Antidepressants: a depressing tale
By Andrew Heck
Antidepressant: the name implies that it is a substance that is designed to eliminate depression and, consequently improve the quality of life for people who suffer from depression. Unfortunately, antidepressants have time and time again failed to deliver on promises to the innocent victims who are prescribed them by their doctors—individuals generally considered to be trustworthy and acting in the best interest of patients.
Though they’ve been around since the 1950s, antidepressants did not become mainstream until the late 1980s, with the advent of Prozac. An SSRI, Prozac was supposed to be the result of decades of improvement and enhanced psychiatric understanding. While it was created with the intention of impacting only serotonin and reducing side effects for those who took it, tests showed that the effectiveness and safety of the drug were only marginally better than previous antidepressants.
In 1991 and 1992 respectively, Zoloft and Paxil, produced by Prozac’s competitors, also became available. Though they were meant to thwart Prozac’s monopoly in the antidepressants industry, they never could match Prozac from a business standpoint, whose earnings had already reached the hundreds of millions of dollars.
In 1993, six short years after it entered the market, Prozac came under fire, as it was alleged to have played a role in the murder-suicide of William Forsyth Sr., an American using Prozac who killed his wife, before taking his own life. In 1995, a lawsuit was launched against Eli Lilly and Company by the children of Mr. Forsyth, who believed the use of antidepressants contributed to their father’s gruesome act. However, in 1991, two years before the initial incident, it was ruled by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that Prozac did not increase suicidal behaviors, rendering the Forsyth children hopeless in their pursuit of $1 million in damages.
In 2004, the FDA’s Dr. Robert Temple testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, suggesting that there might be a connection between the pediatric use of Paxil and increased suicidality. The testimony shocked the public, as the FDA had previously ignored such suggestions and instead readily sanctioned the use of many different SSRIs. This revelation came three years after the murders committed by 12-year-old Christopher Pittman of his grandparents in Chester, South Carolina. Pittman had been a user of Paxil previously but had to switch to Zoloft upon moving in with his grandparents, which may have impacted his behavior in an unpredictable way.
Prior to 2004, the use of SSRIs by children was seen as acceptable, but Dr. Temple’s findings suggested otherwise. Tragically, these findings were too late to save William Forsyth Sr.’s wife and Christopher Pittman’s grandparents. And they are by no means anomalies. Throughout the 2000s, numerous lawsuits (most of which were unsuccessful) have been launched against various antidepressant manufacturers who, even today, are not very heavily regulated and continue to reap unfathomable profits off of the drugs.
The phenomenon known as “depression treatment” is a dark one. It is handled with great malevolence and disregard for the lives of those who are given the drugs, unaware of the potentially fatal consequences of using them.
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