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The Copenhagen Post
January 7, 2014 07:00
by Peter Stanners
A doctor has been found responsible for the suicide of his 20-year-old patient
The health agency, Sundhedsstyrelsen, has decided to make it harder for doctors to prescribe antidepressants to 18-to-24-year-olds after the suicide of a young man, TV2 News reports.
Danilo Terrida, 20, committed suicide in 2011, eleven days after he was prescribed antidepressants following an eight-minute-long conversation with a doctor.
The doctor never followed up on the consultation and has now been found responsible for the suicide by the National Agency for Patients’ Rights and Complaints.
Harder to get ‘happy pills’: From now on, young patients will have to face an assessment and an in-depth conversation with a doctor before antidepressants can be prescribed.
“Along with the Danilo case, there have been other cases that we, as the oversight authority, are not satisfied with. That is why we are now tightening the rules for this vulnerable group,” Sundhedsstyrelsen spokesperson Anne Mette Dons told TV2 News.
Terrida’s family said that they were pleased that the rules had been tightened for prescribing antidepressants.
“It doesn’t change the fact that we have lost our son,” Danilo’s mother, Marianne Terrida, told Jyllands-Posten newspaper. “The fact that it’s a dangerous drug is not new, it’s been known a long time.”
Researcher: Medication counter-productive: The case has sparked a debate about the dangers of psychiatric drugs, and in Politiken newspaper today Peter Gøtzsche, medical researcher and leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center at Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet, wrote that antidepressants have caused healthy people to commit suicide.
“It is true that depression increases the risk of suicide, but antidepressants increase it even more, at least up until the age of 40,” he wrote.
He added that psychiatric medication often does more harm than good and that patients would often be better off without medication.
“Doctors cannot cope with the paradox that drugs that can be useful for short-term treatment can be highly dangerous when used for years and even create the illnesses that they were supposed to prevent, or even bring on an even worse illness,” Gøtzsche wrote.
Ed – The drug Danilo took was Zoloft (sertraline) – see Danish article below.
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søndag den 5. januar 2014
Danilo Terrida – Endnu et selvmord på lykkepiller
Danilo Terrida søgte den 14. oktober 2011 hjælp hos sin læge. Efter en kort telefonkonsultation fik han ordineret “lykkepiller”, den antidepressive medicin sertralin. På kun 8 minutter var lægen kommet frem til diagnosen depression. Den 20-årige unge mand, der gik på Søfartsskolen i Frederikshavn, havde været ked af det i et stykke tid, og følte behov for hjælp til at få det bedre. Tilsyneladende havde han ikke nogen alvorlig krise med det psykiske, men havde haft det svært, og var langt væk hjemmefra. Det kan siges at han nu for alvor skulle til at være voksen.
Den 25. oktober ringede han til sin familie i Gentofte, og de snakkede bl.a. om at Danilo havde været ude at løbe. “Jeg har det fint, mor”. De vidste dog at han “hang med hovedet”, og kedede sig langt væk fra sine vante omgivelser. Samme dag lagde han en foruroligende besked på Facebook, og ringede til venner på Søfartsskolen for at fortælle at han ville begå selvmord. Ingen troede ham. Senere blev han fundet, han havde hængt sig fra en kran. Det var altså ment helt alvorligt.
Hans far, Denis Terrida, var ellers på vej mod Frederikshavn, efter at Danilos bror, Daniele Terrida havde set den mystiske Facebook-opdatering. Han kom kun halvvejs før politiet ringede med den tragiske nyhed.