Posts Tagged ‘Suicide’

Before you take that antidepressant, visit website feauturing 3,500 crimes/suicides related to antidepressant use

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Martha Rosenberg
OpEdNews.com
January 3, 2010

With our national love of drugs, sex, celebrities and violence you’d think SSRIstories.com would be more popular.

The 12-year-old web site lists 3,500 crime related news reports linked to the use of SSRI antidepressants with celebrities like Wynona Ryder, Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Anna Nicole Smith, Heather Locklear, Glen Campbell, Carrie Fisher, Sharon Osbourne, Phil Hartman, Princess Di’s driver, Patrick Swayze’s Sister, O.J. Simpson and the Crown Prince of Nepal generously sprinkled in.

You can search and sort stories by drug–Lexapro, Celexa, Luvox, Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil and the related Effexor and Cymbalta–date, location, type of violence and the articles about school shootings, famous cases and legal cases won on SSRI defenses are color coded.

You don’t even have to read the whole article.

SSRIstories founder and manager Betty Henderson pulls out and boldfaces the story’s drug-related citation like Lynyrd Skynyrd harmonicist Mike Caruso’s remark that, “the doctor put me on Cymbalta. That turned me manic,” and Oklahoma murder suspect Ronson Bush’s remark, “I killed my friend when I took these. I’m not going to take them,” when offered SSRIs at the Grady County Jail.

Read entire article: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Before-You-Take-That-Antid-by-Martha-Rosenberg-100103-313.html

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Glaxo Said to Have Paid $1 Billion in Paxil Suits Including About $390 Million for Suicides/Attempted Suicides Linked to Drug

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk
Bloomberg.com
December 14, 2009

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has paid almost $1 billion to resolve lawsuits over Paxil since it introduced the antidepressant in 1993, including about $390 million for suicides or attempted suicides said to be linked to the drug, according to court records and people familiar with the cases.

As part of the total, Glaxo, the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, so far has paid $200 million to settle Paxil addiction and birth-defect cases and $400 million to end antitrust, fraud and design claims, according to the people and court records.

The $1 billion “would be worse than many people are expecting,” said Navid Malik, an analyst at Matrix Corporate Capital in London. “I don’t think this is within the boundaries of current assumptions for analysts.”

The London-based company hasn’t disclosed the settlement total in company filings. It has made public some accords. Glaxo’s provision for legal and other non-tax disputes as of the end of 2008 was 1.9 billion pounds ($3.09 billion), according to its latest annual report. This included all legal matters, not just Paxil. The company said 112 million pounds of this sum would be “reimbursed by third-party issuers.”

Read entire article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aWNKB4YPWjIY

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Father sues Harvard over son’s suicide – 3 psychiatric drugs prescribed him were all documented to cause suicide

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Thom Weidlich
Bloomberg.com
December 5, 2009

The father of a Harvard College sophomore who killed himself in 2007 sued the school’s president and fellows for wrongful death, alleging the institution’s health service prescribed drugs known to increase suicide risk.

John B. Edwards II of Wellesley, Massachusetts, sued on behalf of the estate of his son, known as Johnny, in state court in Middlesex County on Dec. 2. A doctor and nurse employed by Harvard simultaneously prescribed skin, antidepressant and attention-deficit disorder drugs linked to suicide and other side effects, according to the complaint.

“Three of these drugs have risks associated with heightened suicidality,” the father’s lawyer alleged in the complaint. “All four drugs have significant side effects.”

Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the undergraduate school of Harvard University, whose $26-billion endowment is the world’s largest academic fund.

“The care he received at Harvard University Health Services was thorough and appropriate and he was monitored closely by its physicians and allied health specialists,” Harvard said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “Similar complaints previously have been filed with the Board of Registration in Medicine, the Board of Registration in Nursing and the Board of Registration in Pharmacy, and in all three instances the complaints were dismissed upon review.”

Read entire article:  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aIlr9YQwCSnY

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ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION: U.S. Senator asks Pentagon how many troops are on antidepressants

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Maryland AP News

A Maryland senator has asked the Pentagon for information on how many troops in war zones have been prescribed antidepressants while they were deployed.

Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin sent a letter Tuesday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressing concern about how antidepressant drugs are being administered troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cardin said he wanted to determine if the Defense Department is prescribing antidepressants appropriately and was concerned that there may be a connection between the use of those medications and the suicide rate among troops.

Read entire article: http://wjz.com/wireapnewsmd/Md.senator.asks.2.1304449.html

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In wake of shootings: Read what psychiatrist Peter Breggin said about psych drugs/military/violence & drug withdrawal

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

Dr. Peter Breggin
The Huffington Post
June 20, 2009

Here are the starting facts: Death by suicide is at record levels in the armed services. Simultaneously the use of antidepressant drugs is also at record levels, including brand names like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and Lexapro. According to the army, in 2007 17% of combat troops in Afghanistan were taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills. Inside sources have given me an even bleaker picture: During Vietnam, a mere 1% our troops were taking prescribed psychiatric drugs. By contrast, in the past year one-third of marines in combat zones were taking psychiatric drugs.

Are the pills helping? The army confirms that since 2002 the number of suicide attempts has increased six-fold. And more than 128 soldiers killed themselves last year.

One theory states that the increased prescription of drugs is a response to increased depression among the soldiers. In reality, the use of psychiatric drugs escalates when, and only when, drug companies and their minions target new markets. In this case, the armed services have been pushing drugs as a cheap alternative to taking genuine care of the young men and women in our military. Instead of shortening tours of duty, instead of temporarily removing stressed-out soldiers from combat zones, and instead of providing counseling–the new army policy is to drug the troops.

Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/antidepressants-cause-sui_b_218465.html

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Was Fort Hood Psychiatrist/Shooter on drugs that cause homicidal/suicidal reactions? 16% of psychiatrists “self medicate”

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Richard Balon
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
Vol. 76, No. 5, 2007

Abstract

Background: Self-treatment and treatments of friends or relatives is a controversial issue, tolerated by some and discouraged by others, including professionals. The author studied the attitudes toward self-treatment of depression among psychiatrists in Michigan. Method: A questionnaire asking whether the psychiatrist would or did self-treat for depression was mailed to 830 members of the Michigan Psychiatric Society. Results: The response rate was 68.3% (567 psychiatrists). Almost 43% of responders would consider self-medication or would self-medicate if afflicted with mild/moderate depression. Seven percent would self-medicate or consider self-medication for severe depression or if suicidal ideation became a component of one’s depression. In the past, 15.7% responders treated themselves for depression. Conclusion: These results suggest that a considerable number of psychiatrists would treat themselves for depression, possibly because of fear of stigma or fear of a permanent record, or other reasons.

Click here for article

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Before psychiatrists start vying for more $ to drug troops ask: Was Fort Hood, Texas shooter part of our medicated army?

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Mark Thompson
TIME
June 5, 2008

Seven months after Sergeant Christopher LeJeune started scouting Baghdad’s dangerous roads — acting as bait to lure insurgents into the open so his Army unit could kill them — he found himself growing increasingly despondent. “We’d been doing some heavy missions, and things were starting to bother me,” LeJeune says. His unit had been protecting Iraqi police stations targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, hunting down mortars hidden in dark Baghdad basements and cleaning up its own messes. He recalls the order his unit got after a nighttime firefight to roll back out and collect the enemy dead. When LeJeune and his buddies arrived, they discovered that some of the bodies were still alive. “You don’t always know who the bad guys are,” he says. “When you search someone’s house, you have it built up in your mind that these guys are terrorists, but when you go in, there’s little bitty tiny shoes and toys on the floor — things like that started affecting me a lot more than I thought they would.”

So LeJeune visited a military doctor in Iraq, who, after a quick session, diagnosed depression. The doctor sent him back to war armed with the antidepressant Zoloft and the antianxiety drug clonazepam. “It’s not easy for soldiers to admit the problems that they’re having over there for a variety of reasons,” LeJeune says. “If they do admit it, then the only solution given is pills.”

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Suicide Prevention Drug Pushing Racket – Part II by Evelyn Pringle

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Evelyn Pringle
NaturalNews.com
August 21, 2009

A recent study in the April 2009, Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety journal found no change in the suicide rate in teens as a result of the regulatory ban in the UK on the use of SSRI antidepressants with children under 18, which did result in a drastic reduction in SSRI use among kids.

“Anti-depressant use in under 18 year olds halved after the warnings,” Pulse Today reported on April 24, 2009.

The research team from the University of Bristol concluded that “there was no evidence of an overall effect on suicides of regulatory action to restrict prescribing of SSRIs to young people.”

Lead researcher, Dr Benedict Wheeler, told Pulse: “We found no clear evidence of a beneficial effect on population suicide rates. However, and equally importantly, we did not find evidence of an adverse effect on suicide rates either.”

“This is important, because many mental health workers and researchers have been concerned that reduced antidepressant prescribing to children might inadvertently lead to an increase in suicides,” he said.

Read entire article: http://www.naturalnews.com/026895_suicide_drugs_suicides.html

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Drugged to Death; Our Kids and Our Troops

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

By Jim Marrs
Investigative Journalist
New York Times bestselling author

Today, one of the biggest problems we have, and one of the things that shocks so many Americans, is the rise of teen suicides and the rise of school shootings. Yet all we hear from the corporate mass media on the shootings is “Well, we need to take the guns away.” Let me tell you something, I went to school in Texas. We took guns to school. Nobody shot anybody. So what’s changed? Drugs. Kids on psychiatric drugs. Nearly every school shooter in this country can be shown to have been involved with psychotropic drugs—either taking them at the time of the shootings, or what can be even worse, coming off of them. And teen suicides? Read the FDA black box warnings, these drugs can cause suicidal ideation. So logically, if kids are being drugged up with antidepressants, and if in fact teen suicides are rising, then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that we better stop drugging our kids to death.

Psychiatric drugs cause major changes in brain chemistry and in behavior. International drug regulators warn that the drugs we are doling out to kids can cause mania, psychosis, depersonalization, suicidal and even homicidal ideation. If we take a look at the school shooters that were under the influence of these drugs, you have to wonder why there hasn’t been a federal investigation into the correlation between drugs documented to cause violence and suicide and kids taking them who then became violent and suicidal. If even a handful of these school shooters were found to be taking PCP or smoking crack we would have headline news announcing a causal relationship between illicit drug use and acts of violence. But because these kids are taking legal drugs, prescribed by a psychiatrist for an alleged mental disorder, something we use to refer to as “childhood,” the powers that be don’t think it merits an investigation. Well we are all aware of how much Pharma spends on lobbying efforts. Regarding corporate media I would venture a guess that the reason they haven’t taken on the issue is simple: Big Pharma is now one of, if not the largest, advertisers in the United States, with $5 billion a year spent on direct to consumer advertising.

The rise of drug-induced acts of violence and suicide isn’t limited to our schools. In January 2009 it was reported that more of our military died of suicide than of combat deaths. Why is that? Could it be because our military are getting pumped full of psychiatric drugs? What Time Magazine referred to as “America’s Medicated Army?” Well if we are “medicating” our troops with antidepressants and antipsychotics, drugs documented to cause suicidal reactions, let’s put 2 and 2 together and state the obvious—these drugs are minimally a contributing factor.

Many people don’t realize that psychiatry’s love affair with the military dates back more than 90 years; During World War I the biggest problem the German military had was desertions—people leaving the front lines of the War. So the Germans turned to psychiatrists who came up with a solution: Electroshock. Psychiatrists theorized that if the shock soldiers experienced due to the brutalities of war made them desert the front lines, then another kind of shock—electroshock—could get them to be good little soldiers and willingly return to combat. Maybe because electroshock wiped out their memory, or maybe because soldiers chose to face the front lines rather than have another 450 volts of current tear through their brain, it worked. Psychiatry had come up with a winning strategy for the military to deal with reluctant soldiers and since that time the love affair between the two entities has never waned.

Today there are mobile psychiatric units that travel with the troops to ensure they’re drugged up as needed. And though they are not yet employing electroshock, as more Americans are made aware that these psychotropic drugs are killing our troops, don’t be surprised if sometime soon you pick up a newspaper and find psychiatrists promoting a new cure for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; Electroshock.

Jim Marrs is an award-winning journalist and author. After graduating from the University of North Texas with a degree in journalism, Marrs worked for and owned several Texas newspapers before becoming an independent journalist/author. Marrs is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, the basis for the Oliver Stone film JFK, and Rule by Secrecy.

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“Antidepressant Romance Fuels Premedicated Murder” by Shane Ellison, Masters Degree in Organic Chemistry

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Shane Ellison
NewsWithViews.com
August 18, 2009

I wish medicine wasn’t so darn complicated. If it weren’t, people would see how Big Pharma cleverly plays prescription cupid to hook the masses into an antidepressant romance. Fueled by dreamy ads, sexy actors, and medical experts who get paid to give pharmaceutical fellatio, the romance has grown into a full-fledged orgy.

Antidepressants are among the best selling drugs, yet not one single diagnostic test supports their effectiveness. Romance makes for great business. But, are patients getting the love they deserve or are they facing another life threatening disaster akin to the Vioxx fiasco (killing an estimated 30,000 people who could have just used aspirin)? Perhaps the chemical facts behind antidepressants will give way to reality and help Americans sever ties to the deadly affair.

Life can be a bitch at times. Everyone knows it and Big Pharma profits from it. To answer our cries for happiness, they sell us a slew of molecules ripe with supposed happy atoms purported to elicit wanton pleasure. It’s a pipe dream. Like a parent who doesn’t like their daughter dating drug reps or psychiatrists, the FDA started using Black Box Warnings to inform us that, “Antidepressants, compared to placebo, increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children in short term studies.” Psychiatrists quickly refuted this.

Read entire article: http://www.newswithviews.com/Ellison/shane150.htm

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