Warning – Your Anti-Depressant May Induce Psychosis — (Turning Point Psychotherapy)

The word psychosis is generally meant to describe the state of  an individual who  has lost contact with reality. There may be hallucinations and/or delusions, disordered thinking and an inability to complete daily activities like showering, eating and sleeping.  On the extreme end of the spectrum psychosis involves murder and suicide.

Why is it then, that drugs like SSRI’s which are prescribed to treat depression are so often involved in murder and suicide?

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school massacre, we learned that that the shooter, Adam Lanza suffered from Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder,  commonly treated with SSRIs.  Almost every mass shooter in recent history was taking, or had just come off an SSRI.

The reason Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors induce psychosis, simply put, is because they inhibit the ability to metabolize or break down serotonin.  Since the 1950′s, before SSRI’s were a billion dollar industry, we’ve known that too much serotonin can make a person psychotic – just like we’ve known during the height of tobacco industry profitability that cigarette smoke causes cancer.  Click here for access to a very lengthy list of evidence linking SSRI’s to psychosis including:

• documented school shooting or school incidents where the assailant was under psychiatric care and taking some form of SSRI,
• legal cases won using SSRI defense,
• important journal articles and
• highly publicized cases involving SSRI’s.

Early research on serotonin was done by Dr. Felix Sulman at Jerusalem University in the mid 1950′s. He determined that it is never in the best interest of a human subject (or animal for that matter) to impair their ability to metabolize serotonin – not even “selectively”.  His research revealed that individuals who couldn’t metabolize serotonin would suffer from what he termed Serotonin Irritation Syndrome.

Dr. Sulman found that the subjects in his study suffered from migraines, hot flashes, irritability, sleeplessness, pains around the heart, trouble breathing, worsening of bronchial symptoms, horrifying nightmares, poor sleep just on the edge of consciousness, and would cause pregnant women to abort.

Additional research later finds elevated serotonin in psychosis or schizophrenia, mood disorders including depression and anxiety, organic brain disease, mental retardation, autism, Alzheimers, suicidality, violence, arson, reckless driving, exhibitionism, hostility and argumentative behavior.  Even  rabbits would become aggressive when their serotonin levels were raised. You won’t see these side effects listed on the warning labels, but you don’t have to look far to see their effects on our society.

For many reasons including but not limited to genetic deficits, some people lack the ability to break down serotonin on their own. In 1996, researchers at the University of Southern California were testing mutant mice from a genetic experiment gone bad. They found the mutant mice were born with an excess of serotonin in their brain and were blind,  jittery and exceedingly violent.  Another study was done on a family of Dutch men to determine why they had such high levels of violent crime in their family. The study found they were missing a specific enzyme that breaks down serotonin known as monoamine oxidase A.¹

We need to metabolize serotonin, just like we need to avoid inhaling cigarette smoke.  However, with the pro-corporate supreme court, the extent of our protection is fast becoming limited to the warning labels on the bottle. Legal remedy for damages are less and less available to citizens injured by pharmaceuticals. But we don’t want it to get that far, obviously. We would like to prevent psychotic breaks instead of litigate them.  Based on the evidence, a good way to prevent psychotic breaks and to effectively treat the symptoms of depression is to engage in the least invasive forms of evidence based therapy, most notably cognitive behavioral therapy. Regulating blood sugar, moderate exercise and good sleep hygiene are also among the basic starters for preventing and treating depression before turning to drugs.

– See more at: http://www.turningpointpsychotherapy.com/latest-news/warning-your-anti-depressant-may-induce-psychosis#sthash.jhizKAuY.dpuf