Antidepressants Pose Suicide Risk for Young Adults Too

"Widely used antidepressants double the risk of suicidal behavior in young adults, from around three cases per thousand to seven cases per thousand, according to a huge federal analysis of hundreds of clinical trials....
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"Critics of the drugs said they were deeply distrustful of both the medical profession and FDA itself because of conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry. ...

"Gwen Olsen, a former pharmaceutical industry representative, told the panel she had influenced doctors by offering them free food, gifts and gimmicks to get access and then presented them with skillfully manipulated data. ...
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"'Industry controls the data, and industry with the aid of FDA have miscoded the data so all the articles in all the journals that purport to represent clinical trial data are misleading,' [psychiatrist]Healy said in an interview. His own analysis, published in the British Medical Journal in 2005, found a two-fold increase in risk among all adults taking the drugs."

—By Shankar Vedantam, "Antidepressants a Suicide Risk for Young Adults," Washington Post Staff Writer, December 14, 2006

Multiple Drugs Creating Man-made Insanity

Many experts say the wide-spread epidemic of mental health problems in the US is man-made. ...
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Once Susan Florence was placed on medication, whenever she experienced a side effect from one drug, her doctor simply prescribed another until she ended up in a drug-induced frenzy for which it would have been impossible to distinguish which drug, or combination thereof, was causing the adverse reactions.
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...She was given Provigil to counter the sedating effects of Klonopin, which was prescribed to counter the side effects of Paxil.
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After reporting the reaction she experienced after taking Provigil, the doctor told her to quit taking the drug. He then prescribed Tenuate, a diet pill that has since been pulled off the market. ...

—Evelyn Pringle, "Psych Drugs Used To Manufacture Insanity," by repost Wednesday, Mar. 08, 2006, San Francisco Indymedia, sf.indymedia.org

Controversy Urges Caution Over TeenScreen

"Months before a depression/suicide screening could begin in Kenosha schools, debate on the efficacy and appropriateness of the program is in full swing."
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"John Nordquist, publisher of the Daily Kenoshan, a community Web site, said TeenScreen reaches too far into students' lives.

"To be saying you need a psychiatrist or you are suicidal, that's not for a school to say," Nordquist said.
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"I'm not sure how much legwork was done in looking into TeenScreen, and where their funding comes from. From what I've seen, I don't like the roots of this," board member Pam Stevens said. "There is no chance I would allow this in this school district."

— Chris Barncard, "TeenScreen under fire in Unified suicide fight," Kenosha News, Nov 15, 2006

Protect Your Children: Stop MH Screening!

"Instead of dealing with the overprescription of drug cocktails for children, our government is telling us we have a mental health crisis, and the remedy is universal mental health screening. A major government campaign is now under way, sweetened with federal grants, to subject all children to mental health screening.
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"It's up to parents to stop this unscientific, ineffective, and dangerous government intrusion into the minds and values of our children. State laws should require parental consent for all mental health screening, and Congress should pass the Child Medication Safety Act, to prohibit schools from denying entry to a child whose parents choose not to put him on drugs."

— By Phyllis Schlafly, "Parents worry about prescription drugs, too," Copley News Service, December 1, 2006

To STOP screening of teenagers (TeenScreen) sign this petition now:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/StopTNT/petition.html

Paxil Woes and a $63.8 M Settlement

"Promotion of Paxil for use by children and adolescents while withholding negative information about the medication's safety and effectiveness" is the subject of a $63.8 million proposed settlement between Paxil maker GlaxoSmithKline and attorneys representing plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the company.

… The suit also alleges the company hid clinical-trials data indicating an increased risk of suicidality in children and adolescents with major depression.

—Jim Rosack, Regulatory and Legal Briefs, Psychiatric News December 1, 2006,Volume 41, Number 23, page 19

"Not surprisingly, the company refused to accept any liability and continues to deny all of the allegations in the suit. In the suit, plaintiffs claimed that Glaxo withheld information from four separate studies that challenged the drug’s effectiveness on children and found an upsurge in suicidal thoughts and behavior in children who’d taken it…."

—By Associated Press, November 1, 2006, Edwardsville, Ill., "Glaxo Reaches Settlement in Paxil Case," (Published, November 3rd, 2006 on www.newsinferno.com)

"The FDA is strengthening its warning for the antidepressant Paxil because it may be associated with birth defects, citing a new study that found increased risk of fetuses developing heart defects."
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"Paxil has long been associated with difficult withdrawal side effects, leaving patients virtually addicted to the drug….Paxil withdrawal symptoms include… psychotic features such as visual and/or audio hallucinations/illusions, insomnia, nausea, restlessness, "electrical shock" phenomena/electrical surges or shocks through the head and/or body… depressive thoughts, suicidal thoughts, homicidal thoughts…"

—From Parker & Waichman, LLP, Representing Victims of Paxil Side Effects, www.yourlawyer.com

Paxil: Questionable Results, Hidden Data

“New documents uncovered by ABC News suggest GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of the popular antidepressant Paxil, failed to disclose important information about the possibility of an increased risk of suicidal behavior in some children taking the drug, as well as serious withdrawal symptoms when some patients stop taking Paxil.
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"According to these documents, internal studies by GlaxoSmithKline concluded that Paxil had little or no effect in treating depression in children and adolescents. And as far back as 1997, the company was aware of studies reporting suicide-related behaviors in young patients taking the drug.

"In spite of this information, GlaxoSmithKline distributed a memo to its sales force in 2001 touting the drug's 'remarkable efficacy and safety in the treatment of adolescent depression.'"

—ABC News, December 10, 2004, “Drug Maker Withheld Paxil Study Data," contributors: Greg Fisher, Kate Sheekey, Kim Launier and Marc Lallanilla

"Study 329 suggested that the company's popular drug Paxil might help depressed adolescents. Study 377, completed not long afterward, indicated that Paxil provided no more benefit than a sugar pill in treating depressed young people.

"But only the favorable study was widely publicized by Paxil's maker. The company chose not to discuss publicly the trial with negative results, and those findings came to light only when an outside researcher* on the study team decided to disclose them at a medical conference."

—Barry Meier, “Two Studies, Two Results, And a Debate Over a Drug,” June 3, 2004, The New York Times

*Dr. Robert Milin, Royal Ottawa Hospital, Canada