An immense number of patients get worse from new antidepressant drugs, says Vice President of The Swedish Psychiatric Association

    /24-7PressRelease/ - HAGERSTEN, SWEDEN, November 16, 2006 - This announcement on Swedish national television, coming from one of the top psychiatric authorities in the country, is sensational.

Millions and millions of persons take new antidepressant drugs - in the belief that they are "safe and effective" - as psychiatrists, pharmaceutical companies and medical agencies, like the FDA, have told them.

But now a top psychiatric authority tells them that they in an immense number of cases "get worse from this" and that the antidepressant drugs themselves in many cases "make them continue to be depressed". The VP of The Swedish Psychiatric Association - the national member organisation of the World Federation of Mental Health - further said about the harmful effects of antidepressant drugs and the fact that doctors don't believe what the patients tell them, that there is "a considerable lack of knowledge about these side effects" and that the patients must tell their doctors "that this exists, and then this doctor has to find out about it".

It is a little known fact that pharmaceutical companies have had to work hard to show any positive effect of new antidepressants (SSRIs and SNRIs) to get approval of the drugs. Even if they are experts in asking the right questions and getting the answers they want from their clinical trials, it has been almost impossible to complete two studies where the drug is more "effective" than placebo (which is the requirement for approval of the drug from a medical agency, like the FDA). From deep within the archives of clinical trials the hidden harmful effects of antidepressant drugs have emerged the last two years. But the fact that these drugs cause suicidality and violence is not what psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies have told the public.

Instead the public and doctors have for many years heard that these drugs are "safe and effective" and if some bad effect showed up it was explained away with the "underlying disease". The problem was said to be compliance - the patients had to continue to take the drugs long enough for the depression to go away.

But the Vice President of The Swedish Psychiatric Association has now announced that this was false: For many persons "the antidepressant drugs make them continue to be depressed".

Patients should repeat the words of this psychiatric authority when speaking to their doctors: Tell the doctors about the harmful effects of antidepressants, "that this exists, and then this doctor has to find out about it". They should tell the doctors that the cause of their bad feelings very likely is that "the antidepressant drugs make them continue to be depressed". They should get their doctors to gradually reduce the antidepressant drug under careful supervision.

Patients should also be aware of the new deceitful campaign of biological psychiatry. As with all earlier psychiatric drugs the catastrophic effects can be announced first when a campaign for a new drug or drug cocktail is about to start. The coming campaign, (well-known for the VP Dr. Spjut), in Sweden and the rest of the Western world is the sale of "Bipolar Disorder" (Manic-Depression). Patients are to be told their "old" diagnosis of depression was a bit wrong and that the "correct" diagnosis was "Bipolar" (both these diagnoses are of course completely subjective, there is no objective confirmable evidence for any form of "chemical imbalance" in the brain). And then the treating doctor is supposed to add even more toxic substances - antipsychotic drugs like Zyprexa and Risperdal - to the antidepressants.

The antidepressant era is about to end - it should be replaced by real solutions to personal problems, not by more false diagnoses and more toxic psychiatric drugs.


Janne Larsson
writer from Sweden - investigating psychiatry

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