Mental Health “Experts” Expose Psychiatric Drugging Abuse by Their Own Industry

Republished with permission from AbleChild.

In keeping with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kennedy’s desire to review the effectiveness of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), better known as antidepressants, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week held a ten-panel “Expert Roundtable” focused on the safety of SSRI use during pregnancy. In a word, it was extraordinary.

While the roundtable was intended to focus on the risks/benefits associated with prescribing SSRIs during pregnancy, what really occurred was a truth session about the over-prescription and dangers associated with the use of antidepressants, the drugs questionable “efficacy” and the FDA’s shortcomings when it comes to transparency and honesty about antidepressants. In fact, the FDA Commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, opened the roundtable discussion with a few brief comments giving the audience a glimpse into what used to be forbidden territory by bluntly stating “We’re losing the broader battle…in some respects we’re going backwards. The more antidepressants we prescribe, the more depression there is.” Right. Yes. Finally!

Despite decades of antidepressant use, nobody is getting better, and it appears that the majority of the roundtable “experts” not only agreed but had serious problems with the prescribing of SSRIs to anyone, least of all pregnant women.

Not all the experts objected to SSRI use during pregnancy, though. One expert discussed the benefit of SSRIs during pregnancy mentioning both Fluoxetine (Prozac) and Paroxetine (Paxil) as viable “treatments.” Interesting enough, there is a warning for Paxil which reports “using this medicine while you are pregnant can harm your unborn baby.”

Both mind-altering SSRIs come with several possible adverse events including emotional lability, mania, personality disorder, abnormal thinking, depersonalization, paranoid reaction, psychosis, depression, intense dreams, sleep disturbance and suicidal thoughts and behavior, and suicide attempts.

And, finally, there is a caveat that reports “antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression.” Perfect. Take this mind-altering drug for depression that may actually worsen depression.

Many of the panelists raised issues about the FDA’s failure to provide the public with appropriate warnings about the exposure to serious risks and poor outcomes for babies associated with antidepressants. One panelist referred to the FDA as having “information problems” when it was reported that the Royal College of Physicians in England had made an official correction about the illegitimacy of the “chemical imbalance” while the FDA, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) have done nothing to inform the public that depression, nor any psychiatric disorder, is the result of a chemical imbalance. It always was a theory and has finally been thoroughly debunked.

It actually was a shocking, yet refreshing, discussion if only for its blatantly honest assessment of the drugging that is occurring in the US and abroad.  One panelist said, “we’re really good at getting people on drugs, but really bad at getting them off.” Truer words were never spoken and AbleChild has long advocated for a mandatory “exit plan” for all physicians prescribing psychiatric drugs.

Another expert interjected that it was time for “honesty about the difficulty associated with withdrawal from antidepressants” and one wondered why the labeling of antidepressants was inconsistent when they are drugs within the same class. All great questions that AbleChild intends to follow in the coming months.

While most of the panelists were surprisingly frank about the over-prescribing of antidepressants, it was Professor Joanna Moncrieff, who really stuck a fork in it. According to Moncrieff, “whether antidepressants are really effective, the data does not support those claims.” And Moncrieff explained “these drugs change the normal thinking and feelings… it’s a state of emotional numbing and the data does not show that this numbing is effective and there is very little evidence that antidepressants have any benefit in treating depression.” Moncrief concluded that “antidepressants have never been shown to reduce suicide, but they have been shown to cause suicide.”

During the nearly two-hour long discussion, AbleChild waited for one of the “experts” to state the obvious…the SSRIs, nor any antidepressants, treat any known abnormality. While it wasn’t presented in so many words, one expert got close when, another participant stated, “mental disorders are no different than medical disorders.”

The response was rapid-fire, and the expert shot back “mental disorders are very different from physical problems as physical problems usually have some basis in pathology.” The expert continued “loneliness, isolation, career dissatisfaction are not things to be fixed with medical intervention.” Boom!

Finally. The cat was out of the proverbial bag. No matter how hard the psycho/pharmaceutical industry wants to push mental health “parity,” there is a difference between medical and behavioral illnesses. One is based in science and usually can be objectively diagnosed. The other is based on subjective understanding of verbal responses to questions.

The FDA expert panel may not have decided whether drugging pregnant women was a good or bad idea, but it was a win for the American people and a shot across the bow of the behavioral health industry. Frankly, these experts seemed fed up and honestly disgusted with the decades-long failed practice of using serious mind-altering drugs to correct normal behavior, especially when it comes to the safety of the nation’s infants and children.

Last week, the panel of ten let the world know that there’s a bigger problem with mental health treatment than just drugging pregnant women. These experts were exposing the real mental health crisis…psychiatric drugs are over-prescribed and aren’t the answer to solving uncomfortable human behavior and, in fact, may actually be causing a bigger a problem.

AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety.

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