Now that the studies on antidepressants that were kept from those who needed to know have been reviewed the conclusion is they work no better than placebo - anyone familiar with my work surprised? For almost two decades I have repeated thousands of times over that the hypothesis behind antidepressants is backwards. THEY DO NOT WORK! And no one wanted to hear it. Now the truth is out and how many have been left in the wake? What a worldwide tragedy!!!! But a tragedy that could become far worse before recovery begins due to the lack of knowledge by professionals of safe methods for antidepressant withdrawal.

GPs in the UK have been asked to cut the number of prescriptions for antidepressants because after reviewing the studies that were kept from the public for two decades it was found that these drugs are no more helpful than taking a sugar pill. The country has put their money where their mouth is and spent 170 Million pounds to train 3,600 new therapists to help those who obviously are getting no help from the antidepressants.

What is frightening is the withdrawal that we will all have to experience as those who know next to nothing about antidepressant withdrawal work to bring people down off these antidepressants that do not work, but do produce horrific withdrawal and terrible side effects.

For information on safe withdrawal please refer patients to two decades of what patients have found will work in antidepressant withdrawal in my tape/CD "Help! I Can't Get Off My Antidepressant!" and PLEASE encourage them to NOT switch from one antidepressant to another thinking the withdrawal will be any easier! When the FDA warned that any abrupt change in dose of an antidepressant, whether going up or down, can produce suicide, hostility or psychosis, they meant it. Going down on one antidepressant and up on another is doing that twice and can produce serious reactions. We have enough bipolar patients on the planet without antidepressant withdrawal increasing the numbers any more than it already has (4000% in ten years)!!

Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D., Executive Director,
International Coalition For Drug Awareness
Website: www.drugawareness.org
Author: Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare
& CD or audio tape on safe withdrawal: "Help! I Can't Get
Off My Antidepressant!"
Order Number: 800-280-0730
_______________________________________

"We're asking GPs to consider prescribing alternative therapies. Exercise, for example, particularly 'green exercise' outdoors rather than in the gym, has been shown to be very effective in combating depression. Diet can also be an important factor."


(http://www.managementinpractice.com/default.asp?title=GPsurgedtocutnumberofantidepressantpr
escriptions&page=article.display&article.id=8706)

GPs urged to cut number of antidepressant prescriptions

Tuesday 26th February 2008


A charity is calling for GPs to reduce the number of antidepressant
prescriptions after a new study found some of the latest brands have limited benefits.

A group of experts from the Department of Psychology at the University of Hull analysed 47 clinical trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

These included studies on Prozac, Efexor, and Seroxat, and the researchers claim they show little clinical improvements in depressed patients.

Alison Cobb, policy officer at Mind, said: "This research is a serious
challenge to the predominance of drugs in treating depression.

"Antidepressants do help many people, but by no means all, and some people experience severe side-effects with them.

"Nine out of 10 GPs say they've been forced to dish out drugs because they don't have proper access to 'talking treatments' such as cognitive behavioural therapy, which are recommended as the first-line treatment for mild to moderate depression by the government treatment advice body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

"The government is making very welcome investment in new talking therapies services, but they won't be online for some time yet.

"We're asking GPs to consider prescribing alternative therapies. Exercise, for example, particularly 'green exercise' outdoors rather than in the gym, has been shown to be very effective in combating depression. Diet can also be an important factor."

Copyright © PA Business 2008

"Echoing guidance from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice), ministers believe talking therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapies are as effective as medication in the short-term and more effective over the long term. "

(http://www.politics.co.uk/news/opinion-former-index/health/thousands-more-therapists-as-doubts-cas
t-on-anti-depressants-$1207665.htm)

Thousands more therapists as doubts cast on anti-depressants

Tuesday, 26 Feb 2008 14:46

Govt to fund 3,600 more talking therapists

More than 3,500 therapists will be made available to help people with depression and anxiety after it emerged anti-depressant medication does not benefit many sufferers.

The government has announced a £170 million investment in talking therapies, which will be used to train 3,600 psychological therapists.

Echoing guidance from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice), ministers believe talking therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapies are as effective as medication in the short-term and more effective over the long term.

The announcement coincides with a review of clinical trials, published in the Lancet medical journal, which found anti-depressants are little more effective than placebo bills for many sufferers.

Health secretary Alan Johnson said the additional 3,600 therapists would help secure access for anyone that needs it, with the eventual target that all GP practices are able to access psychological therapies.

Mr Johnson said: "The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme has already captured the imagination of primary care trusts up and down the country and is transforming the lives of thousands of people with depression and anxiety disorders in the areas that have been involved so far.

"This document describes how that transformation can begin to be delivered in every strategic health authority area over the next few years."

Health minister Ivan Lewis explained one in six people suffer from mental health problems at any one time, with GPs spending a third of their time dealing with common problems such as stress, anxiety and depression.

"For many people, prescribing medication is a successful treatment but psychological therapies have proved to be as effective as drugs in tackling these common mental health problems and are often more effective in the longer term," Mr Lewis said.

"Today's guidance is another step towards giving people with mental health problems a real choice of treatment, helping to reduce dependence on medication."

The Liberal Democrats have campaigned for greater access to talking therapies and said today's Lancet review reinforced its importance.

Health spokesman Norman Lamb said: "A genuine choice of treatments for depression must be a core health service priority, not a neglected afterthought.

“Patients should have an individual entitlement to safe and dignified treatment in mental health hospitals and other facilities within 13 weeks."

The extra therapists announced today will treat patients with both mild and severe conditions, using either high or low intensity therapy.

The government expects they will enable 900,000 more people to be tested for depression and anxiety, of whom 450,000 will be completely cured.

"It's sad to watch this," says Ann Blake Tracy, executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness and co-founder of a website, SSRI stories.com, that catalogs violent crimes like Kazmierczak's and links them to psychiatric drug use. "You find suicide, murder, rape, arson" -- all caused by drugs such as Prozac, she says. "How did they convince us that this is therapeutic?"

"As firm as I am on the dangers of these drugs, I'm afraid of withdrawal," says Tracy of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness. "Because if people quit, and don't know how to come off the right way, we're really going to be in trouble."


http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-antidepressants25feb25,1,243019,full.story?ctrack=5&cset=true

Los Angeles Times

Drugs' double-edged sword

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 25, 2008

A young man reportedly taking the antidepressant Prozac has a history of significant psychiatric troubles, including self-cutting, obsessive thoughts and anxiety. But among the 27-year-old's current teachers and acquaintances, he has a reputation as a caring, dependable friend and a highly motivated student.

Surely, say mental health professionals, this recovery was brought about by Prozac.

The same young man, saying the drug makes him feel "like a zombie," abruptly discontinues his antidepressant and begins to behave erratically. About three weeks later, he steps from behind a curtain in a classroom at his alma mater and begins shooting, killing five students before turning the gun on himself.

Just as surely, say critics of antidepressants' widespread use, this unraveling was brought about by Prozac.

Steven Kazmierczak's bolt-from-the-blue shooting spree on Feb. 14 reignited a long-running debate over the benefits and risks of antidepressants -- taking them and discontinuing them.

"It's sad to watch this," says Ann Blake Tracy, executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness and co-founder of a website, SSRI stories.com, that catalogs violent crimes like Kazmierczak's and links them to psychiatric drug use. "You find suicide, murder, rape, arson" -- all caused by drugs such as Prozac, she says. "How did they convince us that this is therapeutic?"

Most in the psychiatric profession would counter that antidepressants overwhelmingly save lives, and salvage those hobbled by sadness and anxiety. They doubt that coming off these drugs -- especially Prozac, which Kazmierczak was reported to have taken -- led the Illinois gunman to kill.

And they fret that depressed patients who believe the charges of critics like Tracy will turn their backs on medicine that can work wonders if taken -- and stopped -- correctly.

"When a story like this is brewing, people think, 'If this medication can possibly be related to a bad outcome, I'd better get off it now,' " says UCLA psychiatrist Andrew Leuchter. "We're talking about millions and millions of people who've been treated successfully with these drugs and stopped treatment without any kind of dramatic changes of behavior."

At the center of the latest tempest over psychotropic drugs is a long-recognized phenomenon called Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome. First identified in psychiatric journals in the late 1990s, the condition is an assortment of symptoms that can plague patients for several weeks and, in a few cases on medical record, months after coming off a wide range of antidepressants. They include dizziness, headache, fatigue, changes in sleep patterns and appetite, vivid or disturbing dreams, agitation and anxiety. Some patients experience tingling or "electric zap" sensations passing through their extremities or head and, in rare cases, spasmodic jerking in the extremities, especially while sleeping.

Though the symptoms of the syndrome can be distressing for patients, many psychiatrists insist that they are rarely dangerous and can be managed by weaning a patient off antidepressant medication very slowly. As patients taper off their meds, however, they and their doctors must assess whether symptoms such as anxiety and agitation, which may affect a patient's behavior and reactions, are a sign of the syndrome or a recurrence of the illness that led to the medication in the first place.

It's not always an easy call, says Dr. Richard Shelton of Vanderbilt University, a leading researcher on antidepressants and their effects.



Lightning rod for debate

Twenty years after Prozac appeared on the U.S. landscape, roughly 10% of American women and 4% of American men take an antidepressant regularly. The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and their close cousins have revolutionized attitudes toward mental illness and its medication in this country. But they remain a lightning rod for controversy.

The role that antidepressants played in Kazmierczak's violent end probably will never be clear. Did Prozac, which Kazmierczak's girlfriend, Jessica Baty, said he had been on but had recently discontinued, help keep the 27-year-old's mental illness in check and, when halted, allow it to roar back? Or did it distort his personality, contort his thoughts and, when abandoned, cause a chemical storm in Kazmierczak's brain that spawned a fury of aggression?

The weight of clinical observations and psychiatric research favors the view that antidepressants helped Kazmierczak until the time he abandoned them. But skeptics charge that antidepressants may have caused or contributed to Kazmierczak's spasm of violence. And mental health experts acknowledge they cannot rule out that possibility.

"You're going to get some unpredictable reactions if you have millions of people taking them and going off. The potential for violent behavior, suicide and particularly impulsive suicide exists," says Shelton, a professor of psychiatry and psychopharmacology. "And the sicker the person is coming in the front door, the more likely they are to have a bad crash when they go off. We do see these extreme reactions."

In a category of drugs so widely used, how could potentially dangerous side effects remain a matter of uncertainty? For several reasons, experts say.

For starters, individuals' responses to antidepressants, though mostly predictable, can vary widely. Psychiatric diagnosis and medication decisions are imprecise and can be disastrously wrong; in cases where a patient with bipolar disorder is misdiagnosed and put on antidepressants, for example, the medicine has been found in some cases to bring on an episode of mania.

And, as the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged in 2007 when it warned of a heightened risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts among young patients starting on many of these drugs, 20 years after their arrival on the scene a full picture of antidepressants' side effects may still be emerging.

Research on animals points strongly to the possibility of heightened violence with the abrupt withdrawal of most antidepressants. Studies using cats and rodents have long shown that sudden declines in the neurotransmitter serotonin (the chemical that most antidepressants, in some fashion, make more available in the brain) will suppress an animal's natural caution and intensify its aggressive reactions toward other animals.

Though the human brain may have more powerful braking mechanisms than a cat's, the role of serotonin in inhibiting impulsive aggression is well established, says neuroscientist Allan Siegel of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, author of "The Neurobiology of Aggression and Rage."

It is expected to be several weeks before Kazmierczak's medical records and postmortem results are fully evaluated and made public. If they suggest that Kazmierczak's murderous act was linked to his abrupt discontinuance of an antidepressant, those findings may dismay the many patients who were not warned from the start of the risks they might face when going off such medicine.

Such findings could also be a sobering reminder to patients that these are not drugs to be dropped on a whim. Currently, an estimated half of patients who start on antidepressant therapy go off their medication in less than a year.

For medical professionals, the case of Steven Kazmierczak may hold other lessons: It could put physicians on alert for symptoms of Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome that lie at the extreme, including violence and suicide. It could underscore that when prescribing antidepressants, physicians need to alert patients that coming off these medications can be a bumpy road.

It may also remind physicians that they should take the same care to monitor a patient's state in the first several weeks off the medication as they do when a patient is just getting started.

According to a 2006 review article published in the journal Primary Psychiatry, the "untoward post-treatment effects" of the syndrome are believed to affect a majority of those who have taken antidepressants in the same class as Prozac for more than six weeks and then stopped. The unnerving symptoms can be particularly acute in cases where, as Kazmierczak is believed to have done, patients abruptly stop taking their medication.

The antidepressants venlafaxine (also marketed as Effexor) and paroxetine (also marketed as Paxil) are most often associated with pronounced discontinuation reactions, which, in these cases, are usually felt quickly -- within two to three days after a patient stops taking these drugs.

Such negative post-treatment effects are considered rare among patients taking Prozac, which Kazmierczak's girlfriend said he had been taking until about three weeks before the shooting. When the effects do happen, experts said they tend to be felt several weeks after fluoxetine, Prozac's chemical name, has been discontinued, because fluoxetine lingers in the body longer than venlafaxine or paroxetine do.

While acknowledging that there is little research to show which patients are most affected by discontinuation effects, Vanderbilt psychiatrist Shelton says he has observed that those who suffer from depression coupled with obsessive-compulsive disorder "seem to be prone to pretty significant reactions."

Shelton cautions that in cases where a patient's reaction to going off an antidepressant seems extreme, a physician should taper the dose "excruciatingly slowly." In Shelton's experience, he says, a gentle reduction of medicine can not only minimize discontinuation symptoms, but may make recurrence of depressive symptoms less likely.

"It's not a horse race. No one says you have to be off medications in three weeks or even three months," Shelton says.

In the war of words over antidepressants, this may be a point of rare consensus between those who believe in the power of antidepressants and those intent on raising alarms.

"As firm as I am on the dangers of these drugs, I'm afraid of withdrawal," says Tracy of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness. "Because if people quit, and don't know how to come off the right way, we're really going to be in trouble."

Since 1992 I have testified in court cases involving antidepressants. I was the expert in the wrongful death case of comedian Phil Hartman and his wife Brynn after their murder/suicide. Pfizer, the makers of Zoloft settled that case. The following information will explain simply what you saw happen tragically last Thursday, February 14, at NIU.


Below is my brief testimony before the FDA on antidepressants followed by the testimony of Mark Taylor, the first boy shot at Columbine High School. Mark Allan Taylor took 6 - 13 bullets that day. He then laid bleeding to death for an hour and a half waiting for help. He is known as the Columbine Miracle Boy after what he survived. His testimony is guaranteed to send chills down your spine after this latest campus shooting!


After this FDA hearing they issued a warning that any abrupt change in dose of an antidepressant - whether going up or down - can produce suicide, hostility or psychosis. You just witnessed everyone of those in this tragedy.


If you will also go to our website at www.drugawareness.org you can hear the statement made by Michael Moore about school shootings and antidepressants and listen to the first part of a movie posted below Michael's statement which has the story of a young school shooter also in withdrawal from one of these antidepressants who was lucky enough to avoid hurting anyone. His story of what happened to him will give you insight into what happened to Steven Kazmierczak.

________________

Dr. Ann Blake Tracy's September 13, 2004 to the FDA



I am Ann Blake Tracy, PhD, head of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness. I am the author of Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare and have testified in court cases involving antidepressants for 12 1/2 years. The last 15 years of my life have been devoted full time to researching and writing about SSRI antidepressants.

Research on serotonin has been clear from the very beginning that the most damaging thing that could be done to the serotonin system would be to impair one?s ability to metabolize serotonin. Yet that is exactly how SSRI antidepressants exert their effects.

For decades research has shown that impairing serotonin metabolism will produce migraines, hot flashes, pains around the heart, difficulty breathing, a worsening of bronchial complaints, tension and anxiety which appear from out of nowhere, depression, suicide - especially very violent suicide, hostility, violent crime, arson, substance abuse, psychosis, mania, organic brain disease, autism, anorexia, reckless driving, Alzheimer?s, impulsive behavior with no concern for punishment, and argumentative behavior.

How anyone ever thought it would be "therapeutic" to chemically induce these reactions is beyond me. Yet, these reactions are exactly what we have witnessed in our society over the past decade and a half as a result of the widespread use of these drugs.

In fact we even have a whole new vocabulary as a result with terms such as "road rage," "suicide by cop," "murder/suicide," "going postal," "false memory syndrome," "school shooting," "bi-polar" - every third person you meet anymore - along with the skyrocketing rates of antidepressant-induced diabetes and hypoglycemia.

Can you remember two decades ago when depressed people used to slip away quietly to kill themselves rather than killing everyone around them and then themselves as they do while taking SSRI antidepressants?

A study out of the University of Southern California in 1996 looked at a group of mutant mice in an experiment that had gone terribly wrong. These genetically engineered mice were the most violent creatures they had ever witnessed. They were born lacking the MAO-A enzyme which metabolizes serotonin. As a result their brains were awash in serotonin. This excess serotonin is what the researchers determined was the cause for this extreme violence. Antidepressants produce the same end result as they inhibit the metabolism of serotonin.

These are extremely dangerous drugs that should be banned as similar drugs have been banned in the past.

As a society we once thought LSD and PCP to be miracle medications with large margins of safety in humans. We have never seen drugs so similar to LSD and PCP as these SSRI antidepressants. All of these drugs produce dreaming during periods of wakefulness. It is believed that the high serotonin levels over stimulate the brain stem leading to a lack of muscle paralysis during sleep thus allowing the patient to act out the dreams or nightmares they are having. The world witnessed that clearly in the Zoloft-induced murder-suicide of comedian Phil Hartman and his wife, Brynn.

Connecticut witnessed the Prozac-induced case of Kelly Silk several years ago. This young mother attacked her family with a knife, then set the house on fire killing all but her 8 year old daughter who ran to the neighbors. As she stood bleeding and screaming for help she explained, "Help! My mommy is having a nightmare!"

Out of the mouths of babes we will understand these nightmares for what they are. She understood that this was something her mother would do ONLY in a nightmare, never in reality.

This is known as a REM Sleep Behavior Disorder. In the past it was known mainly as a drug withdrawal state, but the largest sleep facility in the country has reported that 86% of the cases they are diagnosing are patients on antidepressants.

Because this was known in the past as a condition manifesting mainly in drug withdrawal you should see how dangerous the withdrawal state from these drugs will prove to be. That is why it is so critical to make sure patients are weaned EXTREMELY slowly so as to avoid ANY chance of going into a withdrawal state.

_________________



Mark Taylor's testimony before the FDA 9/13/2004


I am Mark Allen Taylor and I am a victim of the SSRI antidepressant era. I took six to thirteen bullets in the heart area in the Columbine High School shooting when Eric Harris on Luvox opened fire that now infamous day.


They almost had to amputate my leg and my arm. My heart missed by only one millimeter. I had three surgeries. Five years later I am still recuperating.


I went through all this to realize that SSRI antidepressants are dangerous for those who take them and for all those who associate with those who take them.


I hope that my testimony today shows you that you need to take action immediately before more innocent people like me, and you, do not get hurt or die horrible deaths as a result.


As Americans we should have the right to feel safe and if you were doing your job we would be safe. Why are we worrying about terrorists in other countries when the pharmaceutical companies have proven to be our biggest terrorists by releasing these drugs on an unsuspecting public?


How are we suppose to feel safe at school, at home, on the street, at church or anywhere else if we cannot trust the FDA to do what we are paying you to do? Where were you when I and all of my classmates got shot at Columbine?


You say that antidepressants are effective. So why did they not help Eric Harris before he shot me?


According to Eric they "helped" him to feel homicidal and suicidal after only six weeks on Zoloft. And then he said that dropping off Luvox cold turkey would help him "fuel the rage" he needed to shoot everyone. But he continued on Luvox and shot us all anyway.


So, why did these so called antidepressants not make him better? I will tell you why. It is because they do not work.


We should consider antidepressants to be accomplices to murder.

_________________

NOTE: Two critical pieces of information should be mentioned here.

#1 Effexor, the most popular antidepressant on the market - one of two Andrea Yates was taking at the time she killed her 5 children - now has "homicidal ideation" - constant ruminating thoughts of killing and how to accomplish that are now listed side effects of that drug. The manufacturer based that warning on PRE-marketing data, meaning that the company knew it could cause homicidal ideation about 11 years BEFORE that warning was ever issued. How many other antidepressant manufacturers are sitting on similar information on their own drugs?

#2 In August the head of the National Instituute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel, announced that NIH had run studies testing the chemical sister to PCP, Ketamine, for use in depression. They found the drug immediately got rid of depression which should have been expected because it is anesthesia! But Ketamine and PCP are different types of anesthesias - dissociative anesthetics. In other words it will knock you out, but your body suffers no paralysis during anesthesia thus allowing the patient to move about even though they are prepped for surgery. Thus the reason for the blank stares and expressionless, emotionless demeanors so often reported in these cases.

Dr. Insel stated that antidepressants produce the same effect of this dissociative anesthetic but take several weeks to produce that effect, rather than producing an immediate effect. He then called for additional research to find a drug that would be immediate in action in treating depression that would not produce hallucinations along with it as does Ketamine and PCP and I would add "as do antidepressants as well" - just check the package inserts.


My book on this SSRI family of antidepressants, "Prozac: Panacea or Pandora?" first came out in 1994 with one entire chapter devoted to comparing the drugs to PCP because they are so very similar in action. Thirteen years later NIMH confirmed that connection. In the meantime, how many are dead, and why are these drugs still on the market? No one would be surprised at what happened last Thursday at NIU if it was reported that Steven Kazmierczak was using or withdrawing from PCP.


You will also want to go into our site at www.drugawarenes.org and watch the news interview with Mark and Corey - a school shooter. It is entitled "Columbine victim and school shooter join forces" and is posted just above Mark's FDA testimony near the bottom of our home page.


For any additional information or interviews with the families of Corey or Mark or Jeff Weise, the shooter in the Red Lake School shooting feel free to contact me.


Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D., Executive Director,
International Coalition For Drug Awareness
Website: www.drugawareness.org & www.ssristories.com
Author: Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare
& CD or audio tape on safe withdrawal: "Help! I Can't Get
Off My Antidepressant!"
Order Number: 800-280-0730

E-mail: atracyphd1@aol.com