Tag Archives: antidepressants

Will we ever wake up to the deadly risks of happy pills?

Just as David Cameron launches his campaign to boost national happiness, along comes grim news for the 12 million Britons taking happy pills. London-based researchers have just announced that antidepressants raise the risk of fatal heart attacks. This research is only the latest wake-up call for a nation hooked on happy pills. Might we finally heed the warnings and shake ourselves out of our pharmaceutical stupor?

It is high time we did: a small mountain of studies shows that antidepressant drugs are largely ineffective. But more than that, they can ruin lives by creating chronic dependency and a grinding hopelessness that sometimes leads to self-neglect and death.

Anti-Depressant Blamed For Woman’s Suicide—Investigation Launched into the Drug

After a mother of two committed suicide because of being increasingly dependent on an anti-depressant, an investigation has been started into the drug.
Last year, on October 25, Yvonne Woodley, 42, was discovered by her husband Kevin hanging in the loft of the family home in Solihull, West Midlands. Before six months of her death, her Citalopram’s dosage was increased by six GPs she consulted. The drug had a reversed affect. It made her more disturbed and she often used to express her wish to die.

Nation of Pill Poppers: 19 Potentially Dangerous Drugs Pushed By Big Pharma

Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized 13 years ago, Americans have become a nation of pill poppers — choosing the type of drug they desire like a new toothpaste, sometimes whether or not they need it. But if patients want the drugs, doctors and pharma executives want them to have the drugs and media gets full page ads and huge TV flights (when many advertisers have dried up), is the national pillathon really a problem? Yes, when you consider the cost of private and government insurance and the health of patients who take potentially dangerous drugs like these.

Seroquel, Zyprexa, Geodon, atypical antipsychotics—Even though the antipsychotic Seroquel surpasses 71 drugs on the FDA’s January quarterly report with 1766 adverse events, even though it’s linked to eight corruption scandals, even though military parents blame Seroquel for unexplained troop deaths, it is the fifth biggest-selling drug in the world and netted AstraZeneca almost $5 billion last year. Atypicals were originally promoted to replace side-effect prone drugs like Thorazine but soon became pharmaceutical Swiss Army Knives for depression, anxiety, insomnia, bipolar and conduct disorders and other off label uses — and betrayed the same side effects as older antipsychotics. (Especially tardive dyskinesia-linked Abilify.)

5 Myths About Depression Treatments

Myth 1: Antidepressants Are More Effective than Placebos
Myth 2: If the First Antidepressant Fails, Another Antidepressant Will Likely Succeed
Myth 3: Electroconvulsive Treatment (ECT) is an Effective Last Resort
Myth 4: Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is the Best Psychotherapy for Depression
Myth 5: No Treatment for Depression Works

Parents Warn of Possible Psychiatric Drug Dangers

Darkness hung over Charleston Harbor as Matthew Steubing parked his Ford pickup truck on the aging bridge and left a note on the seat beside his Bible. He put on a life jacket and began to climb — up, up, into the span’s superstructure. Then, he jumped.

His parents were waiting for Matthew to arrive home in Winchester, Va., when they received the news on July 18, 2003. Their 18-year-old son plunged more than 160 feet from the Silas Pearman Bridge before slamming into the Cooper River. He was gone. “Our world blew apart,” his mother, Celeste Steubing, said. “We couldn’t imagine this happening because this wasn’t Matthew. … It made no sense.” Matthew, the youngest of six children, had been a vibrant kid, happy and full of life. But after a rough patch in his senior year of high school left him feeling down, a psychologist suggested he would benefit from the antidepressant drug Lexapro. He soon became withdrawn and anxious, his parents recalled during a recent visit to Charleston. Matthew committed suicide just nine weeks after starting on the drug. Only later did his family learn that antidepressants carry a heightened risk of suicide in children, the Steubings said. The Steubings have made it their mission to warn other parents about the hidden dangers of psychiatric drugs. To that end, Celeste Steubing was featured in the recently released documentary, “Dead Wrong,” produced by the Los Angeles-based Citizens Commission on Human Rights.