Posted on 04/21/2007 12:08:00 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
On her popular blog, Arianna Huffington stopped just short of blaming antidepressant medications for Cho Seung-Hui's lethal rampage at Virginia Tech this week. Anti-pharmaceutical demagogues love to blame drugs for all society's ills. Yet if antidepressants had anything to do with the massacre, it's likelier that it was the premature cessation of medication that led to Cho's violently disturbed state of mind.
That's one conclusion that can be drawn from a new analysis on the benefits and risks of antidepressants for children and adolescents published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. The analysis found that the risks of ...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The burden of the article is that the FDA overreacted to skimpy correlation of suicidal thoughts with the use of Prozac. - and the resulting decrease in the use of Prozac is correlated with a similar-sized increase in actual suicides, which until then had been declining.
Now the evidence is pretty clear that the Prozac was doing good, but the FDA is evading its responsiblity by refusing to reconsider.
My take is that this is just another example of the classic syndrome of promoting criticism above action.
"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena - Theodore RooseveltThe FDA is no different from your average journalism outlet - it thinks it isn't doing its job if it allows risks to be taken, even in reasonable expectation of commensurate benefits.
She’s baaaack!
Just like toe fungus.
I don’t have any experience with Prozac, but as a former caregiver of a friend who used other anti-depressants, I can say that I could tell immediately when his medication wore off. He went from fairly mellow to hyper rapidly. Needless to say, I made sure he took his meds on time. If he missed a pill for any reason, I paid for it dearly.
My ex tried Prozac and it had NO EFFECT on him whatsoever.
We should have shipped the VA Tech shooter to North Korea - he would have fit right in as an operative for the tyrant there. Heck, if we'd sent him to Iraq Saddam would have adopted him!
I think anti-depressents don’t actually cause violent behavior. I think that in some cases it removes the persons ability to prevent them from acting on their impulses. Some people just seem to be on the verge of losing control. This may push them over. Of course I could be way off.
My ex tried Prozac and it had NO EFFECT on him whatsoever.
“People Are Not All The Same.”
A close relative has taken Trazadone for decades, http://www.mentalhealth.com/drug/p30-d03.html to quell “anxiety attacks.”
IIRC, there were two brands with theoretically identical formulae. but with divergent effects on different patients. Most found one brand effective; the other of no benefit. A minority found the second brand effective, the first brand being worse than nothing. These included my relative.
Although we always made certain that the pharmacy was aware of this idiosyncracy, they would occasionally decide it wasn't that important, and substitute the wrong brand. Within a day, she would become very depressed, have anxiety attacks, and cognitive deficits.
P*A*N*A*T*S
p.s. Along this same line, consider that the principal “adverse effect” for many (if not all) antidepressants is .... (you guessed it)... DEPRESSION (!)
It’s been a few years now, but I remember Klonepin and Ativan. I can’t remember which he was taking near the end.
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