Tag Archives: antidepressants

50 to 79 Year-old Women on Antidepressants Are 45% More Likely to Have a Stroke and Are at 32% Higher Risk of Death

The study examined data from 136,293 study participants, aged 50 to 79, who were not taking antidepressants when they enrolled in the study, and who were followed for an average of six years. The researchers observed a significant difference in stroke rates: antidepressant users were 45 percent more likely to experience strokes than women who weren’t taking antidepressants. The study also found that when overall death rates (all-cause mortality) were compared between the two groups, those on antidepressants had a 32 percent higher risk of death from all causes compared with non-users.

Number of Prescriptions Written in UK for Antidepressants Nearly Equals Entire Population

Writing in the Guardian, Ed Halliwell examines the reason for this trend, noting that antidepressant prescriptions have increased more than threefold since the beginning of the 1990s, far outstripping the increase in the percentage of the population classified with a “common mental disorder.”

Depression as a mass marketing campaign: Drug companies profit as antidepressant prescriptions increase

Dr. Brad Hagen, a clinical psychologist and faculty member at the University of Lethbridge, the reason for the skyrocketing rates of depression are a matter of heated debate. “Depending on how you look at it, depression either started becoming more common or recognized, or it became marketed,” says Hagen. Sales of antidepressant drugs worldwide are in the tens of billions of dollars each year. Dr. Hagen says the number of sales is actually quite “mindboggling.”

Renowned researcher says public is mislead about antidepressants: they simply put people into drug induced states

Joanna Moncrieff of University College London wrote an opinion piece recently for the BBC. Contrary to the impression promoted by the psychiatric and drug industries, psychiatric drugs do not work by correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Duty to Warn: The Fort Hood Murders/Suicide and the Taboo Question – Were brain & behavior-altering drugs involved?

The huge missing “elephant in the room” is the high likelihood that Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan was medicated with potent brain-altering psychiatric drugs. These would be drugs that Dr. Hasan had easy access to and which he was probably prescribing widely to his psychologically traumatized soldier-patients, unaware of the serious dangers to them or to himself. These popular, aggressively marketed, highly profitable drugs are known to cause a number of serious adverse effects including hostility, suicidality, sleep alteration, depression, mania and psychotic episodes.