[SSRI-Research] Group blames medication -SSRIs [2003]

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> JustSayNo

> Tue, 06 Jul 2004 02:40:15 -0000

> [sSRI-Research] Group blames medication

> -SSRIs [2003]

>

> Group blames medication

> By Ellen Barry, Globe Staff, 4/11/2003

>

>

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/101/metro/Group_blames_medication+.s

> html

>

> As friends, family, and investigators searched for a

> possible motive

> in Tuesday's slaying of a Massachusetts General

> Hospital

> cardiologist, an antipsychiatry ''watchdog group''

> said that Colleen

> Mitchell's psychiatric medication had spurred her to

> shoot Dr. Brian

> McGovern and then turn the gun on herself.

>

> Members of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights,

> which is

> affiliated with the Church of Scientology, planned a

> protest at the

> hospital today against the use of antidepressants

> such as Zoloft,

> which Mitchell had apparently been taking.

>

> There is a long history of allegations that

> selective seratonin

> reuptake inhibitors (a tremendously popular category

> of

> antidepressants that includes Prozac and Paxil)

> drive people to

> violence or suicide. In 2001, a Wyoming jury made a

> $6.4 million

> judgment against GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Paxil,

> after an oil

> field worker taking the drug shot his wife,

> daughter, and

> granddaughter and then committed suicide. The

> company appealed the

> decision and ultimately settled out of court. The

> following year, the

> Food and Drug Administration filed a brief

> supporting the drug

> maker's position.

>

> A Harvard Medical School psychiatrist said yesterday

> that it

> is ''preposterous'' to assign blame for a crime to

> an antidepressant

> like Zoloft. The drugs increase buildup of a

> naturally occurring

> chemical, seratonin, around nerve endings in the

> brain.

> Although ''edgy'' people may sometimes see an

> exaggeration of that

> quality, he said, the effects are transient.

>

> ''These medicines are not that powerful, frankly,

> for good or for

> ill,'' said Dr. J. Alexander Bodkin, chief of the

> Clinical

> Psychopharmacology Research Program at McLean

> Hospital. ''It is not a

> cause for misbehavior, not an excuse for

> misbehavior, and it doesn't

> help us understand the misbehavior.''

>

> But a Utah activist who has testified as an expert

> witness against

> drug manufacturers said a high level of seratonin in

> the brain can

> cause people to ''act out their nightmares,''

> leading them to commit

> violent crimes. Ann Blake Tracy, director of the

> International

> Coalition for Drug Awareness, said she had become

> increasingly

> suspicious of SSRI antidepressants as she watched

> more and more

> friends in Utah begin taking them, ''doing violent

> things completely

> out of character for them.''

>

> The debate over the drugs has emerged in Boston

> several times since

> 1990, when a McLean researcher, Dr. Martin Teicher,

> published a study

> showing that 3.5 percent of patients taking Prozac

> attempt or commit

> suicide due to severe agitation. Eight years later,

> Teicher helped to

> patent a reformulation of the drug, whose

> application states that the

> new version reduces side effects such as ''intense,

> violent suicidal

> thoughts.''

>

> This story ran on page B7 of the Boston Globe on

> 4/11/2003.

> © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

>