Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts

Drugs of the SSRI category (which Prozac belongs to) are by no means safe or well-tolerated. They have all sorts of severe, life-altering, mostly permanent side effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake_i...

Additionally, there's very little - if any - evidence they actually work the way they're purported to.

There are countless heartbreaking stories of people who were prescribed these drugs not knowing what they were subscribing to. In many cases, the effects of those drugs are worse than the symptoms they are supposed to alleviate. With "I Don't Wanna Be Me" there's even a song by Type O Negative (from Peter Steele's own experience with Prozac) about the devastating effects SSRIs can have on a person's life.

These drugs are handed out like candy while the physicians prescribing them often point-blank deny any side effects or even attribute those to the illness they are meant to treat.

I'd go as far as to say that prescribing these drugs for any but the most severe or otherwise untreatable cases violates the "First, do no harm." ethical principle of medicine.

Every medication can have severe and permanent side effects, the question is how often that occurs for a particular drug, and how that stacks up against the quality-of-life improvement from taking that drug.

And whether patients are properly informed of the risks (I was not)

During my first manic episode I was handed sertraline. This pushed the mania full send and I lost a lot of time that I can't account for, things I did I can't remember but friends have recalled. Climbing the house to get in through the upstairs window whilst having the house key on me. Locking myself in my room for a week or two convinced I was the real world John Connor and Arnie was looking for me. Blowing all my savings on cocaine for me and anybody in my vicinity in a month. Going through a gram of mdma more than once in a night. Feeling like I was on a therapeutic dose of MDMA for a few months and thinking this was what SSRIs were meant to feel like. The list goes on.

I will admit I was semi cognizant of the distorted thinking/reality so played it down when talking to the psychiatrist I was urgently (+2 months into it) referred to for early psychosis intervention. I was eventually handed a dozen valium (which the doctor was incredibly hesitant to prescribe, for good reasons) which let me sleep and the mania lifted.

I'm terrified of SSRIs now. I have been diagnosed bipolar for a few years now (went private because in the UK unless you're a danger you're ignored). This week was the first session with a clinical psychologist in a bipolar group. Unsurprisingly almost everyone had a similar experience with SSRIs.

I'm speculating here but I'm pretty sure if you did an MRI on my brain you'd see lesions from the mixing of mdma and sertraline (I get myoclonic jerks to this day).

> Every medication can have severe and permanent side effects

SSRIs are by an order of a magnitude worse than any other common medication in that respect.

Moreover, like I said there's little evidence these drugs actually achieve any quality-of-life improvement beyond a placebo effect.

SSRIs are very bad, but antipsychotics are worse. There are many other reasons, but a demonstrative one is that there is a cumulative annual risk as high as 7% of developing a permanent movement disorder when on them.