Politico reports on a decision from the Florida Supreme Court last Thursday that may influence how physicians treat depression and how they are held responsible for that treatment. In the case in question, the husband of Jacqueline Granicz, who committed suicide in 2008, sued a physician for prescribing the antidepressant Lexapro without requesting a meeting or an evaluation.
A terrible and unnecessary loss.
Journo has never heard of antidepressant withdrawal, and cites “depression.” How long was the late Mrs. Granicz off venlatoxine? The unpleasant lower GI symptom is a post-Effexor effect. I wonder if anyone close to the deceased woman knows withdrawal was part of the problem, if not all of it.
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We are not far from the day when biological psychiatrists will have to accept some responsibility not only for the suicides of their patients, but for the murders and violence committed by them under the influence of prescribed drugs or unsupported withdrawal from them.
Once a patient is prescribed, and often required or pressured, to take a drug with possible suicidal or violent side-effects and goes on to act out in a self-destructive or violent manner, the courts will have to consider the possibility that the violence was as likely as not related to the prescribed drug. This change will begin with the “treatment” of active duty troops and veterans.
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