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Showing posts with the label #Antidepressants

The Catch-22 of Antidepressants

#Antidepressants #MentalHealth #WeightGain #Depression #HealthNews By Judith J. Wurtman, PhD - Huffington Post The catch-22 of antidepressant therapy is the depression that comes from gaining weight on a drug used to stop the depression. Weight gain is a common side effect of the drugs used to treat depression, fibromyalgia, severe PMS (known as Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and hot flushes. As much as physicians tend to minimize the effects, or protest that patients are gaining weight because they are finally happy and going to restaurants, their patients are protesting. Many are halting their use of these drugs because they cannot stand to live in a body blown up by the overeating generated by the medications. Anna typifies this problem. She had major depression that was intensified by PMS and was prescribed Lexapro. This drug has been used effectively to treat major depression and to relieve severe premenstrual mood changes. It worked -- and left Anna almost 50 pounds he...

How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs.

#Abilify #Antidepressants #Antipsychotics #BigPharma #Psychoactivedrugs Mass psychosis in the US Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux. Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are, in fact, bipolar and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging...