Why antidepressants may cause suicidal behavior

For years, antidepressant drugs have been connected with an increased suicide risk and aggressive behaviour - and researchers may have just unknowingly uncovered the reason. A new study has just found that antidepressants are actually decreasing the amount of serotonin in many patients' brains, instead of increasing it as they are meant to. Serotonin is a feel good brain chemical that's thought to be lacking in depressed patients, and depression drugs are meant to function by increasing serotonin levels.

However, according to Columbia University's Dr Rene Hen who led the study, in about half of the population "the more antidepressants try to increase serotonin production, the less serotonin (these people) actually produce." So, for half of the population, these drugs would actually be making the condition worse.

This is a conundrum for the makers of antidepressants and the doctors prescribing them; the effects of lowered serotonin levels aren't pretty, particularly on people with already low levels. According to researchers, "lower serotonin function and impulsive/aggressive traits are associated with suicidal acts, including completed suicide." Autopsies of suicide victims have also found lowered levels of serotonin in the frontal cortex region of the brain, compared to those who died of other causes.

Aside from speaking loudly about the dangers of antidepressants – which are becoming more and more widely prescribed - this should tell you something else pretty clearly too. Doctors and drug companies who call themselves authorities on health often have no idea what their drugs are doing to the people who take them.

You'd think at some point during the years of "gold standard" clinical trails the fact that these drugs were having the exact opposite effect as intended on half of the people taking them would have come out. This really points to some pretty glaring deficiencies in the gold standard and all those connected with the process. It should also be a wake up call to anyone taking any pharmaceutical drug that you're simply a guinea pig of the chemical-driven drug companies - no matter what drug you're taking.




Source : www.zambiapost.com