ABLECHILD: Lawmakers Attack Experts on Risks Associated with Antidepressants

Lawmakers Attack Experts on Risks Associated with Antidepressants

Republished with permission from AbleChild

Eight Members of Congress signed a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., that is so biased and utterly uninformed that one can only wonder which of the eight Members got the call from the pharmaceutical lobby?

This apparent big pharma distress call clearly was in response to a remarkable FDA Expert Panel discussion that took place three weeks ago regarding the need for a larger, more in depth conversation about the harm that may occur to the fetus of women taking Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), also known as antidepressants.

AbleChild wrote about this Expert Panel and could not be more insulted by the Members’ idiotic stance on the panel’s discussion. The problem, of course, is most of the Expert Panel members believed that there was ample evidence to suggest that there is harm associated with women taking SSRI antidepressants during pregnancy.

So, let’s address a few of the comments made in the Congressional letter. First, the Member letter states SSRIs “have been proven to provide immense support to millions of Americans of all ages.” “Immense support?” What does “immense support” mean? Is it a medical term? What is the measurement for “immense support?” Do the Members of Congress mean that having one in four Americans having their minds chemically altered just to function daily is “immense support?”

Certainly, the Members aren’t referring to Massachusetts mother, Lindsay Clancy, who was prescribed SSRI medication (13 different drugs in a four-month period) who then killed her three kids. Did Clancy benefit from the “immense support” the SSRIs allegedly provided? Or how about the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz? Cruz had been drugged by the state of Florida since the age of seven. Did the ADHD drugs and SSRIs prescribed to Cruz provide the Members’ alleged “immense support?”

The problem with lawmakers writing about psychiatric drugs is that the staff, who usually write the letters, don’t take the time to really become informed on an issue. One might remind the Congressional staffer who wrote the letter that using a term like “immense support” is a term of art not science or medicine. It’s very similar to words used to describe a psychiatric diagnosis. For example, major depressive disorder (MDD). How is major depressive disorder measured? Really depressed, minimal or just a smidge? C’mon. What’s the measuring tool? Does the patient that is just a smidge depressed get the same “treatment” as the major depressed or no “treatment?”

Moving along let’s consider the Members statement that “panelists made claims that SSRIs can cause neurological disorders and birth defects despite the lack of any association in decades of studies.” Oops! Wrong again. Let’s consider the recent study released this month in Frontiers in Pharmacology titled “Neurological adverse events associated with antidepressants; a comprehensive 22-year analysis of the FDA adverse event reporting system.” The actual adverse drug events reported to the FDA were analyzed. What did the researchers find in the 22 years of data? “A series of strong adverse reaction signals were identified with “neonatal movement disorders” and “SSRIs and SNRIs exhibited signal patterns associated with neonatal adaptation.” The researchers concluded “overall, this 22-year database analysis revealed diverse patterns of neurological adverse events associated with antidepressants, providing evidence to inform safe clinical decision-making regarding drug use across populations.” Diverse neurological adverse events.

And, because Congressional lawmakers and their staff apparently are unaware of the FDA adverse drug reporting system (MedWatch), it is important to understand that less than ten percent of the adverse events that occur from prescription drugs are actually reported to the FDA. When one considers the numbers of adverse events that are happening, but are not being reported, the problem with mind-altering drugs becomes much more serious.

Now let’s consider that the Members write “these treatments are not experimental.” AbleChild would submit that there is an argument to be made about this conclusion, First, the psychiatric diagnosis is not based in science. There is no medical/biological test that will reveal any abnormality that is any psychiatric disorder. Psychiatric diagnosing is based on answers to questions and could vary from doctor to doctor and diagnosis to diagnosis, depending on the doctor’s understanding of the client’s reported behavior.

More importantly, however, is that the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the SSRIs that the Members believe to provide “immense support” have no idea how the drugs “work” in the brain for any psychiatric diagnosis. For example, the package inserts for Fluoxetine (the first SSRI Prozac) reports “although the exact mechanism of Prozac is unknown, it is presumed to be linked to its inhibition of CNS neuronal uptake of serotonin.” So, if the makers of the drugs, after fifty years of study, cannot tell the public how the drug works, doesn’t that sound like an experimental drug?

One would also argue with the Members’ understanding of safety and efficacy of the drugs, claiming “the safety and efficacy of SSRIs have been proven over decades of rigorous research and can improve quality of life and save lives.”  But what does Congress say to those like Lindsay Clancy and Nikolas Cruz and hundreds of thousands of others who experienced serious adverse events from taking the SSRIs? Still efficacious and safe? Can’t be both ways. Why aren’t the Congressional eight giving those who have been harmed by SSRIs the same consideration as those who have received “immense support?”

The fact is the data shows that psychiatric diagnosing is increasing as is the prescribing of psychiatric drugs. AbleChild is floored that Congress cannot see that the data shows, despite the increases in “treatment,” no one is getting better. Even the FDA Administrator, Marty Makary, said during the Expert Panel opening remarks that “we’re losing the broader battle of addressing mental health in the United States and as a matter of fact, in some respects, we’re going backwards.” Makary concluded “from a national standpoint, the more antidepressants we prescribe, the more depression there is.”

Congress needs to wake up. Seventy-seven million Americans (too many are children) are being diagnosed with non-scientific mental disorders and prescribed serious, life-threatening mind-altering drugs as “treatment,” even though no one in the pharmaceutical industry knows how the drugs “work” as “treatment.”  Will the drugs change behavior? Yes. Is that a good thing? Ask Lindsay Clancy, Andrea Yates, Audrey Hale and thousands of others who had deadly outcomes on the “treatments.”

The eight Members of Congress that signed this letter to HHS Secretary Kennedy need to know that SSRIs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and have serious possible side effects like mania, psychosis, abnormal behavior, hallucinations, aggressive reaction, insomnia, aggravated depression, agitation, anxiety, depersonalization, paranoia, abnormal thinking, psychotic disorder, intense dreams and suicidality and suicide attempts to name a few. And let’s not forget that all the antidepressants carry a black box warning for suicidality (the most serious warning attached to a drug before the FDA takes the drug off the market). That’s right taking SSRIs can cause someone to commit suicide. Yeah, that sounds safe and effective.

And, yes, there is ample data to show that women may want to rethink SSRI use during pregnancy. But more to the point, what is unclear, the thing that the public really needs to know is why these eight Members of Congress are so tweaked by a panel of experts having an open conversation about the safety or risks associated with a class of drugs?

The Congressional letter is not only inaccurate but also sends the wrong message to the public about whose interests are being considered by the lawmakers. Let’s face it. When a public conversation by medical experts about drug safety is dismissed and ridiculed by those who make the laws, because the Members of Congress are at odds with the conclusions, nobody is safe.

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AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety.

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