US FALLS BEHIND AS UK AND EUROPE FORGE AHEAD BANNING ‘VIOLENCE DRUGS’

Added: (Fri Sep 16 2005)

Pressbox (Press Release) - In the land where antidepressant-fuelled school shootings have resulted in 29 dead and 54 wounded, US drug regulators are being accused of dragging their heels following landmark statements from Europe and the UK over the prescribing of controversial psychiatric drugs.

The lucrative child-drugging market has received a major setback following the announcement from the European Medicines Agency warning against child antidepressant use following a review of clinical trials that showed the drugs cause “suicidal behaviour, including suicide attempts” and “hostility” including aggression, oppositional behaviour and anger.

Violent and suicidal behaviour has been witnessed in the US where there are a reported 1.5 million children on antidepressants. Eight out of the last thirteen US school shooters were on antidepressants at the time of the killings, a common denominator that raised serious questions about their use for children and adolescents.

In 2003, the drug regulatory body in the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), was the first to issue warnings regarding antidepressant usage in under-18s. And in March 2004, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public health advisory on cautions for use of antidepressants in adults and children.

Questions are now being asked why the FDA is dragging its heels and not following the latest announcement where 25 European countries have banned the use of these drugs for under-18s. A major factor in the US is the profit-driven drugs industry. Last year, $4.5 billion was spent on direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceutical drugs.

Since 1991, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a psychiatric watchdog group, and independent doctors and researchers have raised the alarm about many of these drugs causing suicide and violent behaviour.

Brian Daniels, national spokesperson for the CCHR in the UK, is keen to point out the myth of the “chemical imbalance” that underlies the prescribing of antidepressants.

“Psychiatrists are telling parents their child has a “chemical imbalance” of the brain despite the complete lack of empirical scientific evidence to support such a claim. Furthermore there is no test to find a “chemical imbalance” or so-called disorders. The child-drugging epidemic is more about profit than people’s lives.”

CCHR was established by members of the Church of Scientology in 1969 to investigate and expose psychiatric abuses of human rights.