A British woman died from a rare brain virus after being told by doctors that she was simply depressed because she had not had a baby, a coroner’s investigation heard.
Jane Harrop, 30, went to the hospital in February last year with severe head and neck pains after collapsing suddenly but was told she had a migraine, the Birmingham Mail reported Tuesday.
As we all know, three of anything makes a trend in journalism, and my trend alarm has just gone off concerning scary news about antidepressants. First, there was this review three weeks ago finding a “modest link” between antidepressants and cancer — though not in studies funded by the drug companies.
Then, author and former Globe staffer Alison Bass reported a week ago on her blog here that a researcher has found that serious flaws tended to skew the biggest study ever of antidepressants toward making the drugs appear more effective than they really are.
And now, Dr. Adam C. Urato, assistant professor of medicine at Tufts, has just sent over the latest: a paper in the current American Journal of Psychiatry that suggests that antidepressants increase the risk of stroke.
Adam Ant has spoken out against the use of anti-depressants which, according to the 80s pop icon, left him in “purgatory”. According to the singer they’re responsible for killing “the spirit” of people prescribed these “mind-altering drugs”. In order to tackle the issue, the 56-year-old believes he’ll have to become a “political animal”. In an interview with Music News, the singer, who has battled mental health problems and twice been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, explained his position: “I feel there is a very, very serious, serious problem in this country, or any country, with anti-depressants, and it affects everybody.
He continued: “It surrounds itself by being a taboo and by being a sense of guilt and by governments just kind of like phoning it in and giving people very, very strong mind-altering drugs, prescribed because they don’t kill you but they certainly kill the spirit and they kill your mentality.”
The fact that doctors take money from pharmaceutical companies happens to be old news. But this time around, the docs in question come from Stanford University. Previous news stories reported that doctors receiving pharmaceutical funding hailed from Harvard, the University of Miami, the Medical College of Georgia and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
More than a few of these doctors are psychiatrists who have received tax-supported, public National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Mental Health funding for clinical research, have participated in U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panels or have appeared on, or on behalf of, various not-for-profit psychiatric advocacy boards — some of which are heavily supported by the manufacturers of psychiatric medications.
Conventional antipsychotics, antidepressants and benzodiazepines often administered to nursing home residents are no safer than atypical antipsychotics and may carry increased risks, according to an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
Psychotropic medications are often used to manage behavioral symptoms in seniors, particularly people with dementing illnesses, with up to two-thirds of dementia patients in nursing homes prescribed these medications. However, the effectiveness of these drugs in this indication is unclear and important safety concerns exist, especially related to antipsychotics.