Debate Persists on Long-Term Use of Psychiatric Meds and Kim’s personal experience of being a guinea pig for Pharmaceutical companies and how it’s killing her
By Traci Pedersen
Followed by personal experiences by: Kimberly McPherson
Debate Persists on Long-Term Use of Psychiatric Meds
In a new article in the journal BMJ, an expert argues that the benefits of psychiatric drugs have been exaggerated and the negatives downplayed due to poor trial design, while another expert and psychiatric patient defend the use of these drugs.
Every year in the West, more than half a million people over age 65 die from the use of psychiatric drugs and the benefits would need to be “colossal” to justify these “immensely harmful” treatments, said Peter Gøtzsche, M.D., professor and director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, Denmark.
But their benefits are “minimal,” he explains, adding that these drugs should “almost exclusively be used in acute situations.” New guidelines should support this change and there should be widespread access to withdrawal clinics to help many patients gradually come off these medications.
The benefits of these drugs have been exaggerated and their harms understated, he said, because randomized controlled trials have been biased, not blinded appropriately. He also notes that the effects of these drugs have not been fully evaluated and that deaths have been underreported.
For example, the majority of studies have included participants who had already been taking a psychiatric drug and such patients may undergo abstinence and be suffering from withdrawal symptoms from the first drug. As a result, this study design exaggerates the benefits of treatment and increases the harms in the placebo group.
Industry-funded trials have also underreported deaths, he said, estimating that there have probably been 15 times more suicides among people taking antidepressants than reported by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Gøtzsche calculates that deaths from three classes of drugs — antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and similar drugs, and antidepressants — were responsible for 3,693 deaths every year in Denmark. This number corresponds to 539,000 deaths in the U.S. and European Union combined.
The benefits of these medications are so small, he adds, that it would be possible to stop current use almost completely without causing harm. He suggests stopping the use of all antidepressant, ADHD, and dementia drugs, and prescribing only a small fraction of currently used antipsychotics and benzodiazepines.
But Dr. Allan H. Young, a professor of mood disorders at King’s College London, and John Crace, a psychiatric patient, contend with Gøtzsche’s stance, arguing that research supports the use of psychiatric drugs. They believe that these drugs are just as beneficial and effective as the drugs used to treat other common, complex conditions.
They believe that these medications are needed to lower the long term harms of psychiatric conditions, which are the fifth leading cause of disability worldwide. Most psychiatric patients suffer from co-existing health conditions, they add, a primary cause of death among this group.
They note that psychiatric drugs are rigorously examined for safety and effectiveness and while the evidence base is “imperfect,” they say, research shows that psychiatric drugs do more help than harm.
Source: BMJ
Kim’s personal experience with psychiatric drugs and her long term use leading to deadly unchangeable diseases.
I’ve been a guinea pig for the psychiatric pharmaceutical companies for over 17 years of my life. If there is a psych med on the market I’ve taken it. About 8 years ago I started having terrible symptoms that other doctors weren’t able to figure out where or why I had them until they found out I had been taking antidepressants for over half my life.
I would have random episodes of passing out, dizziness, low sodium (leading me to have to ingest 3 gallons of pedialyte a day along with 2 extra teaspoons of salt and up to 10 whole grams of sodium chloride), low potassium, random seizures that I never had before, symptoms of lupus, Addison’s disease (where your adrenals shut down), pituitary adenomas (basically cysts on your pituitary gland that grow), and now kidney and liver failure.
All of the things mentioned above have gotten worse over the years and now I live in a constant state of an Addison’s crisis and my cortisol and aldonostrone levels are undetectable meaning that I’m a walking (on good days I can walk to the kitchen) miracle on the verge of death. Also I now have full blown lupus that resulted in negligence on the part of my prescribing physician because I was showing signs of medicine induced lupus for years but the doctor did not help me get off the medication in time so now the lupus has taken on the dreaded autoimmune disease form that will not go away.
I’ve been to over a dozen specialist for my symptoms and new diseases and every single one of them (except for my psychiatrist that is now getting on board because I have so much proof from my other specialists) say that its 99.99% most likely that all of this is from long term use of psychiatric drugs.
The reason I write this is not to deter you from getting help if you have depression or any other illnesses like that. I say these things as a warning to the public that our doctors and pharmaceutical companies are covering up the actual dangers of these man made drugs. I urge you to do your research and to attempt herbal/natural remedies before ever starting a prescribed medication. With natural remedies it will take a bit longer to see results but I guarantee you that it’s worth it to stick it out. The reason the FDA does not approve of natural remedies is because they work to actually cure the patient so there’s no money in it for them. The FDA only approves of things that will keep you sick enough to need to take more of their FDA approved medicine. Who do you think pays for these medical college’s? The Pharmaceutical companies pay for our doctors to be taught about their medicines. Western medicine is there to treat symptoms and natural medicine is there to cure the whole patient.
I write this because I do not want to be silent and find out in a year that there are hundreds of thousands more out there like me.
Trust your doctors but trust your gut more. We need to get back to God’s natural remedies that He spoke about in our instruction book. He states that all of our medicinal needs are in the plants and trees so we need to obey if we want to live happy and healthy long lives. These drug induced pickling agents will help us live long lives but we will be in agony wishing we were dead the whole time. It’s time to get back to what really works so I urge you to try to find a natural/homeopathic/eastern medicine doctor before ever trying a western medicine drug that we won’t know us harmful to us until the FDA and CDC gets unveiled for the killing machines that they are.
The actual number one cause of death in the united states is from the side effects of harmful FDA approved drugs. They just don’t want you to know that.
All my love,
Kimmy
Kimberly McPherson's Blog 