I have to agree with Shebuah here because I know that even though people may not understand precisely how things work, they know a lot more than mere "guess" work. I have experienced and seen first hand the benefits of the right psychotropic drugs when needed for the right person. Most times the first drug tried for a severely depressed individual does not work.

There are all kinds of side effects when the that can affect any given individual, and some side effects most people experience to greater or lesser degrees that go away for most.

I know that these medicines are a life saver and huge boost to quality of life for so many. Ever watch the TV ads for just about any over the counter medicine and all the possible reactions people can have including death? It is for liability reasons that these are tacked on. There are so many people helped who would otherwise have died or had a very poor quality of life had Eli Lilly and other companies not been around to find ever better substances to help people in need. (Emphasis on "in need".)

I know first hand how debilitating that depression can be physically. At one point I was so effected by clinical depression that it hurt to just get up and try to take a shower. I had no energy. It wasn't just a state of mind. Unless you have experienced it and found what works to give quality of life you can not possibly understand how important these drugs are under the care of a good physician or how real physical pain can be which accompany these illnesses.

I have known people who suffered from depression and one friend in particular who literally blew his brains out and it didn't have to happen. People in his support group told him all he needed was "The Big Book" and that all drugs including antidepressants were a sign of weakness and even a RELAPSE if he were to take it. He listened to that sub-group of people and could not tolerate the pain any more.

I do agree that some doctors over-medicate some people and pharmaceutical companies push their drugs at times in very unethical ways. An example of that is Neurontin and an expose on Pharm reps who paid Drs. kickbacks to promote it for A-Z conditions. But overall with the right care and for the right person these advances in medicine can save a life. A good Dr. will work with his or her patient to carefully monitor the efficacy and any side effects of psychotropic drugs or any other for that matter.

I also suffered from severe PMS and bleeding disorder for awhile, very physical I assure you and my OB-GYN prescribed Prozac for that and it helped me immensely. I take no psychotropic drugs now because I no longer need them but if I did need them, knowing now how beneficial they are, I wouldn't hesitate to do so.

> THE LILLY SUICIDES

> WARNING: ANTI-DEPRESSANTS MAY BE HAZARDOUS
> TO YOUR HEALTH

> Posted by: CULTURESHOCKTV.COM
> Sat Aug 17 2002
> By Richard DeGrandpre

> The Witness

> In the final days of the 20th century, a
> North Wales psychiatrist named David Healy
> conducted a curious study, and with more
> than a curious result. Twenty volunteers
> with no history of psychiatric problems were
> recruited, half of whom were given the drug
> Zoloft, an antidepressant from the Prozac
> family of drugs known as the SSRIs, or
> "selective serotonin reuptake
> inhibitors." The other half were given
> an antidepressant that, unlike Zoloft and
> Prozac, does not selectively target the
> brain chemical serotonin. Each group took
> their respective drug for two weeks and
> then, shortly thereafter, switched to the
> other.

> Healy had designed his "healthy
> volunteer study" to compare the
> psychological experience of being on a
> serotonin antidepressant versus a
> non-serotonin antidepressant, but before he
> knew it, two of his volunteers became
> dangerously agitated and suicidal. Both were
> taking the SSRI drug. The adverse reactions
> couldn't easily be blamed on psychological
> instability -- these were healthy
> volunteers. And the rate of 10 percent made
> it clear that such results were not so rare
> as to be incidental.

> Healy was surprised at the effect, but he
> would not stay surprised. Some months later,
> when serving as an expert witness in a civil
> action against Zoloft's manufacturer,
> Pfizer, Healy obtained access to the company
> archives. There he discovered an unpublished
> study from the 1980s in which healthy female
> volunteers were given either Zoloft or a
> placebo. The study was canceled four days
> later, after all those taking Zoloft began
> complaining of agitation and apprehension.
> Healy's case was not so bad; in fact, some
> of his volunteers rated Zoloft positively.
> Of the two who did not, one was a
> 30-year-old woman who, within two weeks of
> starting the drug, became obsessed with the
> idea that she should throw herself in front
> of a car. "It was as if there was
> nothing out there apart from the car which
> she was going to throw herself under,"
> Healy reported. "She didn't think of
> her partner or child."

> The Zoloft case was not Healy's first
> involvement in a civil action against an
> SSRI manufacturer. Earlier, he had been
> involved in a wrongful death suit against
> Eli Lilly, the maker of the much celebrated
> SSRI drug Prozac. An internationally
> renowned psychiatrist as well as a historian
> of psychiatric medicine, Healy's recruitment
> onto the plaintiffs' side was a small but
> significant victory. Prior to his
> involvement as an expert witness, Healy had
> already raised a number of questions about
> the SSRIs, including the possibility that
> they might produce agitation and other
> problems with an unusual frequency,
> sometimes leading to suicide. Healy was also
> ideal because he's not a radical or an
> outsider; he has done research and
> consulting for various drug companies, and
> has himself prescribed SSRIs and other
> psychiatric drugs. In fact, he had been
> consulted on several SSRI suicide cases in
> which he had concluded that the SSRIs were
> not at fault.

> This view changed, however, with the case of
> William Forsyth.

> The Victims

> William Forsyth met and married his wife
> June in 1955. After two years of military
> service in West Germany, Bill and June moved
> to Los Angeles, where Bill had grown up.
> After arriving, Bill started a rental car
> business, and the couple had two kids, Susan
> and Bill Jr. The business and other
> investments continued to grow, and in 1986
> the Forsyths cashed in. Four years later,
> Bill and June retired to Maui, the Hawaiian
> island that their son called home. Bill was
> 61 at the time. June was 54.

> Despite the romance of a new life, the
> transition was difficult for Bill Forsyth.
> Personal difficulties led to marital
> difficulties. Marriage counseling seemed to
> help, though, and by the next year there was
> a general sense that Bill was on the mend.
> Three years after the move to Hawaii,
> however, with Bill still feeling unsettled,
> a local psychiatrist prescribed Prozac. The
> psychiatrist, who had been seeing Bill since
> the previous year, did not believe Bill to
> be either seriously depressed or suicidal.

> After his first day on the drug, Bill was
> feeling as you might expect if you've read
> Peter Kramer's Listening to Prozac -- he was
> "better than well." The next day,
> however, he felt horrible, and for the first
> time put himself under hospital care. Ten
> days later, Bill felt well enough to leave
> the hospital, but was still taking Prozac.
> Everyone seemed to agree that he was doing
> better, and the family scheduled a boat trip
> for the next day. When his parents failed to
> show up that afternoon, Bill Jr. went to
> their home, where he found both his parents
> lying dead in a pool of blood. Eleven days
> after starting on Prozac, Bill Forsyth had
> taken a serrated knife from the kitchen and
> stabbed his wife 15 times. He had then taken
> the knife, fixed it to a chair, and impaled
> himself on it.

> Depressed people sometimes do desperate
> things. Yet these were senseless acts that
> were simply unimaginable to those who knew
> Bill Forsyth. For his two grown children,
> the only possible explanation was the drug.
> They decided to sue.

> The Forsyth case was not the first wrongful
> death suit to be brought against Eli Lilly.
> By the fall of 1994, a year after the
> Forsyth murder-suicide, there were already
> 160 cases filed against Lilly, linking
> Prozac to homicides, suicides, and other
> violence. Many of these cases were
> dismissed; others ended with cash
> settlements. But Lilly had not lost a Prozac
> case, and was determined to keep it that
> way. By the mid-1990s, Prozac sales were
> worth $2 billion per year, or about a third
> of all Lilly's income.

> In March 1999, with Susan and Bill Jr.
> refusing to settle, the Forsyth case finally
> made it to trial in United States District
> Court in Honolulu. "I know that with
> all their power and money I don't have much
> of a chance," said Susan at the time,
> "but I feel like I have to try."
> With David Healy serving as an expert
> witness, the Forsyths' lawyers went on to
> argue that the Prozac family of drugs can
> produce a kind of psychological hijacking --
> a bizarre and nightmarish syndrome marked by
> suicidal thoughts, extreme agitation,
> emotional blunting, and a craving for death.
> They also argued that the company knew of
> these risks and, instead of warning doctors
> to look out for them, worked vigilantly to
> sweep them under the rug.

> The Evidence

> Though Prozac is one of the world's
> best-known commodities, its most terrifying
> potential side effect,
> "akathisia," remains virtually
> unknown. Akathisia has been described as a
> unique form of inner torture that, prior to
> the development of psychiatric drugs,
> probably never existed. Knowledge of the
> side effect, however, has been around for a
> while. In 1978, 10 years before
> "fluoxetine" would be brought to
> the U.S. market and become the bestseller
> known as Prozac, initial clinical trails had
> already warned of akathisia and other
> problems. Minutes from Lilly's Prozac
> project team in that year noted, "Some
> patients have converted from severe
> depression to agitation within a few days;
> in one case the agitation was marked and the
> patient had to be taken off [the] drug ...
> There have been a fairly large number of
> reports of adverse reactions."

> As the Forsyth case and others would go on
> to show, Lilly's internal records revealed
> considerable awareness within the company. A
> letter sent to it from the British Committee
> on Safety of Medicines in 1984 reads:
> "During the treatment with [Prozac] 16
> suicide attempts were made, two of these
> with success. As patients with a risk of
> suicide were excluded from the studies, it
> is probable that this high proportion can be
> attributed to an action of the
> preparation." Similar concern was
> expressed by German authorities in 1985,
> where Prozac is sold as "Fluctin,"
> and with required warnings of possible
> akathisia and suicide. A Lilly document
> dated from March of that year even
> quantifies the problem, suggesting a rate of
> suicide for Prozac 5.6 times higher than for
> the antidepressants that were popular before
> the rise of the SSRIs -- the tricyclics.
> "The benefits vs. risks considerations
> for fluoxetine [Prozac] currently does not
> fall clearly in favor of the benefits,"
> the document concludes. By 1986,
> clinical-trial studies comparing Prozac with
> other antidepressants showed a rate of 12.5
> suicides per 1,000 users compared to only
> 3.8 per 1,000 on older, non-SSRI
> antidepressants, and 2.5 per 1,000 on
> placebos.

> After Prozac's entry into the market in
> 1988, reports quickly surfaced to confirm
> that the beast Lilly saw in the laboratory
> had now, without warning, been unleashed
> upon the public. In 1990, a report appeared
> in the American Journal of Psychiatry on the
> "Emergence of Intense Suicidal
> Preoccupation During Fluoxetine
> Treatment." Two Harvard psychiatrists
> and a registered nurse described cases in
> which patients developed serious
> preoccupations with suicide soon after being
> given Prozac. "We were especially
> surprised to witness the emergence of
> intense, obsessive, and violent suicidal
> thoughts in these patients," they
> commented. "It was also remarkable how
> violent these thoughts were. Two patients
> fantasized, for the first time, about
> killing themselves with a gun, and one
> patient actually placed a loaded gun to her
> head. One patient needed to be physically
> restrained to prevent self-mutilation."

> Two years later, in July 1992, another
> article appeared, this time in the Archives
> of General Psychiatry. Again, the article
> had two senior researchers among its
> authors, one of whom was a leading expert on
> akathisia. The psychiatrists stressed in the
> report that, prior to going on Prozac, none
> of their patients had a history of
> significant suicidal behavior. "All
> described their distress [while on Prozac]
> as an intense and novel somatic-emotional
> state; all reported an urge to pace that
> paralleled the intensity of the distress;
> all experienced suicidal thoughts at the
> peak of their restless agitation; and all
> experienced a remission of their agitation,
> restlessness, pacing urge, and suicidality
> after the fluoxetine [Prozac] was
> discontinued."

> The finding that these problems emerge soon
> after an SSRI drug is taken, and then
> disappear soon after the drug is withdrawn,
> provides compelling evidence that the
> problem is often the drug and not, as the
> makers of SSRIs have insisted, the
> depression. Anthony Rothschild and Carol
> Locke, also of Harvard Medical School,
> reported three such cases in the Journal of
> Clinical Psychiatry in 1991. All three
> individuals had previously attempted suicide
> while being treated with Prozac -- in fact,
> each had jumped from great heights and had
> managed to survive. In turn, all three had
> been put back on Prozac, only to complain of
> the same strange desire to kill themselves.

> "I tried to kill myself because of
> these anxiety symptoms. It was not so much
> the depression," said one of the
> individuals, a 25-year-old woman. Another, a
> 47-year-old man, complained that "this
> is exactly what happened the last time I was
> on [Prozac], and I feel like jumping off a
> cliff again." Reflecting on these
> cases, the Harvard researchers stressed that
> patients need to know that such overwhelming
> symptoms are the side effects of medication,
> and are treatable. "Our patients had
> concluded their illness had taken such a
> dramatic turn for the worse that life was no
> longer worth living."

> The Accused

> Reports that Prozac might be unsafe at any
> dose had Lilly running scared. As early as
> 1990, one executive stated in an internal
> memo that, if Prozac is taken off the
> market, the company could "go down the
> tubes." With the U.S. Food and Drug
> Administration asking questions, Lilly was
> pressed to show that their drug was safe.
> The result was published on Sept. 21, 1991.

> Authored by Lilly employees, the report
> claimed to represent all existing data
> comparing Prozac with either older
> antidepressants or placebos. In fact, the
> data had been hand-picked to favor the drug
> and the company. The analysis dealt with
> 3,065 patients, less than 12 percent of the
> total data from Prozac studies at the time.
> Among those whose data were left out was the
> very population most likely to become
> suicidal -- the 5 or so percent of patients
> who dropped out of the clinical trials
> because they experienced unpleasant side
> effects after taking Prozac.

> The Lilly study was rejected by the New
> England Journal of Medicine. Publication in
> the British Medical Journal was not as high
> profile, but it would have to do. And it
> did. With the study in hand, and with
> repeated assurances from Lilly that its drug
> was safe, the FDA's Psychopharmacological
> Drugs Advisory Committee gave the drug a
> clean bill of health in September 1991,
> concluding that there was "no credible
> evidence of a causal link between the use of
> antidepressant drugs, including Prozac, and
> suicidality or violent behavior."
> Prozac was saved.

> It was not until trials like the Forsyth
> case that Lilly's internal documents would
> surface, revealing the depth of the
> deception. This included statements from the
> Prozac working group in 1978, acknowledging
> problems with akathisia and drug-induced
> psychosis. Also among the documents was
> evidence that the company had drafted (but
> later abandoned) a package insert for Prozac
> stating that, "Mania and psychosis may
> be precipitated in susceptible patients by
> antidepressant therapy." And there was
> a memo dated Oct. 2, 1990, which referenced
> an upcoming Prozac symposium. "The
> question is what to do with the 'big'
> numbers on suicidality," the memo
> states. "If the report numbers are
> shown next to those for nausea, they seem
> small."

> The Lilly papers also contain a series of
> memos referencing a study by two Taiwanese
> doctors entitled "Suicidal attempts and
> fluoxetine (Prozac) treatment." In a
> 1992 memo, a Lilly employee reports,
> "Mission accomplished. Professor Lu
> will not present or publish his fluoxetine
> [Prozac] vs. maprotiline suicidality
> data." In a similar case, Lilly lawyers
> obtained a cease-and-desist order against
> Robert Bourguignon, a Belgian doctor who was
> soliciting his colleagues' impressions
> regarding Prozac side effects. Bourguignon
> eventually prevailed, and his survey,
> "Dangers of Fluoxetine," appeared
> in The Lancet in 1997.

> Lilly's response to "Prozac
> suicide" court cases was equally
> forceful. In the first case to go to trial,
> known as the Wesbecker case, Lilly appeared
> to score a victory, only to have the judge,
> John Potter, declare later that the case had
> been won under pretense. What Potter had
> learned was that Lilly had settled the case
> during the trial, paying a huge sum in
> exchange for the plaintiffs' keeping the
> settlement a secret. This sleight of hand
> occurred immediately after Potter had
> decided to allow the plaintiffs' lawyers to
> present evidence of past criminal behavior
> on the part of Eli Lilly. After discovering
> the secret settlement, Potter fought to
> change the verdict, and eventually succeeded
> in the Kentucky Supreme Court. The case had
> not been won, but settled. This was,
> however, too little, too late. Lilly had
> achieved its objective -- to avoid losing
> even a single Prozac lawsuit.

> The Reckoning

> Michael Grinfeld summed up Lilly's legal
> situation well, and prophetically, writing
> in California Lawyer magazine in 1998:
> "Lilly may eventually face a court
> judgment in a Prozac case, but it has
> succeeded beyond all expectations in
> postponing that day." Indeed it has. On
> April 2, 1999, despite David Healy's
> testimony and the surfacing of the Lilly
> papers, the jury in the Forsyth trial found
> in favor of Eli Lilly. In the eyes of the
> jury, Prozac did not cause Bill Forsyth to
> kill his wife and then himself.

> While Lilly has continued to survive all
> legal challenges to date, not all
> plaintiffs' cases involving the SSRIs have
> ended in defeat. In May 2001, Australian
> David Hawkins was freed from prison after a
> supreme court judge said it was
> "overwhelmingly probable" that
> Hawkins would not have killed his wife or
> attempted suicide had he not been using
> Zoloft. In another 2001 case, a Wyoming
> court found against GlaxoSmithKline, maker
> of the SSRI Paxil. The jury found that Paxil
> can cause some individuals to commit suicide
> and homicide, and had done exactly that in
> the case of 60-year-old Donald Schell. After
> complaining of anxiety, stress, and possible
> depression, Schell had been prescribed Paxil
> by his family doctor. Two days later, Schell
> shot to death his wife, his daughter, his
> infant granddaughter, and then himself.
> David Hawkins, too, had committed homicide
> after his first two days of SSRI treatment.

> Stories like these litter the communities of
> North America and Europe, most of them
> concealed behind the confusion and secrecy
> that so often mark sudden family tragedies.
> By the spring of 1999, 2,000 suicides by
> Prozac users had been reported to the Food
> and Drug Administration, at least a quarter
> of which appeared to be linked to agitation
> and akathisia. According to the FDA's own
> estimate, only about 1 percent of serious
> side effects are ever reported on its
> "adverse event system." This means
> that, as David Healy has concluded, as many
> as 50,000 akathisia-related suicides had
> taken place by 1999. The total estimate for
> all SSRIs would of course be much larger.

> In the face of such statistics, and with the
> loss of their exclusive patent on
> fluoxetine, Lilly announced in December 2001
> that it planned to bring another
> antidepressant to market late in 2002. Not
> surprisingly, the new drug, duloxetine, does
> not selectively target serotonin. The SSRIs,
> once hailed as a revolution in the treatment
> of depression, are now in the process of
> being phased out. Oddly, this is making way
> for pharmaceuticals that act in essentially
> the same way as the drugs that the SSRIs
> originally replaced. Given this backward
> trend, one is left to wonder whether all the
> death and misery linked to the SSRIs might
> have been for naught. If so, a final
> conclusion seems unavoidable: that next to
> Big Tobacco and the marketing of cigarettes,
> the selling of the SSRIs is perhaps the
> deadliest marketing scandal of the 20th
> century.

> horizontal rule

> The Lilly Response

> The following is a response to "The
> Lilly Suicides" offered by the
> communications office of Eli Lilly.

> The safety of Prozac for the treatment of
> depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder,
> bulimia, and panic disorder is thoroughly
> documented. More than 40 million patients
> worldwide have taken Prozac since it first
> came to market in Belgium in 1986 and more
> than 12,000 patients have participated in
> Prozac clinical trials. Thousands of
> scientific papers have referenced Prozac,
> making it among the most studied medications
> in history.

> There is no credible scientific evidence
> that establishes a causal connection between
> Prozac and violent or suicidal behavior. To
> the contrary, scientific evidence shows that
> Prozac and other antidepressant medications
> appear to protect against these behaviors.

> Depression is a serious, life-threatening
> medical condition characterized by a variety
> of symptoms. Suicidal thinking and suicidal
> acts are symptoms of depression -- they are
> caused by the disease, not by the medicines
> used to treat it. In clinical trials, Prozac
> has been shown to decrease both suicidality
> and aggression.

> Moreover, in September 1991, a panel of
> experts appointed by the FDA found no
> credible evidence of a causal link between
> the use of antidepressant drugs, including
> Prozac, and suicidal or violent behavior.

> A study published in the December 1997 issue
> of the Archives of General Psychiatry
> indicated that Prozac actually reduces
> aggressive and suicidal thoughts and
> behavior. A study published in the February
> 1999 edition of the American Journal of
> Psychiatry concluded there is "no
> support to the speculation that fluoxetine
> (Prozac) increases the risk of
> suicide."

> Fluoxetine, the active ingredient in Prozac,
> currently is approved for use in patients 18
> years of age and older who suffer from
> depression, obsessive compulsive disorder,
> bulimia, panic disorder, and premenstrual
> dysphoric disorder (PMDD, as Sarafem™).
> Lilly does not promote the product's use in
> any other patient population.

> horizontal rule

> Windows to Madness

> The psychiatric industry has a shadow
> culture, a surprisingly large and active
> base of self-proclaimed survivors,
> refuseniks, outsiders, dissident scholars,
> and prideful lunatics. Below, seven groups
> on the path to a new normal.

> Support Coalition International - The
> epicenter of the "mad movement,"
> SCI unites 100 international grassroots
> groups for people struggling with or falling
> out of the psychiatric system. Check out
> their on-line Mad Market -- "a little
> library of dangerous books."

> National Empowerment Center - A technical
> assistance center run by psychiatric
> survivors, providing the means for total,
> self-directed recovery in a disordered
> world. Center for the Study of Psychiatry
> and Psychology Founded by maverick
> psychiatrist Peter Breggin, the ICSPP is a
> network of dissident psychiatrists,
> psychologists, and therapists who watchdog
> the impact of mental health theory and
> practice upon individual well-being,
> liberty, and family and community values.
> Revolution, from the inside.

> International Community for Ecopsychology -
> Ecopsychology asks a simple question: does
> damage to -- or preservation of -- the
> physical environment affect the human
> psyche? Surprise, surprise: there's growing
> evidence that a degraded environment is hard
> on the brain. Check this site for research,
> readings, links, and luminaries.

> Runaway House (Weglaufhaus) - One of the
> first anti-psychiatric institutions to get
> official support as a mental health center,
> Runaway House in Berlin, Germany, is a
> pioneer in the booming network of grassroots
> recovery centers for people in psychic
> crisis.

> Survivor's Art Foundation - is a starting
> point for anyone interested in the pen, the
> paintbrush, or the sculptor's knife as a
> means of mental recovery. One result? A
> striking website gallery of writing and art.

> www.ect.org Electro-convulsive therapy
> (shock treatment) is back in vogue,
> supported by new research and claims of
> kinder, gentler techniques. If that isn't
> controversial enough, its frequent use as a
> forced treatment presses heavy civil-rights
> questions. Enter www.ect.org , the locus of
> dedicated opponents, many of whom have been
> zapped themselves.

> horizontal rule

> Universal Declaration of Mental Rights and
> Freedoms

> We hold this truth: That all human beings
> are created different. That every human
> being has the right to be mentally free and
> independent.

> That every human being has the right to
> feel, see, hear, sense, imagine, believe or
> experience anything at all, in any way, at
> any time.

> That every human being has the right to
> behave in any way that does not harm others
> or break fair and just laws.

> That no human being shall be subjected
> without consent to incarceration, restraint,
> punishment, or psychological or medical
> intervention in an attempt to control,
> repress or alter the individual's thoughts,
> feelings or experiences.

> horizontal rule

> Richard DeGrandpre is the author of Ritalin
> Nation (1999) and Digitopia (2001), and is
> currently writing a history of drugs in the
> 20th century. "The Lilly Suicides"
> first appeared in Adbusters Magazine.

> Write to Richard DeGrandpre at
> rdegrandpre@hotmail.com