Posts Tagged ‘Serotonin’

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Antidepressants Increase Risk of Suicidal Behavior in Children and Young Adults, Don’t Reduce Risk in Adults, Study Says

Monday, August 28th, 2023

Other recent research has found antidepressants double the risk of suicidal thoughts and actions in adults.

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, August 17, 2023 — A new study adds fresh evidence that treatment for depression with antidepressants increases the risk of suicidal behavior, including attempted and completed suicides, in children and young adults under age 25. The findings support previous studies that have also found a greater risk of suicidal thoughts and actions in young people taking antidepressants – drugs that are prescribed to reduce that risk.

“The present study finds similar results to prior observational research – that is, consistent evidence of an increased risk of suicidality during treatment with SSRIs in children and adolescents,” wrote lead author Tyra Lagerberg, at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and the psychiatry department at Oxford University’s Warneford Hospital in the U.K. The study was published in Neuropsychopharmacology.

Lagerberg led a team of Swedish researchers who used medical and death registry records of roughly 162,000 depressed individuals from 2006-2018 to find the risk of suicidal behavior within 12 weeks after the patients either were or were not started on selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants following a diagnosis of depression. Overall, the study revealed an increased risk of suicidal behavior among the antidepressant users.

The greatest increase in risk was to youth 6 to 17 years of age, who were three times more likely to engage in suicidal behavior, followed by 18- to 24-year-olds, whose risk was doubled.

“Our results confirm that children and adolescents under age 25 are a high-risk group, in particular children aged under 18 years,” Lagerberg concluded.

While this study did not find an increased risk of suicidal behavior from antidepressants in older patients or patients who previously attempted suicide, it did find that taking the drugs did not reduce the risk for these groups.

The research confirms the validity of the stringent, black-box warning first required in 2004 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on antidepressant packaging to alert consumers and prescribers to the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions for children and adolescents. The action came after drug trials indicated that youth taking antidepressants were almost twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts as those receiving placebos. The warning was expanded in 2007 to include young adults through age 24.

Critics have since complained that the warning resulted in more suicides by youngsters not treated with antidepressants. However, researchers recently re-analyzed clinical trial data and concluded that the data demonstrated an increased risk of attempted and completed suicides among youth taking antidepressants and that the FDA’s warning is clearly justified.

Other recent research has found antidepressants double the risk of suicidal thoughts and actions in adults. A re-analysis of safety summaries submitted to the FDA for approval of antidepressants found that the rate of suicide attempts in drug trials was about 2.5 times higher in adults taking antidepressants as compared to those given placebos.

Another study found that when healthy adults with no signs of depression were given antidepressants, their risk of suicidality and violence doubled.

Antidepressants may be prescribed to prevent suicides, but a recent examination of coroner inquests in which the decedents used antidepressants revealed that about half of the deaths were determined to be suicides. One in eight of the deaths involved an overdose of antidepressants.

More fundamentally, a landmark 2022 study questioned the prescribing of antidepressants at all, after finding the common reason for taking them – to correct a chemical imbalance in the brain – had no scientific basis. The study investigated whether evidence supported the theory that a low level of the brain chemical serotonin causes depression.

“The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression,” the researchers wrote. “Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.”

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and behavioral symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

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No Clear Benefit, But Serious Side Effects Common for Older People Taking Antidepressants, Study Finds

Monday, August 21st, 2023

Adverse effects from taking antidepressants are more common and serious for the elderly because they have more fragile health and take more medications.

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, August 9, 2023 — A new review of recent medical literature on antidepressant use by older people with depression revealed no clear evidence of benefit, while adverse effects were found to be especially common and problematic. Alternative treatments for depression were advised.

The review was conducted to provide an overview of studies from the past decade of the benefit and harms of treatment of older persons with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants. The studies under review comprised depressed patients aged 55 and older who were taking SSRI antidepressants in comparison to control groups receiving placebos.

As reported in Mental Health Science, the evidence indicated that antidepressants have little, if any, benefit over placebos in this age group. There was even less evidence of depression remission.

“The evidence of the benefits of antidepressants in the elderly was weak and alternative treatments are advised,” wrote study author Michael Hvidberg, Ph.D., of the psychology department at the University of York in the U.K.

In the U.S., 15.6 million Americans aged 60 and older are prescribed antidepressants –
that’s one of every five (19%), with one in four (24%) of them women.

Adverse effects from taking the drugs are common and more serious among the elderly because they have more fragile health, deal with more medical issues, and take more medications. “Treatment with antidepressants may lead to more [adverse events] due to polypharmacy and age-related physiological changes,” Hvidberg writes, advising other treatment instead of the drugs.

Side effects of taking antidepressants include weight gain, nausea, insomnia, agitation, emotional blunting, sexual dysfunction, and even deepening depression. Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D., describes antidepressants as neurotoxic because they harm and disrupt the functions of the brain and can cause abnormal thinking and behaviors, including anxiety, aggressiveness, loss of judgment, impulsivity, and mania, which can lead to violence and suicide.

Discontinuing antidepressants can bring on withdrawal symptoms, including electric shock-like sensations (“brain zaps” and “body zaps”), muscle spasms and tremors, hallucinations, confusion, irritability, and mania. One study found that more than half (56%) of people attempting to come off antidepressants experience withdrawal symptoms, with nearly half (46%) of them describing those symptoms as severe.

The new study’s finding of no clear benefit to patients from antidepressants is consistent with the results of a 2022 study, which found no clinically significant difference in measures of depression symptoms between adults treated with antidepressants and those taking placebos, whether over a shorter or longer time frame and regardless of the depression severity of the study participants.

Because the drugs have no strong evidence of benefit to patients, but carry the risks of significant side effects, researchers in another recent study advised primary care physicians not to prescribe antidepressants to depressed patients initially, but instead to recommend alternative approaches for treatment.  Similar guidance was issued in 2021 by the London-based National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the organization that develops standards for health care practices in England.

One alternative approach to depression that has been repeatedly validated as effective in research studies is exercise. The results of one new study found that even exercise below levels of physical activity commonly recommended in health guidelines resulted in significant antidepressant benefits for older adults.

More fundamentally, a landmark 2022 study questioned the prescribing of antidepressants at all, after finding the common reason for taking them – to correct a chemical imbalance in the brain – had no scientific basis.  The study investigated whether evidence supported the theory that a low level of the brain chemical serotonin causes depression.

“The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression,” the researchers wrote. “Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.”

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and behavioral symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

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New Study Finds Troubling Mental and Physical Side Effects Are Main Reason Patients Stop Taking Antidepressants

Monday, July 31st, 2023

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, July 19, 2023 — A new study investigating why patients stop taking antidepressants found the most common reason given was the adverse physical and mental side effects experienced. The findings add to prior research revealing the troubling, and even dangerous side effects of these mind-altering psychotropic drugs.

Researchers in the U.S. and U.K. analyzed 667 reviews posted on the online health forum WebMD by users of seven common selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants. The most common reason users gave for discontinuing antidepressants was the negative side effects they experienced.

Mental side effects were the adverse events most mentioned in the reviews, including apathy, anxiety, insomnia, loss of sexual drive, and suicidal ideation. These side effects were reported more often in the online posts than in the formal reporting systems set up by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, leading the researchers to note that the online comments provide valuable, additional information for government drug regulatory agencies about the adverse effects of SSRIs.

“It is not merely feasible to collect data from online comments and reviews regarding SSRI medication changes, but…doing so can provide important supplementary information to reporting systems,” wrote lead author Su Golder, PhD, of the University of York in the U.K., reporting in JAMA Network Open.

Other top adverse events reported by SSRI users as reasons for discontinuing antidepressants were physical side effects, such as dizziness, drowsiness, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, weight gain, itchiness, excessive sweating, and sexual dysfunction.

“These results suggest that reasons for changes in SSRI use can be identified in online drug reviews and that adverse events mentioned may reflect those more salient to patients for discontinuing their medication,” according to Golder.

Though the study was intended to discover why SSRI users discontinue antidepressants so that ways to keep them on the drugs could be developed, the study provides additional evidence of the harm from the drugs that users contend with. Other recent research findings on the negative effects of antidepressants are much more disturbing.

A 2019 study indicated that the rate of attempted suicide was about 2.5 times higher in those taking antidepressants as compared to placebo. Those results were similar to a 2016 study that found antidepressants, given to healthy adult volunteers with no signs of depression, doubled their risk of suicidality and violence.

Antidepressant use has risen significantly over the past 15 years – and so have suicides and senseless acts of violence like mass shootings. In 2020, some 45 million Americans, or roughly one in seven, were taking antidepressants, up from 34 million in 2006. This 32% increase in users parallels the 35% increase in suicides in the U.S. over the same period. During the same time, many school shootings and other acts of senseless violence were committed by individuals taking antidepressants or in withdrawal from them.

A 2020 study found that half of antidepressant users experience sexual problems that can strain their relationships and lead to a worsening of their depression.  In a 2017 survey of antidepressant users, 44% of respondents reported the drugs negatively impacted their sex lives, 27% their ability to work or study, and 21% their relationships with friends or family.

For all the risk of serious side effects, recent research has found little, if any, benefit to antidepressants over placebos.  A 2022 study found no clinically significant difference in measures of depression symptoms between adults treated with antidepressants and those taking placebos, whether over a shorter or longer time frame and regardless of the depression severity of the study participants.

Another study in 2018 found that those who used antidepressants any time during the 30-year period of the study had an 81% greater chance of having more severe depression symptoms at the end of that time.

More fundamentally, a landmark 2022 study questioned the prescribing of antidepressants at all, after finding the common reason for taking them – to correct a supposed chemical imbalance in the brain – had no scientific basis. The study investigated whether evidence supported the theory that a low level of the brain chemical serotonin causes depression.

“The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression,” the researchers wrote. “Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.”

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and behavioral symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

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Psychiatrists at Annual Conference Warned That Antidepressants They Prescribe Can Deaden Patients’ Emotions

Monday, June 26th, 2023

New study confirms patients’ common complaints of antidepressants deadening their emotions and harming their sex life.

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, June 15, 2023 — A new study presented at the annual conference of the American Psychiatric Association informed psychiatrists that the emotional blunting caused by the antidepressants they prescribe is a significant and under-recognized side effect patients may suffer.

The current study reviewed 25 prior studies related to the problem of antidepressant-induced emotional blunting, described as “a persistent diminution in both positive and negative feelings,” which the patients differentiated as side effects of the drugs rather than symptoms of their depression.

The researchers concluded that “emotional blunting was a significant patient-reported concern with antidepressants.” That dulling of emotions could also be experienced as a change in personality or as not feeling like oneself.

A separate study earlier this year also found that participants given a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant experienced a reduction in positive emotions, along with a significant increase in sexual problems that the researchers suggested could be due to the reduced emotional pleasure.

Sexual dysfunction is reportedly experienced by many patients on antidepressants. Half of the antidepressant users who responded to a recent survey reported experiencing sexual problems they did not have before taking the drugs – problems that can strain relationships and lead to a worsening of the depression for which the drugs are being prescribed.

These findings add new credibility to patients’ common complaints of antidepressants deadening their emotions and sex life.

Worse still, the sexual disability can persist indefinitely, even after antidepressants are discontinued.  The condition, referred to as post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, has no definitive treatment, a fact many patients were not made aware of by their prescribers before starting antidepressants.

A key rationale for prescribing antidepressants in the first place – to fix a chemical balance in the brain – was recently found to be without scientific merit. Researchers conducted a comprehensive review of the research that had looked into whether a lack of the brain chemical serotonin causes depression and concluded there was no convincing evidence to support the theory.

“The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression,” wrote the study’s lead author, Joanne Moncrieff. “Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.”

Also challenging the prescribing of antidepressants are the results of a study which found that taking antidepressants led to worse depression symptoms for patients years later. Patients who used antidepressants at any time during the 30-year period of the study had an 81% greater chance of experiencing more severe depression symptoms at the end of the period.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and emotional symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuses and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office
202-349-9267

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Primary Care Doctors Advised Not to Prescribe Antidepressants to Patients on First Visit for Mild to Moderate Depression

Monday, June 5th, 2023

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, May 25, 2023 — Researchers are advising primary care doctors not to prescribe antidepressants to patients with mild to moderate depression on their first visit because of the drugs’ limited effectiveness and risks of significant side effects. Their conclusion, based on reviews of the available evidence on antidepressants, was published in World Psychiatry, the journal of the World Psychiatric Association.

Noting that most depressed patients in primary care settings have mild to moderate depression, the researchers cite recent research that found the benefit of antidepressants for such patients is so small that it may not be clinically significant. Instead, the researchers suggest non-drug approaches for these patients.

“Antidepressants should not be prescribed at the first visit if the patient has mild to moderate depression, because they have a limited efficacy and may have significant side effects,” according to lead author Bruce Arroll, professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Even for a first visit to primary care by severely depressed patients, antidepressants may not be the best treatment, the researchers say. “The best strategy may be to reframe some of the negative cognitions of the patients and advise physical activity,” writes Arroll, with follow-up to track the patients’ results.

This advice is similar to guidance issued in 2021 by the organization that develops standards for health care practices in England. The London-based National Institute for Health and Care Excellence advised doctors not to routinely prescribe antidepressants as first-line treatment for people with less severe depression, but to offer a variety of non-drug treatment options and to respect the patients’ right to decline treatment.

Recent studies have found little, if any, benefit to antidepressants over placebos. Researchers led by Marc B. Stone of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research combined the results of 232 randomized controlled trials reported to the FDA from 1979 to 2016 that compared the effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants with placebos for patients with depression. Publishing their report in 2022 in the British Medical Journal, the researchers found that a benefit from antidepressants over placebos was limited to just 15% of the patients, while the other 85% experienced no benefit as compared to placebos. The placebo effect was powerful, with roughly two-thirds of the depressed patients given placebos getting better.

Another 2022 study found no clinically significant difference in measures of depression symptoms between adults treated with antidepressants and those taking placebos, whether over a shorter or longer time frame and regardless of the depression severity of the study participants.

Some 45 million Americans are currently taking one or more antidepressants, including 5.7 million children and young adults under the age of 25, for whom the FDA requires a warning on the drug’s prescribing information of the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions.

Other adverse effects of antidepressants include weight gain, nausea, insomnia, agitation, emotional blunting and sexual dysfunction. One recent study found that half of antidepressant users experience sexual problems that can strain their relationships and lead to a worsening of their depression.  In a survey of antidepressant users, 44% of respondents reported the drugs negatively impacted their sex lives, 27% their ability to work or study, and 21% their relationships with friends or family.

Those who used antidepressants any time during the 30-year period of another recent study had an 81% greater chance of having more severe depression symptoms at the end of the study.

Antidepressants may be prescribed to prevent suicides, but an examination of coroner inquests in which the decedents used antidepressants revealed that about half of the deaths were determined to be suicides.  One in eight of the deaths involved an overdose of antidepressants.

Discontinuing antidepressants can bring on serious symptoms during withdrawal, including electric shock-like sensations (“brain zaps” and “body zaps”), muscle spasms and tremors, hallucinations, confusion, irritability, and mania. One study found that more than half (56%) of people attempting to come off antidepressants experience withdrawal symptoms, with nearly half (46%) of them describing those symptoms as severe, and the symptoms can last for weeks or months.

More fundamentally, a landmark 2022 study questioned the prescribing of antidepressants at all, after finding the common reason for taking them – to correct a chemical imbalance in the brain – had no scientific basis. The study investigated whether evidence supported the theory that a low level of the brain chemical serotonin causes depression.

“The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression,” the researchers wrote. “Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.”

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and behavioral symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

1701 20th St. NW

Washington, DC 20009

(202) 349-9267

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World Psychiatric Group Must Tell Its Members To Expunge Chemical Imbalance Myth

Monday, August 29th, 2022

CCHR, a global mental health industry watchdog, has demanded the World Psychiatric Association advise its 180 members to remove all references to a chemical imbalance causing mental disorders from their websites and literature.

By CCHR International Mental Health Industry Watchdog August 9, 2022

Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a 53-year mental health industry watchdog, has demanded the World Psychiatric Association issue a Positioning Statement urging all of its members to remove any reference or suggestion that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental disorders from their websites. In a letter sent to Dr. Afzal Javed, president of the WPA, CCHR called on the organization to condemn the theory and now wants the organization to also send an advisory to national psychiatric associations to inform their members to remove references to the disproved chemical imbalance theory from their websites, literature and any patient informed consent forms.

WPA has 145 member societies, mostly national psychiatric associations, including the American Psychiatric Association, and 36 affiliate member associations, representing some 250,000 psychiatrists worldwide.[1] As the association says it emphasizes the need for “the highest possible standards of clinical practice and ethical behavior in psychiatry,” CCHR says a priority must be that psychiatric groups to stop misleading consumers that a chemical imbalance underlies their mental health issues.[2]

The letter to Dr. Javed at the WPA Congress held in Bangkok, Thailand, pointed out that the chemical imbalance theory was a myth that has been exploited in the mental health field for over 30 years to fuel antidepressant sales, but was recently thoroughly debunked by researchers from University College London (UCL) in a study published in Molecular Psychiatry. The researchers reviewed major studies published over several decades and found no convincing evidence to support the theory that a chemical imbalance causes a mental disorder. The letter said the WPA should formally condemn the debunked theory because to do otherwise constitutes consumer fraud and violates patient informed consent rights.

In 2019, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK had already responded to research that found no proof of low serotonin levels causing depression, and issued a position statement dismissing the idea that antidepressants “correct a chemical imbalance in the brain.”[3] However, the American Psychiatric Association website continued to promote mental health issues as “brain disorders,” without evidence to prove this, and its patient leaflets declared “antidepressants may be prescribed to correct imbalances in the levels of chemicals in the brain.”

As one of the UCL researchers stated, this misleading situation has arisen because it serves the interests of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry. “Our view is that patients should not be told that depression is caused by low serotonin or by a chemical imbalance, and they should not be led to believe that antidepressants work by targeting these unproven abnormalities,” the lead researcher said.

CCHR says the WPA must take immediate action to ensure this view is conveyed to its members. Giving patients misinformation prevents their making an informed decision and has already resulted in many millions of people taking antidepressants or other psychotropic drugs with harmful side effects, erroneously believing these would “correct” something that simply never existed, CCHR wrote to Dr. Javed.

In 2020, WPA issued a Position Statement, “Implementing Alternatives to Coercion” which acknowledged that coercion in psychiatry has long been subject to controversy and contravenes patients’ rights, including violation of “rights to liberty; autonomy; freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment….”

The WPA admitted that coercion in psychiatry is “over-used,” contravening patients’ rights—although CCHR says it should never be used.

It pointed out that practices that constitute coercion include, “treatment without consent (or ‘compulsory treatment’), any form of treatment including the use of psychotropic medication; seclusion locking or confining a person to a space or room alone; restraint actions aimed at controlling a person’s physical movement, including prolonged or unsafe holding by other person(s), the use of any physical devices (‘mechanical restraint’, chaining, etc.) and the use of psychotropic drugs for the primary purpose of controlling movement (‘chemical restraint’).”

It warned that the use of coercive practices “carries the risk of harmful consequences, including trauma” and individuals subject to physical coercion are susceptible to harms that include physical pain, injury and death.”

CCHR wants this statement expanded so that WPA tells its members that to purport, in any way, that a chemical imbalance may be a source of people’s mental travails, harms patients, and could constitute consumer fraud. Troubled patients being misled about what causes their problems and being told that they need to take a psychotropic drug to “correct” this, is a form of coercion and contradicts the WPA 2020 Position Statement and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that the statement is based upon.

References:

[1] https://www.wpanet.org/
https://www.wpanet.org/members-affiliates
[2] https://www.wpanet.org/what-we-do
[3] Royal College of Psychiatrists, “Position statement on antidepressants and depression,” May 2019

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The Serotonin Theory Of Depression Is In The News Again

Monday, August 1st, 2022

While the fraudulent psychiatric “brain chemical imbalance” theory has been debunked for many years, it has been held firmly in place by the psycho-pharma public relations machine in order to sell more harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs. These drugs make patients for life since the drugs do not cure anything and have devastating side effects.

We discuss serotonin because many psychiatric drugs deliberately alter the levels of serotonin in the brain, in the mistaken belief that this is the cause of depression.

July 20, 2022 marks the publication of another study debunking the serotonin theory of depression, the so-called brain chemical imbalance theory.

To quote the study, “Our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity. … This review suggests that the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression. … We suggest it is time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated.”

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter hormone synthesized in the adrenal glands and elsewhere in the body from the essential amino acid tryptophan, found in the brain, blood, and mostly the digestive tract, which allows nerve cells throughout the body to communicate and interact with each other.

Since serotonin impacts every part of the body, messing with it can cause unwanted and dangerous side effects. Obviously, the body must closely regulate and balance the level of serotonin, since both a deficiency or an excess can be extremely harmful.

Psychiatrists have known since the beginning of psychopharmacology that their drugs do not cure any disease. Further, there is no credible evidence that depression is genetic or linked to serotonin transport; these are just public relations theories to support the marketing and sale of drugs. The manufacturers of every such drug state in the fine print that they don’t really understand how it works. Psychiatric drugs are fraudulently marketed as safe and effective for the sole purpose of earning billions for the psycho-pharmaceutical industry.

Messing with neurotransmitters in the brain without totally understanding how they work is serious business, essentially one is playing Russian Roulette with one’s brain.

These drugs mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future. This is the real reason why psychiatry is a violation of human rights. Psychiatric treatment is not just a failure — it is routinely destructive to the individual and one’s mental health.

Contact your local, state and federal officials and insist they stop funding this insanity.

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Antipsychotic Antics

Wednesday, September 15th, 2021

Paliperidone, sold under the trade name Invega among others, is an atypical antipsychotic. Paliperidone is the primary active metabolite of the older antipsychotic risperidone, although its specific mechanism of action with respect to any psychiatric diagnosis is unknown. It blocks the action of dopamine and serotonin in the brain, which as we’ve previously observed is playing Russian Roulette with the brain.

On September 1, 2021 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a 6-month injection form of the long-acting atypical antipsychotic paliperidone palmitate (Invega Hafyera, manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceuticals) for the treatment of what is fraudulently diagnosed as schizophrenia in adults.

Adverse reactions, or side effects, can include upper respiratory tract infection, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, seizures, high blood sugar, diabetes, decreased blood pressure, fainting, falls, low white blood cell count, headache, tachycardia, somnolence, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, cough, dystonia, akathisia, muscle rigidity, parkinsonism, weight gain, anxiety, indigestion, constipation, and an increased risk of death in elderly people with dementia-related psychosis.

It can be addictive and have acute withdrawal symptoms (euphemistically called “discontinuation syndrome”), including rapid relapse, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, restlessness, increased sweating, trouble sleeping, a feeling of the world spinning, numbness, muscle pains, tardive dyskinesia, and psychosis.

The primary reason for prescribing a drug that has only two doses per year is to handle the situation where a patient stops taking their daily prescribed drugs because of their unpleasant side effects.

Psychiatric Fraud

Psychiatrists remain committed to calling “schizophrenia” a mental disorder despite, after a century of research, the complete absence of objective proof that it exists as a physical brain abnormality.

Psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

The late Professor Thomas Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

These are normal people with medical, disciplinary, educational, or spiritual problems that can and must be resolved without recourse to drugs. Deceiving and drugging is not the practice of medicine. It is criminal.

Bear in mind that the drug “treatments” being prescribed are for “disorders” that are not physical illnesses—essentially, they are being prescribed for something that does not exist.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a child or adult exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist calls Schizophrenia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled with so-called Schizophrenia needs to receive a thorough physical examination by a competent medical—not psychiatric—doctor to first determine what underlying physical condition is causing the manifestation.

Any person falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, anxiety or panic. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well–being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.

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Erectile dysfunction drug mistakenly packaged with antidepressant

Monday, December 28th, 2020

Reference: “Erectile dysfunction drug packaged with antidepressant in ‘product mix-up’” [12/10/2020]

“Pharmaceutical distributor AvKare issued a voluntary recall of 100 mg tablets of both sildenafil, an erectile disfunction medication [the active ingredient in Viagra], and trazodone, an antidepressant [such as Desyrel], after a mix-up led to some of the prescription drugs being packaged together.“

We can think of some lewd suggestions of how this combination might work as an antidepressant, but our better judgment prevails.

Sildenafil is also prescribed for pulmonary arterial hypertension (high blood pressure in the lungs) because it relaxes blood vessels to increase blood flow.

If this goof isn’t bad enough, try putting your mind around the horrific side effects of trazodone, should anyone goof by actually taking it.

Trazodone is what’s known as a “newer antidepressant”. Some of its side effects are: flushing, chest pain, abnormal bleeding, ringing in the ears, dizzyness, fainting, changes in sexual ability, and painful erections.

Some of the side effects of sildenafil are: flushing, chest pain, nosebleeds, ringing in the ears, dizzyness, fainting, painful erections.

Gee, it might be difficult to tell which pill you’ve taken since both were in the same bottle and have the same side effects!

We make fun of it because we think it’s too good of a joke to let be; but the fact is, trazodone is not really a joking matter. Its side effects also include suicidal thoughts or behavior, violent behavior, psychotic episodes, deeper depression (which is ironic for an “antidepressant”), and many more serious adverse reactions.

Trazodone, like other such psychiatric drugs, raises the level of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. Since it is not known exactly how this drug is supposed to work, taking it is playing Russian Roulette with your brain.

Trazodone is also routinely prescribed off-label for insomnia. Care must be used when stopping it, since it can have withdrawal symptoms. Psychiatrists euphemistically call this “discontinuation syndrome.”

We now know that Aaron Alexis, the 34-year-old man accused of killing 12 people in a gun rampage at the Washington Navy Yard September 16, 2013, was taking trazodone.

Adverse reactions should be reported to the FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program.

Recognize that the real problem is not even this awful drug, but that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

It is vital that you, your family and friends watch the video documentary “Making A Killing – The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging“. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of psychiatric abuse victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore. Watch the video online.

Making A Killing

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Cap It Off With Caplyta

Monday, September 21st, 2020

Emerging from a cloud of regulatory questions and mixed clinical results, Caplyta (generic lumateperone) an atypical antipsychotic from Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. was given FDA approval 20 December 2019, and is now being heavily marketed. There are over a dozen of these second-generation antipsychotics, with varying activity at the brain receptors for various neurotransmitters.

It is hardly clear whether lumateperone has any advantages over other antipsychotic drugs. The primary reason for researching and releasing another atypical antipsychotic is to try to reduce the side effects, rather than to actually eliminate the symptoms, since no one really knows what causes these symptoms. The manipulation of neurotransmitters in the brain is just a guess, unfounded by any real understanding, just as the actual causes of so-called schizophrenia (psychiatry’s “For Profit Disease”) are not understood.

Side Effects of this dangerous drug include: stroke, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, tardive dyskinesia, diabetes, low white blood cell count, low blood pressure, falls, seizures, sleepiness, trouble concentrating, high temperature, difficulty swallowing, withdrawal symptoms in newborn babies exposed to Caplyta during the third trimester, pruritus (itchy skin), rash, urticaria (hives), increased mortality in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis.

Patients are urged to avoid Cytochrome P450 (CYP3A4) inducers or inhibitors, since these may exacerbate the adverse reactions, causing violence and suicide.

List Price: $44 per 42mg capsule, with a peak sales estimate of $60 million in 2020 and $400 million by 2024. There may be conditions for insurance approval; for example, UnitedHealthcare may require the failure, contraindication, or intolerance to three other atypical antipsychotics before giving approval to pay for the use of Caplyta.

The antipsychotic activity of Caplyta is thought to be mediated through a combination of antagonism of serotonin receptors and antagonism of dopamine receptors in the brain, however the actual mechanism of action of Caplyta in schizophrenia is unknown.

Clinical trial results were measured by the opinion of a clinician observing or asking the patient about their feelings. The results require cautious interpretation and could represent chance findings. One phase III trial showed some symptomatic improvement and another phase III trial failed to show any improvement over placebo.

Obviously use this drug at your own serious risk, and insist on Full Informed Consent.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

It is vital that patients watch the video documentary “Making A Killing – The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging“. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of psychiatric abuse victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore.

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