PRESS RELEASE:

January 26, 2004
Contact: Marla Filidei
humanrights@cchr.org
1-800-869-2247

FDA Hearing on SSRI Antidepressants for Children: Psychiatric Damage Control Tries To Preempt Findings

With the FDA hearing on February 2 into Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants causing suicidal behavior in children and adolescents, the psychiatric industry has been accused of trying to preempt the findings by issuing reports obfuscating the risks of the drugs. On January 19, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), a task force with 9 out of 10 members having significant ties to pharmaceutical manufacturers, claimed that antidepressants banned in Britain for children do not raise the risk of suicide. However the task force ignored the information used by British regulators. The psychiatric watchdog group, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), says such reviews are mere damage control, aimed at protecting psychiatric and pharmaceutical interests, not patient care, in an effort to ward off an onslaught of suits similar to those in the 1980s involving psychiatry's then "miracle pills," neuroleptics.

Next month's FDA hearing is in response to British regulators recently banning the prescription of SSRIs to under 18 year olds because clinical trials show the potential side effect of the drugs to cause suicide, hostility, or self-injury. The FDA is to review the suicidal outcomes in over 4,000 children and adolescents exposed to SSRIs in clinical trials. Despite international concern about these risks, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has yet to issue a warning to psychiatrists to cease prescribing these drugs. If the FDA findings substantiate British drug regulators' concerns, psychiatrists and the APA could face massive litigation because of their failure to inform.

In the 1960s, the APA also refused to warn its members and physicians about neuroleptics causing Tardive Dyskinesia (TD), an irreversible neurological disorder manifesting in facial tics and uncontrollable twitching. Award-winning medical journalist Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America, said, "Year after year passed and the APA made no effort to educate its members, while the tally of Americans afflicted with TD climbed at a rate of more than 250 people per day, and still the APA did nothing." It issued a warning only after "several highly publicized civil lawsuits found psychiatrists (and their institutions) negligent for failing to warn patients of this risk, with damages in one case topping $3 million," writes Whitaker. "This foot-dragging obviously told of a stunning disregard for the mentally ill," he said.

In his book, Prozac Backlash, Harvard University Medical School psychiatrist, Joseph Glenmullen, reports SSRIs can also cause TD. He researched thousands of cases of four different side effects of SSRIs causing "loss of motor control," including neurologically driven agitation leading to severe panic. FDA Adverse Reaction Reports also show that in the early 1990s, 83 children between the ages of 4 and 18 attempted suicide while taking one SSRI, two children aged 5 committed suicide, and 77 experienced hostility, agitation and intentional injury. Today, about 1.5 million American children are prescribed these drugs.

CCHR summarizes its other concerns:

• The FDA hearing comes at a time when Congress is considering passage of the Child Medication Safety Act that would prohibit school authorities from forcing children to take SSRIs and other psychiatric drugs. Parents have been threatened with charges of medical and emotional neglect for refusing to drug their child and children have died after being required to take the drugs to receive educational services.

• The APA opposes the bill that would protect parents' and children's rights. James Skully, M.D., medical director of the APA and a director of the APA's American Psychiatric Foundation (APF) is particularly critical of the legislation. CCHR says this is another example of the APA's "stunning disregard" for children, fueled by the unholy alliance between the APA and Pharma. Both the APA and APF receive substantial annual funding from pharmaceutical interests totaling more than $15 million.

• Clinical trials for psychiatric drugs are based on the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that many medical experts condemn as unscientific. Dr. Sydney Walker III, neurologist, psychiatrist and author of A Dose of Sanity, said DSM has "led to the unnecessary drugging of millions of Americans…."

• With over a million children said to be suffering "depression" and prescribed SSRIs, Dr. Glenmullen says, "…the symptoms [of depression] are subjective emotional states, making the diagnosis extremely vague." Referring to the DSM inspired rating scales for depression, he said they are "designed to fit hand-in-glove with the effects of drugs, emphasizing the physical symptoms of depression that most respond to antidepressant medication…While assigning a number to a patient's depression may look scientific, when one examines the questions asked and the scales used, they are utterly subjective measures based on what the patient reports or a rater's impressions."

• The APA created the market for drugging kids by fabricating disorders and then convincing people that they exist. Medical doctors agree that the DSM is nothing but junk science and the FDA shouldn't be relying upon it to approve any psychotropic drug.

Bruce Wiseman, national U.S. president of CCHR, says, "More than a decade ago in the U.S., we presented evidence of these drugs causing violent and suicidal behavior. Since then thousands of adverse reactions and deaths have been reported to the FDA from the use of these drugs. Yet psychiatrists continue to defend them with a vengeance and freely prescribe the same suicidal-inducing antidepressants that have just been banned in the UK. Psychiatrists and the FDA knew about this data but didn't want to bite the hand that feeds them—pharmaceutical interests. The FDA investigating these drugs comes too late for the many children now dead because of being falsely labeled as mentally disordered and needlessly subjected to these 'killer pills.' It is not too late for those children not yet labeled, and the FDA needs to fulfill its original purpose, which is protecting the public health, and particularly that of our children."

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established by the Church of Scientology in 1969 to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.

For more information, visit www.cchr.org.