SSRI

SSRI  (Drug,  "Safe and Effective")
Start	1985
Interest of	• Peter Breggin • Eli Lilly • GlaxoSmithKline • Johnson & Johnson • Pfizer
A class of drugs licensed to treat depression, increasingly used also for other health concerns.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a type of pharmaceutical which affects neurotransmitters (i.e. brain chemistry). They are widely prescribed, in the USA especially, to treat depression. Popular brand names include Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro.

Origin

Prozac (called Fluoxetine or Sarafem in most nations, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1987, marked the first in a wave of widely prescribed antidepressants.

How

SSRIs work by strengthening the function of nerve cells in the brain that regulate emotions such as fear and stress. Information is communicated between your brain cells with signals. The chemical messengers that deliver the signals are named neurotransmitters. Serotonin is one type of neurotransmitter.

When these brain cells talk each other, through neurotransmitters, they then have to "recycle" the neurotransmitter they used and released so they can send the next message. This process of replacing the neurotransmitter is called a reuptake. SSRIs claim to block this reuptake process, so that people don't develop too much different kinds of depressed or psychotic-like emotions too quickly.

Use

Depressed Over Anti-Depressants - The Agenda with Steve Paikin, 2012

In the United States, SSRIs are increasingly prescribed for a range of health concerns. Perhaps 25-60% of SSRI prescriptions are for drug dependence, "ADHD", anxiety disorders, autism (in children), bipolar disorder, eating disorders, fibromyalgia, neuropathic pain, obsessive-compulsive disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. The clinical affect of other health conditions is a subject of ongoing research.

Others have blamed SSRI antidepressants for their homicidal actions as well. It has become so common, in fact, it has been dubbed the “Zoloft defense” or the “Prozac defense.”

Exposure

A 2017 BBC investigation linking SSRIs use to dozens of murders throughout the UK was banned form YouTube.

According to the America’s medicines regulator, a study looking at all trials between 1979 and 2016 by independent scientists, antidepressants had a substantial benefit beyond a placebo effect in only 15% of patients. A recent trial in Britain showed that 44% of patients could stop taking pills safely

Short of saying that SSRIs may kill more people and random victims than saving them, USNews reported in 2022 that in the long run, antidepressants don't help in the long term when asking the patients themselves.

Commercialisation

“When we stop at the pharmacy to pick up our Prozac®, are we simply buying a drug? Or are we buying into a disease as well? The first complete account of the phenomenon of antidepressants, this authoritative, highly readable book relates how depression, a disease only recently deemed too rare to merit study, has become one of the most common disorders of our day—and a booming business to boot.

The Antidepressant Era chronicles the history of psychopharmacology from its inception with the discovery of chlorpromazine in 1951 to current battles over whether these powerful chemical compounds should replace psychotherapy. An expert in both the history and the science of neurochemistry and psychopharmacology, David Healy offers a close-up perspective on early research and clinical trials, the stumbling and successes that have made Prozac® and Zoloft® household names. The complex story he tells, against a backdrop of changing ideas about medicine, details the origins of the pharmaceutical industry, the pressures for regulation of drug companies, and the emergence of the idea of a depressive disease. This historical and neurochemical analysis leads to a clear look at what antidepressants reveal about both the workings of the brain and the sociology of drug marketing.

Most arresting is Healy’s insight into the marketing of antidepressants and the medicalization of the neuroses. Demonstrating that pharmaceutical companies are as much in the business of selling psychiatric diagnoses as of selling psychotropic drugs, he raises disturbing questions about how much of medical science is governed by financial interest.”
David Healy (1999) 

Even though US Congress banned tobacco ads in the 1970s from radio and TV, medical ads were still allowed in the 2020s. A common problem with the commercialisation of drugs and anti-depressants is how easy it is to buy them. Especially in the US, and even after denouncing Big Pharma lobbyists by dozens of health experts and scholars from Harvard and the Imperial College London. The Economist wrote in 2022 that "Drug companies often publish the results of clinical trials selectively, withholding those in which the drugs turn out not to work well.

TV stations and corporate media have been reported to lie about how SSRIs work since the 1980s, often with little to known repercussion.

30 years after Pfizer's introduction of Prozac, the FCC doesn't fine and lets Pfizer promote the drug nonetheless. Even after drugs to tweak the biological chemical imbalances in the brain aren't proven to work, because depression isn’t caused by a chemical imbalance, and Pfizer was revealed to not know how Prozac works.

Studies involving adults have shown that antidepressants can't completely prevent depression: and only are effective for 10 to 15% of the people in the control group.

Side Effects

The Antidepressant Era by David Healy - Paulopezz - 2013

SSRIs even affect the ability of a person to control they finances. Patients taking SSRIs have been linked to obsessive and compulsive shopping, with the people getting broke more often. The efficacy of SSRIs in mild or moderate cases of depression has been disputed and may or may not be outweighed by side effects, especially in adolescent populations.

SSRIs can cause various types of sexual dysfunction such as anorgasmia, erectile dysfunction, diminished libido, genital numbness, and sexual anhedonia (pleasure-less orgasm). SSRI use in pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of spontaneous abortion and preterm birth. A systematic review of the risk of major birth defects in antidepressant-exposed pregnancies found a small increase (3% to 24%) in the risk of major malformations and a risk of cardiovascular birth defects that did not differ from non-exposed pregnancies.

A 2017 meta-analysis found that antidepressants including SSRIs were associated with significantly increased risk of death (+33%) and new cardiovascular complications (+14%) in the general population. Researcher David Healy and others have reviewed available data, concluding that SSRIs increase violent acts, in adults and children, both on therapy and during withdrawal.

Meta analyses of short duration randomized clinical trials have found that SSRI use is related to a higher risk of suicidal behaviour in children and adolescents. Serotonin syndrome is typically caused by the use of two or more serotonergic drugs, including SSRIs.[108] Serotonin syndrome is a condition that can range from mild (most common) to deadly. Mild symptoms may consist of increased heart rate, fever, shivering, sweating, dilated pupils, myoclonus (intermittent jerking or twitching), as well as hyperreflexia.

Violence

Psych Drugs in Drinking Water, Fish on Prozac - Austin Wellness Mental Health, Dr Vincent Bellonzi (Psychetruth YT channel)

Do Antidepressants Cure Depression? Are Psych Drugs Safe? Dr. Colin Ross & Corrina (Psychetruth YT channel)

SSRIs have a complex and not well-understood impact on people, with a wide range of responses. SSRI use is correlated with the rate of convicted offenses from assault to murder as well as with suicide. A lot of circumstantial evidence connects cases of gun violence, especially school shootings, to SSRI use.

Many mass shooters have taken SSRIs.

 

An example

Page name	Description
Fluvoxamine	An antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class. It may be of use in treating long Covid.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
David McGowan	“If ignorance is truly bliss, then why do so many Americans need Prozac?”	David McGowan	2000

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