Monthly Archives: August 2009

“The Low-Down on Depression and Mental Illness” by Beverly Eakman, author & former Science Editor at NASA

Fox News just informed viewers that 27 million Americans are being treated for depression. The Washington Times ran a three-part series this week on the tsunami of mental illness in New Orleans four years after Hurricane Katrina, mostly depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A rash of additional articles has appeared nationwide on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), including one from last Sunday’s (August 2) Washington Times “Pure suffering for OCD Patients,” by Cheryl Weinstein. All news sources, regardless of political persuasion, lend the aura of medical legitimacy to these phenomena.

Suicide Prevention Drug Pushing Racket: Drug company shills publish bogus studies to promote antidepressants

Nearly every year, as part of the suicide prevention drug pushing racket, drug company shills publish a bogus study with claims that more people are dying from suicide due to a black box warning of an increased risk of suicide in young people on the labels of SSRI and SNRI antidepressants.

How Many of the 27 Million Americans on Antidepressants Actually Have Undiagnosed Thyroid Disease?

The use of antidepressants doubled between 1996 and 2005. Today, 10% of the population is taking antidepressant medication — that’s an estimated 27 million Americans. The question this raises is, how many of these people who have been diagnosed as “depressed” are actually hypothyroid, but haven’t been properly tested and diagnosed? How many of the people taking antidepressants may actually be misdiagnosed?

The real lowdown on Antidepressants: All Doped Up

Between 1996 and 2005, Reuters reports, the use of anti-depressants doubled to nearly 10 percent of the American population. In 1996, the figure was 13 million. Now, it’s 27 million. Those numbers, obviously, should cause some worry. For one thing, the suicide rate for middle-aged people is rising, Reuters reported, suicide being a risk factor in taking antidepressants. According to the Journal of Preventative Medicine, the suicide rate for middle-aged Americans increased 16 percent from 1999 to 2008, which roughly coincides with the massive increase in anti-depressant use.

PR Web: CCHRInt Announces FDA Reported Psychiatric Drug Side Effects Search Engine

For the first time the side effects of psychiatric drugs that have been reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by doctors, pharmacists, other health care providers and consumers have been decrypted from the FDA’s MedWatch reporting system and been made available to the public in an easy to search psychiatric drug side effects database and search engine. The database is provided as a free public service by the mental health watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR).