A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that SSRI’s like Paxil and Prozac are no more effective in treating depression than a placebo pill. That means they are 33 per cent effective, which is the percent of patients who will respond well to a sugar pill.
When residents at the Kern Valley Nursing Home complained or annoyed nursing director Gwen Hughes, prosecutors say she chemically restrained them with powerful anti-psychotic drugs. Her methods were so severe, three residents died. A Food and Drug Administration official estimates that unnecessary anti-psychotics kill 15,000 nursing home patients each year.
“It is a worrisome trend, partly because very little is known about the short-term, let alone the long-term, safety of these drugs in this age group,” said study author Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City.
Drugmakers encouraged doctors to prescribe these drugs for children before the FDA sanctioned their use for youngsters. This was particularly troubling, given that the drugs can cause diabetes and weight gain, side effects that prompted thousands of lawsuits claiming that drugmakers tried to hide evidence of these problems.
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.