Anti-Depressants
Antidepressants
1 - PROZAC, ZOLOFT, PAXIL, etc.- Roughly 28 million Americans-one in every ten-have taken Prozac, Zoloft, or Paxil, Fluoxetine, or a similar antidepressant; yet very few patients are aware of the dangers of these drugs, nor are they aware that better, safer alternatives exist (such as St. John's wort, adequate rest, B vitamins, a nutritious diet, exercise, etc.). In his book, Prozac Backlash, Harvard Medical School's Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a psychiatrist who has a private practice and also works for Harvard University Health Services, documents the ominous long-term side effects associated with these and other serotonin-boosting medications.
These side effects include neurological disorders, such as disfiguring facial and whole-body tics that can indicate brain damage; sexual dysfunction in up to 60 percent of users; debilitating withdrawal symptoms, including visual hallucinations, electric shock-like sensations in the brain, dizziness, nausea, and anxiety; and a decrease of antidepressant effectiveness in about 35 percent of long-term users. In addition, Dr. Glenmullen's research and riveting case studies shed shocking new light on the direct link between these drugs and suicide and violence.
By the end of the 1990s, Prozac and similar drugs (such as Paxil and Zoloft) were being prescribed for everything from depression to anxiety to drug addiction to attention-deficit disorder (ADD). About 70 percent of prescriptions for these antidepressants were being written by family physicians rather than psychiatrists.
Normal children are being increasingly diagnosed as "hyperactive" or having "attention deficit." Glenmullen declares this antidepressant mania to be dangerous, even reckless. He notes that these drugs can have severe side effects, including uncontrollable facial and body tics, which could be signs of severe and permanent brain damage. About 50 percent of patients suffer often-debilitating withdrawal symptoms from them, and about 60 percent end up with sexual dysfunction. Prozac may make a small number of people homicidal or suicidal, or both.
Dr. Peter Breggin states, "(People) start taking the drug and in the beginning they feel better . . Maybe the drug gives them a burst of energy. Stimulants will do that. They make people feel energized. Then they become more depressed. They may get suicidal feelings. They don't know that Eli Lilly once listed depression as an effect of the drug. And so they end up thinking they need more Prozac, and their doctor agrees."
Physicians at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have reported that five patients developed apathy, indifference, and loss of initiative when they took fluoxetine or fluvoxamine, another antidepressant. They found that the mechanisms producing these side effects were similar to "those of frontal lobe dysfunction," in which patients may "display apathy, flatness of affect and lack of emotional concern, childishness and euphoria, socially inappropriate behavior, and difficulty in foreseeing the outcome of an action" (Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, October 1990) .
A number of lawsuits have occurred. Some Prozac users have charged that the drug causes tardive dystonia or tardive dyskinesia (TD), two forms of neurological damage in which the muscles tense up or move involuntarily. These disorders can produce bizarre-looking postures and movements. As a result, people who are taking Prozac to relieve mental illness may in fact appear to be mentally ill. In addition, the symptoms may continue after they stop taking the drug. In some cases those terrible effects may be permanent.
Doctors have also reported a variety of neurological symptoms in people taking Prozac. These symptoms include acute dystonia and reversible dystonia (D. Mahendra, American Journal of Psychiatry, January 1994; B. Black and T.W. Uhde, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, September 1992; etc.).
Drugs similar to Prozac can also be dangerous. In two cases, patients developed complex movement disorders while they were taking fluoxetine. This disorder was marked by rhythmic palatal movements, myoclonus and possibly dystonia in one patient, and myoclonic jerking and rapid, sterotypic movements of the toes in the other (K.J. Bharucha, Movement Disorders, May 1996).
Many psychiatric drugs, such as Haldol and Thorazine, have been found to cause tardive dyskinesia in about 20 percent of long-term users. The manufacturers' prescription information for these drugs includes appropriate
warnings. But that is not the case with Prozac's package insert, which warns that users have developed dystonia and dyskinesia but not that the drug may cause permanent damage to the nervous system.
Generally, when psychiatric drugs cause permanent disorders such as tardive dyskinesia, it is after patients have used the medication for a year or longer. With Prozac, however, the condition appears to set in much more rapidly. One woman in Texas who sued Eli Lilly claims she experienced permanent damage within two days of taking two Prozac capsules a day. Another user began to experience severe muscle spasms in her arms after she took Prozac for eight days; she still had TD and a diminished ability to function two years later.
But there is still more to the Prozac story: According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the clinical trials for Prozac were flawed.
Eli Lilly told physicians involved in the trials to record a variety of adverse reactions, including suicidal ideation, morbid thoughts, agitation, sadness, and insomnia, as "symptoms of depression" rather than as separate effects. In a review of Prozac, FDA Efficacy Reviewer J. Hillary Lee stated, "Note: the exhortation [by Lilly] to exclude experiences caused by depression may have altered the relative frequencies of many adverse experiences." In other words, the truth about the effects of Prozac were hidden.
It is an astounding fact that the FDA's original efficacy review of Prozac found that the drug was no more effective than a placebo! The FDA, for reasons that are not clear, told Eli Lilly to reevaluate the drug based on "fewer variables." The manufacturer did so, reducing the number of variables by two-thirds, and issued a new evaluation of Prozac's effectiveness. The FDA approved this new evaluation.
In fact, the FDA appears to have looked the other way in regard to several problems before Prozac's release. The FDA discovered in 1986 that Eli Lilly had withheld information about the onset of psychotic episodes on at least 52 patients during the drug's clinical trials. Yet no actions were taken against the manufacturer or Prozac. Documents also show that Eli Lilly and the FDA knew of 15 suicides that occurred during the drug's clinical trials, even though the Prozac label said that three people died during the trials.