Posted by Squiggles on May 10, 2006, at 12:46:59
In reply to Re: suicide and AD effect » linkadge, posted by Larry Hoover on May 10, 2006, at 11:39:18
Perhaps if Dr. Healy had said that the
statistics show that caution in the form
of very close monitoring in the first two
weeks or so of taking Prozac, is necessary,
to avoid the high probability of akathisia-
related suicide, the U of T would not have
reacted so negatively. After all, there would
be no harm in keeping a professor who was
queasy about these new drugs. Or did they
perceive there was?As for as I am concerned I don't find such scandals very good for the public. We have to cope with miserable side effects and experiment after experiment.
I find the psychiatric drug life, far wilder
and unpredictable, and dangerous, than smoking
a joint at a party when i was young. But kids are
watched like a hawk by parents for taking
"drugz". The difference of course is that most
kids then smoked a joint or dropped acid once in a year or every few months, then they graduated and went on to conforming lives. Prescription drugs are for life. The "counterfeit" drug crisis i
recently went through almost killed me, but
if it had, it would have been a clean, legal
death with the stats to back up the safety of the drug from some medical journal. A suicide in
a state of agitated mania is not a universal
cause for suicide after all. But I did have to
fight the urge with all my might and play with
the lithium caps so as to rise above the urge -- something that left my brain burning for weeks.So, I may have to reconsider just how much harm would have been done if Dr. Healy was kept at the U of T with his radical notions, because even if there was a dent in the sales of Prozac on account of his polemics, another SSRI could easily have taken its place. I did consider the possibility that his actions were self-centered and that he may have contributed to mass suffering for people taking Prozac. I am not 100% sure there was no harm done there, but I think it may not have been an irreversible harm. So, I suppose they could have reacted differently if they wanted to. It must have been embarrassing and stressful for all concerned.
Thank God I take Lithium :-)
Squiggles
poster:Squiggles
thread:640557
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060510/msgs/642160.html