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Can Prozac Cause Kids to Kill? A Canadian Judge Has Ruled it Can

cchrint — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:42:50 +0000

Note from CCHR:

(see videos at the bottom of this post from film maker Michael Moore and Fox National News reporter Douglas Kennedy)

It is well documented that psychiatric drugs, particularly antidepressants, can cause a host of violent side effects including mania, psychosis, aggression, violence and in the case of the antidepressant Effexor, homicidal ideation. As far back as 1991, CCHR helped organize dozens of individuals and experts testifying before the US FDA that people with no prior history of violence (or suicide) became homicidal and suicidal under the influence of antidepressants (see CCHR’s exclusive footage of the 1991 hearings here). It would take the FDA another 13 years to admit antidepressants could cause suicide and black box warnings were finally issued in 2004. However, despite all the documented violence-inducing side effects of these drugs, the FDA has never issued black box warnings on antidepressants causing violence or homicide despite the fact that at least 11 recent school shootings were committed by kids documented to be on or in withdrawal from psychiatric drugs (see Fox News special report on school shootings here). Therefore, the case cited below, where a Canadian judge ruled that a teenage boy murdered his friend due to being on the antidepressant Prozac, and the fact that the case will not be appealed, is a major turning point in exposing the violence inducing effects of antidepressant drugs.

National Post
By Tom Blackwell
December 7, 2011

JB Reed/Bloomberg News

A Winnipeg judge’s ruling that a teenage boy murdered his friend because of the effects of Prozac will not be appealed, confirming an apparent North American first and reviving debate around the widespread prescription of anti-depressants to young people.

Justice Robert Heinrichs concluded the 15-year-old boy was under the influence of the medication when he thrust a nine-inch kitchen knife into the chest of Seth Ottenbreit, a close friend.

Although the killer pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, the judge cited the drug’s alleged side effects as a reason not to raise the case to adult court, and to mete out a sentence last month of just 10 months – on top of two years already spent in jail.

A spokeswoman for the Manitoba Justice Department said this week prosecutors have decided not to appeal the provincial-court decisions, which were earlier met with outrage from Mr. Ottenbreit’s family and friends.

Both the boy’s lawyer and the psychiatrist who testified on his behalf say it is the first time a criminal-court judge in North America has made such a finding.

Prozac is meant to curb the effects of depression, but Justice Heinrich concluded it set off a steady deterioration in the young murderer’s behaviour.

“He had become irritable, restless, agitated, aggressive and unclear in his thinking,” the judge said. “It was while in that state he overreacted in an impulsive, explosive and violent way. Now that his body and mind are free and clear of any effects of Prozac, he is simply not the same youth in behaviour or character.”

Yet the empirical underpinning of his conclusion, and the pros and cons of young people taking Prozac and other “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)” anti-depressants, seem less clear-cut.

Justice Heinrichs relied largely on the expert testimony of Dr. Peter Breggin, a controversial American physician known for his outspoken opposition to the use of virtually any psychiatric drug. Some other experts say scientific evidence of a link between the latest anti-depressants and homicide is thin.

“I think it got pulled out of a hat, frankly,” said Dr. Umesh Jain, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental health. “You could construct a weak and biologically plausible effect, but you’d have to be pretty convincing in court.”

Studies have established such drugs can increase the risk of young patients having suicidal thoughts. Their tendency to lift inhibition could also release some hostility or violence lurking in a person’s character, said Dr. Jain. Small studies like one he co-authored in 1992 have also suggested that the drugs can trigger short-term mania, especially in bi-polar disorder patients.

There is little or no scientific evidence directly linking the anti-depressants and serious violence or homicide, though, he said.

Still, the official “product monograph” approved by Health Canada for Prozac says the drugs are not recommended for use on adolescents, and warns that agitation, hostility and aggression might ensue. Doctors are allowed to prescribe medications “off label” to patients even when the approval does not expressly permit it.

Specialists in Winnipeg responded to concerns voiced by the accused’s parents by actually increasing the dose, said Greg Brodsky, the teenager’s lawyer.

“On Prozac he was becoming more irrational and aggressive,” Mr. Brodsky said. “That should have been a warning. That warning wasn’t heeded.”

SSRI drugs have a contentious track record. They were hailed originally as a safe alternative to older anti-depressants, then clinical-trial results came to light in 2004 that suggested they increased the risk of children and adolescents having suicidal thoughts.

Other studies have indicated they are effective in patients with major depression, but little better than a placebo for mild to moderate cases.

The Winnipeg murderer had a history of smoking marijuana, had abused prescription drugs and “experimented” with cocaine, but was trying to break free of that background when a family doctor prescribed Prozac for depression in July, 2009.

On Sept. 20, the accused met with Mr. Ottenbreit and another friend at his house, after the two friends had earlier stormed into his home, allegedly damaging the floor. The killer and Mr. Ottenbreit shared a cigarette, before the accused pulled aside a sweater on the floor of his garage, revealing the knife. He picked it up, “got this weird look on his face,” then abruptly stabbed his friend, the other boy told police.

“They were in my house, they dented the floor, I had nothing else to do but to stab him,” he told police later.

Dr. Keith Hildahl, clinical head of Winnipeg’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health program, testified that the Prozac might have played a role, but concluded on balance that his behaviour that summer was largely a result of the tense relationship he had with his parents.

Dr. Breggin, who has testified in a number of U.S. cases where anti-depressants allegedly led to murder or other violence and reviewed the Winnipeg case, pointed the finger of blame at the medication.

“These drugs produce a stimulant or activation continuum,” he said in an interview. “That continuum includes aggression, hostility, loss of impulse control … all of which are a prescription for violence.”

Dr. Breggin’s long-standing criticism of psychiatric drugs and opposition to the view that psychiatric problems have biochemical roots have prompted some supporters to call him the “conscience” of the speciality, and some psychiatrists and patient advocates to condemn him as a harmful influence.

Read article here: http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/07/prozac-defence-stands-in-manitoba-teens-murder-case/

See Michael Moore discuss the need for an investigation into psychiatric drugs causing violence:

See Fox National News on School Shootings and Psychiatric Drugs:

To read international warnings and studies on psychiatric drugs causing violence – visit CCHRInt’s Psychiatric Drug database and simply type in keywords such as violence, mania, psychosis, aggression in the red search box

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With growing public awareness of antidepressant risks: Pro-pill website Web MD does damage control

admin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:08:20 +0000

OpEdNews – October 24, 2011

by Martha Rosenberg

WebMD, the gigantic, pro-pill web site whose original partner was Eli Lilly, is doing damage control for SSRI antidepressants.

There was a day when it seemed like everyone was on antidepressant “happy pills” like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. But then the pendulum began to swing. Patients objected to the weight gain and feelings of not being “themselves,” sexual side effects and the withdrawal symptoms. There were even reports and warnings about suicide and other “neuropsychiatric” effects.

Now, WebMD, the gigantic, pro-pill web site whose original partner was Eli Lilly, is doing damage control for SSRI antidepressants. New articles, sounding like they’re from crib makers or cantaloupe growers, urge patients not to panic or quit taking their pills just because of things they read.

Don’t believe all the hooey about antidepressants turning “you into a zombie,” ruining your sex life or costing too much, says an article called Fears and Facts About Antidepressants on WedMD. And don’t be impatient! “ If the first antidepressant medication doesn’t help, the second or third often will . Most people eventually find one that works for them.” Ka-ching. Don’t listen to all that suicide talk either! “Switching to a different antidepressant may help,” say the damage control articles.

Is your fear of becoming a drug lifer keeping you from antidepressants, asks another WebMD article called What’s Stopping You from Seeing a Doctor About Depression? “If you do need a medication, it most likely won’t be for life,” says the article. Just until the patent runs out?

Do you think you can ignore your depression and it will go away? “Waiting for depression to simply pass can be harmful,” because “depression that goes untreated may become more severe,” say the WebMD articles–rewriting medical practice itself since depression has never been a progressive disease but is actually self limiting.

The important thing, say the articles, is to never stop your meds. “Stopping medication abruptly may.. cause depression to return,” and can cause side effects, say the articles. Worse–”prescription abandonment”–people who discover what a drug costs and leave it at the pharmacy or quit drugs because of their effects– costs Pharma lots of money! Pharma even has programs now that send Big Brother nurses to people’s homes, through their pharmacies, to make sure people are taking their meds.

One antidepressant with a big PR problem is Eli Lilly’s Cymbalta. It’s linked to the deaths of Traci Johnson, a healthy 19-year-old who hung herself on the Lilly campus during clinical trials in 2004, and Carol Anne Gotbaum, daughter-in-law of former New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum who died in police custody at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport in 2007.

Cymbalta is noted in the scientific literature for producing suicidal side effects in people with no mental health history. A 37-year-old man described in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology with a stable marriage and employment and no history of mental problems tried to kill himself with carbon monoxide two months after taking Cymbalta for back pain. A 63-year-old man, also with no mental health history, became suicidal on the drug after two weeks.

“There is an emergence of suicidality in apparently nonsuicidal patients after starting or increasing Duloxetine [Cymbalta] reads an article in Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health.”

But now, Cymbalta is being promoted as a pain drug of choice like it’s not a repurposed antidepressant with antidepressant side effects. Last year it was approved for chronic musculoskeletal pain, including discomfort from osteoarthritis and chronic lower back pain, and it was already approved for fibromyalgia and diabetic nerve pain.

A Cymbalta ad in October’s New England Journal of Medicine , says “Today a non-NSAID [non- aspirin or ibuprofen] non-narcotic, once daily analgesic FDA approved for 3 indications across 4 different chronic pain conditions can be found in 1 med.” Sounds as safe Vioxx.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Should-You-Take-A-Psychiat-by-Martha-Rosenberg-111023-164.html

Martha Rosenberg’s first book , Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, will be published by Prometheus Books in 2012.

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The Drugging of America

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:07:41 +0000

The Journal – September 29, 2011

by Barry Evans

The theory that psychological problems are mainly caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain can be traced back 60 years, when French researchers accidentally discovered that Thorazine (chlorpromazine) dramatically improved the emotional behavior of institutionalized mental patients. Within a few years, the anti-psychotic properties of Thorazine and related drugs led to the trend in this country to reintegrate into society people who had previously been confined to mental hospitals (“deinstitutionalization”).

Prozac advertisement

Today, the “chemical imbalance” revolution is almost complete, as one in 10 Americans over the age of 6 take antidepressants. As Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, wrote in a controversial two-part essay in The New York Review of Books (June 23 and June 30, 2011), the pharmaceutical solution to psychological disorders has now become the norm, as more and more health professionals accept the theory that mental illness, including depression and anxiety, is essentially caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

The wholesale acceptance of this theory, by both the medical profession and the public, came with the introduction of Prozac (fluoxetine) in 1987. While Thorazine was thought to correct a deficiency of dopamine, Prozac was marketed as an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor), designed to compensate for a presumed deficit of the neurotransmitter serotonin. (SSRIs block neurons from re-absorbing serotonin, leaving more of it available to activate adjacent neurons.) Because SSRIs alleviate depression, researchers speculated that depression was caused by too little serotonin in the brain.

Maybe. Or maybe not. Angell argues that by the same logic “one could argue that fevers are caused by too little aspirin.” Perhaps SSRIs do something quite unrelated to neurotransmitters, and depression is unrelated to serotonin levels.

Whether the “chemical imbalance” theory is true or not, the real question is, Do antidepressants work better than placebos? Psychologist Irving Kirsch, one of the authors reviewed by Angell, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain drug companies’ records of their negative studies from the FDA. Unlike the positive results, negative results are normally not published. (Incredibly to this writer, negative results are considered proprietary and therefore confidential.) Taking both positive and negative results into consideration, Kirsch discovered that six popular drugs — Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone, and Effexor — scored unimpressively when compared with placebos. Yet, as Angell writes, “because the positive studies were extensively publicized, while the negative ones were hidden, the public and the medical profession came to believe that these drugs were highly effective antidepressants.” It gets more surreal. When depressed patients were prescribed drugs such as opiates, sedatives, stimulants and even herbal remedies, Kirsch and others found their symptoms were relieved to about the same degree as with SSRI-type antidepressants.

Angell’s essay was, as I say, controversial. One of the more curious responses, published as an opinion piece in the New York Times on July 9, came from Dr. Peter Kramer, author of the 1993 best-seller Listening to Prozac. This book-length endorsement of the drug (which predicted a Brave New World-style “cosmetic psychopharmacology” future for us all) probably did more than anything else to turn Americans on to SSRIs. In his Times piece, Kramer largely sidestepped the alarming questions posed by Angell and the three books she reviewed. Instead, he focused on the difficulties of distinguishing the effects of placebos from those of real drugs. And as he had done in his book, he relied largely on unconvincing anecdotal evidence to make his case.

What we do know about placebos is that they’re not dangerous. However, even as increasing numbers of adults and children take powerful psychoactive drugs (because more of us are suffering?), researchers still have no clear handle on their potentially damaging long-term effects.

Barry Evans gets depressed just thinking about antidepressants.

http://www.northcoastjournal.com/outdoors/2011/09/29/drugging-america/

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Are Psychiatric Medications Making Us Sicker?

admin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 17:39:13 +0000

The Chronicle of Higher Education – September 18, 2011
by By John Horgan

American psychiatry, in collusion with the pharmaceutical industry, is perpetrating what may be the biggest case of iatrogenesis—harmful medical treatment—in history.Dave Plunkert for The Chronicle Review

Three years ago, I was reminded in dramatic fashion of the chasm between psychiatry and more-effective branches of medicine. My 14-year-old son, Mac, while playing lacrosse, emerged from a collision with his right arm askew. I drove him to a local hospital, where an orthopedic surgeon on duty immediately diagnosed the injury: dislocated elbow. He gave Mac an oral and local anesthetic and put him in a portable X-ray machine that showed Mac’s elbow joint on a screen, in real time. Watching the screen, the doctor quickly snapped Mac’s elbow back into place.

Overcome with gratitude to the doctor, I was leading my groggy son out of the hospital when my cellphone rang. An old friend, whom I’ll call Phil, was on the line. He was in the psychiatric ward of a New York hospital, to which his 16-year-old son had been committed. The boy, who was taking antidepressants for depression, had threatened to commit suicide, not for the first time. Thedoctors were recommending electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT.

Knowing that I had written about shock therapy and other psychiatric treatments, Phil asked my opinion. The fact that Phil had called me, a mere journalist, for advice in such a dire situation spoke volumes about the troubles of modern psychiatry.

I first took a close look at treatments for mental illness 15 years ago while researching an article for Scientific American. At the time, sales of a new class of antidepressants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRI’s, were booming. The first SSRI, Prozac, had quickly become the most widely prescribed drug in the world. Many psychiatrists, notably Peter D. Kramer, author of the best seller Listening to Prozac, touted SSRI’s as a revolutionary advance in the treatment of mental illness. Prozac, Kramer said in a phrase that I hope now haunts him, could make patients “better than well.”

Clinical trials told a different story. SSRI’s are no more effective than two older classes of antidepressants, tricyclics and monoamine oxidase inhibitors. What was even more surprising to me—given the rave reviews Prozac had received from Kramer and others—was that antidepressants as a whole were not more effective than so-called talking cures, whether cognitive behavioral therapy or even old-fashioned Freudian psychoanalysis. According to some investigators, treatments for depression and other common ailments work—if they do work—by harnessing the placebo effect, the tendency of a patient’s expectation of improvement to become self-fulfilling. I titled my article “Why Freud Isn’t Dead.” Far from defending psychoanalysis, my point was that psychiatry has made disturbingly little progress since the heyday of Freudian theory.

In retrospect, my critique of modern psychiatry was probably too mild. According to Anatomy of an Epidemic (Crown Publishers, 2010), by the journalist Robert Whitaker, psychiatry has not only failed to progress but may now be harming many of those it purports to help. Anatomy of an Epidemic has been ignored by most major media. I learned about it only after Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine and now a lecturer on public health at Harvard, reviewed the book in The New York Review of Books in June. If Whitaker is right, American psychiatry, in collusion with the pharmaceutical industry, is perpetrating what may be the biggest case of iatrogenesis—harmful medical treatment—in history.

As recently as the 1950s, Whitaker contends, the four major mental disorders—depression, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia—often manifested as episodic and “self limiting”; that is, most people simply got better over time. Severe, chronic mental illness was viewed as relatively rare. But over the past few decades the proportion of Americans diagnosed with mental illness has skyrocketed. Since 1987, the percentage of the population receiving federal disability payments for mental illness has more than doubled; among children under the age of 18, the percentage has grown by a factor of 35.

Between 1985 and 2008, sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics multiplied almost fiftyfold, to $24.2-billion.

This epidemic has coincided, paradoxically, with a surge in prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. Between 1985 and 2008, sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics multiplied almost fiftyfold, to $24.2-billion. Prescriptions for bipolar disorder and anxiety have also swelled. One in eight Americans, including children and even toddlers, is now taking a psychotropic medication. Whitaker acknowledges that antidepressants and other psychiatric medications often provide short-term relief, which explains why so many physicians and patients believe so fervently in the drugs’ benefits. But over time, Whitaker argues, drugs make many patients sicker than they would have been if they had never been medicated.

Whitaker compiles anecdotal and clinical evidence that when patients stop taking SSRI’s, they often experience depression more severe than what drove them to seek treatment. A multination report by the World Health Organization in 1998 associated long-term antidepressant usage with a higher rather than a lower risk of long-term depression. SSRI’s cause a wide range of side effects, including insomnia, sexual dysfunction, apathy, suicidal impulses, and mania—which may then lead patients to be diagnosed with and treated for bipolar disorder.

Indeed, Whitaker suspects that antidepressants—as well as Ritalin and other stimulants prescribed for attention-deficit disorder—have catalyzed the recent spike in bipolar disorder. Though bipolar disorder was relatively rare just a half-century ago, reported rates of it have increased more than a hundredfold, to one in 40 adults. Side effects attributed to lithium and other common medications for bipolar disorder include deficits in memory, learning ability, and fine-motor skills. Similarly, benzodiazepines such as Valium and Xanax, which are prescribed for anxiety, are addictive; withdrawal from these sedatives can cause effects ranging from insomnia to seizures, as well as panic attacks.

Whitaker’s analysis of treatments for schizophrenia is especially disturbing. Antipsychotics, from Thorazine to successors like Zyprexa, cause weight gain, physical tremors (called tardive dyskinesia) and, according to some studies, cognitive decline and brain shrinkage. Before the introduction of Thorazine in the 1950s, Whitaker asserts, almost two-thirds of the patients hospitalized for an initial episode of schizophrenia were released within a year, and most of this group did not require subsequent hospitalization.

Over the past half-century, the rate of schizophrenia-related disability has grown by a factor of four, and schizophrenia has come to be seen as a largely chronic, degenerative disease. A decades-long study by the World Health Organization found that schizophrenic patients fared better in poor nations, such as Nigeria and India, where antipsychotics are sparingly prescribed, than in wealthier regions such as the United States and Europe.

A long-term study by Martin Harrow, a psychologist at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, found an inverse correlation between medication for schizophrenia and positive, long-term outcomes. Beginning in the 1970s, Harrow tracked a group of 64 newly diagnosed schizophrenics. Forty percent of the nonmedicated patients recovered—meaning that they could become self-supporting—versus 5 percent of those who were medicated. Harrow theorized that those who were heavily medicated were sicker to begin with, but Whitaker suggests that the medications may be making some patients sicker.

Several possible objections to Whitaker’s case against psychiatry come to mind. First of all, as Harrow speculates, over time heavily medicated patients may not fare as well as less-medicated patients because the former truly are sicker. Also, the recent surge in mental disability may stem, at least in part, from a decrease in the stigma associated with mental illness, spurring more people to seek and obtain treatment and government assistance. In her review, Marcia Angell called Whitaker’s book “suggestive, if not conclusive,” which seems right to me. At the very least, Whitaker’s claims warrant further investigation.

Between 1985 and 2008, sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics multiplied almost fiftyfold, to $24.2-billion.

Although Whitaker doesn’t address electroconvulsive therapy, its persistence strikes me as yet another symptom of the weakness of modern psychiatry. It fell out of favor in the 1970s, in part because of its negative portrayal in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and yet about 100,000 Americans a year still receive ECT. Studies suggest that the therapy can provide temporary relief from acute depression, but virtually everyone who receives electroconvulsive therapy relapses within a year without further treatment. Proponents claim that ECT has few significant side effects, but this year an FDA panel ruled that ECT should remain classified as a “high-risk” procedure because it can cause persistent memory loss and other side effects. If SSRI’s and other psychiatric medications were truly effective, ECT would long ago have been tossed into the dustbin of failed psychiatric treatments.

So what happened to Phil’s son? When Phil called me, I told him that if my son were suicidally depressed, I’d resist giving him shock treatment unless doctors convinced me there was absolutely no alternative. Phil decided against ECT, and his son, after being released from the hospital, gradually stopped taking antidepressants too. He still struggles with depression, and he smokes more marijuana than Phil would like. But he is healthy enough to be starting college this fall.

http://chronicle.com/article/Are-Psychiatric-Medications/128976/

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Paxil and Prozac Linked to Risk of Heart Birth Defects

admin — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:27:42 +0000

AboutLawSuits.com – June 27, 2011

According to Finnish researchers, doctors should avoid prescribing Paxil or Prozac to pregnant women, due to the potential risk of heart birth defects.

In a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology medical journal, researchers found that side effects of Prozac and Paxil use during pregnancy may increase the risk of women giving birth to children with congenital heart defects. Both drugs belong to a class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Researchers looked at national data from Finland on 635,583 births occurring between 1996 and 2006, and found that 31 out of every 10,000 women who took Paxil during pregnancy gave birth to children with right ventricular outflow tract defects that affect blood flow from the right chambers of the heart to the rest of the body, more than four times the frequency of births among women who did not take Paxil. For those who took Prozac, 105 babies born out of every 10,000 had isolated ventrical septal defects; a hole between the left and right sides of the heart, which was more than double the rate of babies born to women who did not take the drug.

The researchers also found that women who took any SSRI antidepressant during pregnancy were more than twice as likely to give birth to a child with a neural tube defect; 22 out of every 10,000 newborns, as compared to 9 out of every 10,000 newborns born to women who did not take any SSRI during pregnancy.

SSRIs are a relatively new class of antidepressants, which help reduce symptoms of depression by preventing certain nerve cells in the brain from re-absorbing the chemical serotonin. These drugs are commonly used by millions of Americans with depression.

Although the drugs have been found to cause fewer side effects than older anti-depressants, research has shown that users of the drugs could also face an increased risk of suicides, and use during pregnancy has been linked to a risk of birth defects, especially among users of Paxil.

Prozac (fluoxetine) is marketed by Eli Lilly and is approved for the treatment of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other psychiatric problems. In 2007 there were more than 22 million Prozac prescriptions in the United States.

Paxil (paroxetine) is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor prescribed to treat depression. Approved in 1992, it has become one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States, with sales of just under $1 billion in 2008.

In December 2005, the FDA issued an alert about the risk of birth defects from Paxil after studies showed the drug could increase the risk of the heart defects when taken during the first three months of pregnancy. At that time, the agency also required GlaxoSmithKline to update the warning label to include information about the risk of birth defects from Paxil side effects.

The company reportedly agreed to settle hundreds of Paxil heart birth defect lawsuits last year. The Paxil lawsuits were filed by parents who say that the use of the antidepressant during pregnancy caused persistent pulmonary hypertension in newborns (PPHN) and other birth defects. The lawsuits claimed that the company failed to warn consumers and doctors that use of Paxil during pregnancy could lead to congenital heart defects in newborns. The lawsuits also claimed that the company purposefully hid test results that would have revealed the side effects of Paxil and misled doctors.

http://www.aboutlawsuits.com/paxil-prozac-birth-defect-study-19139/

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The Problem With Rehab: Medicalizing Drug Addiction

admin — Sun, 22 May 2011 12:27:34 +0000

ABC News

by STEFAN P. KRUSZEWSKI, M.D.

"clients are continuing to rely heavily on pills to combat their anxieties, mood changes and addiction. "

In my specialty as an addiction psychiatrist, I have often advocated for residential treatment when unremitting drug and alcohol problems persist because other, less intensive, services have failed. That may soon change.

Over the past two years, I’ve witnessed a worrisome trend: the medicalization of addictions. Some of this makes no sense to me. Let me explain.

There have always been drug treatments for acute detoxification of drug and alcohol problems. The drugs have changed over the years, but the concept of providing a brief period of drug stabilization to prevent seizures or delirium or to mitigate psychosis has gone one unabated.

For instance, barbiturates were once used to minimize alcoholic delirium, but the barbiturates were replaced by benzodiazepines and, although still commonly in use, the benzodiazepines have been more recently supplanted or co-administered with anti-seizure drugs, like valproex or gabapentin. The endpoint has largely been the same: we will stabilize the patient over an acute period of rapidly changing health conditions (sweating, diarrhea, pulse, blood pressure, temperature, pain) and, once the detoxification has been successfully completed and the patient is comfortable and alert, we will begin a process of education and behavioral health techniques to foster a hoped-for drug free recovery state.

That is changing, however, in certain facilities in ways that I believe are destructive and counter-productive.

Two cases serve as illustration: I’m asked to review the medical necessity and reimbursement for care provided in a high profile and nationally-acclaimed drug rehab. The case is of a 20-year-old male from the northeastern United States who is addicted to a drug, methadone (an opioid agonist replacement medicine) and alprazolam, a benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drug. He enters treatment and spends 29 days in rehab, where he is provided buprenorphine (a partial opioid agonist replacement drug for opioid dependence) in decremented detox and maintenance for the duration of his stay and clonazepam (used as a substitute for his alprazelom addiction). He is discharged with the recommendation and prescription to return home and continue methadone and clonazepam.

That’s worth repeating. The patient is discharged to continue the same addictive drug for which he was admitted and a longer-acting (and still habit-forming) benzodiazepine drug to replace his other anti-anxiety medication. And with a price-tag of nearly $40,000.

Separately, I’m asked to review, for medically necessity and reimbursement purposes, the care of a 53-year-old woman. Like the young man in the above synopsis, she enters a world-class drug rehab in Florida, but this time for alcoholism. At the time of admission, she is also taking an SSRI antidepressant and a benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drug.

She spends 27 days in the facility. At various times during her admission, not unlike many individuals being weaned off alcohol, she complains of mood fluctuations, anxiety, sleeplessness and body aches. At the time of discharge, she has been taking — and she is recommended to continue to take — seven drugs: citalopram, an SSRI antidepressant; bupropion, an SNRI antidepressant; a small dose of an antipsychotic, aripiprazole, to augment the antidepressant effects of her two different antidepressants; a small dose of thyroid supplement, thyroxine, to do the same; gabapentin, an antiseizure medicine and clonazepam, both prescribed to decrease her anxiety; and carisoprodol, a centrally-acting anti-muscle spasm drug to minimize her musculoskeletal discomfort.

Capsulizing the above: A woman with alcohol dependence on one drug for depression is treated in rehab for almost a month (at a cost of a little more than $45,000) and is discharged on seven drugs, including not one, but two (clonazepam and carisoprodol) with significant habit-forming and addiction-enhancing characteristics.

Message to substance providers: We have a problem. Although addiction experts may justify these “treatments” because education and solace is provided to the patients, I believe that this mocks the purpose of (the very important and necessary) addiction treatment. There is little, if any, harm reduction, because the clients are prescribed the same or other addictive compounds during and after rehab. The clients are also prescribed new drugs, particular in the latter case of the alcoholic woman, whose potential for drug-drug interactions and future adverse events cannot be accurately predicted.

The clients are receiving expensive inpatient care for services and treatment that could easily be managed in cheaper and less-acute-care outpatient settings, like intensive outpatient or partial hospital programs. And, most importantly, the clients are continuing to rely heavily on pills to combat their anxieties, mood changes and addiction.

Problem? Relying on pills got them to rehab in the first place. So what’s the point of attending and paying for — or charging a commercial insurance carrier, Medicare or Medicaid, or any other third-party payer — for an expensive retreat that leaves you in virtually the same mental place, or worse, than you started? Not that much.

Dr. Stefan Kruszewski is an addiction psychiatrist and CEO of Kruszewski & Associates, a Harrisburg, Pa., company that focuses on health care and financial fraud.

http://abcnews.go.com/ad/gmaintroad.html?goback=http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/addiction-treatment-medicalization-wrong-approach/story?id=13642451

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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

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:49:52 +0000

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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US Soldiers’ Suicides Caused by Prescription Drugs?

admin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:29:51 +0000

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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Doctor: Paxil “Especially Notorious” for Causing Withdrawal

admin — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:41:59 +0000

Note from CCHR: To see the 42 international warnings/studies on Paxil visit our psychiatric drug side effects search engine http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/drug_warnings.php or watch this video on Paxil causing addiction/withdrawal featuring attorney Karen Barth Menzies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpex0n0DXuc

Lawyers and Settlements

October 9, 2010

Atlanta, GA: There are a number of Paxil side effects associated with the antidepressant, and some patients continue to experience these effects even after discontinuing use of the drug.

Dr. Charles Raison, an associate professor at Emory University, wrote in response to a reader’s question on CNN that about 20 percent of patients experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking antidepressants.

Raison says that the common symptoms of antidepressant withdrawal include dizziness, anxiety, sensory disturbances and flu-like symptoms.

According to Raison, coming off the medication slowly is important.

“The trick to lowering your chances of having these symptoms is to reduce the dose of the antidepressant as slowly as possible,” he writes. “For people who are really sensitive it can take months to get off an antidepressant slowly enough to avoid withdrawal symptoms.”

Raison also said that Paxil is “especially notorious for causing withdrawal problems” because of its short half-life in the body.

Paxil is also associated with a number of side effects for those currently taking the medication, including birth defects and depression.

Read the rest of the article here http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/15134/paxil-birth-defects-side-effects-pph-7.html

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Drug Industry’s Boast of Ethics Rings Hollow

admin — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:17:09 +0000

The Star Phoenix, September 16, 2010

by Mark Lemstra

Russell Williams, president of Canada’s Pharmaceutical Companies, recently wrote an opinion piece criticizing a series of articles that I wrote on antidepressants. His article was headlined: “Drug industry ethical standards high.”

Curiously, Williams did not address my concern that a review from the United States Food and Drug Administration found that antidepressants not only have no benefit in children, but are associated with a 50 per cent increase in suicidal behaviour.

Regrettably, these negative results were buried by the drug companies. In an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, titled Drug Company Experts Advised Staff to Withhold Data about SSRI Use in Children, and a separate editorial in The Lancet, titled Depressing Research, the authors express regret that drug companies put profits ahead of preventing suicides among children.

I fail to see the high ethical standards in these actions. In fact, it would be easy to list all of the unethical activity by pharmaceutical companies, but this would take a whole book. Instead, let’s discuss one specific example in detail.

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/health/Drug+industry+boast+ethics+rings+hollow/3532133/story.html

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