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"Seeing as how Andrea Yates was psychotic, and had previously been on anti-psychotic medication, why was she on anti-depressants, anyway?

I know she had just switched or had been taken off one or the other, but if she wasn't even taking the right medication to treat her problem, how could it be the medication's fault for her homicidal thoughts and actions?"

This is one of the big lies....that the "right" medication will fix psychosis. Many moms, like me for example, fall into a psychotic state from sleep deprivation. Anti-depressants cause the brain to go into what is called an REM sleep disorder state, where you are awake and functioning, but you are in a sleep state. It is in this state of mind that people often commit the crimes, often with no memory of what they have done.

Read Ann Blake Tracy's book Prozac, pandora or panacea. I linked to it in my post. She takes the time and energy to go through the whole phenomenon step by step and explains very carefully what is happening chemically when the drugs are taken.

Here is a link to an article explaining the chemical reaction: (I wrote it)

http://www.compleatmother.com/articles2/psychotic_jh.htm

One of the dirty little secrets is that in the last few years the big pharma companies have been putting most of their eggs in the "anti-psychotic medication" basket.

These drugs are so high priced and so toxic to the system, yet they are being shoved on a public that is manic and psychotic BECAUSE of taking anti-depressants for the past sixteen years. I read recently that after 9-11 the numbers of Americans taking anti-d's went from 1 in 5 to 1 in 3. Do you know how many people that is??

And no, not all of them will become psychotic, but in my opinion we are playing russian roulette by dispensing these drugs like candy - heck people give them to their pets and two month old babies!!!

For what? Keeps the money rolling in to the drug coffers....

Nutrition and quiet living are the answer to prevent emotional upheaval. And if it does occur, the last thing a mentally ill mother needs is to have her sleep messed with and her body to be overwhelmed by toxic chemicals.

Andrea was bit in the butt by the very profession she worked for, as so many medical people are. They have so much faith in the "better living through chemistry"...they are the most self medicated people in America.

What we need in America is a massive campaign to educate the people how to safely withdraw from these medications, and then they need to be gradually taken off the market just like LSD was in the 70's. That took an act of congress to do, but a similar action needs to happen in regards to psychiatric medications.

Did you know that their is no scientific proof for the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness???

What patients are being given, simply, is a chemical lobotomy, or if they are electroshocked, they are given an electrical lobotomy, and lest you think the psychiatric profession doesn't do the real lobotomy anymore, think again...

http://www.breggin.com/lobotomy.htm

As Dr. Breggin outlines in his book Toxic Psychiatry, the drugs and electroshock that are happening simply damage, literally "gel" the brain tissue in the very same portion of the brain where the lobotomy takes place.

From a column entitled:

Should the use of neuroleptics be severely limited?
by Peter R. Breggin, M.D.

"Growing evidence indicates that these drugs produce tardive psychoses that are irreversible and more severe than the patients' prior problems. In children, permanent behavioral or mental disorders frequently develop as a result of the drugs (Gualtieri and Barnhill, 1988). Furthermore, drug withdrawal often causes rebound of the anticholinergic neurotransmitter system, resulting in a flu-like syndrome that includes emotional upset, insomnia, nausea and vomiting. Many patients find themselves unable to stop taking the drugs, suggesting that we should consider them as addictive (Breggin, 1989a, 1989b).

Shocking as it may seem, this brief review can only scratch the surface of neurological disorders associated with these drugs, let alone the vast number of other potentially serious side effects. For example, in a small percentage of patients the neuroleptic reaction goes out of control, producing neuroleptic malignant syndrome. The disorder is indistinguishable from an acute inflammation of the brain comparable to lethargic encephalitis (Breggin, 1990, 1991) and can be fatal. Given that these are exceedingly dangerous drugs, what about their advantages? How do they "work"?

It is well known that these drugs suppress dopamine neurotransmission in the brain, directly impairing the function of the basal ganglia and the emotion-regulating limbic system and frontal lobes and indirectly impairing the reticular activating system as well. The overall impact is a chemical lobotomy—literally so, since frontal lobe function is suppressed (Breggin, 1983, 1991). The patient becomes de-energized or de-enervated. Will or volition is crushed, and passivity and docility are induced.

The patient complains less and becomes more manageable. Despite the claims made for symptom cure, multiple clinical studies document a non-specific emotional flattening or blunting effect (reviewed in Breggin 1983, 1991)."

http://www.breggin.com/neuroleptics.html

So, your point that "if only Andrea had been on the right meds, none of this would have happened" is actually the wrong direction to take this conversation. All of the drugs, the anti-depressants and the anti-psychotics have similar effects in terms of chemical lobotomy, toxic reactions like Tardive Dyskenisia, and ALL of the drugs are extremely addictive and nearly impossible to get off of.

To me, the question should be: How much longer are we the people going to allow our society to be manipulated and controlled by Big Pharma, and how much longer is it going to take for these chemicals to be pulled from the market as unfit for human and animal consumption???

The government has just allowed Zoloft to go generic, so I think we can safely assume nothing is going to change any time soon.

But those of us who made it to the other side of mental illness with our ability to write, speak, and yell in tact will continue to whistle blow, and if any americans can hear us behind the fog of drugs they are currently anesthetized with, perhaps something will change at some point.

I don't know that our society has the will to do what is necessary, like they did when PCP and LSD were banned. But who knows? Maybe when the murder rate, and the suicide rate, and the families who are being destroyed reach truly epidemic proportions someone, somewhere will say ENOUGH!

Jenny