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Prozac Mania - Page 2

© John McManamy

If this study is to be taken at face value, then one can no longer blame a patient's bizarre behavior simply on his or her condition prior to taking the drug. According to the study's author, Dr David Healey:

"People [on Prozac] don't care about the consequences as you'd normally expect. They're not bothered about contemplating something they would usually be scared of ... We can make healthy volunteers belligerent, fearful, suicidal, and even pose a risk to others."

Other scientists are quick to say this is an extreme overstatement. Morever, Healey's research methods have been called into question. In an article in the New York Times Dr Matthew Rudorfer, associate director for treatment research at the National Institute of Mental Health's Division of Services and Intervention Research, acknowledges that SSRIs are "not innocuous, and they should not be used casually." Nevertheless, "it's a vast overinterpretation to say that they are dangerous and should be avoided."

Even Dr Martin Teicher of Harvard, who first sounded the alarm in 1990, says he views the suicide risk as something "that clinicians need to be aware of but it's generally not a huge problem."

But that comes as cold comfort to the handful of unlucky ones:

Until last year, Eli Lilly, makers of Prozac, had managed to settle all of its 200 or so civil claims out of court. But that changed last year:

In 1992, Bill Forsyth, a retiree living in Hawaii, was prescribed Prozac for his anxiety and depression. The next day, he called his doctor to say he felt 200 percent better. The day after, however, he requested to be taken to a psychiatric hospital, where doctors continued giving him the drug. Eleven days later, he returned home, stabbed to death his wife of 37 years, then impaled himself on a kitchen knife.

Eli Lilly won the case, but possibly lost a long-term war, for the company was obliged to make public incriminating internal documents dating back to 1978.

According to company minutes, Eli Lilly had full knowledge of what its top-selling drug could do to some people. In the company's own words: "There have been a fairly large number of reports of adverse reactions ... Another depressed patient developed psychosis ... Akathisia and restlessness were reported in some patients."

In another meeting, it was noted that, "some patients have converted from severe depression to agitation within a few days; in one case the agitation was marked and the patient had to be taken off [the] drug."

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