Paxil Babies: The Dangers of Antidepressants

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/87298/?page=entireBy Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet. Posted June 6, 2008.Mothers suffering from depression are increasingly pushed into taking

pills, at great potential risk to themselves and their infants.Today in the United States, 11 percent of women take

antidepressants, the use of antidepressants by pregnant women has

dramatically increased, and postpartum depression -- rare in those

cultures in which women receive high levels of social support following

childbirth -- has become so staggeringly common among U.S. women that

Congress is legislating increased medical treatment.Increasing Use of Antidepressants by Pregnant MothersReceiving little attention in 2007 was the study "Increasing Use of Antidepressants in Pregnancy," published by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Medical records of 105,335 pregnant women enrolled in Tennessee

Medicaid from 1999-2003 revealed that antidepressant use during

pregnancy increased from 5.7 percent in 1999 to 13.4 percent in 2003.Among

Tennessee Medicaid-treated women in 2003, 10 percent took

antidepressants during the first trimester, 6.4 percent used

antidepressants during the second trimester, and 5.9 percent used them

during the third. White women were four times more likely than nonwhite

women to have used antidepressants during pregnancy, and older women

and those with greater schooling were also more likely to have used

antidepressants while pregnant.In another study of pregnant women treated at seven health maintenance organizations (HMOs), American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology

reported in February 2008 that "antidepressant use in pregnancy nearly

quadrupled from 1996 to 2005" and that nearly 8 percent of pregnant

women used antidepressants in 2005.Effect of Antidepressant on NewbornsTo

the delight of antidepressant manufacturers, the U.S. Centers for

Disease Control (CDC) recently told Americans that we need not worry

about the effects of Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft and other

antidepressants on newborns. In June 2007, the CDC issued a press

release stating "New Study Finds Few Risks of Birth Defects from

Antidepressant Use During Pregnancy." CDC epidemiologist Jennita

Reefhuis concluded, "Overall, our results are generally reassuring with

respect to the use of antidepressants during pregnancy."This CDC press release was trumpeted by many U.S. newspapers with headlines such as "Antidepressants Not Big Risk for Defects" (Associated Press) and "Reassurance on Antidepressants in Pregnancy" (The Wall Street Journal). However, the actual research findings are the opposite of reassuring.We

have all heard about "crack babies" (newborns addicted to crack cocaine

because their mothers were using it during pregnancy). What about

"Paxil babies"? In 2006 the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine

reported that 30 percent of infants who had prenatal exposure to

antidepressants experience some withdrawal symptoms, with 13 percent of

them experiencing severe ones, most notably tremors, respiratory

distress, gastrointestinal problems, sleep disturbances, and

high-pitched crying. Other withdrawal symptoms include rapid heart

beat, irritability, feeding difficulties, and profuse sweating.There

are several other serious problems that newborns are more likely to

suffer when exposed in utero to antidepressants. A 2006 U.S. Food and

Drug Administration (FDA) alert stated, "A recently published

case-control study has shown that infants born to mothers who took

selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) after the 20th week of

pregnancy were 6 times more likely to have persistent pulmonary

hypertension (PPHN) than infants born to mothers who did not take

antidepressants during pregnancy." In persistent pulmonary hypertension

of the newborn, the newborn's arteries to the lungs are constricted,

this limiting the amount of blood flow to the lungs and therefore the

amount of oxygen into the bloodstream. The FDA alert also noted,

"Neonatal PPHN is associated with significant morbidity and mortality."It

turns out that the CDC based its approval of antidepressant use during

pregnancy on studies in which women were taking antidepressants the

month before they became pregnant or in the first three months of

pregnancy. But is it even in fact safe for newborns if mothers use

antidepressants only in the first trimester?Antidepressant use in first trimester, according to The New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, is associated with more than double

the risk of anencephaly (birth without forebrain), omphalocele (the

child's abdomen does not close properly allowing intestines and other

organs to protrude outside the body), and craniosynostosis (premature

closure of the connections between the bones of the skull before brain

growth is complete).The Rationale for Antidepressants for Pregnant MothersWhat

then is the rationale of those medical authorities who encourage

antidepressant use among depressed pregnant mothers? Their claim is

that while antidepressants might present some risks, the stress of not

receiving medication for depression is more risky for the newborn and

mother. However, the research simply does not back up this claim.Two

major studies comparing the health of newborns from depressed mothers

who took antidepressants versus newborns of depressed mothers who did

not take antidepressants show that newborns are better off with mothers

not taking antidepressants. In 2007 the American Journal of Psychiatry

reported that the preterm birth rate of antidepressant exposed newborns

was 14.3 percent as compared to 0 percent for newborns of depressed

mothers who did not use antidepressants; and the rate of admission to

the special-care nursery is more than double for antidepressant exposed

infants compared to infants of depressed mothers who did not use

antidepressants. These findings echo those reported in a 2006 Archives of General Psychiatry study using health data from a large sample of infants in British Columbia, Canada during a 39-month period.Moreover,

there is no evidence that antidepressant use by depressed pregnant

mothers lowers their likelihood of suicide, and there is a great deal

of evidence that antidepressant use can make some people manic,

agitated, and violent. And while millions of people swear by their

antidepressants, there is increasing evidence that antidepressants do

not work much better than placebos. In 2002 Prevention & Treatment

reported an analysis of forty-seven studies that had been sponsored by

drug companies on Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and Serzone.

Many of these studies had not been published but all had been submitted

to the FDA, so researchers used the Freedom of Information Act to gain

access to the data. They discovered that in the majority of the trials,

the antidepressant failed to outperform a sugar pill placebo.Postpartum Depression and the Mothers ActFor

politicians, a much safer issue than pushing antidepressants for

pregnant mothers is promoting the expansion of medical treatment for

postpartum depression. In 2007 the U.S. House of Representatives

overwhelmingly passed the "Melanie Blocker-Stokes Postpartum Depression

Research and Care Act" and sent it to the U.S. Senate, which renamed it

the Mothers Act. The stated goal of The Mothers Act, currently in

committee, is to "ensure that new mothers and their families are

educated about postpartum depression, screened for symptoms, provided

with essential services, and to increase research at the National

Institutes of Health on postpartum depression."But will the

Mothers Act merely ensure that federal dollars are used to identify

more pregnant and postpartum women as depressed and then convince them

that antidepressants are safe and effective? After all, while

psychiatry authorities and antidepressant manufacturers admit that

antidepressants used by nursing mothers do in fact enter breast milk,

they maintain that antidepressant concentration in breast milk is too

low to be terribly concerned about (though they do acknowledge that

there are no long-term studies to confirm this).In the

"Findings" section of the Mothers Act we are told that postpartum

depression is a "devastating mood disorder" and that "postpartum

depression is a treatable disorder if promptly diagnosed by a trained

provider." But inconvenient truths about postpartum depression are

omitted. Not many in Congress would vote for legislation that stated

the following: The U.S. could eliminate much of postpartum depression

by transforming American values, culture, and economics.The

Mother Act states that "postpartum depression occurs in 10 to 20

percent of new mothers." It should state that postpartum depression

occurs in 10 to 20 percent of American mothers. A 2004 BMJ (formerly known as the British Medical Journal)

cross-cultural review reported that postpartum depression is rare in

Fiji and in traditional African and Chinese populations. The BMJ authors

concluded that "structured social supports after childbirth are

described in groups of women with low rates of postpartum depression." Structured social supports for women after childbirth are decidedly missing from American culture.The Mothers Act findings also neglects the 1996 British Journal of Psychiatry

finding that postpartum depression is associated with unemployment of

the mother (no job to return to), unemployment of the head of the

household, unplanned pregnancies, and not breast-feeding.And the

Mothers Act omits relevant truths about Melanie Blocker-Stokes, the

woman for whom the initial House bill was named for. Blocker-Stokes was

a pharmaceutical sales manager who began suffering severe symptoms of

depression after the birth of her child, and she did in fact receive

extensive psychiatric treatment. She was hospitalized three times in

seven weeks, given four combinations of anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety,

and antidepressant medications, and underwent electroconvulsive therapy

(electroshock). But despite her psychiatric treatment -- or because of

it -- Melanie Blocker-Stokes jumped to her death from the twelfth floor

of a Chicago hotel.Postpartum depression could be dramatically

reduced in the United States with a political will to transform

American society from one that is dominated by money, productivity, and

consumption to one that has vital communities which put energy into

caring about the well being of new mothers -- as do cultures where

postpartum depression is rare.The rate of U.S. depression has

increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years. During that same

time, Americans have received increasing medical treatment for

depression, especially antidepressants, which currently gross more than

$13 billion annually in the U.S. Nowadays, drug companies, psychiatry

officialdom, and U.S. governmental authorities recommend

antidepressants even for pregnant women, and an increasing number of

American newborns discover that their first worldly challenge is

withdrawing from Zoloft.When exactly will be the appropriate time to challenge mental health professional pretensions and rebel from cultural craziness?

 

 

See more stories tagged with: pharmaceutical companies, drugs, antidepressants, postpartum depression Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author of Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).