Two hundred (200) prescription drugs used in the U.S. list depression or suicidal symptoms as possible adverse effects according to a new paper from researchers at Columbia University in New York, NY, USA.

The percentage of people reporting depression using drugs with depression as a possible side effect were:

• 4.7% of people taking no (0) risky drugs
• 6.9% of people taking one (1) risky drug
• 9.5% of people taking two (2) risky drugs
• 15.3% of people taking three (3) risky drugs

Short-term randomized trials of older people show that antipsychotics kill one (1) out of every 100 people notes Prof. Peter Gøtzsche, MD.

In people 65 and older in the USA and Europe alone, antipsychotics, antidepressants and benzodiazepines kill more than 500,000 people per year Dr. Gøtzsche estimates.

“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm—by dropping all antidepressants, ADHD drugs, and dementia drugs (as the small effects are probably the result of unblinding bias) and using only a fraction of the antipsychotics and benzodiazepines we currently use,” writes Prof. Peter Gøtzsche, MD.
    “This would lead to healthier and more long lived populations.
    “Because psychotropic drugs are immensely harmful when used long term, they should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients.
    “We need new guidelines to reflect this.”

“We also need widespread withdrawal clinics because many patients have become dependent on psychiatric drugs, including antidepressants, and need help so that they can stop taking them slowly and safely,” writes Prof. Peter Gøtzsche, MD.

“Psychiatric drugs are responsible for the deaths of more than half a million people aged 65 and older each year in the Western world [in the US and the European Union],” writes Prof. Peter Gøtzsche, MD.

Later in the article he writes,
    “I used Danish prescription statistics to estimate the number of deaths caused by these three classes of drugs.
    “Because falls, which are much more common in older people, are an important cause of death in people taking psychotropic drugs, I included only people at least 65 years of age and used conservative death rates: 1% for antipsychotics, 1% for benzodiazepines and similar drugs, and only 2% for antidepressants.
    “The total number of deaths a year in Denmark (3693) when scaled up corresponded to 539,000 in the United States and European Union combined.”

“A well conducted cohort study of patients of average age 55 found that benzodiazepines and similar drugs doubled the death rate; the excess death rate was about 1% a year,” writes Prof. Peter Gøtzsche, MD.

“A cohort study of patients older than 65 who were their own control found that all cause mortality was 3.6% higher when patients were taking the newer antidepressants for one year than when they did not take antidepressants,” writes Prof. Peter Gøtzsche, MD.

[The study he is referring to found that the death rate for all-cause mortality was 7.04% per year when patients were not taking antidepressants versus 10.61% per year when they were taking SSRI’s and 11.43% for other antidepressants not including tricyclic antidepressants.]

“One of the classic uses of benzodiazepines is as sleeping pills, but this usage also does more harm than good,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 4 titled Anxiety of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“The trials are biased, and a meta-analysis found that after adjustment for this, patients at least 60 years of age with insomnia slept 15 minutes longer on benzodiazepines or similar drugs than on placebo,” Prof. Gotzsche continues.

“Adverse cognitive events were five times [5X] more common, adverse psychomotor events three times [3X] more common, and daytime fatigue four times [4X] more common than if the patients received placebo.

“After a few weeks, the pills don’t work any longer and all that is left are the harmful effects.

Patients who took such drugs had a higher risk of falls – which cause many deaths because of hip fractures – and motor vehicle crashes.

“A study showed that benzodiazepines doubled the risk of injurious falls in people at least 80 years of age; these falls cause almost 1,800 deaths every year in France.

“In another large cohort, benzodiazepines or Z drugs [Zaleplon (Sonata), Zolpidem tartrate (Ambien), Zopiclone (brand names Zimovane and Imovane)] doubled the death rate.”

“If you ask me, no one should take antidepressants,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 16 What can patients do? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“The SSRIs are pretty terrible drugs and patients aren’t too happy taking them. But doctors choose to ignore how bad these pills are,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD in Chapter 3 Depression of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“When the first best-selling SSRI, fluoxetine [Prozac], appeared in the late 1980s, there was no doubt about it. Senior management in Eli Lilly wanted to shelve it after having considered to market it for eating disorders, but Lilly was in serious financial trouble and had to make it a success,” Prof. Gøtzsche continues.

“Initially, the FDA was sceptical and noted serious flaws in Lilly’s trials.

“An FDA officer wrote in 1984 that patients who didn’t do well after two weeks had their code broken, and if they were on placebo, they were switched to fluoxeine.

“In this way, six weeks of fluoxetine was compared to two weeks on placebo, which is a hopelessly flawed comparison and, with the blinding broken, more bias was introduced.

“It also turned out that 25% of the patients had taken an additional drug, and when the FDA in 1985 removed patients on other drugs from Lilly’s trials, there was no significant effect of fluoxetine.

“By adding benzodiazepines, Lilly broke the rules for its trials but didn’t inform the FDA, and when the FDA later learned about it, the agency permitted it and thereby broke its own rules.

“The public and the doctors were never informed about this ruse.

“The FDA went to extremes to make it look like fluoxetine worked.

“Perhaps the fact that Lilly is an American company played a role.

“Fluoxetine was approved when Bush senior was president and he had been a member of the board of directors of Lilly.

“Vice President Dan Quayle was from Indiana where Lilly’s headquarters are, and he had former Lilly personnel on his own staff and sat on an FDA oversight committee.

“The German drug regulator found fluoxetine ‘totally unsuitable for the treatment of depression,’ and furthermore noted that according to the patients’ self-ratings there was little or no response, in contrast to doctors’ ratings.”

“Allen Frances, chairman for the DSM-IV task force [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders], now believes the responsibility for defining psychiatric conditions needs to be taken away from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and argues that new diagnoses are as dangerous as new drugs: ‘We have remarkably casual procedures for defining the nature of conditions, yet they can lead to tens of millions being treated with drugs they may not need, and that may harm them,’ writes Prof. Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“Frances noted that DSM-IV created three false epidemics because the diagnostic criteria were too wide: ADHD, autism and childhood bipolar disorder.”

“It is clear that the risk of suicide caused by SSRIs has been grossly underestimated in the trials, and there are many reasons for this,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 16 What can patients do? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

• “Fraud.
• “The investigators didn’t report suicide attempts or didn’t even look for them.
• “Many suicidal events have been coded as something else.
• “By only recruiting people at very low risk of committing suicide for their trials, the drug industry has taken great care not to get in trouble.
• “The companies have urged investigators to use benzodiazepines in addition to the trial drugs, which have prevented some of the violent reactions that would otherwise have occurred.
• “Some trials have run-in periods on active drug, and patients who don’t tolerate it aren’t randomised.
• “Most patients were in antidepressant treatment before they were randomised, which leads to withdrawal symptoms in the placebo group that predispose to suicide.
• “Events occurring shortly after active treatment is stopped were rarely registered.
• “Many trials are buried in company archives and these are not the most positive ones.
• “Patients are carefully monitored in trials and drug intake is likely to be stopped before a serious problem develops.
• “Patients in trials have contact with other people and get hope, therefore the risk of suicide is less than in real life.”

“There are likely to have been 15 times more suicides on antidepressant drugs than reported by the FDA in its meta-analysis of 100,000 patients in 2006,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 16 What can patients do? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“There were only five suicides in FDA’s analysis of 52,960 patients on SSRIs (one per 10,000 patients), but an internal Lilly memo from 1990 described nine suicides in 6,993 patients on fluoxetine in the trials (13 per 10,000).

“An analysis of prescriptions written by general practitioners in the UK immediately after the drugs came on market is similarly revealing. The patients had an average age of 50 and 79% had depression, but although the follow-up was only about six months, there were 90 suicides among patients receiving fluoxetine, sertraline or paroxetine, which was 24, 17 and 27 suicides per 10,000, respectively.”

“Virtually all trials of psychotropic agents are flawed, not only because of the unblinding problem, but also because of their design,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 3 titled Depression of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“This was recognised decades ago, but drug trials and reviews have continued to pretend the problem doesn’t exist, likely because the psychiatrists choose to ignore everything that threatens the myths they have built up around their profession.

“There are many tricks.

“Some studies exclude patients who improve in the placebo lead-in period; some studies use active drugs in this period and exclude people who experience troublesome side effects; and some studies have both types of ‘cleansing,’ which was the case for one of the very few trials of fluoxetine in children that purported to have shown an effect.

“But even with this extremely biased design, the children fared no better on the drug than on placebo on self-rating scales or on ratings by their parents.

“The ‘effect’ was only seen on a secondary scale filled out by the psychiatrists who were paid by Lilly to run the trial!”

“In a survey of 1,829 patients on antidepressants in New Zealand, 62% reported sexual difficulties, 60% felt emotionally numb, 52% felt not like themselves, 39% cared less about others, 47% had experienced agitation and 39% had experienced suicidality,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 3 titled Depression of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“We have used antidepressant drugs for more than 50 years, but it is unlikely that they have a real and useful effect on depression, whereas their many harmful effects are not in doubt,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 3 Depression of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

More Harm Than Good

Antidepressants cause more harm than good

“Antidepressants cause more harm than good,which the remainder of this chapter is about.”

The subheading for this section in the book is “Antidepressant drugs don’t work for depression”.

“Allen Frances, chairman for the DSM-IV task force [for creating the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which define psychiatric conditions], now believes the responsibility for defining psychiatric conditions needs to be taken away from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and argues that new diagnoses are as dangerous as new drugs: “We have remarkably casual procedures for defining the nature of conditions, yet they can lead to tens of millions being treated with drugs they may not need, and that may harm them,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

3 False Epidemics

This created 3 false epidemics

“Frances noted that DSM-IV created three false epidemics because the diagnostic criteria were too wide: ADHD, autism and childhood bipolar disorder.”

“Very few leading psychiatrists are willing to admit that their specialty has spiralled out of control and when issues of overdiagnosis and overtreatment are brought up, their standard reply is that many patients are underdiagnosed,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“In a 2007 survey, 51% of 108 Danish psychiatrists said they used too much medicine and only 4% said they used too little.”

“In the United States, 1% of children up to only four years of age are on psychotropic drugs, although the first three years of life are a period of rapid neurodevelopment, and about a quarter of the children in American summer camps are medicated for ADHD, mood disorder or other mental health problems,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“It is psychiatry that has become insane, not our children.

“Some child psychiatrists brag that they can make an initial assessment of a child and write a prescription in less than 20 minutes, and for some paediatricians it takes only five minutes.”

“It should be forbidden to make new diagnoses while the patient is in treatment with psychotropic drugs, and if psychiatrists cannot resist the temptation, they should by default call it a likely drug-induced disorder,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“Doctors need to realise that it’s impossible to judge whether a patient truly also suffers from these additional “illnesses,” as long as the patient is under influence of mind-altering chemicals.”

“I have heard several senior psychiatrists say it cannot hurt anyone to get a diagnosis. Such people shouldn’t work as psychiatrists,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“All professional interventions in citizens’ lives, including giving people diagnoses, can cause harm.

“It is a paradox that public debates and reports in the news media are dominated by the beneficial effects of diagnoses and interventions when the first thing we know about any intervention is that it can be harmful.

“If this were not the case, it could not have any potentially beneficial effect.”

“When I – as invited speaker at large scientific meetings for psychiatrists – have pointed out how harmful screening for depression is, they didn’t pay the slightest attention,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 3 Depression of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“This organised denial has shocked me, particularly when the professor at my own hospital – in reply to my remark that screening leads to treatment of many healthy people with antidepressants – said that it didn’t matter because antidepressants have no side effects!

“Really?

“To a substantial extent, the “risk groups” comprise those who have lived more than five decades, and antidepressants kill many of these (see Chapter 14).”

“Psychiatric drugs are so harmful that they kill more than half a million people every year among those aged 65 and over in the United States and Europe (see Chapter 14),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“This makes psychiatric drugs the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer.”

“I believe we could reduce our current usage of psychotropic drugs by 98% and at the same time improve people’s mental health and survival (see Chapter 14),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“The most important reason for the current drug disaster it is that leading psychiatrists have allowed the drug industry to corrupt their academic discipline and themselves.”

“We have repeated the same mistakes with the SSRIs that we made with benzodiazepines, and before them with barbiturates,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“We have created a huge epidemic of drug overuse with just as many drug addicts on SSRIs as on benzodiazepines (see Chapter 12).”

“[Double-blind studies] have rather consistently shown that it is the psychiatrists that think their drugs are effective, not the patients (see Chapter 3),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“Cochrane reviews have shown that it is doubtful whether antidepressants are effective for depression (see Chapter 3) and whether antipsychotics are effective for schizophrenia (see Chapter 6),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“The facts are that SSRI’s kill one of 28 people above 65 years of age treated for one year; that half of the patients get sexual side effects; and that half of the patients have difficulty stopping antidepressants because they become dependent on them (see Chapter 3),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“Furthermore, members of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry explained in Lancet Psychiatry that British withdrawal-support charities report alarming numbers of people suffering disabling symptoms for multiple years following withdrawal from antidepressants,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“A 1993 study in the United States by the Rand Corporation showed that: Over half the physicians wrote prescriptions after discussing depression with patients for three minutes or less,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“Very many people are wongly diagnosed with schizophrenia,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“A 1982 study found that two-thirds of 1,023 African-Americans with schizophrenia didn’t have symptoms necessary for this diagnosis according to current guidelines.

[In other words, 67% were misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.]

“In 1985, the chief psychiatrist at Manhattan State Hospital reviewed the records of 89 patients with schizophrenia and concluded that only 16 should have gotten the diagnosis.”

[In other words, 82% were misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.]

“It’s not surprising that when therapists were asked to use DSM criteria [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] on healthy people, a quarter of them also got a psychiatric diagnosis,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

Joan Mathews Larson, PhD hates benzodiazepines and antipsychotic drugs the most.

In this video clip, Dr. Larson notes that…

“The group of drugs that I abhor [hate] the most…

“Are [really] the benzodiazepines [anti-anxiety drugs like Alprazolam (Xanax)], but I don’t talk about those.

“We won’t even treat people who have been on benzodiazepines for 20 years and who are 60 years old [because] you cannot get those people off [their drugs]…

“You can get them off [those drugs], but they’re crazy and they want to sue you, so don’t do that.

“This group of antipsychotics, Olanzapine (Zyprexa), Quetiapine (Seroquel), Risperidone (Risperdal)…

“These drugs are freely given for sleep in other programs.

“A study was published in 2006 in JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] on these three drugs.

“The subjects were elderly people [in nursing homes], and over half of them, 54%, were dead within 12 days of starting this study.

“These drugs can cause nerve damage, weight gain, pounding heart, temporary paralysis.

“These drugs are not needed to sleep.

“There are much better ways to sleep [with natural treatments].”

New use of benzodiazepines is associated with an approximately 50% increase in the risk of dementia according to a large study from France who followed 1063 men and women with an average age of 78-years-old who were followed for 15 years and did not start taking benzodiazepines until at least the third year of follow-up.

Benzodiazepines include anti-anxiety drugs such as Alprazolam (Xanax) and Lorazepam (Ativan).

A full list of benzodiazepines is shown below and can be found here.