Tag Archives: antidepressants

After surviving war in Iraq, U.S. troops now being killed by Big Pharma

They survived live fire, explosive devices, terror attacks and grueling desert conditions. But upon returning home to seek treatment for the mental anguish that too often accompanies war, U.S. soldiers are now being killed by the pharmaceutical industry in record numbers.

A recent example is found with the late Senior Airman Anthony Mena, who returned home from Baghdad only to be killed by a toxic cocktail of prescription medications in his apartment in the USA. As the New York Times reports, a toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood

Psychiatric News — Antidepressants/Antismoking Drugs Linked to Violent Behavior

A link between several types of psychotropic medications and violent behavior toward others has been documented in a recent study.

The medications most strongly linked to violent behavior were the smoking-cessation aid varenicline and antidepressants, regardless of class.In a study published in the December 15, 2010, PloS One, the researchers used 2004 to 2009 data from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System. They found that during the study period, 780,169 serious adverse events of one kind or another had been reported for 484 drugs, and that of those serious adverse events, 1,937 had been acts of violence. They defined a violent event as any case report containing one or more of the following items: homicide, physical assault, physical abuse, homicidal ideation, or violence-related symptom, but not more ambiguous descriptions such as crime, aggression, belligerence, or hostility.

River fish loaded with Prozac: study

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.

Military’s drug policy threatens troops’ health, doctors say

Army leaders are increasingly concerned about the growing use and abuse of prescription drugs by soldiers, but a Nextgov investigation shows a U.S. Central Command policy that allows troops a 90- or 180-day supply of highly addictive psychotropic drugs before they deploy to combat contributes to the problem.

Drug formulary includes drugs like Valium and Xanax, used to treat depression, as well as the antipsychotic Seroquel, originally developed to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, mania and depression.

Dr. Grace Jackson, a former Navy psychiatrist, told Nextgov she resigned her commission in 2002 “out of conscience, because I did not want to be a pill pusher.”

Want to beat depression? Do what I did – just get a grip!

Depression is a pandemic, so it must have an underlying cause. I suggest it’s this: we have come to see negative emotions as an inconvenience or an illness. And our modern therapy culture is far too ready to give people labels for their distress — labels that make them feel mentally abnormal and unable to help themselves out of their troubles. Many people believe they suffer from ‘depression’ or ‘clinical depression’ simply because they are grieving over one of life’s maulings, don’t know what to do to feel better and think it might help if they had a label for their bad feelings. The label acts like a baby’s dummy or the security blanket of Charlie Brown’s best friend Linus in the Peanuts cartoon — he sucks his thumb and holds it to his ear n times of trouble, though it doesn’t actually serve any useful purpose. This label is not a cure. It might actually demoralise you and prolong the whole bitter episode.