Antidepressants

The FDA recently approved paroxetine (which in higher doses is marketed as the antidepressant Paxil) as a nonhormonal treatment for hot flashes in menopausal women. The drug will be marketed as Brisdelle. According to a New York Times article F.D.A. Approves a Drug for Hot Flashes, the approval was granted despite the fact that FDA’s own advisory committee voted 10 to 4 last March against approval. The reported reason for the negative vote was that in clinical trials, Brisdelle proved only minimally effective. ...

There’s a Mail Online article about high numbers of antidepressant prescriptions in Blaenau Gwent. The article is dated June 29, and was drawn to my attention by Nanu Grewal from Australia. The article is about a town in Wales where reportedly one sixth of the population is taking antidepressants. That’s about 17%. So presumably all these people have brain disease. Or perhaps it’s because the unemployment rate is double the national average. That in itself is depressing, but to make matters even worse, a “diagnosis” of depression can reportedly help a person qualify for additional government benefits – a strong temptation for people living below the poverty line. ...

There’s a must-read article on Leonie’s Blog: The grieving mother is at it again! Leonie lost a son to suicide four years ago. The suicide occurred 17 days after he started citalopram, an SSRI, marketed as Celexa. Leonie heard a ‘science expert’ on the radio this week attributing depression to low serotonin levels in the brain. Leonie asks: "How can these idiots keep spouting the ‘chemical imbalance’ rubbish? It is drug company propaganda at its best and has no scientific basis, no factually based evidence whatsoever to conclude that depression is anything other than a reaction to life itself." ...

Courtesy of Nanu Grewal in Australia, I’ve come across this interesting paper: Systematic meta-analysis of individual selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications and congenital malformations, by Nicholas Myles et al. The authors note that there is some suggestion of a link between SSRI’s, as a group, and birth defects, but that the teratogenicity of individual members of this drug class have not been systematically compared by meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is essentially a systematic review of previous studies and combining of the results of those that meet certain pre-determined criteria for research quality. ...

Melissa, a commenter on a recent post, asked if I would do a post on akathisia. Akathisia literally means inability to sit. People with this problem typically pace for long periods, and if they do sit down, they continue to keep moving and shifting their position in the chair. In severity it can range from a generalized sense of uneasiness or agitation, to severe discomfort and even pain. The discomfort tends to be located in the legs, but can also occur in the hip and pelvic area. In severe cases, the victims pace to the point of exhaustion, but even then sitting does not relieve the discomfort. ...

Courtesy of yobluemama2 on Twitter, I’ve come across an interesting article. It’s called Psychiatric Drugs and Suicide, by Janne Larsson, a reporter. It’s posted on PsychRights.org, a law project for psychiatric rights. The article focuses on suicides committed in Sweden in 2006-2007, and the proportions of victims who had taken psychiatric drugs in the period prior to the suicide. The study also covers data from autopsy reports. Information for the study was gathered under Sweden’s freedom of information act. Here’s a summary of the main findings. ...

David Healy, MD, is a controversial figure. On the one hand, he is a fierce and determined opponent of the escalating use of antidepressant drugs. On the other hand, he is one of the world’s leading proponents of electric shock “treatment.” For the latter reason, I’m somewhat hesitant to quote his work, but he writes good anti-antidepressant articles, and his points are usually well-researched and compelling. I’ve recently come across an article called Prozac and SSRIs: Twenty-fifth Anniversary, which Dr. Healy wrote in February of this year. Here are some quotes: ...

I’ve recently come across an article by Ronald Pies MD on PsychCentral. It’s titled: Are the Puritans Behind the War on Antidepressants? Here’s the opening paragraph: "These are not good times for Prozac and its progeny. In the popular media, the use of antidepressants has been likened to swallowing 'expensive Tic-Tacs', while in professional journals, the effectiveness of these medications has been challenged, if not discounted. And even a casual Google search under the terms, “Antidepressants damage” turns up thousands of websites and articles claiming that these drugs cause brain damage, induce suicide, or lead to 'addiction.' Yikes!" ...

Carl Elliot has an interesting post up about the possible link between the military’s increased use of psychotropic drugs and the concomitant increase in soldiers’ suicide rates. It’s titled Note to New York Times reporters: Read the New York Times. Here’s a quote: "Like many reporters before them, James Dao and Andrew Lehren, [NY Times reporters], report that suicides in the military have risen to record levels. What they don't mention is the fact that prescriptions of psychotropic drugs, many of them with black box warnings for suicide, have also risen to record levels." ...

There’s an interesting article on this topic by Hans Jensen et al, in the February 21, 2013 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. You can see an abstract here. The authors conducted a register study on all pregnant women in Denmark from 1996 to 2006, linking data from the Medical Birth Register, the Psychiatric Central Register, and the National Prescription Database. They found that the "… use of SSRIs during pregnancy increases the risk of a low Apgar score independently of maternal depression." ...