Antidepressants and the Soft Underbelly of Psychiatry

Ted O'Neil
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read

This is part 2 of a discussion on The Impotence of the Mental Health System

Warning: do not discontinue any antidepressants without medical supervision.

PERTINENT STATISTICS ON ANTIDEPRESSANTS

Consider this: according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the rate of antidepressant use in the United Staes among teens and adults increased over 400% in roughly a decade. Now turning our attention to suicide rates, which shows exponential growth in that same period of time. The rise was particularly steep for women. The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999. While there was a dramatic jump for women, the actual rate of suicide is between 300% and 600% higher among men. These are alarming statistics. There appears to be some causal nexus between the two. While correlation does not equal causation, studies have shown that there is, in fact, a link between the two.

By a very large margin, the percentage of whites taking anti-depressants is the highest in the country. African Americans and Hispanics are among the lowest. The suicide rates among whites is roughly 400% higher than African Americans and 500% more than Hispanics.

Something is truly going on.

THE LINK BETWEEN ANTIDEPRESSANTS AND SUICIDALITY

Think about this: in October 2004, the FDA ordered all pharmaceutical companies to add a “black box” warning to all antidepressants because the drugs could cause suicidal thoughts and actions in children and teenagers (subsequently added for most drugs to include adults). Similar actions were taken by the EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

A 2005 British study showed that those taking SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), which many people know in the form of Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, have double the rates of suicide as those taking a placebo. Think about that for a moment. But this was actually a very low figure. Just a year later in May 2006, the American Journal of Psychiatry showed that elderly people prescribed SSRIs are nearly five times more likely to commit suicide during the first month on the drugs than those given other classes of antidepressants. Five times more likely in the first month! In August 2005, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration found a relationship between SSRIs and suicidality, agitation, nervousness, and anxiety in adults. It also determined that these symptoms could occur during withdrawal from the drugs.

So we give drugs to depressed people that cause suicidality and anxiety. Would you take a heart medication that caused a heart attack?

BUT THEY WORKED FOR ME OR SOMEONE I KNOW

The fact is that for most people, depression is self-limiting. That is to say, doing nothing it will go away on its own. Even clinical major depression.

I can hear it now, you say that they worked for you. That you know people that were helped by psychotropic medications. Were they really? In a Public Library of Science study, they found that at moderate levels of depression there was virtually NO difference between antidepressants and placebo. Further, even for severe depression, there was but a minor statistical difference. The conclusion of the study stated: increased benefit for extremely depressed patients seems more attributable to a decrease in responsiveness to placebo rather than an increase in responsiveness to medication.

But do people really get better on their own? In the Netherlands, researchers looked at the progress of patients who had reported an episode of major depression. Two-thirds of the patients were female and for 43%, it was a recurrent episode. Some patients sought treatment at the primary-care level; others sought mental-health-system care; others sought no care. The researchers found that the overwhelming majority of patients recovered (defined as “no or minimal depressive symptoms in a 3-month period”), regardless of the level of treatment.

POPULAR ANTIDEPRESSANTS AND THEIR SIDE EFFECTS

  • Paxil-In 2006 GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of Paxil, wrote to physicians indicating the increased risk for suicide.
  • Cymbalta– In June 2005, the FDA indicated that there was an increase in suicidality.
  • Strattera (which is also used to treat ADHD) was required by the FDA to have a black box warning for an increase in suicidality.
  • Wellbutrin (also known as Zyban for smoking cessation) is used to treat depression and ADHD (though it is not FDA for this purpose) has been shown to cause seizures (4 times any other antidepressant), fatal heart attack, agitation, insomnia, increased relentlessness, anxiety, delusions, hallucinations, psychotic episodes, confusion, weight loss and paranoia.
  • And what about older anti-depressants?
  • Tricyclics ushered in the modern age of psychiatric antidepressants and they are still commonly prescribed today. Drugs such as Elavil, Sinequan, Tofranil, and Pamelor exemplify this class. Like the other antidepressants, the FDA requires all tricyclics and other older antidepressants such as MAO inhibitors to carry the black box warning indicating that there is an increased rate of suicidality when taking the medication.

WHAT NEXT?

Should you stop taking medications? That is up to you…and your physician. However, we are living in a great age where there are many different non-medical interventions for depression that have shown great promise. The overwhelming people on this planet who have depression do not use Western medicine to treat their depression and yet their rates of depression remain significantly lower than that in the West.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade