Benefit Risk Madness: Antipsychotics and Suicide

November, 2, 2012 | 15 Comments

Comments

      • Hi David. Thank you so much for this article and data you have supplied. I am on Relprevv and your data supports the way that the drugs are making me feel. When I try to explain to the Doctors that I feel suicidal on the anti psychotics and anti depressants it feels like they don’t believe me and tell me that I am feeling suicidal for other reasons. But I have had 1 trial period were I was off the drugs and I notice a considerable change in mood. It was like going from sad to happy, and when they put me back on the drugs from happy to sad.

        I just have a question regarding the data provided under the “What’s with the Question Marks?”. Can you please give the numbers of how many patients were in the trial for each drug?

        • I’m not a doctor, but I have been studying the effects these hard core drugs have on people and the correlation between them and suicide and suicidal thoughts and behavior. It’s hard to get the numbers of people that have been harmed while taking these drugs since there is a huge effort to hide this information from the public. The pharmaceutical industry is the most powerful and lucrative in the world.
          That being said, please research a safe and natural way to maybe ween off anti depressants with advice and help from natural heeling doctors, not ones that receive incentives and kick backs from the dangerous drug companies making the very drugs that they are pushing.

  1. If the BMJ and other psychiatric and medical journals are unwilling to publish because ‘it knocks medicine on it’s head’, because they haven’t yet arrived, or even set off on the journey, then might I suggest a New World Medical Journal appears on the market.

    You could fill a magazine with explosive research and data and stories, from Sweden, from New Zealand, from Canada, from the Indians who are being manipulated into clinical trials organised by GSK and dying needlessly, as exposed in Newsnight this week.

    Your advertising revenue could come from thousands of areas based on the premise:
    Don’t take a drug unless you realise the Rxisk

    Holidays, Travel Agencies, Property, Tourism, Natural Health, etc.etc.

    Every time I read some spurious article in the newspapers about drugs and how they can help, ie ssris I am amazed that we cannot retaliate at all. In fact, I think it is pretty irresponsible of newspapers to publish articles like this at all.
    All articles should contain facts and figures and risks, not all the benefits, as they do.
    I always think that every drug article I read should have a response article from an eminent professional. It is all so damningly misleading and dangerous.
    An example, today, front page, Daily Express, Statins in new health alert!
    This is not new, news. This statin saga, is like the ssri saga, just as dangerous, just as misleading.
    You cannot have half the world saying ‘take it’ and the other half saying ‘don’t take it.’
    It is medically insane. Everybody wants evidence based medicine, the majority think that is what they are getting.

  2. “A doctor who can’t doctor without drugs is not much of a doctor.” Now, that’s a breath of fresh air! A lot of docs have lost any sense of that — and I’ve met a few who are more like Pez dispensers, sad to say.

    If these trials were run mainly on people diagnosed with schizophrenia – and if those people don’t innately have a high risk of suicide – then we are in real trouble. Because these drugs are being doled out more and more to people who aren’t schizophrenic, but whose other problems do put them at high risk of suicide. They could be triggering even worse suicide rates than shown in these tables, and the problem could hide out in plain sight.

    Take veterans. The number of vets (and active-duty soldiers!) being prescribed Seroquel in particular has risen high enough to grab the attention of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most of them are getting it for post-traumatic stress disorder, and in high doses. Others are getting it as an “add-on” for depression or as a sleeping pill of last resort for folks in chronic pain from physical injuries. The suicide rate among vets is horrendous as it is. If 10% of that, say, were a consequence of the drugs they were on, would anyone catch it?

    I also see a lot of civilians in chronic pain getting Seroquel or Risperdal as a sleeping pill – including patients with serious back injuries, who end up adding obesity and diabetes to all the other stresses on their bodies. Any suicides there will be chalked up to the physical pain, loss of a job, money woes, etc. I’m sure.

    Among those getting antipsychotics as mood-stabilizers or antidepressants are many people diagnosed with “borderline personality disorder” (BPD) and similar problems. I spoke with a social worker recently who runs groups for young adults with BPD. By definition, they have turbulent emotional lives and respond to distress with impulsive actions, including suicide attempts, cutting, drinking & drugs, etc. She said a lot of her clients take Abilify, but they don’t complain about akathisia so much as weight gain. Patients with a lot of “drama” in their lives to begin with may not be able to pinpoint the cause if they begin feeling worse – and their treaters still less. Abilify could turn out to be the riskiest drug of all.

  3. A gorgeous lady, from an affluent background, this week. killed her two babies, because she stopped her an anti-depressant.

    It is not now rocket science to see why this happened. Luckily for her, the judge concluded that she had ‘forces’ beyond her control. How will this woman ever get over this. She will receive further medication, without a doubt, and if it is ever recognised that her drugs were to blame, how will she ever come to terms with it.
    Well, she won’t. Her life is now so severely damaged, from an ssri, that all the evidence in the world won’t bring her babies back.

    We know, what it is like to have ‘an episode’ from these disgusting drugs and I can only feel overwhelming sorrow for the woman who ‘lost it’ after stopping her drug.

    I honestly don’t know how these pharma executives sleep at night, crowing away at their awesome and spectacular ‘deviations’ to the mind of individuals like this poor lady.

  4. It is difficult for some people to understand how “crazy” psychotic drugs are – some weeks ago a doctor I spoke to re feeling down “and stuck in the past” and wishing to “go back and change things” told me I was just depressed – he prescribed sleeping tablets and Lexapro – I did not know at that time that Lexapro was a psychotic drug nor was it explained to me – Wishing, wanting and praying to feel better and be an obedient patient I took Lexapro for five days – (I stopped because of the feelings of feeling too high – to feelings of exhaustion. Within a short time after stopping them I knew I was reacting more angrily to situations that arose especially in disagreements/arguments with a close friend – the anger was frightening – whilst I would be upset later for reacting so angrily there is something I find difficult to work out – it is a profound feeling of detachment from the “episodes” and an overwhelming feeling of “some part of me lost”. It is a frightening lonely road.

  5. In 1970, my brother was killed in a tragic road accident in Saudia Arabia. He worked for Marconi. He was twenty five years old.
    My parents and I were stricken with grief, My lovely dad was put on valium, which he remained on for twenty years. As his child, I was constantly aware of my dad, taking a pill out of a wee box, but I didn’t know anything about pills.

    My mum was put on Ativan for her grief. She, also, was on this for years. When she stopped taking Ativan, she had a complete nervous breakdown. It was appalling, but, despite that, she got over it.

    Dad stopped taking Valium, when he retired, and never looked back. He was a better dad, after valium, and, mum, off her Ativan, was a fabulous mum.

    I went to see a psychiatrist in 1988 and he gave me Lofepramine. Within a short space of time, I had suicidal thoughts. To his credit his decided not to continue the pharmapyschology approach and let me get on with my life.

    Another crisis, airline pilot boyfriend drunk, and Sunday Mail arrive on my doorstep, and it is all over the newspapers.

    What to do, give me Seroxat to cure my ‘problem.’

    Some absurd dimwit, deep in my medical records, said I had ‘genetic loading’.
    This man, said I had genetic loading, I ask the question, why was my dad put on valium and my mum put on ativan, for years and years, and we came through it but then, astonishingly, I get Lofepramine and Seroxat from which Lofrepramine caused ‘suicidal thoughts’ and Seroxat caused ‘suicide’.

    I also had a distant cousin, who commited suicide, because his wife left him with the babes. This was also given cause of concern of ‘genetic loading,’ He was a police sergeant, he was stricken. It was nothing to do with me.

    What is it about psychiatrists, wanting to medicate, and not listening, or even attempting to realise, that Valium, Ativan, Lofepramine or Seroxat and, of course, all the other humungous drugs, do more harm, in disablement of the’ human right to a normal life.’

    My dad died of an aneuryism, but happy and fulfilled, off valium, my mum is now 92, bright, alert and fabulous.

    The damage these drugs cause is beyond redemption.

    Thank the lord, drugs are no part of our lives anymore and we can get on with living, not medicated.

    ‘Genetic loading’. I can’t quite grasp what his point was.

  6. I wish to know why when I withdraw and stopped too suddenly risperadon I suffered teeth shattering AND NOT BEING ABLE TO TALK FOR 2 HOURS. I would like a copy of evidence of rebound effects for risperadon and to know if the symtoms are actually a cause of the tablets and not my illness ( psychosis)
    The withdrawl from rispiradon was too sudden and I had “weird sensations in my head ” (hARD TO DESCRIBE). David kealy can you supply me a copy of rebound effects of rispirodon please so I can present evidence to the prescriber the psychartrist. who just passed me on to his senior doctor. I have been passed around three doctors now with no answers. They are just saying all my symtoms are psychological. I actually am more suicidal in that I have physical symptoms and my fear of not being understood is ever more pressing.Can you please help.

  7. Yes indeed a brave and good doctor.
    Ten years ago, in an Irish mental hospital, I was put on respiritdol immediately after telling the psychiartrist that I had been smoking grass for a few years to relax, but now wanted to stop.
    Trusting in her judgement I took the prescribed dose everyday for two months, by the end of which I was just dreaming of ways to kill myself.
    When I used to see that someone on TV had died, I would say, ” You lucky B*stard”. The compunction to kill myself was far greater than any desire I felt for grass.
    Eventually I tried to OD myself with a month’s supply of pills, luckily my girlfriend came home and got me to the hospital on time.
    I was never suicidal before taking those pills and have not been since.
    What makes me really angry is that, the seniors in our society, never stand up for the truth in relation to this problem, they just are too indifferent and lazy to look up facts, make enquiries and demand some answers from politicians.
    but sure what can you do?
    big pharma pays the pols to do their bidding and sure who can blame them?
    souls don’t come free ya know!!

  8. Well id say its pretty obvious that antipsychotics would cause a lot of suicides. They are semi-permanent dysphoriants after all…

    Ronnie, I know what you mean. Ive been on and off these drugs for many years and I envy those that are dead.

  9. I have become increasingly ill after I have been given antipsychotics for PTSD. After withdrawing antipsychotics I got my first psychosis. At the moment I am severely suicidal because I am stuck on antipsychotics. I can’t get off anymore, because they made me chronically psychotic. But life on antipsychotics is not worth living – they ruined my life. I can’t feel love, joy, happiness, faith, anything that makes life worthwhile. Thank you for bringing a subject like this to our attention.

  10. I agree Seroquel can cause suicidal behavior, even in older people, and wonder how to do something about it to warn people. Your writing about veterans and suicide while taking Seroquel is very revealing.

  11. I was placed on Xeplion/Invenga sustenna for 6 months and I got a lot of adverse effects. I am definitely suicidal because they took away all my sleep which will kill me in a horrible way. I don’t know where to ask for help

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