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Peter Gøtzsche is a specialist
in internal
medicine and professor in clinical research design and analysis at the University
of Copenhagen. His new book, Deadly Psychiatry And Organised Denial, is published
by People's Press. Visit deadlymedicines.dk. The Council for Evidence-based
Psychiatry, cepuk.org.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3234334/Prescription-pills-Britain-s-biggest-killer-effects-drugs-taken-insomnia-anxiety-kill-thousands-doctors-hand-like-Smarties.html#ixzz3mifoBIKi
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook Dailymail.com 9/25/15
Prescription pills are
Britain’s third biggest killer: Side-effects of drugs taken for insomnia and anxiety
kill thousands. Why do doctors hand them out like Smarties?
80 million prescriptions for
psychiatric drugs are written in UK every year
Psychiatric drugs are the third
major killer after heart disease and cancer
Professor Gøtzsche reveals the scale
of the issue in a new book
Luke Montagu, 45,
heir to the
Earl of Sandwich, was wrongly prescribed anti-depressants which took him seven
years to detox from
By PROFESSOR
PETER GØTZSCHE FOR THE DAILY MAIL
Soaring drug use, a growing number of addicts, far too few
clinics to treat them and a rising death toll. This might sound like a scene
from an impoverished country run by drug cartels - but it is, in fact, the
day-to-day reality for NHS patients who are prescribed psychiatric drugs to
treat anxiety, insomnia and depression.
More than 80 million prescriptions for psychiatric drugs are written in
the UK every year. Not only are these drugs often entirely unnecessary and
ineffective, but they can also turn patients into addicts, cause crippling
side-effects - and kill. For instance, antipsychotics, commonly given to
dementia patients to keep them quiet, raise the risk of heart disease, diabetes
and stroke. Psychiatric drugs also make falls more likely, and breaking a hip
can shorten life significantly, while some antidepressants are linked to a
potentially deadly irregular heartbeat.
Soaring drug use, a growing number of addicts, far too few
clinics to treat them and a rising death toll. This might sound like a scene
from an impoverished country run by drug cartels - but it is, in fact, the
day-to-day reality for NHS patients who are prescribed psychiatric drugs to
treat anxiety, insomnia and depression.
More than 80 million prescriptions for psychiatric drugs are written in
the UK every year. Not only are these drugs often entirely unnecessary and
ineffective, but they can also turn patients into addicts, cause crippling
side-effects - and kill. For instance,
antipsychotics, commonly given to dementia patients to keep them quiet, raise
the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Psychiatric drugs also make
falls more likely, and breaking a hip can shorten life significantly, while
some antidepressants are linked to a potentially deadly irregular heartbeat.
All these have certainly ruffled feathers, but what I've
discovered about the damage caused by psychiatric drugs far outweighs anything
else I've identified. In fact, the data
on all this is available if you know where to look, but I'm the first person to
pull it all together - for instance, finding that the number of suicides among
adults and children taking antidepressant drugs is actually 15 times greater
than the number calculated by the U.S. drugs watchdog, the Food and Drug
Administration. Yet psychiatrists and
GPs generally ignore or deny the appalling scale of this damage from drugs that
are all too often used without medical justification. Just this month, for instance,
a study published in the BMJ found that thousands of people in England with
learning difficulties are routinely prescribed antipsychotic drugs: these drugs
do nothing to help these patients but are used as a chemical cosh [British
slang: a blackjack, bludgeon, blunt
weapon, to attack with such a weapon].
Claims by psychiatrists that the drugs do work have to be taken with a pinch of
salt, not only because good evidence suggests they don't, but also because
those who run the trials almost always receive funding from drug companies. Based
on the same sort of flawed trials,
antidepressants are also being handed out for conditions such as binge eating,
panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and menopausal symptoms. The claimed
benefits can be ludicrously
small, for instance: they cut the rate of hot flushes from ten to nine a day. Yet
despite the lack of good evidence for their benefits, 57 million prescriptions
for antidepressants are handed out a year in England alone - and patients are
left on them for years.
One reason why drug use is steadily expanding is that there
is no chemical marker to diagnose depression or anxiety. So everyday changes in
mood, such as feeling less happy or more anxious, can be a reason for
treatment. Most of us could get one or
more psychiatric diagnoses if we consulted a psychiatrist or GP. Claims by psychiatrists
that the drugs do
work have to be taken with a pinch of salt, not only because good evidence
suggests they don't, but also because those who run the trials almost always
receive funding from drug companies.
Based on the same sort of flawed trials, antidepressants are
also being handed out for conditions such as binge eating, panic disorder,
obsessive compulsive disorder and menopausal symptoms. The claimed benefits
can be ludicrously
small, for instance: they cut the rate of hot flushes from ten to nine a day. Yet
despite the lack of good evidence for
their benefits, 57 million prescriptions for antidepressants are handed out a
year in England alone - and patients are left on them for years.
One reason why drug use is steadily expanding is that there
is no chemical marker to diagnose depression or anxiety. So everyday changes in
mood, such as feeling less happy or more anxious, can be a reason for
treatment. Most of us could get one or
more psychiatric diagnoses if we consulted a psychiatrist or GP.
A successful treatment for depression would allow people to
lead more normal lives - go back to work, salvage relationships. But in all the
thousands of trials, I've never seen evidence that antidepressants can do
this. Some patients may become a little
euphoric or even manic on them, but in patient surveys many report
feeling worse, saying the pills change their personality, and not in a good
way; they may show less interest in other people and report feeling emotionally
numb. 'Like living under a cheese dish cover,' is a typical description
patients use. Sexual function fades;
libido drops in half of patients and half can't orgasm or ejaculate. So
antidepressants are not likely to save intimate relationships - they are more
likely to destroy them.
When I gave a talk to Australian child psychiatrists, one of
them said he knew three teenagers taking antidepressants who had attempted
suicide because they couldn't get an erection the first time they tried to have
sex. These boys didn't know it was the
pills - they thought there was something wrong with them. Although many
psychiatrists still believe SSRIs cut the risk of suicide that can come with
depression, it is well established that these drugs actually increase the risk
in children and adolescents, and most likely in adults as well.
Despite the lack of a chemical marker for any psychiatric
disorder, psychiatrists frequently claim the drugs work by correcting a
chemical imbalance in the brain. They
say it's like insulin and diabetes - patients can't make enough serotonin. I've
been told by a professor of psychiatry that stopping an antidepressant would be
like taking insulin from a diabetic. But
it's nonsense - no one has found that depressed people have less serotonin in
their brains, for instance - in fact, some antidepressants actually lower
serotonin.
This fairy tale has proved very damaging and can lead to
patients becoming addicted. They are given more pills or a stronger dose in the
hope that the 'imbalance' will be fixed, and can be on them for years. When they try to come off the pills and
experience very unpleasant side-effects, patients say they are told their
symptoms are the result of their illness coming back. This ignores the fact that the drugs'
withdrawal effects can mimic the symptoms of psychiatric disorders. It also
doesn't fit in with what happens when patients in desperation reach for the
drugs again: within a few hours they can be feeling better. Real depression
doesn't fade that fast. Doctors'
misconceptions about the drugs they prescribe are turning temporary problems
into chronic ones.
More than one million people in the UK are addicted to
sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs, according to the All Party Parliamentary
Group on Involuntary Tranquiliser Addiction, even though for years official
advice has been to not prescribe them for longer than four weeks. Patient surveys
reveal that similarly large
numbers are having problems withdrawing from antidepressants. The case of Luke
Montagu, told below, is a vivid and horrifying example of the destruction
antidepressants and benzodiazepines can cause.
He still suffers from the crippling effects of withdrawal
seven years after coming off the drugs, which he should never have been
prescribed in the first place. Yet the
NHS does almost nothing to help these victims. There are disgracefully few
facilities to treat them - fewer than ten in the whole country, and all these
are run by small charities, some of which are closing due to lack of funding.
We need to educate doctors so they know how these drugs
really work, and show them how to help patients stop taking the pills (by very
gently reducing the dose). According to
my calculations, if psychiatric drugs were only prescribed for a few weeks in
acute situations, we would
only need 2 per cent of the
prescriptions written
at the moment for insomnia, depression
and anxiety. The saving in human and financial terms would be enormous.
Later this week, I will be speaking at a major conference on
how we can reduce the use of these drugs, More Harm than Good: Confronting The
Psychiatric Medication Epidemic, which has been arranged by the Council for
Evidence-based Psychiatry at the University of Roehampton in London. My proposal
is to start a campaign to Just
Say No - it is time for a war on psychiatric drugs.
As told
to
JEROME BURNE
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3234334/Prescription-pills-Britain-s-biggest-killer-effects-drugs-taken-insomnia-anxiety-kill-thousands-doctors-hand-like-Smarties.html#ixzz3miffY800
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