CBS) Congress is investigating whether the FDA — which is supposed to protect the public — sat on medical evidence and failed to act quickly on a possible link between anti-depressants and suicidal behavior in children, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

With ten million American kids a year prescribed Paxil or other popular anti-depressants, the question of whether the drugs actually cause suicidal behavior in children is crucial.

Last summer, a link was revealed in data from Paxil’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline.

“It has us worried,” said an FDA internal document.

So the FDA assigned one of its respected medical officers, Andrew Mosholder, to look at studies of eight anti-depressants and thousands of troubled kids.

What he found added fuel to the fire.

According to documents obtained by CBS News, there were twice as many suicide-related events in children who took antidepressants as those who got only sugar pills.

Mosholder called the findings “difficult to dismiss.” But the public never got to hear those results. As Mosholder prepared to report to this FDA panel last month, there was an incredible turn of events.

Sources claim Mosholder’s FDA bosses intervened and “pressured him to change his conclusions” to make them “ambiguous and less definitive.”

At the last minute, they took his report off the agenda entirely.

Word of Mosholder’s findings got out to the media anyway. That’s when FDA managers launched a criminal investigation to find which employees leaked the report. Even though, according to one source, “it’s clearly information the public should have.”

Earlier this month, the FDA issued a warning on anti-depressants and suicide, but watered it down by implying there was really no strong evidence — making no mention of Mosholder’s findings.

Patient advocate with the Alliance for Human Research Vera Hassner Sharav says top FDA officials are watching out for the drug industry, not consumers.

“What we want to know is why the FDA has been sitting on this evidence and pretending, now after all this time, there is no evidence,” Sharav says.

Congress is asking the same questions. Did the FDA try to suppress a link between anti-depressants and suicidal behavior in kids, and did it try to intimidate employees who exposed the risks.
CBS) Congress is investigating whether the FDA — which is supposed to protect the public — sat on medical evidence and failed to act quickly on a possible link between anti-depressants and suicidal behavior in children, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

With ten million American kids a year prescribed Paxil or other popular anti-depressants, the question of whether the drugs actually cause suicidal behavior in children is crucial.

Last summer, a link was revealed in data from Paxil’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline.

“It has us worried,” said an FDA internal document.

So the FDA assigned one of its respected medical officers, Andrew Mosholder, to look at studies of eight anti-depressants and thousands of troubled kids.

What he found added fuel to the fire.

According to documents obtained by CBS News, there were twice as many suicide-related events in children who took antidepressants as those who got only sugar pills.

Mosholder called the findings “difficult to dismiss.” But the public never got to hear those results. As Mosholder prepared to report to this FDA panel last month, there was an incredible turn of events.

Sources claim Mosholder’s FDA bosses intervened and “pressured him to change his conclusions” to make them “ambiguous and less definitive.”

At the last minute, they took his report off the agenda entirely.

Word of Mosholder’s findings got out to the media anyway. That’s when FDA managers launched a criminal investigation to find which employees leaked the report. Even though, according to one source, “it’s clearly information the public should have.”

Earlier this month, the FDA issued a warning on anti-depressants and suicide, but watered it down by implying there was really no strong evidence — making no mention of Mosholder’s findings.

Patient advocate with the Alliance for Human Research Vera Hassner Sharav says top FDA officials are watching out for the drug industry, not consumers.

“What we want to know is why the FDA has been sitting on this evidence and pretending, now after all this time, there is no evidence,” Sharav says.

Congress is asking the same questions. Did the FDA try to suppress a link between anti-depressants and suicidal behavior in kids, and did it try to intimidate employees who exposed the risks.

CBS) Congress is investigating whether the FDA — which is supposed to protect the public — sat on medical evidence and failed to act quickly on a possible link between anti-depressants and suicidal behavior in children, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

With ten million American kids a year prescribed Paxil or other popular anti-depressants, the question of whether the drugs actually cause suicidal behavior in children is crucial.

Last summer, a link was revealed in data from Paxil’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline.

“It has us worried,” said an FDA internal document.

So the FDA assigned one of its respected medical officers, Andrew Mosholder, to look at studies of eight anti-depressants and thousands of troubled kids.

What he found added fuel to the fire.

According to documents obtained by CBS News, there were twice as many suicide-related events in children who took antidepressants as those who got only sugar pills.

Mosholder called the findings “difficult to dismiss.” But the public never got to hear those results. As Mosholder prepared to report to this FDA panel last month, there was an incredible turn of events.

Sources claim Mosholder’s FDA bosses intervened and “pressured him to change his conclusions” to make them “ambiguous and less definitive.”

At the last minute, they took his report off the agenda entirely.

Word of Mosholder’s findings got out to the media anyway. That’s when FDA managers launched a criminal investigation to find which employees leaked the report. Even though, according to one source, “it’s clearly information the public should have.”

Earlier this month, the FDA issued a warning on anti-depressants and suicide, but watered it down by implying there was really no strong evidence — making no mention of Mosholder’s findings.

Patient advocate with the Alliance for Human Research Vera Hassner Sharav says top FDA officials are watching out for the drug industry, not consumers.

“What we want to know is why the FDA has been sitting on this evidence and pretending, now after all this time, there is no evidence,” Sharav says.

Congress is asking the same questions. Did the FDA try to suppress a link between anti-depressants and suicidal behavior in kids, and did it try to intimidate employees who exposed the risks.
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=609501n

The bulk of the American media appears afraid to go after psychiatric drugs as a cause of violent crime. This fear stems in part from the sure knowledge that expert attack-dogs are waiting in the wings, funded by big-time pharmaceutical companies. There are doctors and researchers who have seen a dark truth about these drugs in the journals, but are afraid to stand up and speak out. After all, the medical culture punishes no one as severely as its own defectors, when defection from the party line threatens profits, careers and reputations, and when defection alerts the public that deadly effects could be emanating from corporate boardrooms.

And what of the Federal Government itself? The US Food and Drug Administration FDA licenses each drug released for public use and certifies it as being safe and effective. If a real tornado started at the public level, if the parents of the young killers and young victims began to see a terrible knowledge swim into view -a knowledge they hadn’t imagined – and they joined forces, the Earth would shake.

Commenting on some of the adverse effects of the antidepressant drug Prozac, psychiatrist Peter Breggin notes: “From the initial studies, it was also apparent that a small percentage of patients became psychotic.”

Prozac, in fact, endured a rocky road in the press for a time. Stories on it rarely appear now. The major media have backed off. But on February 7, 1991, Amy Marcus’s Wall Street Journal article on the drug carried the headline, “Murder Trials Introduce Prozac Defense”. Marcus wrote: “A spate of murder trials which defendants claim they became violent when they took antidepressant Prozac are imposing new problems for the drug’s maker, Eli Lilly and Co.”

Also on February 7, 1991, the New York Times ran a Prozac piece headlined: “Suicidal Behavior Tied Again To Drug: Does Antidepressant Prompt Violence?”

In his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, Dr Breggin mentions that The Donahue Show (Feb.28, 1991) “put together a group of individuals who had become compulsively self-destructive and murderous after taking Prozac, and the clamorous telephone and audience response confirmed the problem.

Breggin also cites a troubling study by Teicher et al., from the February 1990 American Journal of Psychiatry (147:207-210), which reports on …six depressed patients, previously free of recent suicidal ideation, who developed intense, violent, suicidal preoccupations after 2-7 weeks of fluoxetine [Prozac] treatment. The suicidal preoccupations lasted from three days to three months after termination of the treatment. The report estimates that 3.5 per cent of Prozac users were at risk. While denying the validity of the study, Dista Products, a division of Eli Lilly, put out a brochure for doctors, dated August 30, 1990, stating that it was adding ’suicidal ideation’ to the adverse events section of its Prozac product information.

An earlier study, by Joseph Lipinski in the September 1989 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, indicates that in five examined cases, people on Prozac developed what is called akathisia. Symptoms include intense anxiety, inability to sleep, the “jerking of extremities” and “bicycling in bed or just turning around and around. Breggin comments that akathisia “…may also contribute to the drug’s tendency to cause self-destructive or violent tendencies… Akathisia can become the equivalent of biochemical torture and could possibly tip someone over the edge into self-destructive or violent behavior… The June 1990 Health Newsletter, produced by the Public Citizen Research Group reports: ‘Akathisia, or symptoms of restlessness, constant pacing, and purposeless movements of the feet and legs, may occur in 10-25 per cent of patients on Prozac.’”

The well-known publication, California Lawyer, in a December 1998 article titled Protecting Prozac, details some of the suspect maneuvers of Eli Lilly in its handling of suits against Prozac. California Lawyer also mentions other highly qualified critics of the drug: “David Mealy, MD, an internationally renowned psycho pharmacologist, has stated in sworn deposition that ‘contrary to Lilly’s view, there is a plausible cause-and-effect relationship between Prozac’ and suicidal-homicidal events. An epidemiological study published in 1995 by the British Medical Journal also links Prozac to increased suicide risk.”

Special Report

Posted Sept. 2, 2002

By Kelly Patricia O Meara

These are the recollections of 19-year-old Mark Taylor, who spent nearly two months in the hospital and has endured three years of follow-up operations for the gunshot wounds he received during the murderous 1999 rampage of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

Taylor slowly is recovering from his wounds and, in an effort to bring attention to what he believes was the cause of Harris’ deadly rage, has filed a lawsuit against Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc., the manufacturer of Luvox (Fluvoxamine), the antidepressant that Harris had been prescribed and was taking at the time of the shooting spree. Despite the deadly assault against him, Taylor’s perception of the young men who nearly killed him is surprising. Continue Reading »

Article published in the Chattanooga Times free Press by Jimmy Powell

Jimmy Powell Published Article

Peter Breggin, M.D. began the full time private practice of psychiatry in 1968. Dr. Peter Breggin has been informing the professions, media and the public about the potential dangers of drugs, electroshock, psychosurgery, involuntary treatment, and the biological theories of psychiatry for over three decades. Since 1964 Dr. Peter Breggin has been publishing peer-reviewed articles and medical books in his subspecialty of clinical psychopharmacology. He is the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than 20 professional books, many dealing with psychiatric medication, the FDA and drug approval process, the evaluation of clinical trials, and standards of care in psychiatry and related fields.
For thirty years Dr. Breggin has served as a medical expert in many civil and criminal suits including individual malpractice cases and product liability suits against the manufacturers of psychiatric drugs. His work has provided the scientific basis for the original combined Prozac suits, for many tardive dyskinesia cases, and for label changes in many psychiatric drugs.
Dr. Breggin’s background includes Harvard College, Case Western Reserve Medical School, a teaching fellowship at Harvard Medical School, a two-year staff appointment to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and a faculty appointment to the Johns Hopkins University Department of Counseling.
In 1972 Dr. Peter Breggin founded The International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP) as a nonprofit research and educational network. The Center is concerned with the impact of mental health theory and practices upon individual well-being, personal freedom, and family and community values. He also founded the peer-review journal, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. In 2002, Dr. Peter Breggin and his wife Ginger selected new and younger professionals to take over leadership of the journal and ICSPP

For a list of his books and other useful information

www.breggin.com

Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, appeared on “Primetime Live” to discuss the often-unrecognized side effects of antidepressant drugs. Here is a sampling of his answers to your questions on the subject.

Norma asks: Are there currently any class action lawsuits against the makers of Paxil?

Dr. Glenmullen: There is a large group of lawsuits against GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil, involving patients who experienced Paxil withdrawal. It’s not exactly a “class action” but it’s similar and called an MDL for multi district litigation.

Annette in Massachusetts writes: Is there a safe way to stop taking Paxil? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dr. Glenmullen: There is a safe way: Tapering carefully off the drug. This is true for all 32 antidepressants currently on the market in the United States. One of the most difficult aspects of tapering antidepressants is how widely patients vary in their susceptibility to withdrawal reactions. While one patient may be able to taper off an antidepressant in two months, the next patient may need to take eight months to taper off the same dose of the same antidepressant. So, an antidepressant tapering program has to provide standard dosage reductions for each antidepressant and at the same instruct doctors and patients on how to customize the dosage reductions when patients have moderate to severe withdrawal reactions that require slowing the taper down to keep patients safe and comfortable. Continue Reading »

There’s a New Predator in Town

Although I can’t imagine such a thing would exist, it has recently come to my attention that there are websites out here that not only encourage depressed people to take their own lives but they also provide a reference on how-to. If that is not bad enough… in this particular case, the on-line grim reeper asks victims to install a web cam so that she may watch your child kill herself.

Just recently the body of an18 yr old girl from Brampton, Ontario was found in the Rideau River.

Nadia Kajouji was in Ottawa because she was a first year student attending Carlton University. Nadia was a healthy child and had no known history of depression. It is my understanding, through the media, that this young lady recently suffered through a break up with her boyfriend and pressure at school. Now when you have passed through the phase of young love and have been married, had children, thrown your husbands dinner out the window a few times along with his cloths and car keys, sold his expensive golf clubs at a garage sale, etc., (not that I have ever done thatJ) you know that breakups hurt, but they are not a life long commitment. Life is about love and loss. I don’t know anyone whom has not suffered a broken heart. Continue Reading »

Today, more than 17 million children worldwide have been prescribed psychiatric drugs so dangerous that medicine regulatory agencies in Europe, Australia and the United States have issued warnings that antidepressants, for example, can cause suicide and hostility in children and adolescents. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also issued a warning that stimulant drugs, such as Ritalin and Concerta can cause suicidal as well as violent, aggressive and psychotic behavior, and that these same drugs can cause heart attacks, stroke and sudden death.

• Of these 17 million, more than 10 million children are in the United States, being prescribed addictive stimulants, antidepressants and other psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs for educational and behavioral problems.
• Today, children 5 years old and younger are the fastest-growing segment of the non-adult population prescribed antidepressants in the U.S. Children as young as 4 have attempted suicide while influenced by such drugs and 5 year olds have committed suicide. Between 1995 and 1999, antidepressant use increased 580% in the under 6 population and 151% in the 7-12 age group. In 2004, the FDA ordered that a “black box” label be placed on antidepressants warning that they can cause suicide in children and adolescents.
• The problem is international in scope. In Australia, the stimulant prescription rate for children increased 34-fold in the past two decades. In Mexico, sales of Ritalin increased 800% between 1993 and 2001. In Britain, the stimulant prescription rate for children increased 9,200% between 1992 and 2000. Spain reported a steady 8% annual increase in Ritalin consumption between 1992 and 2001.
• These stimulants are mostly prescribed for “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD) and other childhood “disorders” and are “Schedule II” drugs, meaning they have the same potential for abuse as morphine, opium and cocaine. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports that studies show that Ritalin is more potent than cocaine and effects the brain in the same way as cocaine does. Its side effects include nervousness, anorexia [eating disorder], heart irregularities, weight loss and psychosis. Between 1990 and 2000, 186 deaths were linked to Ritalin in the U.S. alone.
• A recent U.S. report found that 10% of teens abuse Ritalin and another stimulant drug, Adderall. Eight out of 13 school shooters in the U.S. were taking antidepressants or stimulants at the time of the crime. Often children, affected by these drugs, have been institutionalized where they have been forcefully restrained—tragically, dozens have died during this violent procedure.
• Parents are not informed about all the potential risks to their child when they agree to a psychiatric drug prescription. They are not informed that the diagnoses for which they are prescribed are unlike medical diseases. There is no physical test—blood or urine test, “chemical imbalance” test or x-ray or brain scan—that can determine the physical existence or cause of the “mental disorder.” Millions of children are prescribed these drugs when they have simply never been taught to read or may be suffering from allergies, lead poisoning or other environmental toxic effects.

And we are worried about… marijuana

By Princess

The Impact Of Antidepressant On Society

“If we were paid for what our experiences cost us we would be millionaires”

You Tube Video – Antidepressants & School Shootings, Suicide, Addiction.

You Tube Video – Antidepressants Warning Suicide Watch

You Tube Video – School Shootings II

You Tube Video – Prozac Suicide Victim

“Currently, due to massive growth in psychiatric drugging of children and youth and the current targeting of them for even more psychiatric drugging, PsychRights has made attacking this problem a priority. Children are virtually always forced to take these drugs because it is the adults in their lives who are making the decision. This is an unfolding national tragedy of immense proportions”

You Tube Video – Antidepressants & School Shootings, Suicide, Addiction.

You Tube Video – Antidepressants Warning Suicide Watch

You Tube Video – School Shootings II

You Tube Video – Prozac Suicide Victim