The Dangers of Antidepressant Drugs

April 30, 2008

Today I want to show you some shocking information about antidepressant drugs, their overuse, and their danger when used on many segments of the population, including children and Lyme sufferers.

First, lets look at the use of antidepressant SSRI drugs in Lyme disease. Here is an excerpt on the topic from my book Lyme Disease and Rife Machines.

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Another problem experienced by almost all Lyme Disease sufferers, especially during herx reactions, is depression. In Lyme Disease, depression can be caused by a variety of physiological problems in the brain resulting from neurotransmitter imbalances, hormone imbalances, the physical presence of the infection, Borrelia neurotoxins, systemic metabolic disturbances, etc.

Here again the strategy of conventional doctors, often even LLMDs, is to pre-scribe chemical drugs that “alleviate” depression by changing brain chemistry. Selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are usually the drug of choice. These drugs have many unwanted side effects including the incidence of un-pleasant mental symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, hyperactivity, and more. These side effects are particularly undesirable for a Lyme Disease sufferer be-cause they already occur as part of the disease process itself!

And let us not forget that the FDA just issued the king of all paradoxical warn-ings for ALL anti-depressant drugs: The “black box” warning that states antidepressant drugs cause suicidal thoughts and ideation.

Another reason to avoid antidepressant drugs is that it is very important for Lyme Disease sufferers to be able to accurately assess their symptoms at any given time. Self-symptom assessment is one of the most effective tools in deter-mining which therapies work, which don’t, and what it feels like to get better or worse.

A Lyme Disease sufferer already has enough brain imbalances caused by the infection; taking a drug to induce more unnatural brain changes is obviously not a smart idea. Feeding brain chemistry-altering drugs to someone whose brain is already completely thrown off due to an infection can cause a confusing, danger-ous roller coaster ride of symptoms.

PEMF is helpful in treating the symptoms of many types of depression and in some cases can be a substitute for taking chemical antidepressants.

In a February 2004 Science and Society article, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak re-ported that severely depressed patients who were taking pharmaceutical drugs for treatment and underwent brain evaluation with MRI machines actually ended up experiencing dramatic improvement in their depression from the MRI machine itself. A patient who had been so depressed she could barely speak became ebullient after the 45-minute brain scan. Then a second patient, who seemed incapable of even a wan smile, emerged actually telling jokes. The article concludes that in theory, since the brain itself is an electromagnetic organ, stimulation with electromagnetic energy appears to be beneficial in depression and possibly other illnesses such as Schizophrenia and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

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Now, lets look at antidepressant drug use in children and other segments of the population. Here is a video preview of a film coming out later this year:

According to a recent news release:

ADHD has now become a potentially fatal disorder, if you accept the doctor’s recommendation to use Strattera. The day will come when Lipitor will also be found dangerous for subpopulations. Remember, it always seems that whenever they lower CHOLESTEROL in our bodies with some drug, there is always a provable increase in deaths from suicide and accidents!!

This problem will become more and more obvious when we remember that in the USA the admitted SECOND LEADING CAUSE of death is PRESCRIBED DRUGS! Those of us who understand how seldom the drug related contribution to death is appreciated would argue that in fact prescribed drugs are the leading cause of death in the US.

Garry F. Gordon MD,DO,MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
www.gordonresearch.com

Another news release:

New reports indicate that 55 children and teenagers have died while “treated” with the ADHD drug Strattera, in the last 5 years – 31 of them committed suicide. In total there are reports of 102 instances of death – 57 of them from suicide.

The regulatory agency in UK, The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency – MHRA, said they didn’t know of the number of persons who have died. They had to ask the manufacturer, Eli Lilly. And the answer from Lilly was that reports of 41 fatal cases existed in their data base for Strattera – but only 24 of these should be counted.

From Lilly’s answer it was clear that this was a sensitive question and the company wanted to convince the MHRA not to release the data. Lilly also wanted to have information in case the regulatory agency anyway decided to make the figures known – so that they could prepare answers for media questions.

And Lilly should get even more questions to answer as newly revealed and compiled data indicate that 102 persons have died while under Strattera “treatment” – including 55 children and teenagers.

A request for a full independent investigation into ALL instances of death in connection with Strattera has been submitted to the MHRA.

Janne Larsson
Reporter – investigating psychiatry

CNN concurs:

CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/01/04/prozac.documents/index.html

(CNN) — Internal documents from Eli Lilly and Co. appear to indicate that the drug maker had data more than 15 years ago showing that adverse-effect reports for Prozac were far more likely to list suicide attempts and violence than reports for other antidepressants.

One memo suggests a strategy for talking to doctors about unfavorable clinical trial data showing an increased risk of nervousness, anxiety, agitation, insomnia and sedation among patients.

Lilly officials said Tuesday numbers in the documents made public Monday represented not clinical trials but “adverse effects” reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company acknowledged the documents belong to Lilly.

The data were reviewed extensively at the time, said Dr. Charles Beasley of Lilly, but “we did not believe this data, for a number of reasons, were terribly useful or informative in terms of suggesting anything about a causal link between the drug and the adverse effects being reported.”

The documents were provided to CNN by the office of Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-New York, who has called for tightening FDA regulations on drug safety.

“The case demonstrates the need for Congress to mandate the complete disclosure of all clinical studies for FDA-approved drugs so that patients and their doctors, not the drug companies, decide whether the benefits of taking a certain medicine outweigh the risks,” he said.

One of the documents cites what a Lilly official told CNN were 14,198 adverse-effect reports in which 3.7 percent were suicide attempts by people on fluoxetine — the generic name for Prozac. That rate was far higher than those cited for any of four other commonly used antidepressants.

The document also states that 2.3 percent of those adverse-effect reports concerned psychotic depression while on the drug, more than double the next-highest rate of patients using any of the other antidepressants. In addition, the document said that 1.6 percent were reported incidents of hostility — more than double the rate reported on any of the other commonly used antidepressants.

And, the document says, 0.8 percent of adverse-effect reports concerned patients causing an intentional injury — eight times the rate associated with any of the other antidepressants.

Lilly officials said Prozac had only recently been approved in the United States at the time those data were compiled and as a result the drug was under close scrutiny by physicians, receiving more adverse effect reports than the older antidepressants. Such reports would be expected to decrease the longer any drug remains on the market, Beasley said.

Among the documents is a memo in which the author says the drug may produce nervousness, anxiety, agitation or insomnia in 19 percent of patients, and sedation in 13 percent of patients.

Beasley did not dispute the contents and said he likely authored the memo, titled “Activation and sedation in fluoxetine clinical trials.”

The memo said, “Several suggestions may be helpful in presenting this information to physicians,” including emphasizing that more patients on another class of antidepressants stopped taking their drugs than did those on Prozac.

The existence of the documents obtained by CNN and other documents was reported last week by the British Medical Journal. Its editors said the documents had been reported missing from a 10-year-old murder case, and that they had sent them to the FDA for review.

The journal said the documents disappeared in 1994, during the case of Joseph Wesbecker, a printing press operator who had killed eight people at his Louisville, Kentucky, workplace five years before, while taking fluoxetine. He then shot and killed himself.

Each of the four pages of the documents obtained by CNN is stamped “Confidential” and “Fentress,” the name of one of Wesbecker’s victims.

That stamp, said Lilly spokesman Morry Smulevitz, likely was used because the documents were provided to plaintiffs’ attorneys in the trial. He said the documents did not disappear, but have always been available.

In a civil suit against Eli Lilly, victims’ relatives contended the company had long known about the side effects of fluoxetine, including its alleged role in increasing a user’s propensity to violence.

Lilly initially won the case, but it was later forced to admit that it had made a secret settlement with the plaintiffs during the trial, which meant that the verdict was invalid, the journal said.

The FDA has recently warned that antidepressants can cause side effects such as agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, and aggressiveness.

In a statement posted on Lilly’s Web site, the company said, “To our knowledge, there has never been any allegation of missing documents from the Wesbecker trial or any other trial involving Lilly. Further, it has always been Lilly’s objective to publicly disclose data about both the safety and efficacy of fluoxetine.

“Lilly has made several requests to the BMJ to obtain copies of the supposed ‘missing’ documents; we still await these documents. We are surprised and concerned that a leading medical journal would not find it important to share these documents with us so that we could respond to the public in a meaningful way.”

Based on its history of having provided regulatory authorities with study results, the statement said, “Lilly believes that there is no new scientific information to review on this topic.”

About 54 million people worldwide have taken Prozac, Smulevitz said.

Also:

CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/06/antidepressants.suicide.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Using antidepressants increases the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior among young adults but lessens it for seniors, the Food and Drug Administration says.

The effects of antidepressants on adults from 25 to 64 were mixed, so much so that the FDA would only conclude the drug had a neutral effect on suicidal behavior for them but possibly lowers the risk of suicidal thoughts.

The information came from a mass review of 372 studies involving roughly 100,000 patients and 11 drugs, including Lexapro, Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil. The FDA analysis will be incorporated in future changes to antidepressant labels, but the agency wants to first discuss its plans with outside advisers.

In 2004, the FDA ordered strong warnings about the pediatric risk of suicidal tendencies put on antidepressant labels, and began analyzing whether adults face a similar risk, in part by requesting data from drug companies.

It now appears there is an increased risk among adults between the ages of 18 and 25.

“When results are analyzed by age, it becomes clear that there is an elevated risk for suicidality and suicidal behavior among adults younger than 25 years of age that approaches that seen in the pediatric population,” the FDA said in documents that were released ahead of the December 13 meeting of its psychopharmacologic drugs advisory committee.

The FDA’s analysis of the multiple studies suggests an age-related shift in the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior associated with treatment with the drugs. That means the risk appears to decline with age, even if the numbers do not explain why, the FDA said. The issue is complex to sort out because depression itself can lead to suicide.

All antidepressants now bear a so-called “black-box” warning about the increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents.

In May, GlaxoSmithKline and the FDA warned Paxil may raise the risk of suicidal behavior in young adults, too, and changed the drug’s label to reflect that risk.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.