Hello, I share this information around to bring awareness about the hidden reality and harms of psychotropic drugs, not to be anti-psychiatry or medication (b&w thinking), but reveal reality of risks many were or still not made aware of today, including most doctors and psychiatrists. As well as a deep rot inside the medical system and current politics of care. Anyone considering taking such drugs or their friends or family to be put on them should have an overview understanding around this topic. Some of this may not be news to you. We all have blindspots. Naturally many individual's firsthand experience of certain side-effects especially rare or extreme ones from taking these drugs may be some of the most well-informed about them, even moreso than their very own doctor. But there are a few doctors who learned the hard way to shift their stance to be more balanced and reflect reality of risk to benefit, either by their patient(s) getting serious or lasting side-effect and learning from their practice of care in prescribing, or took the drug themselves and learned of harm they never knew was possible until it was too late.
(I will provide relevant verifiable information, sources or links in which you can scrutinize or verify certain claims made.)
One growing example we'll start with is PSSD which is defined around a persisting sexual dysfunction >6 month off the drug and can include varying accompanying symptoms like indefinite lasting chronic anhedonia (still not globally recognized by doctors yet this problem of "chemical castration" or "lobotomy" horror many patients describe facing daily for years, ignored or brushed aside for decades. However, recent years it has gained some attention, and after enough noise and pressure regulatory agencies in E.U. and various national health agencies formally recognized the condition, while U.S. and the FDA has still not added it to side effect labels as of 2026. ). So there is some wins but nowhere nearly enough, as will be laid out there remains a overall colossal issue with and around these drugs and how they are marketed and presented to the public.
Beyond that, you'll learn how pharmaceutical companies have performed the greatest magic trick of all that has fooled even your doctor, using a standardized medical dictionary called MedDRA to split up and bury severe side effects under multiple technical terms, effectively hiding major risks in plain sight (more on this later... requires technical nuance far beyond can concisely explain here). Unfortunately as you will see later, drug manufacturers are not incentivized to isolate and structure their trial data in a way that makes the severity of certain side effects such as PSSD clear to regulators and label makers and ultimately the doctor and patient.
Informed consent is lacking or limited with PSSD patients specifically going all the way back 3 decades to new sufferers every single year complaining saying they wish they never took the drug if they knew this could happen, doctors will usually dismiss them and say it can't happen from the drug, or interpret it as their condition / depression itself that has worsened, requiring more treatment. An interesting ironic fact is that these medications can cause depression. This may be known as a paradoxical reaction, where a drug induces the condition it is designed to treat. The resulting domino effect drives polypharmacy, as doctors prescribe additional drugs to treat the medication's own side effects.
A doctor's role and relationship with the patient should be guided by 'First Do No Harm,' but the system is heavily skewed, turning those prescribing these drugs into industry "puppets" whose choices are heavily controlled by the industry's vocabulary, effectively leaving them to function more like sales representatives distributing pre-approved brochures. That's an over simplification yes but quite true, the relevant information will be provided to judge for yourself. Probably the most absurd statement or claim is from a man who says a lot of the evidence for these drugs is "fake", indeed fake is quite a strong word, who is this man? Well let's get into it. (Again, I will outline and provide some information for your own research and fact checking below.)
GENERAL TOPIC POINTS & Information that is covered:
- Who is doctor David Healy and why should you care about him or his work? How does he fit in this story?
- Briefly on how these drugs seem to work or what we know so far (researchers are still not fully sure how they work exactly), and their various effects including the potentially problematic (from my understanding, can make mistakes).
- Overview of broad effects and rare or lesser-known iatrogenic harms or serious side-effects from some people who took these drugs.
- Limitations or problems with trusting these drugs based on the fact they are supported by the "Evidence" and clinical trials**, what the real data was revealed later to show, e.g study 329, why we need better standard.
- Some of Mr. Healy's notable work over the decades.
- Some pharmaceutical fraud settlements** involving psychiatric medications:
- Some starter resources / videos, and citations to learn more or investigate yourself. Including industry biggest problems, drug harms including PSSD, and delicate topic of suicide and homicide cases, or anything else as I see fit.
Dr. David Healy is an internationally prominent Irish psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist, and author. He serves as a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Canada and previously held a professorship in psychiatry in Wales. He is most widely recognized as a vocal and influential critic of the pharmaceutical industry, specifically regarding the safety, marketing, and trial transparency of psychiatric medications.
See davidhealy.org and Rxisk.org to learn more. PEER Reviewed articles: davidhealy.org/articles/
Core Areas of Work
Antidepressant Safety: He pioneered research into the adverse side effects of SSRI antidepressants, notably their links to increased risks of suicide and violence.
Industry Critique: He exposes pharmaceutical practices like "disease-mongering" (marketing a condition to sell a drug), clinical trial data manipulation, and the ghostwriting of medical journal articles.
Patient Advocacy: He is a co-founder and CEO of Data Based Medicine Limited, which operates RxISK.org, an independent website allowing patients to directly report prescription drug side effects.
Legal Expertise: He frequently acts as an expert medical witness in international homicide and suicide lawsuits tied to psychotropic prescription side effects.
Before becoming a professor of Psychiatry in Wales, and more recently in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Canada, he studied medicine in Dublin, and at Cambridge University. He is a former Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, and has authored more than 230 peer-reviewed articles, 300 other pieces, and 25 books, including The Antidepressant Era and The Creation of Psychopharmacology from Harvard University Press, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1-3 and Let Them Eat Prozac from New York University Press, and Mania from Johns Hopkins University Press and Pharmageddon.
David is a founder and CEO of Data Based Medicine Limited, which operates through its website RxISK.org, dedicated to making medicines safer through online direct patient reporting of drug side effects.
Legal and Academic Victory: Healy sued the University of Toronto for $9.4 million over the violation of his academic freedom. The university settled out of court, issuing a statement defending the expression of critical views and appointing him as a visiting professor, a move widely celebrated as a total vindication of his scholarship.
Regulatory Capitulation: For 15 years, regulators ignored his warnings. However, the tide turned when the FDA and British regulators finally issued stringent "black box warnings" on antidepressants, confirming that the drugs increase suicidal thinking and behavior in children and young adults.
The Expert Witness of Record: Because he painstakingly analyzed raw, unpublished pharmaceutical documents during legal depositions, courts routinely seek Healy out. He has served as a pivotal expert witness in high-profile homicide and suicide trials involving psychotropic drugs.
An Anchor of Public Trust: As public awareness grows regarding overmedication and long-term drug dependency, Healy has transitioned from a corporate pariah to a deeply trusted, heroic figure. Patients suffering from unacknowledged side effects turn to his books, blog, and platforms to find the validation and rigorous scientific data their own doctors often omit
What Are Reuptake Inhibitors?
Some of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants are reuptake inhibitors. Many antidepressant drugs inhibit the neuronal reuptake of norepinephrine, serotonin, and/or dopamine.
Reuptake is a natural process by which brain chemicals called neurotransmitters are absorbed back into your nerve cells after they are released to send messages between your nerve cells. A reuptake inhibitor blocks or slows this process. Instead of being reabsorbed, the neurotransmitter stays -- at least temporarily -- in the gap between your nerves, called the synaptic cleft. The idea is to allow the neurotransmitters to stick around longer and increase their signaling.
SSRIs for example increase the extracellular level of neurotransmitter serotonin by inhibiting its reuptake by the serotonin transporter (SERT). By inhibiting SERT, an increased amount of serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine or 5-HT) remains available in the synaptic cleft and can stimulate postsynaptic receptors for a more extended period.
That's what they do in brief. And there are effects beyond that, no one really knows how these drugs work exactly for sure and are still piecing together the puzzle, anyone who says they know is lying.
The old chemical imbalance theory of depression that was put forward was too simplistic and wrong.
The effects of antidepressants extend well beyond simply increasing neurotransmitters like serotonin. Changes in extracellular neurotransmitter levels can initiate downstream adaptations that influence how neurons communicate and how the brain responds over time. These involve:
• auto-receptors and feedback mechanisms
• receptor sensitivity
• intracellular signaling
• gene expression
• synaptic plasticity
• changes in neural connectivity and network activity
What are some potential problems with the way these drugs work? Some Problems with these drugs in brief:
- They can lose effectiveness: Some research suggests that SSRIs can lose efficacy over time. A phenomenon called antidepressant tachyphylaxis occurs when someone initially responds to an antidepressant and then experiences a return of depressive symptoms while continuing the same treatment. One review found reported rates of 9–57%, depending on the population and follow-up period.
- Much of the evidence supporting antidepressant efficacy comes from relatively short-term trials, while much less is known about the effects of long-term use.
- Receptor Downregulation: The brain adapts to the increased stimulation by reducing the sensitivity or availability of some serotonin receptors, helping push signaling back toward its previous balance.
- Physical Dependence: The neural network adapts so deeply to the chemical presence that it considers it the "new normal". Basically without the drug you feel off or unwell. This is not addiction. And withdrawal or tapering can be challenging. You can also eventually end up feeling worse than when you started the drug, whether from withdrawal, recurrence of the underlying illness, or a combination of both. And if the drug seems to stop working as well, the response may be to increase the dose or add another drug. A pattern known as polypharmacy.
- These drugs DO NOT necessarily increase SEROTONIN or other neurotransmitters in the brain overall.
- SSRIs do not primarily increase serotonin synthesis. They increase serotonergic signaling by inhibiting SERT-mediated reuptake, thereby altering the extracellular availability and signaling of serotonin.
When an SSRI for example, is introduced, it blocks the serotonin transporter (SERT), leaving serotonin to stick around longer. However...
In normal brain function, SERT is partly a conservation mechanism. It pulls serotonin back into the cell, where it can be repackaged and stored for later use.
When an SSRI blocks SERT, more serotonin remains in the extracellular fluid rather than being taken back up and recycled through SERT. Some of that serotonin can diffuse away or be taken up by other cells and ultimately metabolized rather than returned to the serotonergic neuron.
Both ongoing serotonin synthesis and reuptake are important for maintaining intraneuronal serotonin concentrations.
If serotonin synthesis is severely impaired, the brain may become more dependent on reuptake/recycling to maintain its serotonin stores, and blocking that recycling can have very different consequences.
Extracellular/synaptic 5-HT: SERT blockade leaves more serotonin outside the neuron for longer, so local serotonergic signaling can increase.
Intraneuronal/recyclable 5-HT: less of the released serotonin is recovered through SERT, reducing the amount of recycled serotonin available to replenish the intracellular pool.
That potentially increases the neuron’s dependence on new serotonin synthesis.
Blocking reuptake does not necessarily mean more serotonin overall. Although SERT inhibition increases the amount of serotonin remaining in the extracellular space, it simultaneously reduces the amount being returned to the serotonergic neuron for possible reuse. Over time, this can shift the balance away from the revolving pool of recycled/reused serotonin and toward newly synthesized serotonin, potentially increasing demand itself for continuous serotonin production to keep replenishing the intracellular pool.
Efficiency-wise, replacing serotonin through de novo synthesis requires raw materials and biochemical cofactors, including tryptophan, vitamin B6, iron and other cofactors. For most people, certain increased stress or demand on the body may be negligible. But in some with a biological bottleneck or impaired synthesis capacity, the same additional stress or demand on the body can have a much different effect/impact. The drug may reveal a deficit or vulnerability that wasn't obvious before.
Interestingly, an in-vivo humanized model mouse study using a rare mutation in TPH2 which represents approximately an 80% reduction in natural 5-HT (serotonin) synthesis found that chronic fluoxetine treatment drove serotonin tissue levels in the mutant mice down to just 1–3% of normal. 5-HTP supplementation restored serotonin levels. These results are striking.
This tells us that Serotonin synthesis capacity modifies the consequences of SERT inhibition. In other words someone with reduced serotonin synthesis capacity may depend more heavily on efficient reuse and storage to maintain their existing serotonin pool. If the same principle applies in humans, then severely impaired serotonin synthesis could make SERT inhibition maladaptive in some vulnerable individuals, because recycling (blocked) can no longer compensate for limited production. (And need also account for a person's difference in genetics, liver enzymes, micronutrient status, methylation capacity, etc.)
The question of what happens when you chronically block a neurotransmitter's normal reuptake/transport system can apply to other reuptake inhibitors. Norepinephrine and dopamine, for example, have their own transporters NET and DAT that regulate their reuptake and recycling.
Nutrient depletions: Antidepressants may affect nutritional status, and studies have reported associations with nutrients such as vitamin D, calcium, and CoQ10, although the evidence varies by drug and nutrient. How an individual’s broader micronutrient and amino-acid status is affected is far less understood and rarely assessed comprehensively. Antidepressants can also affect appetite, metabolism, gastrointestinal function, and other physiological processes that may influence nutritional status.
The Safe and effective narrative/lie which has become truth: As David Healy, a prominent Welsh psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist has argued, medicines were historically understood as useful poisons, they can either do harm or under right conditions be made to do good. Requiring care and discretion in their use, and consideration of individual risk and benefit made clear to the patient.
The modern tendency to seldom withhold the drug but instead actually push their use and present antidepressants primarily as safe and effective treatments which only save lives can understate their limitations, adverse effects, risks and uncertainties. Side effects are common, including sexual dysfunction or numbing, and some adverse effects may persist after discontinuation. Evidence also shows that antidepressant efficacy varies substantially between individuals, with some trials finding little or no advantage over placebo for particular drugs or groups of patients. I will provide further detail on such issues later.
Now onto the topic specifically of SIDE EFFECTS from antidepressant drugs themselves and iatrogenic harms: what are the downside problems and risks they pose against their touted upside benefits and how much evidence really is there to say they're safe and effective?
First we'll look at side effects than afterwards the evidence quality.
Here's a list of reported side effects people experience from taking the SSRIs, SNRIs, can confirm on rxisk org and David Healy website citations.
General Common Issues including:
• Emotional Blunting
• Sexual Side effects
• Tolerance (drug loses therapeutic effect over time often leading to dose increase)
• Physical Dependence on the drug
• Rebound Symptoms (A temporary return of the original psychological symptoms, often worse than before starting treatment.)
Discontinuation and Withdrawal Syndromes
1. Standard Discontinuation Syndrome: Flu-like physical symptoms, dizziness, "brain zaps," anxiety, and insomnia lasting up to a few weeks.
2. Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome: Debilitating neurological and physical symptoms that persist for many months or years after stopping.
3. Tardive Dysphoria: A chronic, treatment-resistant depressive state triggered by long-term chemical alteration of the brain.
Rare, Severe, and Indefinite Harms:
• Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD): Total or partial loss of sexual function, genital numbness/loss sensation, may also include Emotional blunting, Anhedonia (inability to experience any pleasure), and Cognitive impairment, lasting years or indefinitely after quitting (PSSD defined as no improvement after 6 months being off the drug), along with other Miscellaneous symptoms can occur. (as of writing PSSD sub has over 20K members.)
• Tardive Dyskinesia: Involuntary, repetitive facial and body movements caused primarily by antipsychotics, which can be irreversible.
• Permanent Emotional Numbing: An indefinite inability to feel deep joy, affection, or normal emotional responses long after stopping treatment.
• Persistent Akathisia: An intense, agonizing inner restlessness and physical inability to sit still that can become chronic.
Also Anhedonia along with Memory loss reported as well, and permanent brain zaps or headaches.
These examples are not just 10-50 few cases you must dig for but thousands upon thousands and rapidly growing across various forums and continents globally and is still greatly under-reported, and pharmaceutical scandals in the past reveal how data manipulation and study designs or publishing bias make these patients basically disappear from the data-set and it's a battle to get these side effects listed on the drug Europe is leading the way currently, U.S. behind. To rub salt in the wound the patients harmed end up stigmatized or not taken seriously by their doctors, there are conflicts of interest everywhere in this industry.
Dr. David Healy's website is a goldmine if you want to learn and see the good work he does, and Dr. Josef has many case studies on YT along with an interview with Dr. Healy himself worth watching.
Here's a list of some other drug induced disorders you may want to know about, from Iatrogenic Neuroimmune Disease Association (INIDA).
Drug-Induced Disorders:
• Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD)
• Post Finasteride syndrome (PFS) • Post Accutane syndrome (PAS)
• Post-Acute-Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS)
• Neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome (NIDS)
• Fluoroquinolone antibiotic toxicity (“Floxies”)
• Autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA Sydrome)
• Akathisia
• Tardive Dyskinesia
And probably more not listed here.
Next let's look at the problem with taking and Trusting these drugs based on the fact they are supported by the the "Evidence" and clinical trials
Dr. David Healy and platforms like Mad in America expose how commercial incentives distort psychiatric research, making drugs appear safer and more effective than they are.
Flawed Study Design and Data Manipulation
• Surrogate Checklists: Clinical trials use rating scales (like the HAM-D) that can blur the line between a drug's adverse side effects and symptoms of the underlying illness.
• Hiding Harms: Unfavorable data regarding severe risks, such as treatment-induced Suicide, emotional numbing, or long-term dependency are often miscoded or omitted.
• Restricted Access: Raw trial data is rarely shared with independent scientists or frontline physicians for true verification.
Publishing and Marketing Bias
• Ghostwriting: Pharmaceutical companies hire commercial writers to draft positive trial results, then pay prominent academic clinicians to sign their names as authors.
• Publication Bias: Positive trials are rushed into prestigious medical journals, while negative trials showing a drug failed are frequently buried or unpublished.
• Manufactured Consensus: Industry-funded panels shape clinical guidelines and medical education to promote high-cost brand-name drugs over cheaper, older alternatives.
Institutional Capture and Lawsuits
• The Chemical Imbalance Myth: Critical platforms emphasize that the popular public narrative of correcting a precise "chemical imbalance" functioned more as a marketing tool than a validated biological fact.
• Legal Reckoning: Whistleblowers and lawsuits (such as over Study 329 or suppressed adolescent Suicide data) have repeatedly forced regulatory updates and black-box warnings, proving that early warnings from independent watchdogs were initially suppressed.
Mr. Healy's work over the decades.
Dr. David Healy, a prominent Welsh psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, and historian of medicine, has exposed the specific, systemic mechanisms that pharmaceutical companies use to manipulate science.
Through his books like Let Them Eat Prozac and Pharmageddon, and his drug-safety platform RxISK, Healy argues that modern "evidence-based medicine" has been hijacked. He emphasizes several hidden realities.
1. Healthy Volunteer Trials Proved the Danger
Healy’s most damning research revealed that antidepressants (SSRIs) can induce Suicide and violence in completely healthy human volunteers. Pharma companies long argued that when patients became Suicidal on antidepressants, it was simply their underlying "depression" getting worse. Healy proved that when given to people with no history of mental illness, these drugs could still trigger severe, agitated states (akathisia) that lead directly to Suicide and violence.
2. The Deception of "Washout Periods"
Healy exposed how companies explicitly rig clinical trial designs using a trick called a "placebo washout" period:
• The Setup: Before a trial officially starts, all patients are abruptly taken off their current medications.
• The Result: Many patients experience severe, chaotic withdrawal symptoms.
• The Deception: The company labels these crashing, withdrawing patients as "placebo non-responders" or counts their withdrawal distress as "symptoms of psychiatric illness," artificially making the new drug look superior and safer than it is.
3. Coding Suicide as "Emotional Lability"
As an expert legal witness with access to sealed, internal pharmaceutical company documents, Healy revealed how companies actively falsify safety data. In major clinical trials (such as GSK’s infamous Study 329 into Paxil/Seroxat for children), Suicidal acts and attempts were intentionally miscoded in corporate data sheets under benign terms like "emotional lability," "agitation," or "noncompliance" to hide the risk from regulators.
4. Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD)
Healy has been a global leader in exposing PSSD (Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction). While pharma companies claim sexual side effects end when a patient stops the pill, Healy’s work at RxISK org proved that these drugs can cause permanent, irreversible genital numbness and sexual dysfunction that persists for years or decades after stopping the medication.
5. "Disease Mongering" and the Serotonin Myth
Healy has documented how pharma companies actively manufactured chemical myths. Early trials actually showed SSRIs were less effective than older drugs, but companies realized they could market them by inventing a simplified, unscientific narrative: the "chemical imbalance" or low-serotonin theory. Healy points out that this was a highly successful public relations campaign, not validated science, designed to sell drugs by convincing healthy people they had a lifetime chemical defect.
6. Severe Institutional Backlash
Healy’s work proved how dangerous it is to challenge this system. In 2000, after delivering a lecture exposing these drug risks, the University of Toronto abruptly rescinded his job offer as director of their mood disorders program under intense pressure from industry-funded interests. He sued for a violation of academic freedom, resulting in a landmark settlement. Healy famously warns that doctors have become "subsidiary" to pharma marketing, treating clinical trials like marketing brochures rather than objective science.
Another point I think worth mentioning came to mind, he regularly emphasizes the loss of the doctor-patient relationship. Summarized below 👇
Dr. David Healy argues that modern Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and standardized clinical guidelines have completely degraded the doctor-patient relationship, transforming what should be a partnership into a bureaucratic exercise. Through his work on DavidHealy org and books like Pharmageddon, he explains how this system silences patients and strips doctors of their clinical judgment.
1. Patients Are the Data
Healy emphasizes that in medicine, the patient is the source of the data, not corporate-sponsored clinical trials.
• The Conflict: When a patient tells a doctor, "I started this drug and immediately felt suicidal," or "I stopped the drug years ago and my body part is still numb," that observation is primary scientific data.
• The Erasure: Instead of believing the patient, modern doctors are trained to consult corporate randomized controlled trials (RCTs). If the ghostwritten trial data doesn't mention that specific side effect, the doctor frequently dismisses the patient's lived experience as "anecdotal" or an "underlying symptom" of their illness.
2. The Illusion of Evidence and Guidelines
Healy warns that standard clinical guidelines are not objective blueprints for health; they are highly successful corporate marketing tools.
• The "Lamppost" Metaphor: Healy famously states that companies and doctors now use clinical trial data, or the lack of it, "as a drunk uses a lamppost for support rather than illumination." Trials are not used to discover truths, but to justify prescribing a product.
• Abstract Averages vs. Real People: Clinical guidelines are built on statistical averages from artificial, highly screened patient cohorts. Healy notes that these math models cannot capture individualized medicine because they inherently strip away the unique physical realities, history, and vulnerabilities of the single patient sitting in the room.
3. The Death of Medical Observation
Before the era of corporate EBM, the core of medicine was built on a doctor believing the evidence of their own eyes and trusting their patient’s narrative.
• The Bureaucratic Screen: Today, clinical guidelines act as a barrier between the doctor and patient. Doctors are forced into a "tick-box culture" where meeting a guideline's administrative metrics matters more than whether the human being feels better or worse.
• Legal Shielding: Doctors follow guidelines not because they fit the individual patient, but because the guidelines provide legal protection against malpractice lawsuits. This shifts the doctor's loyalty away from the patient and toward institutional protocols.
4. Reclaiming Relationship-Based Medicine
To fix this medical crisis, Healy advocates for a shift from evidence-based medicine to relationship-based medicine. He insists that true science requires doctors to listen to patients, prioritize real-world outcomes over checklist scores, and aggressively taper or stop drugs when a patient indicates the treatment is causing harm.
Some of the largest pharmaceutical fraud settlements involving psychiatric medications:
1. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) – $3 Billion (2012)
This remains the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history. GSK pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges regarding the severe misbranding and illegal marketing of its blockbuster antidepressants, Paxil (paroxetine) and Wellbutrin (bupropion).
The Violation: GSK illegally promoted Paxil to children and adolescents despite internal data showing it was ineffective and drastically increased the risk of suicide.
The Tactics: The Department of Justice found that GSK showered doctors with expensive trips, meals, entertainment, and other benefits to drive prescriptions, while simultaneously ghostwriting and publishing misleading medical articles like Study 329.
2. Pfizer
$2.3 Billion (2009)
Geodon (Antipsychotic)
Illegal off-label marketing; paid kickbacks; promoted dangerous high doses.
3. Johnson & Johnson
$2.2 Billion (2013)
Risperdal (Antipsychotic)
Marketed off-label to children and seniors; downplayed stroke risks and elevated prolactin-related male breast growth.
4. Abbott Labs
$1.5 Billion (2012)
Depakote (Mood Stabiliser).
Illegally marketed to control agitation and aggression in elderly dementia patients. Later randomized evidence was unfavorable; Elderly dementia patients were experiencing significant adverse effects.
5. Eli Lilly
$1.42 Billion (2009)
Zyprexa (Antipsychotic)
Marketed off-label to dementia patients; downplayed diabetes and weight-gain risks.
Notable Landmark Precedents & Court Orders
• The Tobin/Schell Case (2001): In a landmark civil trial where Dr. David Healy testified as an expert witness, a Wyoming federal jury found that GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil was 80% responsible for causing a peaceful man, Donald Schell, to suddenly murder his wife, daughter, granddaughter, and himself after taking the drug for just two days. This legally established that SSRIs can independently trigger homicide and suicide.
• The Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) Whistleblower Suits: Whistleblowers exposed how pharmaceutical companies funded state mental health initiatives to hardwire clinical guidelines, influencing doctors to prescribe the newest, most expensive patented antipsychotics and antidepressants to state hospital patients and inmates over safer, time-tested alternatives.
Additionally some starter resources / videos, and citations to learn more or investigate yourself.
VIDEOs explaining how the way many drugs are prescribed under evidence-based medicine needs to be fixed or overhauled:
• David Healy TED Talk - Making Medicines Safer for All of US -> davidhealy.org/making-medicines-safer-for-all-of-us/ (only 10k views in 7 years?.. criminal.)
• The Perfect Killing Machine -> davidhealy.org/the-perfect-killing-machine/
• Publishing Bias - What doctors don't know about the drugs they prescribe | Ben Goldacre -> youtube.com/watch?v=RKmxL8VYy0M
• David Healy - Time to abandon evidence based medicine? -> youtube.com/watch?v=A3YB59EKMKw
• Healy's video lectures -> youtube.com/@davidhealy6933/videos
Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications:
• davidhealy.org/articles/
Complex Withdrawl:
• rxisk.org/complex-withdrawal/
Some Pubmed articles to read:
• Diagnostic criteria for enduring sexual dysfunction after treatment with antidepressants, finasteride and isotretinoin -> pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8925105/
• Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction: barriers to quantifying incidence and prevalence -> pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11450419/
• Estimating the risk of irreversible post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) due to serotonergic antidepressants -> pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10122283/
"In conclusion, our findings indicate that serotonergic antidepressants carry a small but significant risk of about 0.46% of developing an irreversible sexual dysfunction persisting after their discontinuation (post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, PSSD)"
VIDEO starters on awareness of lesser-known Drug Side effects:
• Dr. Josef Psychiatrist turned Activist on Drug Risks & Harms -> youtube.com/@taperclinic
• Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) - Professor David Healy -> youtube.com/watch?v=Ke9Q5i97PHE
• The “Anti-Psychiatrist”, PSSD Expert & Hero! | Who is Dr. David Healy? -> youtube.com/watch?v=BcxS_ITe0MI
• Everything You Need To Know About PSSD | Interview with David Healy -> youtube.com/watch?v=dUVq21ar0MI
• Will's experience with medication-induced PSSD/Anhedonia/DPDR -> youtube.com/watch?v=_cHkNTjv5M4
PSSD awareness organizations:
• www.pssdnetwork.org/
• pssdcanada.ca/international-pssd-associations
Delicate topic of violence and homicide cases after taking a drug:
• (Video & Articles) rxisk.org/violence-zone/
• Jury finds drug 80% responsible for killings -> pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1173337/
• (VIDEO) "Eli Lilly’s worst nightmare." — That’s what the Indianapolis Star called trial lawyer Andy Vickery. -> facebook.com/watch/?v=1578424640381747
More:
• Mad in America is a website and non-profit organization founded by journalist Robert Whitaker that advocates for reforming the modern, drug-based psychiatric system - > madinamerica.com
