CCHR calls for the U.S. to adopt the recent UK recommendation to reduce antidepressant use. With over 45 million Americans currently on these drugs, which have been linked to suicide and withdrawal effects, CCHR urges immediate action.

By CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
June 7, 2024

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health industry watchdog, says the U.S. government should adopt similar measures as that recently recommended in the United Kingdom—to “de-prescribe” or reduce antidepressant and other psychotropic drug use. The high patient numbers taking antidepressants in England and the associated costs to its health services prompted the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), an informal cross-party of legislators that reviews concerning issues, to issue a report in May on “Shifting the Balance Towards Social Interventions: A Call for an Overhaul of the Mental Health System.” One of the report’s key recommendations is the need for drug de-prescribing services, as well as a national withdrawal support helpline.[1]

CCHR highlights the $8.1 billion budget for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which allocates $601 million for suicide prevention services. However, mounting evidence suggests that antidepressants may actually increase the risk of suicide. Additionally, the difficulty of withdrawing from these drugs can compel individuals to continue taking them, preventing them from seeking more effective help. CCHR collected statistics from IQ Via showing 45.2 million Americans take antidepressants, of which 2.1 million are ages 0-17.[2]

In May, the UK’s medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), announced it is to review over 30 common antidepressants due to potential links to suicide and self-harm, with over 515 death alerts linked to these drugs since 2000.[3]

Australian psychiatrist Niall McLaren, part of the global Critical Psychiatry movement, supports the APPG report given the lack of effective results from antidepressants. He writes, “After spending the stupefying sum of nearly a quarter of a trillion pounds [about U.S. $318 billion] over the past 40 years or so, there’s been no measurable improvement. One by one, [the APPG] list the many failings of the current approach to mental health.” For example:  

• While about 20% of British adults take antidepressants, the suicide rate is going up.
• The prevalence of mental disorder is the same or worse after 40 years, yet the rate of disability from mental health diagnoses has trebled.
• Modern psychiatric drugs are many times more expensive than the older, “first generation” of psychotropics yet they are no better in terms of outcome and have just as many serious to dangerous side effects.[4]

A study published in BJPsych Open supports the idea that increased antidepressant prescribing is not associated with a reduction in depressive symptoms and, indeed, “treatment with antidepressants is unlikely to be effective.”[5]

A 2024 study published in the American Academy of Pediatrics reported antidepressant prescriptions for young adults and teens between 2016 and 2022 increased by nearly 64% from 2020 onward. This rate rose 129.6% and 56.5% faster after March 2020 for female teens ages 12–17 and 18–25.[6] Yet, the Food and Drug Administration has a black box high-risk warning against prescribing antidepressants to this age group because of the risk of inducing suicide.

Peter C. Gøtzsche, a Danish physician and medical researcher, wrote that “Depression drugs kill many people,” and the risk increases with polypharmacy, which he says, is common in psychiatry. It “increases the risk of dying. As an example, the Danish Board of Health has warned that adding a benzodiazepine [sedative] to a neuroleptic increases mortality by 50-65%.”[7]

A cohort study of 136,293 American postmenopausal women (age 50-79) also found that depression drugs were associated with a 32% increase in all-cause mortality.[8]

Long-term antidepressant use can produce physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms, making it difficult, or nearly impossible, for patients to stop taking them. Research presented at this year’s European Psychiatric Congress showed there are major problems related to withdrawal. Dr. Mark Horowitz, a Clinical Research Fellow in Psychiatry in England, explained how withdrawal effects can last for more than a few days or weeks after the drug is out of the system. “It’s not the time taken for the drug to leave the system that determines the length of the effect. It’s the time taken for the system to readapt to the drug not being there that explains how long withdrawal symptoms can last for.”

Withdrawal symptoms include dizziness, insomnia, impaired concentration, fatigue, headache, tremor, tachycardia, nightmares, depressed mood, irritability, anxiety, and panic attacks.

A Lancet Psychiatry study published this month also points to antidepressant users experiencing these withdrawal effects that pharmaceutical companies disingenuously call “discontinuation syndrome.” The review of 79 studies covering 21,002 patients reveals that 15% suffered these effects, or one in six to seven patients. However, “some reviewers estimate this can occur in the majority of patients (56% [range 14–86%]), with almost half of cases classed as severe.”[9]

Horowitz further explains: “We know that these are symptoms of withdrawal and not just relapse (a return of someone’s underlying condition), because they have been found in studies of people who stopped antidepressants with no underlying mental health conditions.”

Horowitz noted that studies show that while 30% of those taking the drugs were suicidal before starting medication, 60% became suicidal after stopping; therefore, 30% of consumers will experience being suicidal for the first time in their lives because of withdrawal effects.

A little-known side effect is akathisia, a movement disorder usually caused by a psychoactive substance in which the individual may experience an intense sensation of unease or an inner restlessness. Dr. Horowitz calls the experience, “horrible.” “People are pacing, they feel agitated, they feel terror. A lot of them are talking about suicide because it is a state in which you get no rest and no calm, often for weeks and sometimes longer.”[10]

He advised to minimize the risk of withdrawal effects, the best approach is to gradually taper off the drugs over months or sometimes years, and at a rate that the individual user can tolerate. CCHR stresses this should be done under medical supervision.

Dr. Horowitz was one of the researchers of the groundbreaking July 2022 review of 17 studies that looked at the decades-old theory that depression is caused by low serotonin and found there was “no consistent evidence” of “an association between serotonin and depression.”[11] For decades, the chemical imbalance myth propelled millions to take antidepressants, driving $15 billion a year in global antidepressant sales.[12]

The APPG concluded that the failure of the mental health system is due to the near-universal reliance on the “biomedical model.” Dr. McLaren writes: “This conceptualizes mental disorder as a matter of individual pathology caused by genetic disturbances of brain function, but the report sees it as the problem, not the solution: The dominant biomedical model of mental health care has led to over-reliance on psychiatric drugs.” He candidly remarks: “When you look at the reality of the ‘mental health’ industry, the figures are damning, and the reason is … psychiatry.”[13]

In October 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a guidance on Mental Health, Human Rights, and Legislation, recommending that mental health legislation must “take a new direction away from the narrow traditional ‘biomedical paradigm’ that has contributed to coercive and confined environments in mental health services.”[14]

WHO/UNCRC says governments must provide services to help people withdraw safely from psychotropics, recommending, “The health authority shall report, on a regular basis, the availability of discontinuation programs for psychotropic drugs.”[15]

CCHR advocates for SAMHSA and state mental health funding to be directed toward services that help individuals safely withdraw from antidepressants and other psychotropic prescription drugs. CCHR further asserts that the current biomedical approach, which includes invasive and potentially harmful methods like electroshock therapy, should be replaced with safe alternatives. However, it stresses that the current marketing of psychedelic drugs as an alternative is simply moving from one bad treatment to another.  They call for a mental health system that does not rely on psychedelics or coercion.

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[1] Rachel Kelly, “Our mental health crisis won’t be solved by pills alone,” The New Statesman, 31 May 2024, https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/05/our-mental-health-crisis-wont-be-solved-by-pills-alone

[2] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/people-taking-psychiatric-drugs/;  https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/

[3] “Prozac one of 30 antidepressants probed by UK watchdog over links to suicide,” NZ News, 10 May 2024, https://nz.news.yahoo.com/prozac-one-30-antidepressants-probed-150843143.html

[4] Niall McLaren, M.D., “Beyond Pills,” 28 May 2024, https://www.niallmclaren.com/p/beyond-pills; “Shifting the Balance Towards Social Interventions: A Call for an Overhaul of the Mental Health System,” Beyond Pills All-Party Parliamentary Group, May 2024, https://beyondpillsappg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Beyond-Pills-APPG-Shifting-the-Balance-Report-2024-1.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[5] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/03/01/overdosing-americas-youth-dangerous-trend-in-antidepressant-prescribing/, citing: “The impact of antidepressants and human development measures on the prevalence of sadness, worry and unhappiness: cross-national comparison,” BJPsych Open. Nov. 2023, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10594156/

[6] Kaitlan Vogel, “Antidepressant use spiked during COVID-19,” Healthline, 28 Feb. 2024, https://www.healthline.com/health-news/antidepressant-prescriptions-increasing-young-people

[7] Peter C. Gøtzsche, “Prescription Drugs Are the Leading Cause of Death,” Brownstone, Institute, 16 Apr. 2024, https://brownstone.org/articles/prescription-drugs-are-the-leading-cause-of-death/

[8] Peter C. Gøtzsche, “Prescription Drugs Are the Leading Cause of Death,” Brownstone, Institute, 16 Apr. 2024, https://brownstone.org/articles/prescription-drugs-are-the-leading-cause-of-death/, citing Smoller JW, Allison M, Cochrane BB, et al. Antidepressant use and risk of incident cardiovascular morbidity and mortality among postmenopausal women in the Women’s Health Initiative study. Arch Intern Med 2009;169:2128-39

[9] Jonathan Henssler, M.D., et al., “Incidence of antidepressant discontinuation symptoms: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” Lancet Psychiatry, 5 June 2024, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(24)00133-0/fulltext

[10] Torsten Hjelmar, “Users of Antidepressants may suffer due to Doctors not knowing new Research and Guidelines,” The European Times, 11 May 2024, https://europeantimes.news/2024/05/users-of-antidepressants-may-suffer-due-to-doctors-not-knowing-new-research-and-guidelines/

[11] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/depression-antidepressants-review-serotonin-1.6548219

[12] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/03/01/overdosing-americas-youth-dangerous-trend-in-antidepressant-prescribing/, citing: “A $15 billion hustle? Expert says pill-prescribing psychiatrists KNEW that depression isn’t caused by low serotonin levels – as landmark study shows that pricy drugs do little to help mental health,” Daily Mail, 21 July 2022, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11035903/Expert-says-psychiatrists-KNOW-theory-low-serotonin-levels-cause-depression-incomplete.html

[13] Niall McLaren, M.D., “Beyond Pills,” 28 May 2024, https://www.niallmclaren.com/p/beyond-pills; “Shifting the Balance Towards Social Interventions: A Call for an Overhaul of the Mental Health System,” Beyond Pills All-Party Parliamentary Group, May 2024, https://beyondpillsappg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Beyond-Pills-APPG-Shifting-the-Balance-Report-2024-1.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[14] https://www.cchrint.org/2023/09/18/who-guideline-condemns-coercive-psychiatric-practices/; World Health Organization, OHCHR, “Guidance on Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation,” 9 Oct. 2023, p. xvii, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/WHO-OHCHR-Mental-health-human-rights-and-legislation_web.pdf

[15] https://www.cchrint.org/2023/09/18/who-guideline-condemns-coercive-psychiatric-practices/; World Health Organization, OHCHR, “Guidance on Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation,” 9 Oct. 2023, pp. 57-58, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/WHO-OHCHR-Mental-health-human-rights-and-legislation_web.pdf