It can no longer be denied that antidepressants double suicides, both in children and adults. As I recently described on the Mad in America website, this has been shown in randomised trials and in the most rigorous meta-analysis I have seen of observational studies.
However, psychiatric leaders have denied for over fifty years that depression drugs cause suicide. Their false narrative is that the pills only increase suicidal thoughts and behaviours, not suicides. This has always been a foolish argument. As a suicide starts with suicidal thoughts and behaviours, there cannot be drugs that increase suicidal thoughts and behaviours without also increasing suicides.
Psychiatric leaders have fooled the public so such an extent that most of them still claim that depression drugs protect against suicide. Guidelines recommend depression drugs for people at risk of suicide, and so-called suicide experts do the same.
Psychiatrists who continue to deny the facts often say that if depression drugs increase suicides, it should be easy to see this if we compare suicide rates with drug usage.
Actually, many studies have shown this, but the research literature is flawed. Studies that happen to show that depression drugs protect against suicide have a far greater likelihood of being published than studies that show the opposite, as the prevailing belief among top psychiatrists—who are very often on industry payroll—and in the drug industry is that the drugs are protective. I have found that the observational studies and meta-analyses of such studies that have reported that the pills protect against suicide or have no effect on suicide are flawed and sometimes even fraudulent.
It is not simple to do reliable observational studies of suicide. Many factors influence the number of suicides, e.g. unemployment. As a patient once said to his doctor: “I don’t want an antidepressant, I want a job!”
However, when wide-ranging new initiatives are implemented, we have a situation where we can study the drug-suicide relation reasonably accurately because social and other determinants will be about the same after implementation than before. This is the case for the United States.
Suicides in the United States
From 1999 onwards, government agencies at all levels—federal, state, and local—launched substantial suicide prevention efforts where people with depression are advised to take depression pills.
The efforts include screening for depression even though a review of the randomised trials recommends against this. Every war veteran is screened annually for depression, which is serious medical malpractice because it increases hugely the risk of issuing false positive diagnoses. The screening test recommended by the World Health Organization is so poor that for every 100,000 healthy people screened, 36,000 will get a false diagnosis of depression.
The outcome of the US suicide prevention programmes has been the opposite of what was expected. The prescribing of depression drugs has increased steadily since 2000, and the age-adjusted suicide rate for the American population has also increased steadily, by 35% from 2000 to 2017. For war veterans, the results have been very similar.
For those of us who have not blinded ourselves—as we do not have guild interests or a steady flow of money from the drug industry to protect—this was of course expected, as it was what the science had told us.
In other countries, the same happened. Australian researchers who tested the hypothesis that national mental health policies, programmes and legislation would lower national suicide rates, found the opposite in their study of 100 countries.
In a study of 76 countries, the researchers found higher suicide rates in countries with mental health legislation; or a higher number of psychiatric beds, psychiatrists, and psychiatric nurses; or more training in mental health for primary care professionals; or greater spending on mental health as a percentage of total spending on health in the country.
An analysis of 191 countries also found that countries with better psychiatric services experienced higher suicide rates.
In 2016, the US Department of Veterans published a study that showed that, whether the veterans had received a psychiatric diagnosis or not, there were many more suicides among those who were treated. The most disturbing graph is this one, from a paper by Robert Whitaker and war veteran Derek Blumke:
The mental gymnastics that have been applied to make all the convincing data go away were extraordinary. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention turned the data upside down and sounded an alarm about a hidden “epidemic” in our midst: There were so many people failing to get helpful antidepressant treatment for their mental disorders!
This is a great recipe for drug companies. When your drug kills people, just say that if many more people had been treated with your drug, it would have saved people. How deep can you sink? There seems to be no moral bottom that stops organisations from sinking even deeper than where they already have, being corrupted by industry money.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention received significant funding from pharmaceutical companies, which understood that a “suicide prevention” campaign would boost sales of their drugs. Academic psychiatrists on industry payroll led its scientific advisory board and served terms as directors of the Foundation. The Foundation pushed screening programs to get more people into treatment, and its advisory board and presidents touted depression drugs as “anti-suicide” pills.
Unfortunately, the Veterans Administration has also been corrupted by the industry. In 2018, it partnered with Johnson & Johnson to promote the campaign “No veteran left behind,” which featured Tom Hanks and urged all Americans to reach out to veterans in crisis and help get them “mental health services.” The communication plan was led by Johnson & Johnson.
If the suicide rates had remained stable at the rate they were in 2006, there would have been 10,000 to 15,000 fewer suicides among US veterans. This number is greater than the total of all combat deaths since 9/11.
It is a national disaster all over the world that suicide prevention programmes and guidelines about how to use depression drugs increase suicides.
Psychotherapy instead of pills
The randomised trials of psychotherapy have shown that psychotherapy can halve the risk of suicide attempts among high-risk people—those admitted after a suicide attempt.
It is therefore not surprising that a 2024 meta-analysis of trials found that psychotherapy is markedly superior to depression drugs for the combined outcome of suicide attempts, suicide, or other serious psychiatric adverse events.
If we want to prevent suicide, we should avoid depression drugs and offer people psychotherapy, but this is not what they get, and the disrespect for patients is gigantic. When laypeople were asked what sort of treatment they would prefer, six times as many people preferred psychotherapy for pills, but a survey of US child and adolescent psychiatrists showed that only 9% of the patients receive psychotherapy without pills.
A US psychiatrist said that when he trained back in the 1980s, they got 50% psychotherapy training and 50% medication training, but currently, the average psychiatric resident gets zero psychotherapy training, so, “all they have to offer is a pill.” In Sweden, the Board of Health recommends that all adults with mild to moderately severe depression are offered psychotherapy, but only 1% get it.
Psychotherapy works for people with very severe depression, which pills don’t. The illusion that pills they are more effective for reducing symptoms when the depression is severe, is based on two mathematical artefacts. One is caused by bias due to lack of effective blinding, which will affect high depression scores more than low scores.
The other is caused by faulty regression analyses. When researchers regress change in symptoms on initial symptom severity, this is equivalent to looking at (x-y)=ax + b, where x is the initial value and y is the value after treatment. Since x appears on both sides of the equation, 50% of the variation is already explained. This means that a totally ineffective drug will look effective if such a misleading regression analysis is carried out.
Psychiatry should be abolished or completely restructured
Psychiatry is a specialty that is so lethal that psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer, and antidepressants are a major killer, mostly because old people lose balance, fall and break their hip. The reason psychiatry still exists in its current form despite the dire facts about the harms it causes is because of its organised denial and because politicians have accepted the false narrative about what psychiatric drugs accomplish.
It is so bad that I argued in my most recent, freely available book – with reference to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—why I find that psychiatry is a crime against humanity.
Psychiatric leaders continue to deny the disturbing facts. They denied for over fifty years that depression drugs make patients dependent just like benzodiazepines do, making it hard or impossible for many patients to stop taking them.
I have no doubt that history will judge psychiatry to be by far the worst medical specialty that ever existed and that future generations will have difficulty understanding how this insanity could continue for so long.
This article is one of the most realistic studies I have ever seen.. Congratulations to you and other researchers who do research like you.. (Peter C. Gøtzsche, Robert Whitaker, Thomas Szasz, Peter Breggin, Marcia Angell, Devad Healy, David Cohen, Jose Luis Turabian, Loren R. Mosher, Steven Hyman, Sydney Walker III vs et al..) I’m glad we have you… 🙂
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Thomas Szasz characterizes suicide and murder as ‘voluntary acts’.. He also states that mental illness and psychiatric medications do not cause ‘suicide and murder’, but psychiatric medications cause ‘involuntary movements, internal tension and various restlessness, etc.’He explains that suicide and murder are voluntary acts..
Yes… Suicide and murder are voluntary acts.. It was psychiatric drugs that fueled these voluntary actions. Thomas Szasz knew this truth. Despite this, he insisted on voluntary action. Why? Because…
Thomas Szasz had only one reason for acting this way. That was because he wanted people who committed suicide and especially murder to be sent to a prison, not a mental hospital. A mentally ill person who committed murder should have been sent to prison, not to a mental hospital. From this perspective, he described suicide and murder as ‘voluntary actions’.
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So.. These views of Thomas Szasz coincided with the recent introduction of psychiatric drugs.. Well.. After decades passed.. Numerous studies have shown that psychiatric drugs have been proven to cause ‘violence, murder and suicide’.. Therefore… Psychiatric drugs make people more prone to violence, murder and suicide.
It does this by disrupting thought. It disrupts the ability to make decisions. In momentary events, it cannot make CORRECT decisions. He doesn’t know what to do. But he thinks he has to do something. He even tries not to do anything wrong. That’s why he wants to do something right. And he does.. But he doesn’t know that what he’s doing is RIGHT. He just knows it as RIGHT. Violence, murder and suicide all start with these thoughts.
That’s why.. Psychiatric medications disrupt this decision-making ability. It probably does this by numbing the brain. The brain chemistry is numbing, it’s stupefying. But this is not true for every person. If it were, every person taking psychiatric medication would commit suicide. They would commit violence and murder.
However, every person taking psychiatric medications has the potential to develop chemical-induced brain damage.. And probably due to this brain damage, permanent mental illness occurs. (Natural psychological problems becoming permanent..) In every psychiatric drug user without exception..
Usually in long term (months and/or years of psychiatric drug use..)
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Psychiatric drugs are poison. They cause brain damage and permanent mental illness. And they kill. It causes violence, murder, and suicide. And it causes a lot of physical illnesses. It also causes people who use psychiatric medications to be subjected to violence, sexual abuse and rape. (The number, including those not reported in the media, could be frightening.) (What is happening in mental health units such as mental hospitals, rehabilitation centres, nursing homes, care homes etc. in England shows us this… (Like ‘violence against mentally ill’ news..) The number can be frightening, including those not reported in the media. And unfortunately, this abuse can also happen at home within families…)
So how do psychiatric drugs do this? Anyone who knows the narcotic effects of psychiatric drugs (at least people with bad characters) can use them with bad intentions. Psychiatric drugs can be used as a weapon. And it is already used. In addition to violence, murder and suicide, patients also have the possibility of being subjected to violence, sexual abuse and rape. Unfortunately… These psychiatric atrocities must be stopped.
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In my opinion.. Psychiatry should be removed from medical schools. Medical schools should not include psychiatry, which harms and even kills people. This is a shameful situation (for the medical community). A crime against humanity is being committed, but no one speaks up about it.
As soon as possible… Ministries of mind and soul (spiritual) health should be established.. Psychiatrists and psychologists should serve as ‘mind and soul health doctors’.. Harmful and lethal psychiatric side treatments such as psychiatric drugs and ECT, SHOULD BE BANNED.. In mental health treatments, drug-free treatment methods should be used. Etc etc.. These are my thoughts. There may be better ones. Experts on the subject can evaluate these.
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And as a final word.. For centuries, mental illness has been treated with medication. But he was unsuccessful. No medicine could cure mental illness. Because mental illness was not in the brain. It was something in the person’s own soul. Mental problems cannot be cured (i.e. treated) with psychiatric medications.
Drug-free treatment methods such as behavioral therapies, nature therapies, etc. (Today’s Norwegian examples, such as Storia houses, etc.) These are known to help mental illnesses reach normal levels.. Such innovations and changes are needed in the mental health paradigm.
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In fact, such non-drug treatments existed during the time of the prophets. What happened? They were forgotten. Then, charlatans came into play. (Today, psychiatrists) They acted as if something existed in the brain that did not exist. And they tried to cure ‘mental illnesses’. What happened? They failed. They damaged people’s brains. They tortured them. They caused their suffering and death.
And these charlatans, they really enjoyed it. That’s how they became psychopaths. And… Aren’t psychiatrists like that today? They do the same thing. For this reason, today’s psychiatrists have become psychopaths because they harm people and enjoy it so much. Unfortunately.. In the past, those who treated mental illnesses were charlatans and psychopaths. And they are the same now. They haven’t changed. So… They used to be charlatans, they are charlatans now.
Of course, this quackery and psychopathism is not for all psychiatrists.. There are honest psychiatrists among them.. Psychiatrists who reveal the harms of psychiatric drugs… And psychiatrists who know the dangers of psychiatric drugs and therefore do not prescribe these poisonous psychiatric drugs to their patients… Except for these… These are honest psychiatrists. But they are few in number. This is sad…
My words may be harsh. But.. Is it important that my words are harsh or that dishonest psychiatrists are harming millions of people?
How many millions of people have been harmed by psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric side-treatments such as ECT? (Disabled, injured or even killed? Around the world..) Unknown.. Because it is not focused on enough. It is not investigated. Other reasons are recorded (process) in the ‘health and death reports’ of people who were injured or died from psychiatric drugs. This leaves the ‘actual cause of injury and death’ for people injured and dying from psychiatric drugs unknown. This is how the cover-up technique works in the medical world. Who will be responsible for these? What a shame, isn’t it a sin?
Politicians must do something.. Honest psychiatrists, psychologists, other doctors, journalists, intellectuals, etc. and other researchers must come together.. New paradigms based on drug-free treatment methods for mental illnesses should be on the agenda. Nothing else comes to my mind. Let’s just say that’s it for now.
Best regards. Y.E. (Researcher blog writer (blogger))
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Perfect post. I especially agree with crime against humanity. We should have in mind that if something is legal, approved by Government it is not necessarily good. Lobotomies were also approved by Goverment and Goverment did nothing to compensate. It is foolish to blindly believe govt.
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I think the most convenient solution to deal with the problem ASAP except suing them to hell is to start ideological pharmaceutical company and put all these warnings on leaflets by CEO and Owner order not asking anyone for opinion. I can imagine such company being sued by psychiatrists for too much warnings which would made them frist-class clowns in eyes of public.
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It makes me suicidal to see how blind we are as critics of psychiatry to imagine that suicides would be managed by a national suicide strategy when that nation and our destroyed, dysfunctional society that has ruined our Earth is giving us more and more reasons to commit suicide every single day. If you can’t broaden your critique of psychiatry to encompass a critical understanding of the whole of this society then you are just data entry clerks, inputting data as the world burns. Do see this otherwise we’ll have to clear out you humans as well as your monstrosity of a concrete and plastic and glass and metal society. Chocolate and vape shops, tobacco shops and supermarkets, coffee shops and bakeries, this bilge of fetid piggy treats at the cost of all of our children a single one of which contains all the beauty and the promise of the whole Earth. Instead let’s continue to allow every kind of vampire to grift off them mercilessly and destroy them all in their own image and turn them into the destructive fiends they are who cannot help but betray themselves by destroying who they are, which is the whole of humanity and the Earth. What sane person would not want to cry and would not want to take the pain away>
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