Peer-Support Groups Were Right, Guidelines Were Wrong: Dr. Mark Horowitz on Tapering Off Antidepressants

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In an interview with MIA, Dr. Horowitz discusses his recent article on why tapering off antidepressants can take months or even years.

Playing the Odds: Antidepressant ‘Withdrawal’ and the Problem of Informed Consent

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If I thought that it was possible, I would have opened a string of clinics all over the country to help get people off of antidepressants.  Unfortunately, the problems that sometimes occur when people try to stop an SSRI antidepressant are much more severe and long-lasting than the medical profession acknowledges, and there is no antidote to these problems. The truth is, giving people information about taking antidepressants is like giving information to people who are enroute to a casino; they go because they hear that some people win (at least for a time), but the losers are the ones who ultimately pay for it all — and the odds are not in their favor.

Robin Williams On Antidepressant at Time of Suicide

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Robin Williams had "therapeutic" levels of the tetra-cyclic antidepressant mirtazapine in his blood at the time of his suicide, according to the coroner's report...

Researchers Search for Subgroups Where Antidepressants Are More Effective

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The researchers theorized that this increased effectiveness was due not to “antidepressant” properties, but rather to the drug’s side effects, which include insomnia, drowsiness, and nausea.

Suicide in the Age of Prozac

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During the past twenty years, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and American psychiatry have adopted a "medicalized" approach to preventing suicide, claiming that antidepressants are protective against suicide. Yet, the suicide rate in the United States has increased 30% since 2000, a time of rising usage of antidepressants. A review of studies of the effects of mental health treatment and antidepressants on suicide reveals why this medicalized approach has not only failed, but pushed suicide rates higher.

How to Avoid Severe SSRI Withdrawal Symptoms?

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After long-term use, most people are going to have serious symptoms when stopping SSRIs. Many people are going to have transient, mild to moderate difficulty and some are going to end up falling down the akathisia rabbit hole. That is a long, difficult drop.
prescriptions and suicide

Suicides Are Increasing – And So Are Antidepressant Prescriptions

Disturbingly, our study and others reveal that the black box warning is now ignored in many countries, since antidepressant prescriptions for children are on the rise again. Despite increasing certainty that antidepressants are ineffective and likely cause suicidal behavior in young people, psychiatry continues to claim that they reduce suicide risk.
integrative mental health

8 Years of Mental Health Research Distilled to 4 Infographics

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Pictures are worth a thousand words. So I’ve chosen pictures to distill the mountain of mental health research I’ve examined over the last eight years. Three infographics summarize research on psychiatric drugs, and one asserts why I think Integrative Mental Health is the best path available for mental health recovery.
quitting antidepressants

Lingering Side Effects of Quitting Antidepressants

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Nobody told me what it would be like when I first stopped taking antidepressants. The worst is definitely over, but I’m still experiencing some lingering side effects. When the hyper-arousal to sights and sounds kicks in and my head starts buzzing, I’ve learned some ways to cope.

Suicide Rates Rise While Antidepressant Use Climbs

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Multiple media sources are reporting on new data from the CDC revealing a substantial increase in the suicide rate in the United States between 1999...
new antidepressants

Challenging the New Hype About Antidepressants

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The extraordinary media hype over the latest meta-analysis of antidepressants puts the discussion of these drugs back years. Despite the fact that rates of prescribing have doubled over the last decade, the authors of the analysis are calling for yet more prescribing. But this latest meta-analysis simply repeats the errors of previous analyses.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Halves the Risk of Repeated Suicide Attempts

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A new study suggests that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) may halve the likelihood of re-attempting suicide, for those who have attempted in the past.

Rise in Suicides Baffles Military

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The New York Times reports that the "baffling" rise in suicide rates in the U.S. military is not correlated to deployment, as is often...

Antidepressants Do Not Prevent Suicides, May Increase Risk

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When the CDC released data revealing an increasing suicide rate in the US, some experts, speaking to major media outlets, speculated that the increase...

Germanwings Pilot Saw Psychiatrist Three Times, Doubled Antidepressant Before Crash

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The man who deliberately crashed a Germanwings commercial airliner with 150 passengers aboard was actively in psychiatric treatment at the time, reported the New...
antidepressants

Do Antidepressants Work? A People’s Review of the Evidence

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After a meta-analysis of RCTs of antidepressants was published in Lancet, psychiatry stated that it proved that "antidepressants" work. However, effectiveness studies of real-world patients reveal the opposite: the medications increase the likelihood that patients will become chronically depressed, and disabled by the disorder.

Katharine Hepburn is Glamorous – Suicide is Not

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What do you do when the media reports stories of children who have killed themselves on SSRIs? Position the stories of these children, not the drugs they were taking, as a suicide risk. Warn that more children will die if mouthy parents are allowed to speak and upstart journalists are allowed to report. And then position psychiatrists as the only people who can talk about suicide without producing an epidemic of self inflicted deaths.

Things Your Doctor Should Tell You About Antidepressants

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The conventional wisdom is that antidepressant medications are effective and safe. However, the scientific literature shows that the conventional wisdom is flawed. While all prescription medications have side effects, antidepressant medications appear to do more harm than good as treatments for depression.

On the Link Between Psychiatric Drugs and Violence

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One of psychiatry's most obvious vulnerabilities is the fact that various so-called antidepressant drugs induce homicidal and suicidal feelings and actions in some people, especially late adolescents and young adults. This fact is not in dispute, but psychiatry routinely downplays the risk, and insists that the benefits of these drugs outweigh any risks of actual violence that might exist.

Two Years Tapering an Antidepressant – A Life-Changing Experience That I Didn’t Want

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My heart goes out to anyone experiencing withdrawal, but especially those who are so ill they can’t work and are struggling to navigate a heartless and cynical ‘benefits’ system. Their only crime is to have experienced difficulty from a prescribed treatment, yet they are treated as medical pariahs.

New Study Concludes that Antidepressants are “Largely Ineffective and Potentially Harmful”

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A new study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry concludes that “antidepressants are largely ineffective and potentially harmful.”

Antidepressant Use May Increase Risk of Hip Fractures in Older Adults

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Study finds antidepressant use is linked to increase in hip fractures in community-dwelling older adults with and without Alzheimer’s disease.

The Reckoning in Psychiatry Over Protracted Antidepressant Withdrawal

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Medically-induced harm—affecting tens of millions of people worldwide—has taken the field decades to take seriously.
drowning in antidepressants

Ambushed by Antidepressants for 30 Years

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They helped me function for a while, but the debilitating side effects of antidepressants held me prisoner. I'm still having a hard time understanding how this could have happened. It's been suggested to me by a therapist that what I'm going through now is another kind of PTSD: the ongoing trauma of realizing what antidepressants did to me for 30 years.

Rigorous Study Finds Antidepressants Worsen Long-Term Outcomes

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A new study conducted by Jeffrey Vittengl at Truman University has found that taking antidepressant medications resulted in more severe depression symptoms after nine years.