PSYCHIATRIC INFORMATION

As psychiatry and the giant pharmaceutical companies fight to create a PR spin that antidepressants are harmless non-addictive drugs – the truth is beginning to come out showing the dangers of these drugs. Along with horrific side effects these drugs produce while you take them, they are now proving for some people to be nearly impossible to stop taking. As this article by the Associated Press proves many patients experience terrible antidepressant withdrawal so severe that some appear to be hooked on antidepressants for life.

The Associated Press article provides an example of one of the victims side effects and withdrawal symptoms. In the article they state:

After years of repeated warnings by groups like the Citizens Commission On Human Rights – the United States FDA & the drug company Glaxo Smith Kline (the maker of Paxil) have admitted that patients taking Paxil have a dramatic increase in suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide. This being such a horrible side effect you would think they should have told you this earlier when they first found out about it.

In fact, its an increase of over 600%!!! Would you like to take a drug that makes you six times more likely to kills yourself? How about it you are depressed and seeking help for suicidal thoughts already? Yet that’s exactly what Paxil is prescribed for!

The US FDA is now warning that Paxil, a commonly used antidepressant, causes birth defects in newborn children when their mothers take Paxil during pregnancy.

The Washington Post reveals that Paxil causes heart defects in pregnant mothers unborn children. Yet another reason for pregnant mothers to never take an antidepressant.

The Washington Post also reported that “an earlier study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the babies of mothers taking antidepressants were three times more likely to suffer from irritability, tremors and seizures in the weeks after birth”.

In a description that sounded more like a dungeon torture chamber this article covers the horrific abuse of patients in psychiatric hospitals in Turkey. The story also quoted a report investigating these human rights violations. The report included such comments as:

“Investigators observed children emaciated from starvation,” and “Staff reported children dying from starvation and dehydration.”

Patients are “subjected to treatment practices that are tantamount to torture,”

The group said electric shock therapy were “massively overused in Turkish psychiatric facilities in cases for which there is no clinically proven justification,” and that they were used as a form of punishment.

The drug manufacturer Eli Lilly is admitting today that their drug Strattera prescribed to treat ADHD and hyperactivity causes children to have suicidal thoughts. This is after the FDA requested that Eli Lilly provide the data that they apparently had not disclosed showing the link between suicide and this ADHD drug. After reviewing this information the FDA seems to have requested that Strattera carry a warning on it’s label.

Recently there has been a big push both nationally and at the local state levels to force mental health screening of children in schools. Often this is to be done without parental consent. This is clearly a violation of our basic rights as parents. These screenings are also used to make referrals to psychiatric care and to label children with learning or psychiatric disorders.

I just found this press release about a man who after taking Zoloft for only a short time killed himself unexpectedly. Below are some clips about his suicide and how it related to recent warnings that antidepressants cause suicide.

Russell Johnson, a 54-year-old Nebraska native who spent much of his life in O’Neill, survived cancer surgery two years ago and was talking about retiring, maybe moving to South Dakota.

And then one summer day, without warning, he left the job he’d had for 28 years, went home for lunch and shot himself, according to family members.

I just ran across this article covering Adderall Deaths and the decision of Canadian health agency to pull the drug from the market.

The author covers the curious point of why does the FDA continue to allow this drug to be prescribed to children when it has been linked to the deaths of 20 children. In the article he says:

“This uncovers a fault in the regulation of pharmaceutical drugs: the absence of ongoing monitoring of the “performance” and especially the safety of drugs. Once approved, it appears that the FDA relies on voluntary reporting by the drug companies to tell it about side effects - a bit like having the fox guard the hen house.”

In a time of loss and destruction some people will try to take advantage of the weak and needy. The hurricane Katrina victims are about to find this out first hand. I have been recently seeing media reports that psychiatry and the big drug companies are gearing up to dish out millions of dollars of “free” psychiatric care and harmful psychiatric drugs to help “treat” the victims. Ultimately what the victims will discover once hooked on these powerful mind altering drugs is that the side effects (like suicide and psychosis) are awful and withdrawal from them is almost impossible.

In a review of the book “Selling Sickness: How Drug Companies are Turning Us All into Patients” Phil Shannon reports about the pharmaceutical industries efforts to turn every day problems into diseases “treatable” by drugs. All in the name of profit.

Thirty years ago, the retiring head of the Merck pharmaceutical company told Fortune magazine that he was distressed that the market for his company’s drugs was limited to only sick people. If he could make drugs for healthy people, he would be able to “sell to everyone�. That dream is now coming true.