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Nor had proper disclosure been made that benzodiazepines had been co-prescribed during clinical trial in order to minimize the agitation that the manufacturer had recognized this medication could cause.
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"The effexor XR is horrible, but it's impossible to get off of safely. Search google for "verlafaxine withdrawal". But the pain, the pills... there is no other way out. I wanted/hoped that things would improve. Paxil and effexor are evil DRUGS, made and prescribed for the profit of Pharmaceutical companies...with no care taken about the effects they have on a person's brain, body, well-being, and safety."
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In August 2003, Wyeth issued a warning to doctors about clinical trial evidence linking its antidepressant Effexor to suicidal thoughts in young patients, and the company added that warning in the drug's label. See Wyeth Aug 22, 2003 letter: www.ahrp.org...
The FDA forced Wyeth to replace this explicit warning with the watered down, equivocating version that the FDA-approved for all SSRI and SNRI antidepressants.
Originally posted by nazgarn[/i]
I am now on a minimal dose and plan to come off them completely. Am I the only one who believe these drugs have a beneficial place in our society?
Take care and peace,
- Naz
A psychiatric reformer takes aim and blasts away with both barrels. Breggin launches a full-scale attack on the popular view that neuroses and psychoses are diseases with biochemical and genetic causes best treated by drugs--even by electroshock and incarceration. He advocates not pills but psychotherapy, which ideally provides a "caring, understanding relationship--made safe by professional ethics and restraint.''
Treating mental disorders as chemical imbalances to be corrected primarily by chemical intervention is, he claims, an outrageous hazard to health, damaging the brains of a high percentage of those subjected to it. Breggin notes that the medical training of today's biopsychiatrists ill-equips them for any other approach: They are taught to make diagnoses and prescribe medical treatments; their communication skills are undeveloped, and they know little about the art of listening to patients' problems. Their penchant for prescribing drugs, according to Breggin, is encouraged by a too-cozy relationship between the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry, which generously funds research into the biochemical and genetic basis of mental disorders, and whose claims for its products are insufficiently scrutinized by either the FDA or the medical profession. Breggin also has harsh words for health insurers that reimburse for drugs and psychiatric hospitalization but not for psychotherapy and social rehabilitation...
A report in the British Medical Journal in 2002 by Dr. Nicholas Buckley and colleagues at the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, Canberra Hospital, Australia studying fatal toxicity index (deaths per million prescriptions) found that venlafaxine's fatal toxicity is higher than that of other serotoninergic antidepressants but it is similar to that of some of the less toxic tricyclic antidepressants. Overall they found serious toxicity could occur following venlafaxine overdose with reports of deaths, arrythmias, and seizures. They did, however, state that this type of data is open to criticism pointing out that mortality data may be influenced by previous literature and that "less toxic" drugs may be preferentially prescribed to patients at higher risk of poisoning and suicide but they are also less likely to be listed as the sole cause of death from overdose. It also assumes that drugs are taken in overdose with similar frequency and in similar amounts. They suggested "clinicians need to consider whether factors in their patients reduce or compensate for this risk before prescribing venlafaxine."[35]
The February 27, 2007 Vancouver Sun reported that the BC Drug and Poison Information Center has alerted doctors that the drug poses a significant risk of death from overdose, saying that venlafaxine "appears more toxic than it was originally hoped".[36] A doctor from the Department of Pharmacy Services College of Pharmacy, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, reported on the death of a 39-year-old patient with a 30 g overdose.[31] To put this into perspective, a patient would have to take over 66 of the infrequently prescribed 450mg high dosage pills.
Originally posted by anhinga
Here's a book, well, the title says it all for those taking SSRIs and other pharms, that people should be aware of:
Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock, and Biochemical Theories of the "New Psychiatry"