SSRI’S AND SUICIDE
Bob Fiddaman has a post up today called MHRA Consultant Calls for Antidepressant Use in Young. The article highlights some of the dangers associated with SSRI’s, and also describes some of the attempts to suppress or discount the significance of this information.
Apparently in 2010, Swedish psychiatrist Göran Isacsson, MD, PhD, published a paper in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. The piece was titled Antidepressant medication prevents suicide in depression, and reported that of a group of 1,077 depressed people who had committed suicide, only 15.2% had measurable amounts of antidepressants in the blood stream at the time of the suicide.
This claim was challenged by Janne Larsson, a Swedish journalist, who asked to see the actual data. This request was consistently denied, but:
“After many legal wrangles the Karolinska Institutet were forced to admit in court that the actual figure quoted by Isacsson [15.2%] was way off the mark. The true percentage of those who had antidepressants in their blood when they committed suicide was a staggering 56%.”
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica retracted Isacsson’s article.
SSRI’S UNSAFE FOR CHILDREN
Bob also draws attention to a recent article in BMJ (open) Suicide-related events in young people following prescription of SSRIs and other antidepressants: a self-controlled case. One of the authors is Stephen J. W. Evans, BA, MScC, Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is an expert member of the Pharmacovigilance (Drug Safety) and Risk Assessment Committee at the European Medicines Agency.
Evans et al are proposing that MHRA’s position, that SSRI’s are not recommended for children, be re-evaluated. MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) is approximately the UK equivalent of the FDA.
SSRI’S AND BIZARRE BEHAVIOR
Bob then lists six fairly high profile incidents in which people who were taking SSRI’s went “crazy.”
“Depression did not cause any of the above bizarre incidents. Depression symptoms, do not include holding up garages, impersonating police officers, robbing banks, running around wielding an axe, stealing shopping trolleys and driving a stolen golf cart whilst firing random bullets on a golf course.”
and asks the question:
“Were they all misdiagnosed or did they all have a reaction to the medication [SSRIs] they were taking at the time?”
Bob’s article is detailed and compelling, and well worth reading. We, on this side of the debate, have made a great deal of headway, but pharma-psychiatry has not given up. There are still profitable markets out there, and thar’s gold in them thar pills.
We need to keep up the pressure; keep exposing the lies and the destructiveness. Please read Bob’s article, and pass it on.