Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: TheWho on September 07, 2007, 03:14:31 PM
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Suicide rates were falling since 1990, but seem to be on the rise again. Could this be due to our friends at the pharmaceutical industry trying to find better ways to treat depression, bi-polar etc. with new meds?
I would expect a correlation (or many) to appear in a near future article.
http://http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7008435812
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I think it has more to do with a rise in people sending their kids to these fucking programs, the proliferation thereof, and the utter hopelessness of it all. You can't fix that with a pill, buddy!
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What I notice is who is behind this. How much might the drug industry have to pay for an increase of 248 suicides? I'm sure, what ever the cost, it was well within their budget. Particularly interesting is the info on number of rx's compared to number of suicides.
U.S. report shows rise in youth suicides after decade of decline
Published: Monday, February 5, 2007 | 9:04 PM ET
Canadian Press: LUNDSEY TANNER
CHICAGO (AP) - New government figures show a surprising increase in youth suicides after a decade of decline, and some mental health experts think a drop in use of antidepressant drugs may be to blame.
The suicide rate climbed 18 per cent from 2003 to 2004 for Americans under age 20, from 1,737 deaths to 1,985. Most suicides occurred in older teens, according to the data - the most current to date from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[do the math, that's 14%]
By contrast, the suicide rate among 15-to 19-year-olds fell in previous years, from about 11 per 100,000 in 1990 to 7.3 per 100,000 in 2003.
Suicides were the only cause of death that increased for children through age 19 from 2003-04, according to a CDC report released Monday.
[inaccurate, but 248 was the highest]
"This is very disturbing news," said Dr. David Fassler, a University of Vermont psychiatry professor.
He noted that the increase coincided with regulatory action by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that led to a black box warning on prescription packages cautioning that antidepressants could cause suicidal behaviour in children.
[The black box warnings were placed on SSRIs because there was significant evidence of "increases in suicide/ideation" for teens on antidepressants, which the drug companies knew, but occluded.
Shouldn't they be looking at how many of those suicides, if there really was an increase, were caused by antidepressants? Where are the data on how many kids committed suicide while taking an antidepressant?]
Fassler testified at FDA hearings on antidepressants during 2003 and 2004 and urged caution about implementing black box warnings. The agency ordered the warnings in October 2004 and they began to appear on drug labels about six months later.
[Let's see, that would be April 2005. Hummm. How could those black box warnings in April '05 have effected a decrease in prescriptions and consequently, an increase in suicides in '04? Makes one wonder, doesn't it?]
Psychologist David Shern, president of Mental Health America, called the new data "a disturbing reversal of progress."
Other research has linked certain antidepressants with decreasing suicide rates, Shern said, adding, "We must therefore wonder if the FDA's actions and the subsequent decrease in access to these antidepressants in fact have caused an increase in youth suicide."
[Where's that research? Does it exist? Yep, those '05 warnings certainly contributed to increased suicides in '04. Idiot.]
The advocacy group receives funding from makers of antidepressants, government agencies and private donations.
The suicide data are in a report on vital statistics published in February's Pediatrics.
Antidepressant use among children decreased during the same time period. Data from Verispan show three million antidepressant prescriptions were written for kids through age 12 in 2004, down 6.8 per cent from 2003.
[Great news. And there was one additional suicide listed from '03 to '04. From 68 to 69]
Among 13-to 19-year-olds, the number dropped less than one per cent to 8.11 million in 2004.
[Yet, 247 of the 248 increase were among this age group. Facinating. Seeing ANY discrepencies? Doesn't this comment contradict the complaint?]
Steeper declines in both age groups occurred in 2005, according to the prescription tracking firm.
The suicide data are preliminary and don't show whether suicides might have been concentrated in one region or among one gender or ethnic group, said the CDC's Dr. Alexander Crosby.
"It's something that we want to look a little bit closer into," Crosby said. "It's probably too early to say" if declining use of antidepressants had anything to do with it, he said,
The CDC is expected to issue a more thorough report on the data in a month or two.
The data are concerning, but it's too soon to know if they're anything more than a statistical blip, said Dr. John March, a Duke University
psychiatry professor. He led landmark National Institute of Mental Health research linking antidepressant use with an increased risk for suicidal behaviour, but also showing that getting psychotherapy at the same time cancelled out that risk.
Some mental health experts believe suicide prevention programs and effective use of treatment including drugs and therapy contributed to the decline in suicides that occurred in the 1990s.
Funding cuts for school-based suicide prevention programs might have contributed to the apparent rise noted in the new CDC report, said Emory University psychologist Nadine Kaslow. But the rise might not indicate a
countrywide trend and needs to be investigated, she said.
[What, Teen Screen isn't catching them?]
"It's definitely concerning" but will need to be followed to see whether increases occurred in subsequent years, Kaslow said.
On the Net:
Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org (http://www.pediatrics.org)
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov (http://www.cdc.gov)
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i think the increase in suicide has nothing to do with antidepressants.
in my opinion, the increase in suicides has to do with societal pressure. for example, 40 years ago you could get by easily on a high school education, and if you had a bachelors degree you were really on top of things. nowandays, bachelor's degrees are like high school degrees used to be. bachelors is a bare minimum, and unless you live in the sticks, your chances of getting anything but a minimum wage job, if that, on a high school diploma are slim to none. kids know that to get anywhere nowadays, you need at least a master's, and then by the time they hit their 40's their master's degree will be devalued another level. kids are dropping left and right at colleges beacuse of all the stress and pressure.
and then combine that with the feeling of powerlessness. many kids feel like they are unable to control their present lives or the outcomes of their futures, so they feel the only way they can change their lives is to escape. they feel alienated, many suicides are people who felt like they didnt "fit in" in this world, and unable to change it. for example like being completely distraught over their crumbling home life; yet unable to leave or change things (ever seen "virgin suicides"?), or even being stuck in a school where you had failed to make freins/feel like everyone hates you.
antidepressants dont do shit in regards to suicide. they make you feel a little bit easygoing, but they dont change your thoughts. the people who would never commit suicide before pills, wouldnt do it on them, and some one who would before would still do it after an ssri.
what people need to do is wake the fuck up and realize that pills wont change anything. they are not a quick fix, usually they just delay the problem till later or exacerbate them by hiding the true cause. people need to start treating each other with respect and dignity, no matter who the other person is, and let people make their own choices. i dont think anyone would want to commit suicide if they felt that they were loved and needed, and that they could eventually change their life for the better.
then again there's the truly clinically depressed - the people who cant get out of bed for weeks at a time. in these cases, SSRIs can have benifits, but you still need strict supervision, and lots of real therapy, and lots of love.
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Suicide is good for global warming, they permanently lower their carbon footprint. We should honor their sacrifice.
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antidepressants dont do shit in regards to suicide. they make you feel a little bit easygoing, but they dont change your thoughts. the people who would never commit suicide before pills, wouldnt do it on them, and some one who would before would still do it after an ssri.
I agree with all you said except this.
Drugs affect people differently. Psych drugs can/do cause suicidal ideation in a percentage of people, particularly young people, hence the "black box warning". People who were not suicidal before taking them. The FDA, pressured by drug companies, doesn't hand those warnings out frivolously.
What appears to be happening is the psych drug companies would like to have about 40-50% of the population addicted to the drugs they peddle, preferably from childhood, so they're making installments to a drug company every month their entire life... kinda like a mortgage. And rarely is it just one drug. You take a and b. And then have to have c and d, for the side effects of a and b.
They're dx'ing babies with depression. BABIES for god's sake.
But yeh, everyone's trying suppress the symptoms while ignoring the cause.
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Might just be due to a rise in population. More people equals more people taking their early "exit" plan.
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antidepressants dont do shit in regards to suicide. they make you feel a little bit easygoing, but they dont change your thoughts. the people who would never commit suicide before pills, wouldnt do it on them, and some one who would before would still do it after an ssri.
I agree with all you said except this.
Drugs affect people differently. Psych drugs can/do cause suicidal ideation in a percentage of people, particularly young people, hence the "black box warning". People who were not suicidal before taking them. The FDA, pressured by drug companies, doesn't hand those warnings out frivolously.
What appears to be happening is the psych drug companies would like to have about 40-50% of the population addicted to the drugs they peddle, preferably from childhood, so they're making installments to a drug company every month their entire life... kinda like a mortgage. And rarely is it just one drug. You take a and b. And then have to have c and d, for the side effects of a and b.
They're dx'ing babies with depression. BABIES for god's sake.
But yeh, everyone's trying suppress the symptoms while ignoring the cause.
Yeah my meds caused me to be emotionless and later prone to violent outburst. For the record I've always been easy going and I didn't realize I had changed until family pointed it out.
The drugs didn't cause my depression but they gave me that edge to actually try and hurt myself. The withdrawal from the ssri and snri drugs was what put me in the greatest danger because my emotions would swing to extremes, deep suicidal depression to total hippie style flower power love+happiness.... I was nuts.
I got better(though still depressed) after I stopped taking them.
I think we can attribute the rise to unreal expectations placed on youth these days. They can't fail test, have sex, try drugs, or mess up in anyway without being labeled as failures. This is due in large part to the same think that pushes programs.
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Suicide is good for global warming, they permanently lower their carbon footprint. We should honor their sacrifice.
That's so random. :lol:
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What appears to be happening is the psych drug companies would like to have about 40-50% of the population addicted to the drugs they peddle, preferably from childhood, so they're making installments to a drug company every month their entire life... kinda like a mortgage. And rarely is it just one drug. You take a and b. And then have to have c and d, for the side effects of a and b.
:flame: :evil: This is too true!
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I think we can attribute the rise to unreal expectations placed on youth these days. They can't fail test, have sex, try drugs, or mess up in anyway without being labeled as failures. This is due in large part to the same think that pushes programs.
Pretty much.. it seems worse than it was when my generation was coming up.
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I would tend to look to the wider social factors when looking at any increase in the suicide rate for any group. This can often be a good indicator.
As to drugs I dont' i tend toward the view that caution should be strongly exercised with adolescents as their bodies and minds are still developing.
However I took anti depressants for a while in my 20's and they did the job. They took the edge of things and helped me to function. I only agreed to take them under the proviso that it would not be permanent. Eventually with medical advice i weaned myself. To me this is the whole point of any medication. Respect it for what it is. Be aware of risks and side effects and when the worse is over cease to take it. For some it can be a disaster for others it can be just the thing to get over the hump
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Anti-depressants are a placebo.
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Anti-depressants are a placebo.
Not.
A September 2004 Food and Drug Administration hearing found that more than two-thirds of studies of antidepressants given to depressed children showed that they were no more effective than placebo, or sugar pills, and that only the positive trials were published by the
pharmaceutical industry. The lack of effectiveness of antidepressants
has been known by the Food and Drug Administration since at least 2000
when, according to the Food and Drug Administration Background Comments on Pediatric Depression, Robert Temple of the Food and Drug
Administration Office of Drug Evaluation acknowledged the 'preponderance
of negative studies of antidepressants in pediatric populations'. The
Surgeon General's report said of stimulant medication like Ritalin,
`However, psychostimulants do not appear to achieve long-term changes in outcomes such as peer relationships, social or academic skills, or
school achievement.'.
The Food and Drug Administration finally acknowledged by issuing
its most severe Black Box Warnings in September 2004, that the newer
antidepressants are related to suicidal thoughts and actions in children
and that this data was hidden for years. A confirmatory review of that
data published in 2006 by Columbia University's department of
psychiatry, which is also the originator of the TeenScreen instrument,
found that `in children and adolescents (aged 6-18 years),
antidepressant drug treatment was significantly associated with suicide
attempts . . . and suicide deaths. . . . '. The Food and Drug
Administration had over 2000 reports of completed suicides from 1987 to 1995 for the drug Prozac alone, which by the agency's own calculations represent but a fraction of the suicides. Prozac is the only such drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in children.
Other possible side effects of psychiatric medication used in children include mania, violence, dependence, weight gain, and insomnia from the newer antidepressants; cardiac toxicity including lethal arrhythmias from the older antidepressants; growth suppression, psychosis, and violence from stimulants; and diabetes from the newer anti-psychotic medications.
Parents are already being coerced to put their children on psychiatric medications and some children are dying because of it. Universal or mandatory mental health screening and the accompanying treatments recommended by the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health will only increase that problem. Across the country, Patricia Weathers, the Carroll Family, the Johnston Family, and the Salazar Family were all charged or threatened with child abuse charges for refusing or taking their children off of psychiatric medications.
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As an expert witness, Healy used his access to Pfizer's
clinical-trial data to reanalyze the company's results. He found that
volunteers on Zoloft had twice the risk of suicide as those taking placebos.
However, adding insult to injury, the miscarriage of justice was cemented in 2004 when the Supreme Court refused to hear the Miller appeal-just as the FDA issued a requirement for "Black Box" label warnings about the risk that Dr. Healy was prevented from testifying about in front of a jury. In 2006, GlaxoSmithKline sent warning letters to physicians acknowledging not a two-fold increased risk, but a six-fold risk of suicidal behavior in adults taking Paxil. FDA's subsequent analysis of the adult data confirmed the increased risk in adults.
http://www.thenation.com/docprem.mhtml? ... 6&s=yeoman (http://www.thenation.com/docprem.mhtml?i=20070326&s=yeoman)
The lawsuit filed on behalf of Ray Badyna, specifically cites an article
published in 2000, on a study funded in part by Prozac maker Eli Lilly, and
Paxil maker SmithKlineBeecham, that found the incident of deliberate self-harm by patients taking SSRIs to be 5.5 times higher than persons taking tricyclic antidepressants.
Recently a document became public that clearly shows the manipulation of
study results in articles published on Pfizer's Zoloft (sertraline), by the
medical communications agency, Current Medical Directions in 1998.
The CMD published 6 articles on Zoloft use with children but all total,
only 1 article mentions one suicidal act. However, according to Dr David Healy, one of the world's leading authorities on SSRIs, and author of "Let Them Eat Prozac," and "The Antidepressant Era," there were 6 suicidal acts.
He says, the rate of suicidality in children taking Zoloft was in fact 9%,
but Pfizer got away with not publishing these negative findings by only
reporting side effects that occurred at a rate of 10% or higher.
As far as the benefits of Zoloft, a study in the Journal of American
Medical Association in April 2002, compared the effectiveness of Zoloft, St
John's Wort, and a placebo and reported that placebo patients had the highest rate of remission of symptoms at 31.9%, and Zoloft's 24.8% rate of remission was barely better than the 23.9% of St John's Wort.
The kinds of suicides that experts say are SSRI-induced are extremely
violent, totally unexpected and impulsive. Notes are seldom left and many
suicide attempt survivors recall a strange out of body like experience.
For instance, 71-year-old Milton Cole, who was in good health and not
depressed, went to a heart doctor with chest pains. After tests failed to reveal a heart problem, the doctor gave Mr Cole free samples of Prozac, supposedly to relieve the chest pain. Thirteen days later, his wife found him hanging from a beam in a back room of their shop, according to the November 3, 2003 Miami Herald.
Dr Joseph Glenmullen, author of "Prozac Backlash," and "The Antidepressant Solution," explains that the difference between ordinary suicidality and SSRI induced suicidality can be distinguished because an activation syndrome usually accompanies SSRI suicidality, which includes akathisia and mania.
Harvard trained psychiatrist, Dr Stefan Kruszewski, agrees and says,
"Because the drugs cause predictable neurochemical changes in the central nervous system, SSRIs can also increase the risk of violence and aggressive acting out."
On March 22, 2004, the FDA issued an Advisory warning that symptoms such as akathisia, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability,
hostility, impulsivity, hypomania, and mania had been reported in patients
taking Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, Celexa, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Effexor,
Serzone and Remeron and recommended close observation of patients for worsening depression or emergence of suicidality.
According to Attorney Braslow, at the time of this warning it was revealed
that Forest had added a suicide warning on Celexa sold in Europe years earlier, but in the US there was no such warning on Lexapro or Celexa.
"In addition," Mr Pogust reports, "the drug maker had previously conducted a number of European trials with both hospitalized and outpatient adolescents which showed Celexa to be no more effective than a placebo."
In May 2005, the FDA published the alarming suicide rate for children
taking SSRIs in a Public Health Alert that stated "1 in 50" kids on SSRIs become suicidal or have increased suicidality "DUE TO DRUG."
The next month, another FDA Advisory warned that adult patients "should be watched closely for worsening of depression and for increased suicidal thinking or behavior."
In addition to suicide, some of the most serious adverse events reported
to be associated with SSRIs in recent years, are birth defects. Many studies have determined that SSRIs are harmful to the unborn fetus. In April 2006, a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, by Canadian researchers, found that SSRIs use during pregnancy doubled the mother's risk of delivering a stillborn infant and increased the risk of premature delivery, underweight babies, and seizures.
These findings are important for doctors to know because according to a
report by CDC researchers last year in Pediatrics, preterm birth is the leading cause of infant mortality in the US, accounting for at least a third of all deaths in 2002.
The harms to the fetus reported include a withdrawal syndrome, requiring prolonged hospital stays, respiratory support and tube feeding and a 6-fold increase in the life-threatening lung disorder, persistent pulmonary hypertension, as well as serious heart birth defects that require open heart surgery to correct.
In September 2005, studies conducted by Danish and US researchers found that the use of SSRIs in the first 3 months of pregnancy was linked to a 40% increased risk of birth defects such as cleft palate, and a 60% increase in cardiac defects. One study of 1,054 women who took SSRIs found they increased the risk of premature birth by 40%.
As a result of the rising number birth defects found to be associated with
SSRIs, drug companies are facing a slew of lawsuits. They are reportedly
especially worried about birth defect information becoming public because
medical experts estimate that tens of thousands of infants in the US have
SSRI-related birth defects, with the blame largely unknown to the parents.
Nearly 10 years ago, one of the harshest admonishments about the
over-prescribing of SSRIs came in an Editorial in the October 20, 1997, issue of Time Magazine by Candace Pert, a professor at Georgetown University Medical Center at the time, as one of the two scientists who discovered the serotonin binding process, which stated in part:
I am alarmed at the monster that Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Solomon
Snyder and I created when we discovered the simple binding assay for drug receptors 25 years ago.
Prozac and other antidepressant serotonin-receptor-active compounds may also cause cardiovascular problems in some susceptible people after long-term use, which has become common practice despite the lack of safety studies.
The public is being misinformed about the precision of these selective
serotonin-uptake inhibitors when the medical profession oversimplifies their action in the brain and ignores the body as if it exists merely to carry the head around!
"In short," she warned, "these molecules of emotion regulate every aspect
of our physiology."
Dr Healy says SSRIs continue to be over-prescribed even as researchers are finding more and more adverse events and doctors need to fully explain these side effects before prescribing the drugs so patients can make an informed choice about taking them.
Persons interested in more information on legal matters related to SSRIs
can contact the Pogust & Braslow law firm at 610-941-4204, or
http://www.pogustbraslow.com/ (http://www.pogustbraslow.com/)
Evelyn Pringle
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera ... s_of_s.htm (http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_070222_off_label_sales_of_s.htm)
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I've read the debate here, while the drug companies definitely have to held to task. I really think you folks ought to take a look at the "emo" lifestyle that has expanded greatly in the last few years. I've been tacking suicide figures and the "emo" problem, they seem to run in parallel.
When you look at music and poetry that glorify self injury and death, and then you see a vast increase in self inury and suicide, you have to assume that the emo subculture may have caused this increase.
We all went through trends and fads of dress, hair and music. emo is different, after our fads, we cut our hair, changed our clothes, and became responsible adults (for the most part). emos are going to have horrible scars all over their bodies, and some of them, and any number above zero is too much, aren't going to reach adulthood at all!
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Yeah that's it, blame it on the music.. :roll:
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Of course it's more than the music. It's the lack of self concept, the lack of a sense of the future, it's the music, the lack of regard for their own lives, and probably others as well. It's a mistake (my apologies) to be too vague in my posting. The entire LIFESTYLE, in my opinion ,is a contributing factors to the current increases in self injury and suicide. I work in a school, and have so for over 15 years. We always had the occasional suicide attempt, and almost no self injury. For about the last 5-6 years, however, there has been an explosion in self injury and suicide attempts. There has, unfortunately, been several suicides. I cannot attest to what medications the children that suicided were on, but the one think that linked all of my experiences is that all of these children were dressed in the "emo" fashion, self injured, and were known to be in the "scene". Scoff if you will, but I've seen it myself, and I'm sure that others have as well.
As I stated in my last post. We all had our fads. I was a "metal head" in the 80's. I played guitar badly), dressed in black, and had long hair. I grew up, as I'm sure that most of us have. The difference here, again, is that some of these "emo" kids aren't growing up, they're dying!
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So what (if anything) do you suggest?
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Of course it's more than the music. It's the lack of self concept, the lack of a sense of the future, it's the music, the lack of regard for their own lives, and probably others as well. It's a mistake (my apologies) to be too vague in my posting. The entire LIFESTYLE, in my opinion ,is a contributing factors to the current increases in self injury and suicide. I work in a school, and have so for over 15 years. We always had the occasional suicide attempt, and almost no self injury. For about the last 5-6 years, however, there has been an explosion in self injury and suicide attempts. There has, unfortunately, been several suicides. I cannot attest to what medications the children that suicided were on, but the one think that linked all of my experiences is that all of these children were dressed in the "emo" fashion, self injured, and were known to be in the "scene". Scoff if you will, but I've seen it myself, and I'm sure that others have as well.
As I stated in my last post. We all had our fads. I was a "metal head" in the 80's. I played guitar badly), dressed in black, and had long hair. I grew up, as I'm sure that most of us have. The difference here, again, is that some of these "emo" kids aren't growing up, they're dying!
What about Goths. They were pretty mopey. Loved the idea of death. Sad poems. grumpy grumpy music . None of the goths I grew up with topped themselves. Youth culture is designed to be something grown ups just don't get. This is why it creates such fear
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I wish my lawn was emo.
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Several things; One is that people can start talking and become more aware of the issue. Second is that parents should pay more attention to their children and remain involved in their lives, just don't give them meds to "act right". Third is work with their local schools to track what trends are occurring. Fourth; organize and take actions, like having supervised gatherings for kids, proposing dress codes for schools, and so on. Individuals can always make decisions and take actions to help their own children, as well as others. That's one of the purposes of this forum, as I've been able to surmise. Can you add anything? I'm new to this.
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Several things; One is that people can start gibber like frightened squirrels and thereby mong fear. Second is that parents should force their way into their children's lives and not rely on chemicals when regular old idiotic meddling works just fine. Third is conspire with their batshit teachers to freak out every time their kids say something they don't understand. Fourth; organize and take actions, like having supervised gatherings for kids to make sure that they aren't listening to that VILE DEVIL MUSIC, proposing dress codes so that they won't DARE look like someone that we don't want them to, and so on. Individuals can always make decisions and take actions to further hurt their own children, as well as force themselves on the children of others who think this is a load of bullshit. Since I'm hopelessly retarded I thought a forum like Fornits would help me in this insanity. Can you add anything? I'm really fucking new to this, and even crazier than the emos.
GTFO
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Cultural Disaster, You should not be working with children because you are an idiot. You have fallen into the all to predictable trap of the generation gap. That trap being to blame a pop culture fad for the impending armageddon that's sure to destroy all youth and with it the future of humanity.
Blues was the devils music, rock and roll "forced" kids to have sex and do drugs *gasp. Hip hop is the reason kids join gangs and kill each other, not that little thing called poverty. Seriously this shit just gets rehashed every generation....
But what the hell I'm preaching to a brick wall of illogical bullshit....
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I wish my lawn was emo.
:rofl:
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The numbers for Denmark are just in.
More girls tries suicide - TV2 Denmark - In Danish (http://http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/article.php/id-8222503.html)
A part of Denmark has on-line records going back to 1990 as a part of a study. In 1990 there were 24 tries. In 2004 there were 104.
When numbers for this area where in, they have started to look into the problem nationwide and it is the same.
I had to say that the number of women in the hospital where I visited a relative were high. There were very few males in the unit (which specializes in depression).
It is only among the teenager girls the problem exist. In the society as whole the number has lowered so the teenager boys only have half the tries that they had in 1990.
Our authories believe that teenager girls are victim of too much pressure. Opposite the male teenagers, who have learned to not care about their clothes, how much they drink and to a certain point what kind of grades they get, the girls are living in fear about not being perfect.
It is kind of scary, that this is almost the same in two countries that in many ways are very different.
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Anti-depressants are a placebo.
Apparently not. They either increase or decrease suicidal thoughts in teens, depending on which study you want to believe.
Here's something I saw just a few days ago. I'm not sure what to make of it, but is sure as hell surprised me:
Quoted from:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19649893/site/newsweek/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19649893/site/newsweek/)
According to a new study in The Journal of American Psychiatry, the number of SSRI prescriptions for pediatric depression (ages 5 to 18) tumbled more than 50 percent between 2003 and 2005. In a troubling parallel development, the number of teen suicides jumped a record 18 percent between 2003 and 2004, the most recent year for which data exist.
Are the two trends connected? Many experts say yes. "All the data point in one direction: antidepressants save lives and untreated depression kills people," says Dr. Kelly Posner, a Columbia University child psychiatrist. She and others cite an unwitting instigator: the Food and Drug Administration—which may have scared parents and doctors away from SSRIs in 2003 when it issued a health-advisory warning of a potential link between the popular drugs and teen suicide.
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Several things; One is that people can start talking and become more aware of the issue. Second is that parents should pay more attention to their children and remain involved in their lives, just don't give them meds to "act right". Third is work with their local schools to track what trends are occurring. Fourth; organize and take actions, like having supervised gatherings for kids, proposing dress codes for schools, and so on. Individuals can always make decisions and take actions to help their own children, as well as others. That's one of the purposes of this forum, as I've been able to surmise. Can you add anything? I'm new to this.
You were doing alright until you got to #4... I agree that parents should be involved in the lives of their kids (to a reasonable extent) and should refrain from resorting to meds to control them. I don't agree with arbitrating what they wear; that's silly. A person (kids too) should be allowed to look however they want. Now, a parent has the right to say "You look like a jackass" to them if so inclined, but it should stop there..
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Several things; One is that people can start talking and become more aware of the issue. Second is that parents should pay more attention to their children and remain involved in their lives, just don't give them meds to "act right". Third is work with their local schools to track what trends are occurring. Fourth; organize and take actions, like having supervised gatherings for kids, proposing dress codes for schools, and so on. Individuals can always make decisions and take actions to help their own children, as well as others. That's one of the purposes of this forum, as I've been able to surmise. Can you add anything? I'm new to this.
You were doing alright until you got to #4... I agree that parents should be involved in the lives of their kids (to a reasonable extent) and should refrain from resorting to meds to control them. I don't agree with arbitrating what they wear; that's silly. A person (kids too) should be allowed to look however they want. Now, a parent has the right to say "You look like a jackass" to them if so inclined, but it should stop there..
I dont know, Froderik, That has always been a struggle for me. I think having a dress code takes the pressure off a lot of kids and definitely the parents. It is a cost saver also. Many southamerican countries provide the uniforms for the kids to wear. The kids are able to express their individuality in other ways (i.e hair style, back pack etc.). But if there was a question on the ballot stating that starting next year all school kids would have to wear blue pants with a white top (shirt) I would advocate against it ,adamantly, as I don’t think the government should be reaching into our homes to dictate what we should or should not wear or how we should raise our children.
So I guess its good to have the choice to send kids to a private school if you want dress codes, public if you don’t. In the public sector the schools could vote locally to instill local codes like no hoodies, but there is that never ending struggle to define what is appropriate or not, parents suing to allow their child to attend school topless if they like. But that is the price of democracy I guess.
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Australia as a commonwealth country with a british hangover has a long standing tradition of school uniforms. Many like them because of this idea that they take the pressure off in terms of clothing. This is true. The idea however that they get rid of elitism though is hilarious as anyone can tell a public school uniform from its private eq from a million miles. Kids immediately register it. They are afterall young not retarded. Kids also do their best to find small ways to overcome the uniform rules.
To think that they can help in overcoming wider spread social problems is also somewhat naive. Given that the US appears to really like the rhetoric of individual liberty and individual rights and it seems traditionally avoided uniforms because of this I cant see uniforms helping any kid. it is just a way of controlling them and setting a double standard. if suicide is really growing at such a concerning rate then why not seriously look at the wider social factors behind it instead of trivial solutions which seek to merely control kids.
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Fassler testified at FDA hearings on antidepressants during 2003 and 2004 and urged caution about implementing black box warnings. The agency ordered the warnings in October 2004 and they began to appear on drug labels about six months later.
[Let's see, that would be April 2005. Hummm. How could those black box warnings in April '05 have effected a decrease in prescriptions and consequently, an increase in suicides in '04? Makes one wonder, doesn't it?]
http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=09200 ... atment.htm (http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=092007_clinical_depression_treatment.htm)
Pharma Hand Seen Behind Alarmist Suicide Statistics
Submitted by Martha Rosenberg on September 19, 2007 - 3:37pm.
Long before the New York Times reported this month that youth suicides were up 8% from 2003 to 2004 and experts blamed an "antidepressant deficiency" big pharma was trying to plant the story.
There's too much money in diagnosing children with major psychiatric illnesses and keeping them on psychotropic drugs their whole lives to let a little thing like the black box warnings the FDA imposed on antidepressants for children in 2004 ruin sales.
After all this is a nation that believes that children are born with a Ritalin deficiency, insomnia is Ambien deficiency and old age is hormone deficiency. Why shouldn't pharmacology trump biology with suicide statistics as well?
Last year an article in the June issue of PLoS Medicine set the stage.
Lead author Dr. Julio Licinio, a consultant to Prozac-maker Eli Lilly, found the U.S. suicide rate "dropped steadily over 14 years as sales of the antidepressant [Prozac] rose."
It was followed by an article in April in the Archives of General Psychiatry by four representatives of a private "drug development services" company called Quintiles Transnational and four other authors expressing concerns that "the number of children and teenagers who were prescribed antidepressants has decreased significantly" underlining "the importance of presenting a fair balance within the media." ("Impact of Publicity Concerning Pediatric Suicidality Data on Physician Practice Patterns in the United States")
And in February a MedPage Today article actually scooped the New York Times with the headline, "Teen Suicide Spike Linked to SSRI Black Box."
Black box warnings create a barrier to treatment "by scaring young people and parents away from care," said David Shern, Ph.D., president of Mental Health America, reported to have accepted $3.8 million from pharmaceutical companies in 2005, in a statement when the article broke.
Charles Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., of Emory University School of Medicine took it a step further.
"The concerns about antidepressant use in children and adolescents have paradoxically resulted in a reduction in their use, and this has contributed to increased suicide rates," he told reporters. Dr. Nemeroff has links to Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Wyeth-Ayerst, Pharmacia-Upjohn and five other drug makers according to published reports.
Unfortunately for pharma, when the New York Times broke the story it had a short shelf life.
The rise in suicides among ages 10 to 24 in 2003 to 2004 stood. But the charge that the rise was due to a drop-off in antidepressant prescriptions, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac, which came from an article in the September American Journal of Psychiatry, promptly fell on its head.
It turned out the drop in SSRI prescriptions that "caused" the suicide rise occurred the following year. In most of the year cited, SSRI prescriptions actually "rose an average of just over 10 percent" for those 18 and under according to Psychiatric News and "the number of prescriptions peaked in March 2004."
Meanwhile preliminary Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics from the year that would have been influenced by a drop in SSRI prescription that occurred--2005--do not show deaths up, though they have not been broken into category.
Asked about the 180% turnaround in facts which meant the suicide rise was not caused by SSRI prescription drop-offs and possibly caused by SSRIs themselves, vindicating the FDA's black boxes, the article's lead author Robert D. Gibbons, Ph.D., a professor of biostatistics and psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, did not sound the statistician.
"This study was suggestive, that's what we're saying," Dr. Gibbons told the Times in a follow-up story--"Early Evidence on the Effects of Regulators' Suicidality Warnings on SSRI Prescriptions and Suicide in Children and Adolescents" is suggestive? try conclusive--and should piggyback off previous studies that showed the links. better.
Then why publish it?
There were other question marks about the American Journal of Psychiatry article too--not counting Pfizer's financial contribution and Dr. Gibbons link to Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
What if the suicides aren't about SSRIs at all but the growing popularity of treating children with antipsychotic drugs?
"I would be absolutely certain that the increase is not because kids are not being treated," says David Healy, M.D., a psychiatrist at the University of Cardiff and early critic of SSRIs. "They may not be getting SSRIs, but they are getting psychotropics," he says and, "the antipsychotic 'mood stabilizers' have just as great an increase in suicide risk as antidepressants-- if not greater."
Pharma is probably working on a new round of articles on the topic right now.
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Martha Rosenberg is a nationally known columnist who frequently writes about health care.