People often go through times of depression due to job loss, relocation, loss of a loved one, divorce, and many other situations that cause us to feel insecure. Our bodies do have natural ways of dealing with these emotions especially if people use healthy means including adequate sleep, exercise, healthy eating and emotional support from friends and family.
SSRI/SNRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors/Selective Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors) are antidepressant drugs that interfere with the body-minds normal functioning. These drugs are literally mind-altering. They can cause people to terminate loving, supportive relationships with family and friends, the very relationships that are extremely important to helping people recover from depression. The drugs can cause hallucinations, paranoia, and mania.
There is a direct correlation with the increase of antidepressant drug use and the rise in extreme, senseless violent acts. There are experts who have been trying to bring this to the attention of physicians, the FDA, and the public for more than a decade. Depression is not the problem. The drugs are the problem.
In 2001, GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay $6.4 million to the surviving family members after 60 year old Donald Schnell flew into a rage and killed his wife, daughter, and granddaughter only 48 hours after he began to take Paxil.
I keep asking, when is somebody going to see this? But weve been so brainwashed about drugs. We think legal means safe, Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D. explains. Most people dont know that LSD once was legal and prescribed as a wonder drug. That PCP was considered to have a large margin of safety in humans. Most people dont know that ecstasy was prescribed for treatment of depression until five years before Prozac was introduced to the market.
The adverse effects of psychiatric drugs are regularly misdiagnosed as more signs of depression, anxiety or some other created-by-vote psychiatric disorder. Then patients are prescribed additional psychiatric drugs or the dosage is increased. That was the case of California teenager Dominique Slater. Only 14 years old she was on several antidepressants including Celexa and Wellbutrin. When her erratic behavior worsened her doctor prescribed double dose of Effexor. Fifteen days later she killed herself. She was barely a teenager yet she was prescribed multiple antidepressant drugs at high doses. The year was 2003. Britain had already sent letters to all physicians sternly warning against the use of any of these drugs in anyone under the age of 18 years. It took the FDA another year to issue a warning of increased suicide in youths under 18 years old. No letters were sent to physicians. And the drug companies created marketing campaigns specifically to get antidepressants into the offices of all types of physicians, not just psychiatrists.
More than 10 million prescriptions for antidepressants are issued each year for children younger than 18 in the U.S. Any physician, not just psychiatrists, can write prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. The age of children being given these powerful mind-altering drugs continues to get younger. Ohio physicians in the month of July 2004 prescribed psychiatric drugs for 696 babies aged newborn to 3 years old covered by Medicaid.
Its shocking, said Dr. Ellen Bassuk, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. These medications are not benign. They can have dangerous side effects. Who is being helped by children being drugged, the babies or the caregivers?
Article by K.L. Carlson, Former Pharmaceutical Rep