Abstract
Psychiatry's tools of trade include antidepressants that induce suicide and antipsychotics which have hallucinations and ‘schizo-phreniform reaction’ among their listed side effects. GlaxoSmith Kline (GSK), brought down by Baum Hedlund's litigation in California admitted on its website on 6 May 2006 that its antidepressant, Aropax, had, in clinical trials, a relative risk of suicide over sugar pills of six. The sublethal consequences fill mental health units and emergency rooms. GSK knew, and did not inform the licensing agency, The United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), nor the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia (TGA).
Eli Lilly was forced to remind doctors, in the monthly prescribing guide, that hallucinations were a reported side effect of its blockbuster antipsychotic Zyprexa.
The other antipsychotics and serotonin boosting antidepressants are much the same, some do better, some do worse, and this depends on the genetics of the tested population.
Such medications have been imposed on a profession, the majority of whom have had no education therapeutics other than that received from drug company representatives. A training program for College Membership fails to train psychiatrists to differentiate the organic from the functional. Psychiatrists have been taught by academics who have to declare competing pharmacological interests whenever they publish. It is a small wonder that mental health is in crisis and the number of people diagnosed with serious mental illness has gone up by 125% since Prozac was unleashed in 1991. This paper examines the differences between clinical trial outcomes (published because of legal action by Elliot Spitzer, Attorney-General of New York), American Prescriber information, Australian Prescriber Information, small print in the MIMS Annual and the fatuous advertisements in journals and drug representatives’ spiels.
It adverts to how failure to warn of or recognise these side effects can result in negligence actions for suicide, in defence of homicide, of sexual offences and lesser violence (Involuntary Intoxication).
These drugs prolong illness, compensable and other.
The responsibility of the Therapeutic Goods Administrations, the Colleges of Psychiatrists, and State and Federal Departments of Health as well as individual prescribers is raised, including the duty to warn.