Today the LA TIMES ran a large article

[Guest guest]

Antidepressant-Induced Violence in Youths Causes FDA to

Examine Link

 

As you have noticed on our site, the number of news articles coming out

since

the FDA hearing have increased tremendously! Updating you on all of

them is

impossible. But I will try to update you on the most important or Mark

will

post them on the front page of the site with all the latest news.

 

We also encourage you to search Google News for new articles we may

miss.

 

Today the LA TIMES ran a large article discussing the violence

associated

with the SSRIs. Note this statement from the article:

 

" And GlaxoSmithKline, during clinical tests on children with

obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression, found that the

percentage of children

taking Paxil who became hostile — which was defined as everything

from

angry thoughts to violent acts — ranged from 6.3% to 9.2%. For

those taking

the placebo, the range was zero to 1%, according to published

records. "

 

This is critical information that needs to get out. Once again I would

encourage you to get this information to your local papers, BUT once

again I stress

the urgency of including what this article left out:

 

#1 The warning that abrupt or rapid withdrawal (which most

doctors

continue to do) is VERY dangerous and can lead to even more serious

problems as

the patient can experience seizures, heart attack, suicidal or

homicidal

ideation along with psychosis, severe flu-like symptoms, electric

shocks, etc. from

coming down too rapidly. It is not worth taking the chance.

 

#2 Too many patients on these drugs will sit back and say, " Oh,

those

people were that way before the drug. The drug had nothing to do with

their

behavior and I am not that kind of person. "

 

But they need to understand that this is a drug reaction the patient

has no

control over. As I explain in detail in my book about SSRIs, Prozac:

Panacea or

Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare, when one reaches a point where the

REM

sleep has been repressed for long enough the body and brain WILL force

one into

REM while awake to compensate.

 

Add to that this: The impairment produced by the drugs of one's ability

to

metabolize serotonin produces nightmares. Then you, in that REM state -

the

dream state, begin act out that nightmare.

 

The only control one has over this type of response is whether or not

he

chooses to take the drug that produces the nightmares and represses REM

leading to

this end result.

 

We now know that 80% of the cases being diagnosed with this disorder

(RBD)

are on SSRIs. Another 6% are on the older antidepressants.

 

#3 Before these drugs hit the market this sleepwalk nightmare

known

as RBD was known as a " drug withdrawal state. " This will give you some

idea of

why it is so important to avoid serious withdrawal from an SSRI

antidepressant. I cannot tell you how often I hear from people that

they have tried and

tried to come off these drugs before, but after getting my tape on

withdrawal they

were FINALLY able to come off without serious problems and make it off

and

get well.

 

If 80% of the patients being diagnosed with this horrible sleepwalk

state in

which the large majority hurt themselves or someone else, how many more

will

experience RBD in withdrawal from SSRIs? It is clear to me that we can

expect a

high rate.

 

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, with all of this information coming out about

the

dangers of SSRIs, get this warning to people everywhere about the

dangerous

withdrawal! We have far too many horrible cases coming in already

without having

the numbers absolutely skyrocket due to the lack of warning about

withdrawal -

especially with children.

 

Ann Blake Tracy, PhD

 

Executive Director, International Coalition For Drug Awareness

Author: Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare

& audio tape or CD on safe withdrawal: " Help! I Can't Get

Off My Antidepressant! "

 

Order Number: 800-280-0730

Website: www.drugawareness.org

 

 

 

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-violent21mar21,1,3763470.

story?coll=la-headlines-nation

 

March 21, 2004

 

 

THE NATION

 

FDA Probes Downsides of Antidepressants

 

Cases of youths turning violent while taking the drugs lead panel to

examine

possible links to adverse behavior, especially in minors.

 

By Elizabeth Shogren, Times Staff Writer

 

WASHINGTON — A popular honors student who played on his varsity high

school

basketball and baseball teams in rural Washington state, Corey

Baadsgaard

nevertheless would come home complaining that no one liked him.

 

His family physician prescribed Paxil, a popular antidepressant. But

Baadsgaard, then 16, sunk deeper into depression. The doctor switched

him to a

different antidepressant, Effexor, and stepped up the dose over a

three-week period

from 40 milligrams to 300. The first morning Baadsgaard took 300

milligrams, he

felt rotten and went back to bed.

Â

Three years later, he said, he still has no memory of what happened

next: no

memory of taking a high-powered rifle into his third-period English

class, of

herding his classmates and teacher into a corner, of holding them at

gunpoint

for 45 minutes, of being persuaded by the principal into giving up his

gun.

 

He spent 14 months in a juvenile detention center.

 

Baadsgaard and his father believe the antidepressants made him suicidal

at

first, then violent. The Food and Drug Administration — based on such

anecdotal

evidence and the results of clinical trials — is reconsidering its

decision

not to require that doctors and parents be warned about possible side

effects of

the drugs known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

 

The link to suicide was the focus of an FDA advisory committee meeting

last

month. But testimony from Baadsgaard and others who had turned violent

while

taking the drugs suggested to several members of the committee that the

FDA

should look more broadly at the medications' adverse effects.

 

Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who has

studied

serotonin reuptake inhibitors, said Baadsgaard's story was plausible.

And he

wondered whether antidepressants could help explain the rash of school

shootings and murder-suicides over the last decade.

 

People who take antidepressants, Glenmullen said, can " become very

distraught…

.. They feel like jumping out of their skin. The irritability and

impulsivity

can make people suicidal or homicidal. "

 

Added Dr. David Healy, director of the North Wales Department of

Psychological Medicine: " What is very, very clear is that people do

become hostile on the

drugs. "

 

Glenmullen and Healy emphasized that parents, patients and doctors

should be

warned to watch for potentially dangerous reactions. However, both said

they

planned to continue prescribing the drugs to their patients.

 

The pharmaceutical companies and many doctors dispute the suggestion

that

antidepressants play a role in violent or suicidal acts.

 

Dr. Alastair Benbow, the European medical director for GlaxoSmithKline,

Paxil's manufacturer, refused to comment on specific cases. But he said

he didn't

believe there was " any clear evidence that Paxil is linked with

suicide,

violence or aggression — and certainly not homicide. "

 

The source of aggressive behavior, doctors and mental health groups

said, may

lie with the illness and not the treatment. And failing to treat

depression,

they explained, could have consequences as grave as treating it.

 

" Suicide and violence are well-recognized outcomes of depression

itself, "

Benbow said.

 

Although only one antidepressant, Prozac, is explicitly approved by the

FDA

for children, doctors routinely prescribe others to their young

patients. The

National Mental Health Assn. estimates that depression affects 1 in 33

children

and 1 in 8 adolescents; Healy believes young people account for 1

million of

the 20 million Americans who take antidepressants annually.

 

Most of the drugs carry no specific warnings about increasing the risk

of

suicide or violence.

 

But one company, Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth, warned doctors in a letter

last

summer that children taking Effexor in clinical trials had shown

increased

hostility and suicidal tendencies compared with children taking

placebos. The

company directed doctors not to prescribe Effexor to children.

 

And GlaxoSmithKline, during clinical tests on children with

obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression, found that the percentage

of children taking Paxil

who became hostile — which was defined as everything from angry

thoughts to

violent acts — ranged from 6.3% to 9.2%. For those taking the

placebo, the

range was zero to 1%, according to published records.

 

Benbow said the trials provided evidence of increased hostility in

children,

particularly among those younger than 12 and with obsessive-compulsive

disorder.

 

But Dr. Timothy Wilens, a pediatric pharmacologist at Massachusetts

General

Hospital in Boston, said that when he and his colleagues treated 82

children

with antidepressants for a variety of psychiatric problems, " there were

no

serious outcomes " like suicide or homicide. Although a quarter of the

patients had

adverse responses like agitation, aggression, increased depression or

irritability, Wilens said he didn't " know of any evidence that these

medicines turn

people into predators. "

 

The link between antidepressant reuptake inhibitors and violence came

under

scrutiny 10 years ago in a trial stemming from the case of Joseph

Westbecker,

who weeks after starting Prozac killed himself and eight others at a

Louisville, Ky., printing plant.

 

Twenty-seven survivors and relatives of the dead sued Eli Lilly,

Prozac's

manufacturer. The jury ruled in the company's favor after the

plaintiffs' lawyers

rested their case without presenting key evidence.

 

The judge suspected a behind-the-scenes deal between the drug company

and the

plaintiffs. An investigation showed that Lilly had given huge

settlements to

all the attack survivors and their lawyers.

 

In 1997, the judge changed the official record from a jury verdict in

Lilly's

favor to dismissal of a settled case. But the drug company had won the

case

in the eyes of public opinion.

 

" It's an example par excellence of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering

that the

companies have done repeatedly to obscure the side effects from public

view, "

Glenmullen said.

 

Drug companies have not always won.

 

A federal jury in Wyoming in 2001 found against SmithKlineBeecham (now

GlaxoSmithKline) in the case of Donald Schell, 60, who had been taking

Paxil for two

days when he killed his wife, daughter, granddaughter and himself. The

jury

found that Paxil could cause some people to become homicidal or

suicidal, and

that the drug was a " substantial " factor in the Schell murder-suicide.

The

company was ordered to pay relatives of the victims $6.4 million.

 

But most of the hundreds of cases against the makers of antidepressants

have

been dropped, dismissed or settled out of court. Only three have made

it to

trial, said Andy Vickery, a lawyer in the Schell case.

 

Vickery now represents defendants who have committed horrible acts

while

taking antidepressants. He recently decided to take on the case of

Christopher

Pittman, a youth who in 2001 killed his paternal grandparents and set

their South

Carolina house on fire. His trial is to begin in April.

 

At the FDA hearing, Pittman's father read a letter written by his son

while

he was in detention, about how while taking Zoloft he " took the lives

of two

people that [he] loved more than anything. "

 

While on the drug, Pittman wrote, he " hated the whole world for no

apparent

reason. " He got into fights and blew up at the smallest things. Things

kept

getting worse, he wrote.

 

" When I was lying in my bed that night, I couldn't sleep because my

voice in

my head kept echoing through my mind — telling me to kill them —

until I got

up, got the gun, and I went upstairs and I pulled the trigger, " wrote

Pittman,

who is now 14.

 

In Baadsgaard's case, the violent outburst was completely out of

character,

said his father, Jay Baadsgaard. Corey never got into fights, his

father said.

In their family, he was the " hugger. "

 

So, " as soon as it happened, we knew the drugs had to have something to

do

with it, " Jay Baadsgaard said. Corey stopped taking the drugs while in

juvenile

detention and has not had any behavioral problems since, his father

said.

 

Jay Baadsgaard remains angry at the drug companies, and said the drugs

should

be banned for children. " These drugs are hell, " he told the FDA panel

in

February.

 

Corey Baadsgaard didn't go that far. He said he believed depressed kids

should try counseling, and the drugs should be prescribed only as " the

last

resort. "

 

 

 

 

 

Erin M

Bksfld, Ca

 

Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.