for use in the pediatric population and all of which carry the most serious warning possible regarding the risk of suicide.

According to the pharmacy data presentation: [Which can be downloaded as a Powerpoint presentation HERE]

More than 50% of HUSKY Youth Behavioral med utilizers are on stimulants.
Close to 30% of HUSKY Youth Behavioral med utilizers are on antipsychotics.

The pharmacy data also revealed the following:

Most Frequently Used Behavioral Meds for DCF-Involved Youth

Medications for ADHD

Ritalin (10%)
Adderall (5%)
Vyvanse (4%)
Strattera (3%)

Atypical Antipsychotics

Abilify (11%)
Risperdol (10%)
Seroquel (8%)

Anti-anxiety

Hydroxyzine (2.5%)

Antidepressants

Prozac (4.5%)
Zoloft (4%)
Zyban (3%)
Desyrel (2.5%)
Celexa (2%)

Mood Stabilizers

Lithum (3%)
Depakote (3%)
Lamictal (2.5%)

Curiously, none of the above medications are on the Connecticut DCF list of approved/unapproved drugs listed in its DCF PMAC document.

With this in mind, Sheila Matthews contacted Dr Steven Kant and inquired as to whether any of the above drugs were approved by the Connecticut DCF for use in children.

Dr Kant replied:

… the answer to your question is not that straight forward.. . . Medications may be indicated by age and/or by specific treatment needs so it is not either a simply “yes” or “no”. Also, some medications may have the age indication but for a totally different condition, such as anti epileptic condition. . .Also FDA indications are static, they do not change over time though medical practice is constantly evolving…

Contradicting the very document that lists Connecticut’s approved and unapproved drugs, a “check-off” list that verifies the status of medications, Dr Kant replied, “I don’t think a “check off” for each medication would work in terms of verifying their status.”

With such an ambiguous response from Dr. Kant, we found the DCF Approved Medication List on the Internet. This particular version was revised in 2009.

It appears that the DCF has approved drugs in children that have not been approved for children by the FDA. In fact, the FDA has issued multiple advisories and alerts since 2004 about the increased risk of suicide in children, adolescents and young adults up to age 25 who are treated with psychotropic medications.

And while Fluoxetine (Prozac) is the only medication approved by the FDA for use in treating depression in children ages 8 and older, it still carries a black box warning regarding the risk of suicide.

In contrast, the DCF seems to be ignoring the conclusions of the FDA. Its list of approved medication in children and adolescents include every single antidepressant except paroxetine [Paxil] and venlafaxine [Effexor].

Forest Lab’s citalopram [Celexa] – APPROVED

Forest Lab’s escitalopram [Lexapro] – APPROVED

Solvay Pharmaceuticals’ fluvoxamine [Luvox] – APPROVED

Pfizer’s sertraline [Zoloft] – APPROVED

GlaxoSmithKline’s bupropion [Wellbutrin -also marketed as an anti-smoking cessation drug under the name of Zyban] – APPROVED [1]

Alarmingly, the DCF has produced a guide entitled, “MEDICATIONS USED FOR BEHAVIORAL & EMOTIONAL DISORDERS – A GUIDE FOR PARENTS, FOSTER PARENTS, FAMILIES, YOUTH, CAREGIVERS, GUARDIANS, AND SOCIAL WORKERS” where it writes, “Most of the side effects from the medications are mild and will lessen or go away after the first few weeks of treatment.” The guide also points out possible side effects of SSRI’s/SNRI’s:

SSRIs and SNRIs:

Headache
Nervousness
Nausea
Insomnia
Weight Loss

One of the most dangerous side effects of these medications, suicidal thoughts/ideation, doesn’t even make the 5 bullet-pointed list. The Guide does, however, add the following: “Watch for worsening of depression and thoughts about suicide.”

The DCF Approved Medication List writes:

“The DCF Approved Medication List is a list of psychotropic medications that has been carefully established by the Psychotropic Medication Advisory Committee, a group of DCF and community professionals.”

Sheila has since investigated other advocacy groups that were concerned about the off-label prescribing of psychiatric medications to youths in state custody. This is where she stumbled upon Children’s Rights, a non-profit charity based in New York City.

In 2005, Children’s Rights employed ten (10) attorneys and a staff of 31. It claims to use its expertise to change child welfare red tape and scrutinize failing systems. If the child welfare system fails to respond, Children’s Rights files a lawsuit. If successful, it enforces reform and then monitors its implementation.

In 1989, Children’s Rights had in fact filed a suit against William O’Neill and the Connecticut state Department of Children and Youth Services [DCYS].

The suit charged that an overworked and underfunded DCYS failed to provide services including abuse and neglect investigations, adoption, foster care, mental health care, caseloads and staffing. The case has been pending for over twenty (20) years, and while there have been numerous arguments that DCYS should be more inclusive or has failed to provide certain services, the issue of massive off-label prescription of psychotropic medications has never been brought to the court’s attention.

Children’s Rights is chaired by Alan C Myers, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, a billion dollar law firm which represents the pharmaceutical industry in mass torts and class actions. Myers is also co-head of the firm’s REIT Group [Real Estate Investment Trust].

Also, listed on the Children’s Rights website are individuals and law firms that have served as co-counsel on Children’s Rights’ legal campaigns to reform America’s failing child welfare systems, including:

Missouri - Shook Hardy & Bacon – Eli Lilly Co. and Forest Labs, defended the original Wesbeker Prozac trial in Kentucky and still defend Prozac, Celexa and Lexapro.

New Jersey – Drinker Biddle & Reath – GlaxoSmithKline attorneys – defended Paxil as local counsel in Philadelphia cases.

Oklahoma – Kaye Scholer LLP – provides work in Pharmaceutical Products Liability defense and employs an attorney who was former General Counsel of Pfizer, Inc.

A particular success for Skadden Arps occurred in 2010 when it secured a summary judgement ruling for Pfizer Inc. in a suit filed by two insurance companies who sought $200 million in damages for Pfizer’s predecessors alleged “off-label” marketing of its epilepsy drug, Neurontin.

Furthermore, in February 2011, Skadden Arps secured the dismissal of over 200 cases in a multi-district litigation pending against their client, Pfizer Inc. The plaintiffs had alleged injuries related to the use of Pfizer’s anti-epilepsy drug, Neurontin.

Neurontin, the generic version is called gabapentin, is prescribed by psychiatrists for a variety of “off-label” indications. It is often tried as an alternative treatment, when patients are unable to tolerate the side effect of more proven mood stabilizers such as lithium. [2]

Gabapentin has also been associated with an increased risk of suicidal acts or violent deaths.

This is a drug that has been known to cause behavioral problems, which include unstable emotions, hostility, aggression, hyperactivity or lack of concentration.

Children dependent on child welfare systems have rights and, according to its web page, Children’s Rights is dedicated to protecting them.

It should come as no surprise that the site fails to discuss the off-label prescription of non-approved psychotropic medications to children and adolescents, unless this falls under the ‘abuse and neglect’ category?

If Children’s Rights’ motive was to accomplish fixing the child welfare system then why hasn’t it investigated why thousands of children under state care are prescribed “off-label” psychiatric drugs? With a partner in a billion dollar pro-pharmaceutical law firm as its Chair, and supporters who also defend pharmaceutical products, is it safe to assume that its stance on the drugging of children is one that is being ignored?

Children’s Rights push to remove abused and neglected children into safety.

The basic question always comes down to trust. When power, money and a good cause is mixed, it is imperative to check motives. We would be less of a society if we didn’t check out all the facts. Abuse and neglect exist, always has and always will, but society is obligated to ensure those victims are not transformed into “good cause victims” and expensed out. There is no doubt we have a right to question the system and those who claim to promote change for the good of the children within it.

Children’s Rights Chairman, Alan C. Myers, Medical Director of Connecticut Behavioral Health Partnership, Steven Kant and the Connecticut Department of Children and Families may get their knickers in a twist with regard to an advocate of Ablechild and a blogger from Birmingham, UK questioning their motives but hey, what’s the downside of shinning a light on all these players, be they good or bad players?

Sheila’s concern is that Children’s Rights with its multi-million dollar budget and with the help of its billion dollar law firms, will continue to ignore the risks of these unapproved and dangerous medications, under the guise of helping our nation’s most vulnerable children. The question remains: how can the lawyers who defend psychotropic drugs also be the same lawyers who advocate for abused and neglected children to get into state welfare programs which place these children on the same drugs? The conflict is clear and obvious – and it poses an unmistakable danger to children who truly need our help.

[1] Bupropion [also known as Wellbutrin, Zyban] is a non-tricyclic antidepressant.
[2] Gabapentin

Bob Fiddaman is the author of the Seroxat Sufferers blog and the book, “The evidence, however, is clear… the Seroxat scandal.” Chipmunka Publishing.

Sheila Matthews is the co-founder of Ablechild and a mother of two children.

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River fish loaded with Prozac: study

Friday, January 21st, 2011

Note from CCHR: While the authors of this study are concerned about the effects of antidepressant drugs on fish, we would like to point out another concern— If the chemical structure of antidepressants makes them “extremely difficult to remove from sewage, even with the most sophisticate systems available,” one can only imagine how difficult it is for the human body to rid itself of them. Just a thought.

The Gazette – January 21, 2011

by William Marsden

Researchers at the Université de Montréal and Environment Canada have discovered large quantities of antidepressants in the liver, muscle and brain tissues of brook trout exposed to effluent from Montreal’s sewage treatment plant. Photograph by: Nick Brancaccio, POSTMEDIA NEWS FILE PHOTO

MONTREAL – St. Lawrence River fish are loaded with Prozac and other antidepressant drugs, leading scientists to wonder if the “happy hormone” is altering the lifestyle of the chronically grumpy-looking marine animals.

Researchers at the Université de Montréal and Environment Canada have discovered large quantities of antidepressants in the liver, muscle and brain tissues of brook trout exposed to three months of various levels of treated effluent from Montreal’s sewage treatment plant.

According to the peer-reviewed study, published this week in the journal Chemosphere, most of the drug was found in liver tissue. Slightly less was found in the brain. The least amount was found in muscle, which is the filet eaten by humans.

U de M professor Sébastien Sauvé, a co-author of the study, said that because relatively small amounts are found in meat tissue, he is not worried that these fish pose a danger to humans.

Research during the last two decades has revealed that pharmaceutical drugs and personal care products are a major source of pollution in the marine environment. Even in very low concentrations, they have altered the ecosystems.

Sauvé said such drugs as chemotherapy medicines, hormones and antibiotics have been found in fish and pose a greater danger to human health than antidepressants.

“My real concern is the effects on the fish,” he said, adding they “could be quite serious.”

He said the study shows that fish exposed to the effluent have changes in their brains’s nerve activity. “We don’t know if these are positive or not.”

The problem is how to measure behavioural changes in fish.

“It’s very hard,” Sauvé said. “The question itself is quite interesting. You can’t ask a fish whether it is happier or not.

“One of things they can do is use cameras to look at the male behaviour. Will it have the same behaviour in mating or feeding? Then you have to go back and look at its normal behaviour. It’s quite tedious work and difficult.”

Quebecers purchase about 555 million anti-depressants a year from pharmacies. That works out to about one in four Quebecers taking one pill a day. That does not include the amount prescribed by psychiatric hospitals.

Residue from antidepressants leaves the body and ends up in our waterways. Sauvé said his study indicates the problem of antidepressants contaminating marine animals is probably global.

Most treatment plants are not equipped to deal with pharmaceuticals. Montreal’s sewage treatment plant treats only solids and does not remove chemicals.

“The chemical structure of antidepressants makes them extremely difficult to remove from sewage, even with the most sophisticate systems available,” Sauvé said.

Montreal is experimenting with ozone treatment, which, according to the study, reduces the level of antidepressants in the effluent leaving the plant, but does not eliminate them.

The research team found eight kinds of anti-depressants in the fish. The highest concentrations came from Prozac.

The study is a result of a controlled experiment. How much antidepressant medication is in fish in the river will vary greatly, depending on the kind of fish and its habitat.

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Tags: antidepressants, contaminated, Fish, prozac
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Note to Press Re: Arizona Shooting—Before Touting Pharma’s “More Mental Health Treatment Needed” Line – Try Asking The Right Questions

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

By CCHR International

10 recent massacres were committed by those under the influence of psychiatric drugs resulting in 54 dead and 105 wounded

Every single time there is a school shooting, or some senseless massacre, the press are quick to start touting the need for more mental health treatment to “prevent” these tragedies—well before the facts of the case have been investigated. In fact, most of the press don’t appear as interested in bringing the facts to light as they are in making “recommendations” based on assumptions and calling for more mental health services/treatments. How one can make recommendations before finding out what actually occurred seems illogical to us, and we’re hoping we’re not the only ones. What also seems illogical is the lack of direct questioning and demand for answers given the facts already known about prior massacres/shootings, such as: The majority of those who committed such acts had already undergone mental health “treatment,” and were already on psychiatric drugs. Drugs documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause violence, mania, psychosis, hallucinations, suicide and even homicidal ideation.

In the case of prior massacres/shootings, what has repeatedly occurred is that when the facts finally came out, due solely to the efforts of those few determined investigative reporters (such as Fox National News reporter Douglas Kennedy), and it was revealed that the shooter had been under the influence of psychiatric drugs, or in withdrawal from them, most of the press were quick to counter the drug/violence connection by featuring some Pharma mouthpiece touting the “there is no evidence that these drugs cause violent or homicidal behavior” line.

Really? No evidence? There have been 22 International Drug Regulatory Agency Warnings on psychiatric drugs causing violence, mania, psychosis and even homicidal ideation. These warnings have been issued by drug regulatory agencies in the United States, the European Union, Japan, The United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

And consider that just last week, TIME Magazine reported on a study from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices that “based on data from the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System has identified 31 drugs that are disproportionately linked with reports of violent behavior towards others.” And out of the Top 10, 8 were psychiatric drugs.

From Time Magazine: “When people consider the connections between drugs and violence, what typically comes to mind are illegal drugs like crack cocaine. However, certain medications — most notably, some antidepressants like Prozac — have also been linked to increase risk for violent, even homicidal behavior.

The Top 10 included the Antidepressants Pristiq, Effexor, Luvox, Paxil, Prozac, ADHD Drugs, Strattera and the Anti-Anxiety drug, Halcion.

Now, to be perfectly clear, we’re not saying for a fact that Loughner was taking psychiatric drugs at the time of the shooting, or in the past, which studies show can cause long-term damage long after an individual has stopped taking them. We’re saying, why aren’t the press finding out? Consider that 10 recent massacres were committed by those under the influence of psychiatric drugs documented to cause mania, psychosis, violence and even homicide, resulting in 54 dead and 105 wounded—and those are just the ones we know about. In several cases, medical records were sealed or autopsy reports not made public or, in some cases, toxicology tests were either not done to test for psychiatric drugs, or not disclosed to the public. But let’s just consider what we do know about the mental health “treatment” of those who committed these acts of violence:

Dekalb, Illinois – February 14, 2008: 27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak shot and killed five people and wounded 16 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amount of Xanax in his system.

Omaha, Nebraska – December 5, 2007: 19-year-old Robert Hawkins killed eight people and wounded five before committing suicide in an Omaha mall. Hawkins’ friend told CNN that the gunman was on antidepressants, and autopsy results confirmed he was under the influence of the “anti-anxiety” drug Valium.

Jokela, Finland – November 7, 2007: 18-year-old Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School in southern Finland, then committed suicide.

Cleveland, Ohio – October 10, 2007: 14-year-old Asa Coon stormed through his school with a gun in each hand, shooting and wounding four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon had been placed on the antidepressant Trazodone.

Blacksburg, Virginia – April 16, 2007: 23-year-old Seung Hui Cho shot to death 32 students and faculty of Virginia Tech, wounding 17 more, and then killing himself. He had received prior mental health treatment, however his mental health records remained sealed.

Red Lake, Minnesota – March 2005: 16-year-old Jeff Weise, on Prozac, shot and killed his grandparents, then went to his school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation where he shot dead 7 students and a teacher, and wounded 7 before killing himself.

Greenbush, New York – February 2004: 16-year-old Jon Romano strolled into his high school in east Greenbush and opened fire with a shotgun. Special education teacher Michael Bennett was hit in the leg. Romano had been taking “medication for depression”.

El Cajon, California – March 22, 2001: 18-year-old Jason Hoffman, on the antidepressants Celexa and Effexor, opened fire on his classmates, wounding three students and two teachers at Granite Hills High School.

Williamsport, Pennsylvania – March 7, 2001: 14-year-old Elizabeth Bush was taking the antidepressant Prozac when she shot at fellow students, wounding one.

Conyers, Georgia – May 20, 1999: 15-year-old T.J. Solomon was being treated with antidepressants when he opened fire on and wounded six of his classmates.

Columbine, Colorado – April 20, 1999: 18-year-old Eric Harris and his accomplice, Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 26 others before killing themselves. Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox. Klebold’s medical records remain sealed.

Notus, Idaho – April 16, 1999: 15-year-old Shawn Cooper fired two shotgun rounds in his school, narrowly missing students. He was taking a prescribed SSRI antidepressant and Ritalin.

Springfield, Oregon – May 21, 1998: 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 22. Kinkel had been taking the antidepressant Prozac.

So, given the fact that these shooters were on psychiatric drugs, given the fact that 22 international drug regulatory agencies warn these drugs can cause violence, mania, psychosis, suicide and even homicide, given the fact that a major study was just released confirming these drugs put people at greater risk of becoming violent, here are the questions we think deserve to be answered.

1) Court records show that a case against Jared Loughner was dismissed on Dec. 9, 2008, after he completed some type of diversion program. What was the diversion program? Did it include mental health treatment or do the case notes include any information about any prior mental health treatment Loughner may have undergone? Such was the case of Columbine shooter Eric Harris’s “diversion program”, where case notes dated 4/16/98 revealed that “Eric has been having difficulty with his medication for depression. A few nights ago he was unable to concentrate and felt restless. He went to the doctor and the doctor is changing his medication.”

* Further note to press: Sometimes finding the psychiatric drug connection requires a bit more due diligence than just asking the question; case in point, following the Columbine massacre, the Coroner’s office initially reported no drugs were found in Eric Harris’ tox reports. Following this, an investigative reporter found that Harris was rejected from the military and psychiatric drug use was suspected as the cause for the rejection. When this became known, the coroner’s office seemed to find that Harris did in fact have the antidepressant Luvox in his system.

2) The Wall Street Journal reported, “One high-school pal said Loughner had become suicidal”. Considering the FDA has issued black box warnings that antidepressants can cause suicidal ideation (as can other psychiatric drugs) was Loughner already under the influence of these drugs?

3) The press has reported that Loughner was “barred from campus pending a psychological evaluation.” So what happened? Did he get one? Was he ever in mental health treatment, or prescribed a psychiatric drug? Ever?

As a final note: Whether or not Loughner was yet another in the long list of shooters under the influence of drugs documented to cause mania, psychosis, hallucinations, aggressive behavior, suicidal and homicidal ideation—Given the international drug regulatory agency warnings & studies, the just released Institute for Safe Medication Practices study, this much we know for certain; the last thing we need is more kids on psychiatric drugs. And given what we already know about the risks of these drugs, any recommendation for more mental health treatment, meaning more people and more kids put on these drugs, is not only negligent, but considering the possible repercussions, criminal.

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Tags: ADHD Drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, antidepressants, Arizona Shooting, celexa, drug warnings, drugs, effexor, Jaren Loughner, luvox, mental health, mentally ill, prozac, psychiatric drugs, Ritalin, school shootings, shooting, ssri, Strattera, Valium, Xanax, Zoloft
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“Plato, Not Prozac! Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems” A look at how philosophy can be therapeutic

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Salisbury Post – Jan 9, 2011

by Dr. Jim Spiceland

“Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.” — Epicuris

An important objective of “Plato, Not Prozac!: Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems” is to introduce the reader to the methods and value of “philosophical practice.”

The author, Dr. Lou Marinoff of City University of New York, is aware that this may seem like a new concept to some American readers. He reminds them of the words of one of the west’s earliest philosophers, Socrates, who counseled his students to “know themselves.”

Socrates also claimed that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and many of his dialogues, brought to us by his student Plato, can plausibly be viewed as counseling sessions.

Socrates clearly wanted his students to face their problems, and his dialogues demonstrate a constructive method for dealing with them. Indeed, Marinoff claims that philosophical dialogue, the exchange of ideas itself, can be therapeutic.

Socrates also referred to the philosopher as a “midwife,” one who is skilled in assisting the student in the sometimes painful process of uncovering his or her own inner life.

Philosophical practice is not something new. It has been around, in one form or another, for a very long time.

Marinoff calls philosophical practice “therapy for the sane,” which makes it useful to just about all of us. He laments the “medicalization” of many of the ordinary stresses of modern life.

Emotional distress is not necessarily a disease. Modern psychiatry, however, appears to thrive on this model. Marinoff points out the growth of its major reference book, “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual” (DSM). Marinoff says that just about any conceivable behavior can end up listed in the DSM and diagnosed as a symptom of mental illness.

This is in spite of the fact that a majority of the mental illnesses listed in the DSM have never been shown to be caused by any brain disease.

In 1952, the DSM listed 112 disorders. The current edition, first published in 1994, presents nearly 400 disorders. The target date for the next edition is 2012. One wonders how long its list of disorders will be. Marinoff claims “…the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatrists who prescribe their drugs are committed to identifying as many ‘mental illnesses’ as theypossibly can.”

This, of course, results in the transfer of a lot of wealth and power in their direction. In the 1980s, psychiatrists suggested that about 10 percent of the U.S. population was mentally ill. By the 1990s, the number was up to 50 percent.

There are people who need to be medicated, and it is also true that a few need to be institutionalized to protect themselves and others. It should be equally clear, however, that something has gone wrong here.

Half of us are mentally ill? On the contrary, it is normal to have problems. Most educated people have the intellectual means to recognize and deal with the problems that come with life in our hurried technological age.

We may, however, profit from the collective insights of philosophy. “Plato, Not Prozac” is replete with interesting discussions of how to apply philosophy to personal moral dilemmas, conflicts between reason and emotion, problems with relationships, midlife changes and mortality.

Marinoff writes of a “great philosophical plague of … widespread feelings of personal pointlessness. So many people are without a firm sense of purpose or meaning in their lives that the lack has come to seem normal.”

There is good reason to believe that most of us can work through these issues on our own, and a careful reading of this book can be a good beginning. Its purpose is to be a practical guide to help deal with life’s most common struggles. It deals with important questions that all people grapple with, and considers answers given by some of history’s great thinkers. Most important of all, it presents strategies that help the reader find his or her own answer.

The book is neatly divided into four sections, each of which builds on the other, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of the methods and values of philosophical practice.

The first part of the book discusses “New Uses for Ancient Wisdom” and does an excellent job of demonstrating how the perennial questions of the discipline are relevant to our fast-paced lifestyle.

When confronting a problem philosophically, one practical method is what he labels the PEACE process. This involves identifying the problem, examining the emotions provoked by the problem and an analysis in which you list and evaluate options for solving it.

The fourth stage requires a person to take a step back, gain perspective and contemplate the entire context of the problem.

“To this point, you’ve compartmentalized each of the stages in order to get a handle on them. But now you exercise your whole brain to integrate them. Rather than dwelling on the individual tree, you examine the shape of the forest.”

This will enable a person to consider which philosophical systems, insights and methods might be helpful in managing the issue. These four steps, when carefully applied, should bring an understanding of the problem which makes the appropriate action clearer.

Part II discusses “Managing Everyday Problems,” such as seeking a relationship, maintaining a relationship, family life and strife, workplace issues, midlife problems and many other issues. The discussion is enriched by case studies from the author’s practice.

Part III presents the application of philosophy to contexts beyond client counseling. European philosophical cafes are presented, along with the need for specialized ethical consultants in areas like health care, business and law.

A clear description of a “Socratic dialogue,” such as those conducted at German spas and resorts, is in this section. The author even mentions a colleague who is marketing Socratic dialogues to cruise lines: “Sun, Sea, and Socrates.” Certainly a new and interesting idea.

The last section is a discussion of more than 60 philosophers whose work is relevant to philosophical counseling. Several of them are mentioned in the book, but these brief presentations elucidate their relevance to many philosophical problems.

“Plato Not Prozac” is a good read. And the book is not as polemical as the title implies. Fairly early on, Marinoff suggests that in our fast-paced lifestyle, some people will benefit from Plato and Prozac. The book represents a refreshing and much-needed perspective.

http://www.salisburypost.com/Entertainment/010911-book-plato-not-prozac-qcd

Lou Marinoff is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at City College New York, and the Founding President of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA)

http://www.loumarinoff.com/Lou%20Marinoff%20Bio%201209.pdf

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Finally—An Official Admission: Psychiatric Drugs Cause Violent & Homicidal Behavior

Friday, January 7th, 2011

NOTE FROM CCHRINT: Finally. An admission. From TIME Magazine no less. We at CCHR would like to take this opportunity to point out that it was due to CCHR’s efforts in 1991 that the FDA held public hearings on the antidepressant Prozac causing violence and suicide in patients. Scores of victims and families gave testimony along with medical experts that people with no prior history of violence or suicidal behavior became so under the influence of an antidepressant. However, the FDA panel, comprised of individuals and psychiatrists with heavy conflicts of interest and numerous ties to the pharmaceutical industry, ignored the evidence. It would take the FDA 13 years to finally issue black box warnings that antidepressants can induce suicidality. They have yet to issue black box warnings on antidepressants causing violence…. despite the fact numerous school shooters have been under the influence of such drugs. Watch CCHR’s exclusive footage of the 1991 FDA hearings on Prozac.

TIME MAGAZINE – JAN 7, 2011

Top Ten Legal Drugs Linked to Violence

by Maia Szalvitz

When people consider the connections between drugs and violence, what typically comes to mind are illegal drugs like crack cocaine. However, certain medications — most notably, some antidepressants like Prozac — have also been linked to increase risk for violent, even homicidal behavior.

A new study from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices published in the journal PloS One and based on data from the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System has identified 31 drugs that are disproportionately linked with reports of violent behavior towards others.

Please note that this does not necessarily mean that these drugs cause violent behavior. For example, in the case of opioid pain medications like Oxycontin, people with a prior history of violent behavior may seek drugs in order to sustain an addiction, which they support via predatory crime. In the case of antipsychotics, the drugs may be given in an attempt to reduce violence by people suffering from schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders — so the drugs here might not be causing violence, but could be linked with it because they’re used to try to stop it.

Nonetheless, when one particular drug in a class of nonaddictive drugs used to treat the same problem stands out, that suggests caution: unless the drug is being used to treat radically different groups of people, that drug may actually be the problem. Researchers calculated a ratio of risk for each drug compared to the others in the database, adjusting for various relevant factors that could create misleading comparisons.

10. Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq) An antidepressant which affects both serotonin and noradrenaline, this drug is 7.9 times more likely to be associated with violence than other drugs.

9. Venlafaxine (Effexor) A drug related to Pristiq in the same class of antidepressants, both are also used to treat anxiety disorders. Effexor is 8.3 times more likely than other drugs to be related to violent behavior.

8. Fluvoxamine (Luvox) An antidepressant that affects serotonin (SSRI), Luvox is 8.4 times more likely than other medications to be linked with violence

7.Triazolam (Halcion) A benzodiazepine which can be addictive, used to treat insomnia. Halcion is 8.7 times more likely to be linked with violence than other drugs, according to the study.

6) Atomoxetine (Strattera) Used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Strattera affects the neurotransmitter noradrenaline and is 9 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to the average medication.

5) Mefoquine (Lariam) A treatment for malaria, Lariam has long been linked with reports of bizarre behavior. It is 9.5 times more likely to be linked with violence than other drugs.

4) Amphetamines: (Various) Amphetamines are used to treat ADHD and affect the brain’s dopamine and noradrenaline systems. They are 9.6 times more likely to be linked to violence, compared to other drugs.

3) Paroxetine (Paxil) An SSRI antidepressant, Paxil is also linked with more severe withdrawal symptoms and a greater risk of birth defects compared to other medications in that class. It is 10.3 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to other drugs.

2) Fluoxetine (Prozac) The first well-known SSRI antidepressant, Prozac is 10.9 times more likely to be linked with violence in comparison with other medications.

1) Varenicline (Chantix) The anti-smoking medication Chantix affects the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, which helps reduce craving for smoking. Unfortunately, it’s 18 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to other drugs — by comparison, that number for Xyban is 3.9 and just 1.9 for nicotine replacement. Because Chantix is slightly superior in terms of quit rates in comparison to other drugs, it shouldn’t necessarily be ruled out as an option for those trying to quit, however.

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Tags: 1991 hearings, Antidepressant, antipsychotic, CCHR, effexor, FDA, homicidal, homicidal behavior, Paxil, prozac, violence
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Nation of Pill Poppers: 19 Potentially Dangerous Drugs Pushed By Big Pharma

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

AlterNet — December 6, 2010

by Martha Rosenberg

Here are some of the dicey drugs many Americans are hooked on,

thanks to greedy pharmaceutical companies.

Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized 13 years ago, Americans have become a nation of pill poppers — choosing the type of drug they desire like a new toothpaste, sometimes whether or not they need it.

But if patients want the drugs, doctors and pharma executives want them to have the drugs and media gets full page ads and huge TV flights (when many advertisers have dried up), is the national pillathon really a problem?

Yes, when you consider the cost of private and government insurance and the health of patients who take potentially dangerous drugs like these.

Seroquel, Zyprexa, Geodon, atypical antipsychotics

Even though the antipsychotic Seroquel surpasses 71 drugs on the FDA’s January quarterly report with 1766 adverse events, even though it’s linked to eight corruption scandals, even though military parents blame Seroquel for unexplained troop deaths, it is the fifth biggest-selling drug in the world and netted AstraZeneca almost $5 billion last year.

Atypicals were originally promoted to replace side-effect prone drugs like Thorazine but soon became pharmaceutical Swiss Army Knives for depression, anxiety, insomnia, bipolar and conduct disorders and other off label uses — and betrayed the same side effects as older antipsychotics. (Especially tardive dyskinesia-linked Abilify.)

Foisted disproportionately on the young, poor and disadvantaged, atypicals cause such weight gain and metabolic derangement — 16 percent of Zyprexa patients gain 66 pounds and some gain over 100 — manufacturer Lilly Eli Lilly agreed to pay the state of Alaska $15 million in 2008 for the Medicaid costs of Zyprexa patients who developed diabetes.

Atypicals carry warnings of death in demented patients but are widely used in nursing homes. And even though Risperdal maker Johnson & Johnson, Geodon maker Pfizer, Abilify maker Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lilly and AstraZeneca have all entered into government settlements that acknowledge fraudulent or wrongful atypical marketing, FDA rewarded atypical makers by approving Zyprexa and Seroquel for children last year. And approved a new atypical antipsychotic, Latuda, in October. Maybe the FDA is bipolar.

Ritalin, Concerta, Strattera, Adderall and ADHD drugs

When it comes to the epidemic of 5.3 million US children between 3 and 17 diagnosed with ADHD, suspicions of pharma pushing the disorder are exceeded only by pharma’s admissions thereof.

During an August conference call with financial analysts, Shire specialty pharmaceuticals president Mike Cola credited the “very dynamic ADHD market” to Shire’s globalization efforts and “investments we have made in new uses for our existing products.”

Those uses, a.k.a. diagnoses, for Shire products like stimulants Adderall, Vyvanse and Intuniv include adult ADHD, cognitive impairment, depression and excessive daytime sleepiness.

Still, Cola says despite the 10 percent ADHD “new starts” that are helping Shire “grow the market,” and the “co-administration market” of add-on prescription drug$, the ADHD franchise suffers from patients who drop out when they quit seeing their pediatrician. “We don’t see those patients show up again until their mid-to-late 20s,” laments Cola.

ADHD drugs, in addition to “robbing kids of their right to be kids, their right to grow, their right to experience their full range of emotions, and their right to experience the world in its full hue of colors,” as Anatomy of an Epidemic author Robert Whitaker puts it, can also be deadly.

A 2009 article in the American Journal of Psychiatry called Sudden Death and Use of Stimulant Medications in Youths found 1.8 percent of youthful stimulant users died sudden deaths from cardiac dysrhythmia or unexplained causes versus 0.4 percent who were not on stimulants. Though it helped fund the study, the FDA said the results proved no “real risk” and kids should keep taking their meds.

Meanwhile, says Robert Whitaker, kids on ADHD meds “are told they are going to be on these drugs for life. And next thing they know, they’re on two or three or four drugs,” a phenomenon also known as the co-administration market.

Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, SSRIs

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRIs) antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and Lexapro probably did more to inflate pharma profits in the last decade than direct-to-consumer advertising and Viagra put together, no pun intended: over 60 million prescriptions were filled in the US in 2007 with many patients reporting their depression lifted.

But some critics say for mild depression, SSRIs don’t work at all and are no better than placebo.

And others say they can add aggression, bizarre behavior, self-harm and suicidal thoughts to depression. In fact, there are 4,200 published reports of SSRI-related violence, aggression, bizarre behavior, self-harm and suicide since the drugs were introduced in 1988 including the well known gun massacres at Columbine (1999), Red Lake (2005), NIU and likely, Virginia Tech (2007).

SSRIs have non-behavioral perks both sides agree on: life-threatening serotonin syndrome when taken with migraine drugs, gastrointestinal bleeding when taken with aspirin, Aleve or Advil and the bone condition, osteoporosis.

Paxil can reduce or abolish the effect of tamoxifen in breast cancer patients and increase deaths says British Medical Journal. It’s linked to a two-fold increased risk of cardiac birth defects in infants according to its own manufacturer, GSK.

And sex? SSRIs are so linked to dysfunction even the pharma-identified web site WebMD admits many will experience impotence, delayed ejaculation or no orgasm. But there is a solution (besides going off SSRIs) says WebMD: Add another antidepressant that’s not an SSRI, like Wellbutrin!

Effexor, Cymbalta, Pristiq, SNRIs

Selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) are like their SSRIs chemical cousins except their norepinephrine effects can modulate pain, which has ushered in your-depression-is-really-pain, your-pain-is-really-depression and other crossover marketing. But the problem with giving a psychoactive drug for pain is that you’re giving a psychoactive drug for pain. “After three months of taking Savella [another SNRI], I started self-destructing and cutting myself,” writes a 40 year old woman on askapatient.com. “I don’t know why or anything, but it does similar to Prozac where it makes you think and do weird things.”

And Cymbalta, approved this fall for chronic back pain and osteoarthritis?

Cymbalta was the drug healthy 19-year-old volunteer Traci Johnson was testing when she hung herself in an Eli Lilly dorm in 2005. It was the drug Carol Anne Gotbaum killed herself on at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport in 2007.

SNRI’s are also harder to quit than SSRIs, especially Effexor. 25-year-old Chicagoan David F. told AlterNet he stood at the top of an 8-story parking lot contemplating jumping every day for weeks after quitting. It’s also the drug Andrea Yates was on when she drowned her five children in 2001.

But not all SNRI side effects are behavioral. The FDA would not approve Pristiq, a newer version of Effexor, when Wyeth/Pfizer tried to market it for vasomotor symptoms, because it caused heart attacks, coronary artery obstruction and hypertension in clinical trials. That’s similar to another SNRI, the diet pill Meridia, which was just withdrawn from the market for causing heart problems. Pristiq is still available.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.alternet.org/story/149078/nation_of_pill_poppers_19_dangerous_drugs_shamelessly_pushed_by_big_pharma?page=entire

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Tags: Abilify, Adderall, ADHD Drugs, antidepressants, antipsychotic, big pharma, Columbine, Concerta, effexor, Geodon, Nation of pill poppers, nursing homes, Paxil, pill poppers, prozac, Risperdal, Ritalin, Seroquel, SNRIs, SSRIs, Strattera, Zoloft, Zyprexa
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5 Myths About Depression Treatments

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

COUNTER PUNCH, December 3, 2010

By Bruce E. Levine,
Clinical Psychologist

A warning: for people satisfied with their standard depression treatments, debunking myths about them may be troubling. However, for critically thinking depression sufferers who have not been helped by antidepressants, psychotherapy, or other standard treatments, discovering truths about these treatments can provide ideas about what may actually work for them.

Critical thinkers have difficulty placing faith in any depression treatment because science tells them that these treatments often work no better than placebos or nothing at all, and if one lacks faith in a depression treatment, it is not likely to be effective. In fact, it is belief and faith—or what scientists call “expectations” and the “placebo effect”—that is mostly responsible for any depression treatment working. Critical-thinkers can find a way out of depression when their critical thinking about depression treatments is validated and respected, and they are challenged to think more critically about their critical thinking.

Myth 1: Antidepressants Are More Effective than Placebos

Many depressed people report that antidepressants have been effective for them, but do antidepressants work any better than a sugar pill? Researcher Irving Kirsch (professor of psychology at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom as well as professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and author of The Emperor’s New Drugs) has been trying to answer that question for a significant part of his career.

In 2002, Kirsch and his team at the University of Connecticut examined 47 depression treatment studies that had been sponsored by drug companies on the antidepressants Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and Serzone. Many of these studies had not been published, but all had been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so Kirsch used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to all the data. He discovered that in the majority of the trials, antidepressants failed to outperform sugar pill placebos.

“All antidepressants,” Kirsch reported in 2010, “including the well-known SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors], had no clinically significant benefit over a placebo.” While in aggregate, antidepressants slightly edge out placebos, the difference is so unremarkable that Kirsch and others describe it as “clinically negligible.”

Why are so many doctors unaware of the lack of superiority of antidepressants as compared to placebos? The answer became clear in 2008 when researcher and physician Erick Turner (currently at the Department of Psychiatry and Center for Ethics in Health Care, Oregon Health and Science University) discovered that antidepressant studies with favorable outcomes were far more likely to be published than those with unfavorable outcomes. Analyzing published and unpublished antidepressant studies registered with the FDA between 1987-2004, Turner found that 37 of 38 studies having positive results were published; however, Turner reported, “Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, [falsely] conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies).”

Myth 2: If the First Antidepressant Fails, Another Antidepressant Will Likely Succeed

In The Noonday Demon, the popular 2001 book about depression, writer and depression sufferer Andrew Solomon repeated the then urban legend that “more than 80 percent of depressed patients are responsive to medication.” Solomon accurately cites a journal article that states this statistic; however, following the “reference trail,” I discovered that the journal article that Solomon cited refers to a second article for evidence of this statistic, but this second journal article mentions nothing about 80 percent of depressed patients responding to some medication.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) was aware that there was no research to back up the assertion that 80 percent of depressed patients improve if they keep trying different medications, so NIMH funded “Sequential Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression” (STAR*D), the largest ever study of sequential depression treatments. STAR*D results were published in 2006.

In Step One of STAR*D, all depressed patients were given the antidepressant Celexa, and in Step Two, patients who failed to respond to Celexa were divided into different groups and received other treatments (mostly different drug treatments) in place of or in addition to Celexa. If their second treatment failed, there was a third and, if necessary, a fourth treatment step.

In every STAR*D treatment step, remission rates were either equal to or significantly lower than the customary placebo performance in other antidepressant studies, but to the exasperation of many scientists, there was no placebo control in this $35 million U.S. taxpayer funded STAR*D study. (STAR*D researchers disclosed receiving consulting and speaker fees from the pharmaceutical companies which manufacture the antidepressants studied in STAR*D.)

In March 2006, NIMH triumphantly announced that 50 percent of depressed people saw remission of symptoms after the first two STAR*D steps. However, NIMH failed to mention in its press release that in the same time it took to complete these first two steps—slightly over 6 months—previous research shows that depressed people receiving no treatment at all have a spontaneous remission rate of 50 percent.

In November 2006, following the completion of all four STAR*D steps, STAR*D authors claimed a 67 percent cumulative remission rate, which again exasperated many scientists because this number failed to incorporate STAR*D’s extremely high relapse and dropout rates. In an American Journal of Psychiatry editorial that accompanied STAR*D authors’ report, J. Craig Nelson, M.D, stated, “I found a cumulative sustained recovery rate of 43 percent after four treatments, using a method similar to the authors but taking relapse rates into account.” However, even 43 percent turns out to be an inflated rate.

Separate analyses of STAR*D in 2010 by psychologist Ed Pigott and medical reporter Robert Whitaker revealed that STAR*D researchers had inflated remission numbers by switching mid-study to a more lenient measurement, and also by including patients who were not depressed enough at baseline to meet study criteria. But even taking the STAR*D data as is, Pigott’s analysis revealed that less than 3 percent of the entire group of depressed patients who began the STAR*D study can be ascertained as having a sustained remission (i.e., actually participated in the final assessment without relapsing and/or dropping out).

Myth 3: Electroconvulsive Treatment (ECT) is an Effective Last Resort

Andrew Solomon in The Noonday Demon alsostates, “ECT seems to have some significant impact between 75 and 90 percent of the time. About half of those who have improved on ECT still feel good a year after treatment.” Is ECT really that effective?

In 2004, researcher Joan Prudic, M.D. and her team at New York State Psychiatric Institute conducted a major study of ECT, which involved 347 patients at seven hospitals. Reported were both the immediate outcomes and the outcomes over a 24-week follow-up period. With respect to immediate outcomes, Prudic reported: “In contrast to the 70 to 90 percent remission rates expected with ECT, remission rates, depending on criteria, were 30.3 to 46.7 percent.” Even worse for ECT advocates, Prudic noted that, “10 days after ECT, patients had lost 40 percent of the improvement.”

There are also studies comparing ECT with a placebo (called “sham ECT”). In sham ECT, patients receive muscle-relaxing and anesthetizing drugs that routinely accompany ECT, and they are hooked up to the ECT apparatus, but they receive no electric voltage. Psychiatrist Colin Ross reports, “No study has demonstrated a significant difference between real and placebo (sham) ECT at 1 month post-treatment.”

Myth 4: Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is the Best Psychotherapy for Depression

First, the good news about CBT. The only non-drug treatment examined in STAR*D was a form of cognitive therapy (which was not fully detailed by STAR*D authors and only administered in Step Two). Among those who failed Celexa in the first step, three groups in Step Two switched from Celexa to one of three antidepressants, and their remission rates ranged from 25 to 26.6 percent; but one group in Step Two switched from Celexa to cognitive therapy, and its remission rate was 41.9 percent. STAR*D researchers did not assess whether any differences in treatment effectiveness were statistically significant.

Another group in Step Two maintained Celexa and added cognitive therapy, and this “Celexa plus cognitive therapy” group’s remission rate was 29.4 percent, not as high as the group that received cognitive therapy without medication. This begs the question: Is it also a myth that “antidepressants plus psychotherapy” works better than either treatment alone? Research psychologist David Antonuccio at the University of Nevada School of Medicine reports, “Combined psychotherapy and drug treatment do not appear to be superior to therapy or drug treatment alone.”

What psychotherapy is best for depression? While Americans hear most about CBT, it turns out that CBT or some form of cognitive therapy is no more effective for depression than any of several other types of psychotherapy. In 2008, psychologists Pim Cuijpers and Annemicke van Straten at the University of Amsterdam reported on a meta-analysis of 53 studies, each of which compared two or more different types of psychotherapy for depression. Included were varieties of “cognitive-behavior therapy,” “psychodynamic therapy,” “behavioral activation therapy,” “social skills training,” “problem-solving therapy,” “interpersonal therapy,” and “nondirective supportive therapy.” The major finding? “No large differences in efficacy between major psychotherapies for mild to moderate depression.”

So, if psychotherapy technique is not all that important, what is? Psychologist Bruce Wampold at the University of Wisconsin reviewed the psychotherapy outcome literature, examining hundreds of studies and meta-analyses, for his book The Great Psychotherapy Debate. Wampold unequivocally states that outcome effectiveness does not depend on the specific techniques of psychotherapy but instead depends on so-called “non-specific” factors such as the nature of the alliance between therapist and their client, and clients’ confidence in the therapy and in their therapist. “Simply stated,” Wampold concludes, “the client must believe in the treatment or be led to believe in it.”

Myth 5: No Treatment for Depression Works

In April 2002, an NIMH-funded study on the antidepressant Zolof, the herb St. John’s wort, and a placebo had some curious results. The findings were that 32 percent of placebo-treated patients experienced remission, better than the 25 percent remission for the Zoloft-treated patients or the 24 percent remission for the St. John’s wort-treated patients. Most scientists would say that this study shows that neither Zoloft nor St. John’s wort worked, but those subjects who had positive outcomes with these two treatments would disagree. So, does this study show that antidepressants and St. John’s wort are not helpful, or does it show that “expectations,” belief,” and “faith” are the likely factors that make all treatments work?

When assessing whether a specific treatment is effective, scientists are trained to rule out the effect of expectations. Researchers evaluate a depression treatment as effective if, in a controlled study, the treatment outcome is significantly better than a placebo. However, the reality of depression treatments is that expectations, faith, belief, and the placebo effect are—far and away—the most important reasons why anything works.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.counterpunch.org/levine12032010.html

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Tags: antidepressants, celexa, Depression treatment, ECT, effexor, electroconvulsive therapy, Irving Kirsch, NIMH, no better than placebo, Paxil, prozac, Serzone, STAR D, Zoloft
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US Soldiers’ Suicides Caused by Prescription Drugs?

Monday, November 1st, 2010

The Epoch Times, November 1, 2010

by Martha Rosenberg

The suicide rate among U.S. troops is astonishing.

In 2009 there were 239 suicides within the Army, including the Reserves, 160 active duty suicides, 146 active duty deaths from drug overdoses and high-risk behavior, and 1,713 suicide attempts, says the Army’s suicide report released in July.

More troops are dying from their own hands than in combat, says the Army report, titled “Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention.” Thirty-six percent of the suicides were among troops who were never deployed.

Also astonishing is the psychoactive prescription drug rate among active duty-aged troops, aged 18 to 34, which is up 85 percent since 2003, according to the military health plan, Tricare. Including family prescriptions, since 2001, 73,103 prescriptions for Zoloft have been dispensed, 38,199 for Prozac, 17,830 for Paxil, and 12,047 for Cymbalta. All of the drugs carry a suicide-warning label.

In addition to the spike in SSRI antidepressant prescriptions, prescriptions for the anticonvulsants Topamax and Neurontin rose 56 percent in the same group since 2005, says Navy Times. The FDA warned last year that taking these drugs doubles suicidal thinking.

In fact, 4,994 troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., are on antidepressants right now, says the Fayetteville Observer. Six hundred and sixty-four are on an antipsychotic and “many soldiers take more than one type of medication.”

Troops may also be taking Chantix, an antismoking drug so linked to violence and self-harm that Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake was forced to defend its use before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in 2008 even in drug trials. Related Articles

“If you know the drug induces suicidal thoughts,” an unappeased committee chair Bob Filner, D-Calif., asked Rep. Filner, “Why don’t you just stop [prescribing it]?”

The FDA says that even widely prescribed asthma drugs like Singulair and Advair are linked to suicide and have been cited in young people’s deaths.

Who knows what happens when the drugs are mixed with mood stabilizers, insomnia meds, pain pills, anti-anxiety drugs, and antipsychotic pills? These drug combinations have never been tested for safety.

Links between suicide and even murder-suicide and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI) antidepressants have been long recognized.

Traci Johnson, a healthy 19-year-old with no mental problems, hung herself during Lilly trials of Cymbalta in the drugmaker’s own clinic in 2004. Columbine shooter Eric Harris had reportedly just switched from Zoloft to Luvox.

Red Lake shooter Jeff Weise who killed 10 on a Minnesota Native American reservation in 2005 had just upped his Prozac dose. And the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was also on psychoactive medications, say news reports.

Even though Americans have doubled their antidepressants since 1999 so that 10 percent of the population or 27 million now take them, suicides have climbed by 5 percent since 1999 and 16 percent in middle-aged adults, says an article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2008.

In fact, the high percentage of civilian suicides on psychoactive drugs is probably the clearest indication that military life is not the only cause of the shocking troop suicides.

In September alone, there were 18 civilian suicides, 11 murders, 2 murder-suicides, and other violence linked to people who were using or had used antidepressants, according to published reports. (Ssristories.com/index.php?sort=what&p=recent)

A 54-year-old patient with a breathing tube and an oxygen tank and no previous criminal record held up a bank in Mobile, Ala. She had gone off her antidepressants.

An enraged man in Australia, also off his antidepressants, chased his mailman and threatened to cut his throat for bringing him junk mail.

A 58-year-old Amarillo, Texas, man with no criminal history tried to abduct three people, killing an Oklahoma grandmother in the process. He had “an antidepressant in his blood,” said police.

Also in the 30-day period, a 60-year-old grandmother in Seattle killed three family members and herself; a disc jockey in Bristol, U.K., set himself on fire; and a man in Exeter, U.K., was found to have stabbed himself in the heart. All were on antidepressants.

Finally, in the month of September, legal proceedings began against two mothers and a father charged with killing their own children.

Over 4,000 published reports of violent and bizarre behavior of people affected by antidepressants on the Web archive ssristories.com reveal the same out-of-character violence and self-harm in civilians that is currently seen in the military.

Twenty people set themselves on fire. Ten bit their victims (including a biter who was sleepwalking and a woman, on Prozac, who bit her 87-year-old mother into a critical condition.) Three men in the 70s and 80s attacked their wives with hammers.

Many stabbed their victims obsessively—one even stabbed furniture after killing his wife—and 14 parents drowned their children, a crime seldom heard of before the 2001 Andrea Yates case. Yates, who drowned her five children, was on the antidepressant Effexor, which manufacturer Wyeth (now Pfizer) “issued no public warning” about [the possibility of violent behavior], says the Associated Press.

Then there was the North Carolina pilot on Zoloft who sang “I’m going down for the last time” into the cockpit voice recorder before he crashed his plane in June. And the mayor of Coppell, Texas, Jayne Peters, who killed herself and her daughter in July over the grief of losing her husband. Police found antidepressants at the home.

Such murder-suicides committed by women used to be rare, says Betty Henderson the ssristories.com moderator and researcher. “Before the SSRI antidepressants, women committed 5 percent of the murder-suicides, and now they account for almost 15 percent of this type of violence,” she said in an interview.

Antidepressants are also causing women to become sexual predators, says Henderson. “There have been more than a dozen recent cases of women school teachers molesting their young students under the influence or withdrawal of antidepressants. Who heard of this type of sexual aberration before the antidepressant craze?”

Why don’t doctors and media outlets publicize the names of these volatile drugs?

“It’s a good question,” said Dr. Gary Kohls, a Minnesota family practitioner, in an op-ed written after Iraq veteran Matthew Magdzas killed his pregnant wife, their 13-month-old daughter, their dogs, and himself in Wisconsin in August.

“Nobody in the media has, to my knowledge, had the courage to report what the drugs were, nor have they interviewed the physician or his clinic to find out the rationale for prescribing drugs that have common violence-inducing effects (with black box warnings stating that in the prescribing information),” he writes. “Therefore nothing has been learned from this important teachable moment, probably because revealing the common reality of prescription drug-induced violence would be economically harmful for the sacred cows of Big Pharma and Big Medicine.”

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., called the fact that one of every six troops are now on psychoactive drugs “pretty astounding and also very troubling,” in Senate hearings this year.

Retired Col. Bart Billings, a former Army psychologist who has also testified before Congress, says, “I feel flat-out that psychiatrists are directly responsible for deaths in our military, for some of these suicides,” in a March Marine Times article. “I think it’s criminal, what they are doing.”

Even Katie Bagosy, the wife of Marine Sgt. Tom Bagosy, who took his own life in May, indicts the Neurontin medication he was prescribed for his downfall.

“He told me, ‘It all started to get worse when I got on this medication.’ Looking back, that was the beginning of the end,” she says in an article called “A Prescription for Tragedy” in the current National Journal.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/45181/

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Making a Market in Antipsychotic Drugs: An Ironic Tragedy

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

The Huffington Post

September 23, 2010

by Dr. Peter Breggin

Remember not so long ago when Prozac became the world’s largest selling medication of any kind, and then for years how Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft took over many of the top 10 spots? Remember the explanations at the time–that they were wonder drugs and that 15-50 percent or more of Americans would need them some time in their lives? To many people this seemed like a scientific breakthrough when in reality it was … a triumph of marketing. Some studies suggest that the antidepressants are little or no more effective than a sugar pill and a lot more dangerous. Recent research examined all antidepressant studies submitted in recent years to FDA in regard to antidepressant efficacy and found that the drug performed no better than placebo except in “severely depressed patients,” reaching “clinical significance” only “at the upper end of the very severely depressed category.” Even then, the difference between the antidepressant and the placebo was “relatively small.”

In addition to being largely ineffective, the antidepressants can be very distressing to withdraw from, which keeps the market artificially inflated by people who would desperately like to stop but find the process too emotionally or physically painful. Often these individuals fail to realize that they are undergoing withdrawal and instead mistakenly conclude that they “need” the medication to control their original psychiatric problems.

Now look what have become the new top selling drugs in the world: antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal, Zyprexa, Abilify, Seroquel, Geodon and Invega. Although the FDA has been expanding the approved use of some of these drugs to some cases of autism, Tourettes and a variety of other problems, their original purpose and their main use in psychiatry until now has been largely confined to psychosis and acute mania. Psychosis and acute mania afflict a very small portion of the the population. Yet these drugs are now at the top of the list of most widely prescribed medications worldwide. How did these incredibly toxic chemicals become daily pharmacological mainstays for so many millions of children and adults? It’s time to face the truth that the prescription of psychiatric drugs is driven by marketing trends–and now for the first time by something even more dreadful and insidious than mere marketing.

To begin their market campaigns for the newer antipsychotic agents, the drug companies created the myth that these products were not as dangerous as the old antipsychotic drugs, which were becoming recognized as highly toxic. Especially hard to ignore, it was demonstrated that the old antipsychotics cause tardive dyskinesia, a disfiguring and sometimes disabling array of abnormal movements in 5-8 percent per year cumulative of otherwise healthy patients and more than 20 percent of older patients. But even the unproven and ultimately false claim that the newer drugs were safer could not make a huge market for them. Even if these were wonder drugs, they were wonderful for a relatively tiny percent of the population. The drug companies had to create a new patient population market and that market became “bipolar disorder.”

Once much rarer than schizophrenia, bipolar disorder would soon become one of the most common diagnoses made in medicine and psychiatry. Indeed, while ordinary folks used to talk about their biochemical imbalances and depression, now they’ve upgraded to having bipolar disorder.

Lithium, once the magic bullet without side effects for bipolar disorder–then called manic-depressive disorder–had turned out to be a severe central nervous system toxin that over the years ruins mental function while also producing thyroid disorders, kidney failure and a host of other serious problems. The discrediting of lithium created a new niche for antipsychotic drugs–to be used as “mood stabilizers” for people with severe ups and downs. But it was a relatively smalll niche to begin with.

Where would all the new bipolar patients come from? Many of them would come from the fertile imagination of drug company sponsored psychiatrists who found bipolar disorder in everything from toddlers with temper tantrums to adults with bursts of energy followed by a natural period of feeling fatigued. Leaders in child psychiatry like Harvard’s Joseph Biederman were literally paid under the table to push antipsychotic medications for bipolar disorder in children. A recent study showed that children labeled bipolar actually receive more adult antipsychotic drugs than adults labeled bipolar . Another recent study covering 2000-2002 showed that 18 percent of child visits to a psychiatrist included antipsychotic treatment, and 92 percent of those were for the newer so-called second generation drugs. It took a great deal of marketing to convince physicians that these relatively untried and highly toxic antipsychotic drugs are that safe and effective in children.

But even marketing bipolar disorder to the professions and the public was insufficient to create a huge enough market to satisfy the drug companies. Here’s where the irony of ironies came into play. The newer antidepressants–once the leading drugs in the world–frequently cause mania. They do so in millions of patients, children and adults alike, every year. These once most popular drugs in the world by causing mania made and continue to make the market for the next wave of most popular drugs–the antipsychotic drugs being used as mood stabilizers.

How common is antidepressant-induced mania? Very common. Several studies have found that 6 to 8 percent of patients exposed to antidepressants will develop a manic disorder. One research study, for example, found in a retrospective study that Paxil produced mania in 8.6 percent of patients exposed. Other studies find the rates as high as 17 percent And if a person has already shown a manic tendency or has experienced a manic-like episode, antidepressants will push one-quarter to one-third into new manias (For a review, see P. Breggin, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, 2008, pp. 157-165) . Yet misguided psychiatrists commonly give antidepressants to patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The result? Millions of people suffer from medication-induced mania and other expressions of what I call “medication madness.”

When I took my psychiatric residency at Harvard in Boston and at SUNY in Syracuse in the early 1960s, we never saw or diagnosed bipolar disorder in children. In my four years of training, I saw one 19-year-old in a manic state and a few adults. When a person was admitted in a manic condition talking a mile a minute, imagining grand things about themselves, making outrageous plans, bursting with anger and energy, unable to sleep and otherwise euphoric, the condition was so unusual that we would hold grand rounds, a medical show-and-tell, to discuss the patient.

Now psychiatric wards are filled with patients having their second and third or umpteenth manic episode and every psychiatrist’s day is filled with patients diagnosed bipolar. It’s mostly about antidepressant-induced mania. Every single child I have evaluated who has suffered what looks like a manic episode has been taking stimulants or antidepressants, both of which cause mania. At least 9 out of 10 adults I’ve seen in the last two decades who have suffered emotional episodes that could be diagnosed as mania had them in direct response to stimulants or antidepressants–mostly the newer antidepressants starting with Prozac.

In the official diagnostic system, these are not cases of bipolar mania but cases of medication induced mood disorder with manic features; but they are almost always mistakenly called bipolar disorder in order to avoid identifying the drug and the prescriber as the causative agents.

For those who want further details, I have reviewed all the studies mentioned in this report in my medical book, “Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition” (2008). In my popular book, “Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime” (2008), I have provided dozens of in-depth illustrations of lives ruined by psychiatric drugs, especially the newer antidepressants.

Read the rest of the article here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/making-a-market-in-antips_b_720861.html

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