[lbo-talk] let's argue about the cause of mental illness

[shag carpet bomb]

At 11:48 AM 8/27/2009, Bryan Atinsky wrote:
>A neighbor of my sister is a doctor at a psych hospital north of Tel Aviv, 
>and not too long ago I got into a discussion with her (the doctor) about 
>this relationship between SSRIs and suicidal ideation and behavior. She 
>said that she thinks it isn't really the medication that creates the 
>ideation, etc., but that many severely depressed individuals, the ones at 
>least that she sees in her hospital, are too depressed to act on anything, 
>let alone suicide, and can't really be counseled.

I've been reading Let Them Eat Prozac, which is by David Healy, parts of 
which are online. In it, I came across references to research that Lilly 
tried to heavily suppress WRT Prozac: suicide ideation among non-depressed 
people.

Lilly, and I assume other drug companies, when sued by survivors of people 
who'd taken SSRI's and then gone on murderous and suicidal rampages used a 
strategy of blaming the disease instead of the drug. At least in the 
Forsythe case against prozac, one Doug posted about here way back in 1999, 
Lilly worked hard to keep that evidence out of the courtroom since it was 
good evidence for pinning it on the drug, not the disease. Also in chapters 
5 and & of Let Them Eat Prozac, there's a discussion of the fact that it 
was mildly depressed folks who, upon taking SSRI's, are the ones who 
suffered most from suicidal ideation most. These are folks who are totally 
incapacitated and, in fact, are folks who aren't hospitalized and don't 
need to be.

shag