Horrific Side Effects of Psych Meds

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Amanda Baggs posted this link to her blog. I think it's very important to share.
Psych Meds drove my son crazy

I didn't even know there was such a thing called autistic catatonia, thats scary. It was a very good heart warming story, I thought.

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Where did these come from?

http://www.prozactruth.com/psychiatry.htm
http://www.breggin.com/

I'm not sure what you are asking? Could you clarify?

everyone who is on meds should be aware of what side effects can and do occur. it is unreasonable to dismiss meds totally~ they do work for some people. for others, they do not. What this woman and her family went through was horrific ~ not only because the meds caused such chaos for the boy, but also because the docs wouldn't listen to the mom ( a common occurence in docs, i've found).

I think that the lesson to be derived from this is that parents should expect to have to be in the role of researcher and advocate for their kid, in the realm of meds just as in most other regards. Never assume that doctors are going to know about something like (as in this case) a side-effect that applies to only 1/10 of 1% of the population. They very rarely will.

The author suggested that the antipsychotics her son was on caused him to become borderline diabetic. While that is possible, it is also possible that putting on 100 pounds in a year had something to do with it. The particular antipsychotics he was taking are usually pretty safe in terms of blood sugar issues. A couple of atypical antipsychotics, Zyprexa and Risperdal, are very bad in that regard. You should keep that in mind if you read a generalization about atypical antipsychotics and blood sugar -- two drugs are causing most of the problems. If you're a malpractice lawyer, or an anti-psychiatry crusader, it may be handy to say that atypical antipsychotics cause elevated blood sugar levels 50% more often than older antipsychotics did. If you aren't, it's good to note that four or five other atypical antipsychotics only rarely cause those sorts of problems, and that older antipsychotics had other problems which were usually worse.

And this is just one aspect of one family of psych drugs. The others are just as messy and complicated, and you can be sure that there are aspies being prescribed all of them. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, drugs for ADD or Tourette Syndome; psych drugs for just about everything they've invented a name for yet.

Some psychiatric drugs may have benefits which greatly outweigh the risks for a particular individual, while others would be extremely poor choices. Don't expect your doctor to infallibly sort this out. There may be a baby, there's definitely bathwater, and it will ultimately fall to you to distinguish between them. Expect to have to do a lot of homework yourself, and be prepared to talk to your doctor about alternatives.

I think it goes without saying that we should always research drugs before experimenting on our kids. I think this story is about the intense pressure that a team of doctors, specialists, put on this family. It wasn't just, "let's try this to see if it helps". They threatened them with institutionalization, and that it would be her fault if she neglected her son's urgent needs. The background of the story reveals that these doctors in Minnesota were receiving cash kickbacks for dispensing these meds. It's an industry that neglects the welfare of the patient.

I remember when my son was a toddler and the neurologist suggested Ritalin. This was in 2002 and he said that it was experimental with autistics and no studies had been done. But he thought it might help. He didn't pressure but he did sound assured that it was okay to experiment. I later complained to my husband, what if I didn't have access to the computer? What if I were just a bit more weak-willed? What if I trusted doctors more? (my mom used to obtain prescriptions at the drop of a hat)

It goes both ways. Not necessarily with aspies, there are really no drugs specifically for them anyway. But I've known several people who really needed antipsychotics, and in most of those cases they went from delusional and violent (towards at least themselves, if not others) to being able to lead fairly normal lives. On the other hand, one of them eventually acquired so much liver damage from his antipsychotic and bipolar meds that he died. Yet, had he not taken them, he might have gotten himself killed in some other way. One of the happier cases I'm acquainted with is almost completely recovered after a couple of years on antipsychotics, but he still has a scar on his throat and another on his chest, from earlier suicide attempts.

I totally agree that the pharma industry is corrupt. Doctors may or may not be influenced by their money and perks; I have a relative who is an MD and is one of the most uncorruptable people I've ever known. But he can't know everything, and 90% of what he is going to see are studies funded by pharmaceutical companies. In a system where medicine is for profit, few others have any incentive to throw much money at research.

Of course, most of this is kind of off-topic when it comes to aspies. Even if pharmaceutical companies start trying to develop drugs specifically for autism, they're probably not going to be right for most aspies anyway. They'll probably be like Ritalin... helpful for the ADHD experienced by some, bad for most with OCD, terrible for those with tics, and unacceptable for many other individuals due to side-effects. They're saying now that autism may be caused by as many as 100 different genes, and I totally believe that. It's not like one thing, it's like a whole big array of things, which have a lot in common, but also a lot which differ.

My aspie kid is about to turn 10. So far, he hasn't taken anything but vitamins and minerals, and I hope to go on that way for the forseeable future. But I can imagine doing otherwise at some point. If I do, it will be slowly, carefully, and with a lot of research before the first pill is swallowed. And if it causes more problems than good, he's coming right back off of it. No doctor knows your kid like you do.

Yeah, my son is "autistic" so the ritalin was not for ADHD symptoms, but the impulsiveness, screaming and tantrums. We knew for a fact that 80% of his tantrums and lack of focus was due to his lack of communication skills.

I've done a lot of research on so-called "high functioning" autism and am prepared for the day that my son is dealing with puberty-onset of depression. I think it's a good thing to keep him dope-free until then, so we know what his baseline is.

In psychiatric terms, soon you will be made the lower class because of how feeble you are in intellect.

You think that you know everything and others are left in ignorant confusion of the functions of neurotransmitters but you will learn otherwise. They will make you learn. Only time will tell when we will advance the horror beyond ECT and into better and disturbing forms of mind-control.

Our technology will surpass you greatly...

What if Helen Keller had been put on medication. Would she have achieved what she did? She too had screaming fits and wild tantrums.

What about Edison. Maybe he would have stayed in school, but would he have achieved what he did?

It makes you wonder. Maybe we're trying too hard to eliminate the eccentrics of the world. A little emotion isn't always such a bad thing. It's what makes us human. I like to refer to it as passion.

The article was an eye-opener. What a frightening thing to be pressured to medicate your child. It's real.

Earthdweller, I don't know to whom you are speaking and to what you are referring to. Sorry, I can't respond to something that doesn't make sense. I lost my Orphan Annie Decoder Ring in college.

Equinn, I can't speak on Thomas Edison, I don't remember reading about his eccentricities. I remember Helen Keller, though. I read on blogs that are frequented by Hearing Impaired and they report similar problems [to autistic people] with how they're treated. People knowing they're essentially deaf and not accomodating, forcing Deaf kids to wear hearing aides when they don't always help with comprehension, their lack of comprehension being interpreted for oppositional behavior, etc. Sound familiar?

When teen boys are rejected by a girls, it is very emasculating to them. So it can affect them very badly, to the point where they see all women as evil monsters who must be punished and then they go on a murder spree. Boys with ASD seem especially to obsess over their difficulties with interacting with the opposite sex. I see it all the time here on WP and sometimes it gets so bad I feel like I'm not welcome here because I'm female and I learned I'm not the only female aspie here who feels that way.

Of course I've said things about guys that were pretty nasty as well, so we're even, I guess. Except that I don't want to really go out and murder guys or even castrate them on Father's Day.

Anyway, if this article doesn't prove how psychiatrists are cold, heartless pill-pushers who want to make money on someone who acts the least bit out of the ordinary but isn't hurting anyone, I don't know what is. "We have to give you drugs so you'll stop stacking dishes or sorting mail". Talk about stupid!

Yes, if you study American History policy makers got together to substitute relatively cheap pills for expensive social programs.

I remember reading this story before.

This story is my story, although what happened to Ms. Bauer's son was more severe. I can absolutely vouch for it most probably being true.

I remember reading this and realizing, really realizing, for the first time that none of what happened to me that summer from Hell was my fault. And then, like two weeks later, the Eric Conn disability fraud scandal broke in the news, and I realized that it also might not have been done to me accidentally.

I'm not saying that all meds are always bad.

I am saying that you need to be aware of what CAN happen, and you need to believe your kid (and your instincts), and not always just do exactly as the doctor says just because the doctor is a doctor or because the doctor won't listen to you.

It's still out there. My story started in 2010 and continued through most of 2011. It's not that meds are always bad. It's that they can cause bad things to happen, and the doctors don't always know it, because it's not something that happens a lot or something that you're taught about to know about it unless you've seen it before or you attend a lot of conferences to know.