Смекни!
smekni.com

Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors Essay Research Paper Seratonin (стр. 1 из 3)

Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors Essay, Research Paper

Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors

Although the trend to fix an array of psychiatic problems has been to take a medication of a seratonin elevator, doctors are overlooking possible side effects of these drugs when wrongfully prescribed.

The seratonin uptake inhibitors (SSRIS), Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft have become the latest soultion to cure peoples depression. In the pharmacutical companies publications for these miracle pills, it appeared that anyone with a disliked personality quirk could obtain these drugs and fix their personality. Pharmacutical companies such as SmithKline Beecham (makers of Paxil and Zoloft) and Lilly ( maker of Prozac) have become a gigantic barrier in collecting all the facts regarding these drugs. These pharmacutical companies invest millions of dollars each year in advertising their product, giving marketing products to doctors, donations to medical schools and grants for medical students. Are Americans really getting an untainted look at these drugs? While pharmacutical companies lure doctors in with valuble incentives to prescribe these drugs people are being wronfully diagonsed and wrongfully prescribed. The true side effects of these drugs need to be exposed . There should be a more extensive screening for who is placed on these drugs, and safer alternatives should be offered initially by psychiatrists.

The issue of doctors wrongfully diagnosing patients is a very serious one. In studies the SSRI drugs have shown severe side effects in some patients. Currently, the gunman of the Colombine High School shooting are being investigated for being on Prozac. If no limitations are placed on these drugs it is possible for more devastating side effects to harm other people.

“Never before Prozac has a medication been so misrepresented by so many people for so long in the absence of adequate data.” Drs. Dewan and Masand

Ann Blake Tracy, holds a Doctorate in Psychology and Health Sciences, is the director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, She has testified before the FDA and congressional subcommittee members on Prozac. She also testified in 1992 as an expert witness in Prozac and other SSRI related court cases around the world. She writes;

Prozac and its analogues are being prescribed for everything from headaches and flu to acne and home sickness. Yet, according to FDA spokespersons, there have been more adverse reaction reports on Prozac than any other medical product.

As of October, 1993, a total of 28,623 complaints of adverse side effects had been filed with the FDA, including 1,885 suicide attempts and 1349 deaths. The FDA’s general rule of thumb for estimating the true figures is that these reports represent only one to ten percent of the actual figures. This would indicate the staggering amount of 286,230 – 2,862,300 actual adverse reactions, 18,850 – 188,500 actual suicide attempts and 13,490 – 134,900 actual deaths attributed to Prozac by the end of 1993. We are being told these new mind-altering chemicals have a large margin of safety. Considering the widespread use of these products, we have no time to waste in discovering the truth behind these drugs.

In 1956 Eli Lilly patented LSD . In 1987 Eli Lilly gave us Prozac. LSD, the most notorious of the psychedelic drugs, was first marketed by Sandoz in Europe with the suggestion that it be used to chemically induce insanity in “normal subjects.” The reason was to discover how mental illness is produced. Yet in December 1955, two months before Lilly obtained their patent on LSD in America, TIME featured the drug, declaring that LSD “may actually help psychiatrists clear up mental illness.” It was also promoted as a cure for alcoholism and as an “aid in facilitating psychoanalysis”. It was even considered a safe medication for pregnant women. How many are aware that the finest physicians once recommended LSD as a miracle cure?

Year 2000, many of the same marketing claims are being made for Prozac that were once made for LSD. Just how similar in action are these two drugs? How much evidence is there that those who feel they cannot live without Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, are addicted to these drugs or dependent upon them?

Recent medical studies demonstrate that the brain levels of Prozac are 100 times greater than blood levels and it is believed that this is the case with the other serotonin reuptake inhibitors as well – evidence of toxic brain levels affecting behavior no matter what the blood levels demonstrate. This accumulation is evidence that the drug residue will produce a delayed withdrawal and continue to produce reactions, not only during the period of time the patient is using the drug, but for long periods of time after discontinuation of the drug use.

Brain wave patterns indicate patients are in a total anesthetic sleep state while appearing awake and functioning. Increasing serotonin – exactly what these drugs are designed to do – induces both nightmares and sleepwalk. Patients report over and over again that they have lived out their worst nightmare. And as with sleepwalk episodes, many have no recall or little recall of what they have done. Often someone must prove to them what they have done while they where under the influence of these drugs before they will believe it to be true. One patient stated that he could not detect during his two year use of Prozac what was real or what was a dream!

Seven to ten percent of patients do not have the liver function necessary to metabolize these drugs. Unfortunately, even if they do have a functioning liver system to metabolize the drugs, this group of drugs totally saturates that liver system so that the ability to metabolize the drug gradually becomes greatly impaired and the metabolism of other drugs becomes greatly impaired.

Stress or depression can be detected by elevated levels of cortisol, yet one single 30mg dose of Prozac clearly doubles the level of cortisol. This should in the long run double the patient’s stress and depression. But that is not the only detrimental effect of elevated cortisol levels. This can cause a multitude of serious physical and emotional adverse side effects.

These drugs given to children is absolutely unconscionable for many reasons – only one being that increased cortisol impairs the development and regeneration of the liver, kidney and muscles, as well as impairing linear growth. Yet, learning that even one parent was given this information would be surprising.

What concerns some doctors, including Listening to Prozac author Peter Kramer, is that the drug’s long-term effects are largely unknown. A series of studies in humans has shown no connection between antidepressant use and cancer, but there are some concerns about whether antidepressants promote tumor growth in cancer patients or in those exposed to cancer-causing substances (such as nicotine in cigarettes). This concern is primarily due to a small study published in 1992 that found that after being injected with cancer cells or cancer-causing substances, rats subsequently injected with antidepressants had more tumors than control rats.

Cost is also an issue. Older antidepressants like the MAOIs and the tricyclics are cheaper than Prozac and the SSRIs because their patents have expired; they are less expensive compared to these wholesale price tags of some of the newest.

Tolerance is a concern. (A person develops drug “tolerance” when the drug suddenly stops working, requiring larger and larger doses to be effective.) About one in 50 patients will develop tolerance to any drug, doctors say, and there have been reports of tolerance with Prozac.

Sherry, 38, has suffered for some time with many health problems, including obesity and chronic pain from arthritis. Depressed over these health worries, she began taking one capsule of Prozac daily, which eased her depression at first. She’s now up to five tablets daily (100 milligrams), a very high dose indeed.

“The crying episodes have stopped,” she says, “but Prozac is just not very effective anymore. Before, I was always able to pull myself back from depression. Now I’m just crazed, and I’ve lost faith in traditional medicine.”

Some people report strange feelings of loss on Prozac. They feel as if they have changed in some very basic, profound way. They appear to be a little uncomfort-able at the thought that while they are not depressed, neither are they the same person. Some mental health experts believe this could be the result of suddenly achieving normal mood after years of having adapted as a depressed person..

This uncomfortable feeling of loss is not unique to Prozac; people taking other SSRIs report similar experiences, especially among those who have battled depression for many years. There’s an ongoing controversy about whether Prozac causes people to try to kill themselves, or whether suicide attempts by users of Prozac are the result of the depression itself.

Studies have shown that at the beginning of treatment, 10 percent to 15 percent of patients feel more anxious after taking Prozac, but this anxiety eventually passes.

There also have been reports of anger and irritability among users of Prozac. Very irritable patients usually find their temperaments improving on Prozac, but it’s a different story with manic-depressives. If manic highs involve anger, paranoia, or irritability and you take Prozac without first being stabilized on lithium, the manic side of your mood may break through and you could experience these symptoms. Many scientists believe that Prozac may initially increase manic symptoms because the drug increases a person’s energy before it has successfully altered mood. This could suddenly prompt a suicide attempt in someone who had previously been too lethargic to make the effort. Indeed, several studies have suggested that people who are slowed down by depression in this way do appear to have a temporary increased risk of suicide as the depression eases.

1990 created a backlash in Prozacs popularity after reports circulated that it induced violent and suicidal tendencies in some users. The Church of Scientology led the attack against the drug, which focused on a small group of patients who had suicidal or violent thoughts.

In 1990 the church filed a citizen’s petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asking that Prozac be withdrawn from the market, citing a Harvard Medical School study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry stating that 6 out of 172 high-risk mental patients who had been resistant to other drugs had become preoccupied with violent suicidal thoughts while on Prozac. Two of them tried unsuccessfully to kill themselves. Although none of the six had appeared to be suicidal when they started taking Prozac, five had had suicidal thoughts before.

The Scientologists took that study’s findings and stated United States will become violent and suicidal on Prozac and charging that widespread use of Prozac would promote waves of violence. They backed up this claim by pointing to mass murderer Joseph Wesbecker, who killed himself and eight coworkers at a printing plant in Louisville, Kentucky, with an AK-47 assault rifle. A Scientology group alleged that man, who they said had no history of violence, went berserk because he took Prozac. Subsequent media reports revealed Wesbecker had a large gun collection, had tried to kill himself 12 times in the past, and had often talked about killing his employers.

Many depressed people are also suicidal, the fact that a few severely depressed patients taking antidepressants became suicidal didn’t surprise researchers. The FDA was concerned, however, because Prozac affects serotonin, a neurotransmitter known to be linked with aggression. After further study, however, in 1991 the FDA rejected the petition, reaffirming Prozac’s safety. This decision was followed two months later by a unanimous announcement by the FDA advisory committee and an independent scientific advisory committee that Prozac and other antidepressants do not cause violence or suicidal behavior, and that Prozac, on the contrary, appears to guard against violent behavior. The announcement included the information that large-scale studies show that people taking Prozac are less suicidal than those taking a placebo or other antidepressant drugs. This affirmation of support was backed by the National Mental Health Association and the American Psychiatric Association.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which contains the signs and symptoms of various psychiatric problems describes what qualifies one to fit in a particular type of depression. A panel of distinguished psychiatrists revises the DSM periodically. The manual is now in its 4th edition (DSM-IV). This document is key in determining who should be placed on the SSRIS. The DSM-IV recognizes several types of clinical depression:

Normal Depressed Mood & Grief

These conditions are natural reactions to losses in life. They typically involve sadness, lethargy, and in serious cases — for example, grief after the death of a loved one — often despair, anger, insomnia, poor appetite, or weight gain, obsessive thoughts about the lost person, and terrible guilt about any problems in the depressed person’s relationship with the deceased individual. What makes these reactions normal is that people eventually recover. After losing a ball game, it may take a day or two to bounce back. After a lay-off, it may take a few months. After the death of a loved one, it may take up to a year. If symptoms persist, they have a clinical depression and should call a doctor.

Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood

When People are faced with changes many people feel overwhelmed and “crazy” for a while. Then they get things under control. If they don’t, and they become persistently gloomy, angry, and unable to cope, it’s most likely adjustment disorder with depressed mood. Adjustment disorder with depressed mood presumes a change you have to adjust to.

Mild Depression (Dysthymia)

Dysthymia involves chronic depressed mood, poor self-esteem, and low-level symptoms of major depression “People with mild depression can still function, but they’re sad sacks,” says San Francisco psychiatrist Michael Freeman, M.D. “They consider themselves losers.”

Dysthymia may or may not have a triggering life event. Quite often, there is nothing to blame it on — no loss or life change. This can be confusing for both the person affected, and their loved ones. But just as you can catch a cold seemingly out of nowhere, you can also slip into dysthymia for no apparent reason.

Major Depression

When people say “seriously depressed,” this is what they mean. Major depression often causes despair and hopelessness so profound that the person loses interest in life, becomes incapable of feeling pleasure and sexual arousal, and may be unable to get out of bed or eat for days at a time. This illness may also cause other symptoms not easily recognized as depression: weight loss or gain; anxiety, irritability, or agitation; chronic indecisiveness; or sleep disturbances (insomnia or sleeping all the time). In other words, you can suffer a major depression and not feel blue.

Very often, major depression strikes without any triggering loss. This can be confusing and frustrating for both the person affected, and their loved ones. We want our illnesses to have clear causes. But many serious diseases do not: diabetes, cancer, arthritis. That’s how it is with major depression. It’s a serious disease that often develops with no discernible triggering event.

Officially, according to DSM-IV, major depression involves at least two weeks of deep despair and at least four of the following:

· Sleep problems. Insomnia or sleeping all the time.

· Appetite problems. Loss of appetite or major weight gain.

· Lack of energy. Apathy, lethargy, no interest in anything.

· Feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and/or terrible guilt.

· Difficulty concentrating, or unusual indecisiveness.

· Suicidal thoughts, or suicide attempts.

Beyond the almost unbearable misery it causes, the big risk in major depression is suicide. Within five years of suffering a major depression, an estimated 25% of sufferers try to kill themselves. The myth is that people who talk about suicide don’t attempt it. The fact is that many people announce their intention before their suicide attempts. Take any talk of suicide very seriously, and make sure the person gets professional help. Call their doctor immediately, if possible.

Bipolar Disorder (Manic-Depression)

About 1% of the American population experiences bipolar disorder annually. This illness involves major depressive episodes alternating with high-energy periods of wildly unrealistic activity. A manic friend might, for example, call at 3 a.m. to announce in all seriousness that she’s flying to Hollywood immediately to marry Robert Redford, and star in his next movie.

Typically, bipolar disorder develops without any clear cause.

Atypical Depression

“Atypical” means unusual. Instead of feeling unrelenting gloominess and lethargy, a person with this condition might seem deeply depressed for a few days, then fine for a while, or anxious and irritable.

Like many other forms of depression, the atypical variety often develops without a triggering event.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

This condition is often called “winter blues.” A reaction to lack of sunlight in winter, mild or major depression develops in late fall and clears up in early spring. As distance from the equator increases, this condition becomes more common. In the northern hemisphere, December, January, and February are the worst months.