Will we ever wake up to the deadly risks of happy pills?

Just as David Cameron launches his campaign to boost national happiness, along comes grim news for the 12 million Britons taking happy pills. London-based researchers have just announced that antidepressants raise the risk of fatal heart attacks. This research is only the latest wake-up call for a nation hooked on happy pills. Might we finally heed the warnings and shake ourselves out of our pharmaceutical stupor?

It is high time we did: a small mountain of studies shows that antidepressant drugs are largely ineffective. But more than that, they can ruin lives by creating chronic dependency and a grinding hopelessness that sometimes leads to self-neglect and death.

The Way Antipsychotics Are Used in Nursing Homes Called “A form of elder abuse” by Patient Advocates

Patricia McGinnis, executive director of the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, said nursing homes must be “accountable” for the drugs they administer. “The way anti-psychotic drugs are used in nursing homes is a form of elder abuse,” McGinnis told the forum. “Instead of providing individualized care, many homes indiscriminately use these drugs to sedate and subdue residents.”

Texas Doctors Prescribe $47 Million Worth of Antipsychotic & Anti-Anixety Drugs, Primarily for Kids—One Child Psychiatrist Alone Wrote 27,000 Prescriptions For Xanax

With little oversight and apparent carte blanche, a relative handful of Texas physicians wrote $47 million worth of Medicaid prescriptions for powerful antipsychotic and anti-anxiety drugs over the past two years, according to a Star-Telegram analysis. The top five doctors alone wrote $18 million worth. Grassley asked Texas and other states for the top 10 prescribers who billed Medicaid for certain drugs. The Star-Telegram used prescriber numbers to identify the doctors, then sorted and tallied the drugs they were prescribing. Also reviewed was information on other mental-health drugs that have cost taxpayers about $1.3 billion during the past five years.

Most of the drugs have gone to children and adolescents, although prescribing the drugs to children, such as a toddler, is considered “off-label” — uses not approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Now the state’s Medicaid program is among others under scrutiny, after Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, began investigating the use of mental-health drugs this year.

Girl, 2, had twice the amount of anti-psychotic drug in her system as adult dosage

Awtumn Minnema, the 2-year-old who died Nov 15 from a prescription drug overdose, had twice the amount of an anti-psychotic drug in her system as a single adult dose, a pathologist said today. Dr. Stephen Cohle, who performed the autopsy on Awtumn, said toxicology reports showed the girl died from too much haloperidol, sold as Haldol, in her system. Haldol is anti-psychotic drug most often used to treat schizophrenia.

Anti-Depressant Blamed For Woman’s Suicide—Investigation Launched into the Drug

After a mother of two committed suicide because of being increasingly dependent on an anti-depressant, an investigation has been started into the drug.
Last year, on October 25, Yvonne Woodley, 42, was discovered by her husband Kevin hanging in the loft of the family home in Solihull, West Midlands. Before six months of her death, her Citalopram’s dosage was increased by six GPs she consulted. The drug had a reversed affect. It made her more disturbed and she often used to express her wish to die.

CCHR International

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