Antipsychotics have increased suicide by 20 times.

when healy first started reporting the risk of ssri induced suicide many pro drug interest groups disputed his findings. the end result is warning labels are on antidepressant packet throughout the world and not just in north wales. hopefully the end result of this debate will be warning labels on antipsychotic packaging too.

it seems this is going around in circles. this issue is just one of a million that face the victim of psychiatric labeling. try to get it in perspective and stop trying to split hairs by turning it into a culture specific issue which it is not!!!!!

the esence of the above is "An analysis published in the current issue of the British J of Psychiatry (BJP) of the suicide rate among schizophrenia patients treated at the same hospital in North Wales (UK) before psychotropic drugs and patients treated (in and out of hospital) with neuroleptics and /or atypical antipsychotics, found a 20-fold increase in the suicide rate since use of psychotropic drugs."

got it?

The suggestion that suicides have increased due to the use of antipsychotics is cross-cultural and has implications worldwide. Agreed. Never said it didn't.

The increase in suicide rates in this area *does* have cultural-specific implications, yes.

To say it doesn't, when the study itself uses the 'fact' that they use this example because population and ethnic mix have remained stable (which they haven't) is a bit thick.

I'll try once more... this is as plain as I can make it...

The study of increased suicide rates and their possible links to the use of anti-psychotic is a cross-cultural issue.

The use of one area, with a strong individual culture and national identity, along with it's own particular difficulties which impact on suicide rates also, means that that particular culture and geographical area must be taken into account.

Still confused?

If you were studying the suicide rates in inner city areas while the rates might be the same, the ways in which you'd implement measure to address that would be very different to those used in rural areas. Savvy? I guess not...

All together now... "It's the meds! It's the meds!"

Yes I'm having a bad day. Yes I ranted. Yes I'm fed up of trying to discuss real issues with people who can only think in one line.

I stopped visiting schizophrenia.com because all they tell me is 'take the meds...'

Does anyone know of a forum where *all* the issues are discussed, and not just one aspect of psychiatry?

of course people are going to talk about the harmful effects of meds and the medical model. it's the treatment paradigm of psychiatry.

a person labeled with a mental illness is a person that doesn't fit in, is not producing or consuming and is not happy.

schizophrenia is not a disease in anyway, shape or form. psychiatric ideology is about medicalising diversity as a means of social control.

"We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated ... Man does not have the right to develop his own mind."

Dr. Jose M. R. Delgado
Director of Neuropsychiatry
Yale University Medical School
U.S. Congressional Record, 1974

to change this paradigm an enormous social-political shift is needed which will probably happen in the future as our present culture is unsustainable.

to anyone interested.......you can get a pdf copy of this study here.

Lifetime suicide rates in treated schizophrenia: 1875-1924 and 1994-1998 cohorts compared, by D. Healy, M. Harris, R. Tranter, P. Gutting, R. Austin, G. Jones-Edwards and A.P. Roberts, British Journal of Psychiatry (2006), 188, 223-228. This study documents how the suicide rate went from one half of one percent before the advent of neuroleptics (and deinstitutionalization) to four percent in the modern era where neuroleptics are the standard treatment.

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

Quote;

"Although deinstitutionalisation is probably the single most important factor in determining suicide rates in patients with schizophrenia, pharmacotherapy appears to contribute to this risk, and is the element of current care that is under most clinical control."

Also;

"LIMITATIONS

The comparator sample of present-day patients with psychosis was relatively small.

Current clinical recording methods do not make the recording of suicidal acts mandatory, so data on this important variable were lacking for the present-day cohort.

Unlike a randomised trial, this epidemiological study could not control for a range of important variables."

So again, it is inaccurate and misleading to say that the use of antipsychotics has *caused* the rise in suicides - that is not the conclusion of the study itself. It *contributes* to the suicide rate. There are other, more significant factors that have a greater bearing on the results. Which is all I was saying....

The conclusions drawn suggest that the use of medication needs further investigation because that is the contributary factor over which we have most control. Important conclusion, and one likely to be of benefit to patients.

What is *not* of benefit to patients is ignoring the less controllable but more significant factors.

It is not the finding of the study that 'Antipsychotics have increased the suicide rates by 20 times', whichever way you want to look at it.

the ahrp interprets the study this way.

"An analysis published in the current issue of the British J of Psychiatry (BJP) of the suicide rate among schizophrenia patients treated at the same hospital in North Wales (UK) before psychotropic drugs and patients treated (in and out of hospital) with neuroleptics and /or atypical antipsychotics, found a 20-fold increase in the suicide rate since use of psychotropic drugs."

psychrights interprets the study this way.

"Lifetime suicide rates in treated schizophrenia: 1875-1924 and 1994-1998 cohorts compared, by D. Healy, M. Harris, R. Tranter, P. Gutting, R. Austin, G. Jones-Edwards and A.P. Roberts, British Journal of Psychiatry (2006), 188, 223-228. This study documents how the suicide rate went from one half of one percent before the advent of neuroleptics (and deinstitutionalization) to four percent in the modern era where neuroleptics are the standard treatment."

i interpret this study as evidence that antipsychotics are responsible for a 20 fold increase in schizophrenics that are treated with antipsychotics.

if you want to interpret the study in another way that makes you happy i'm pleased for you.

you've also posted above that akathisia isn't even cited as a possible contributing factor in the study. that's why i posted a link to the entire paper so people can see that the antipsychotic induced side effect"akathisia" is indeed cited in the study and is a major contributing factor to antipsychotic induced suicide.

Anonymous wrote:i interpret this study as evidence that antipsychotics are responsible for a 20 fold increase in schizophrenics that are treated with antipsychotics.

if you want to interpret the study in another way that makes you happy i'm pleased for you.

I read the conclusions drawn by those who wrote the paper. They pretty much echoed my interpretation. It doesn't make me happy.

Anonymous wrote:you've also posted above that akathisia isn't even cited as a possible contributing factor in the study. that's why i posted a link to the entire paper so people can see that the antipsychotic induced side effect"akathisia" is indeed cited in the study and is a major contributing factor to antipsychotic induced suicide.

And thankyou for posting the link; although it doesn't state it is a 'major contributing factor' - simply that it is linked, and in conjunction with other factors such as deinstitutionalisation could clearly pose a risk.

In fact, it cites deinstitutionalisation, along with "other social changes" and novel psychotropic drug treatments, as major contributing factors. Which is what I said in the first place; opportunity for suicide in the old asylums was not there in the same way it is now.

I am not arguing that medication is not an important contributing factor. Of course it is. But it is very far from being the only factor.

There were two asylums in North Wales; the one mentioned in the study, and another in Conwy. My husband used to go up to the Conwy asylum to play football with the 'inmates'. This is the 1950s and 60s - the boys were told in no uncertain terms beforehand to let the opposing team win. The one thing he still remembers with absolute clarity were big metal cages all along the corridors, in which the worst patient were locked up, confined also in straight-jackets. The suicide rate was very low. The use of anti-psychotics was nil. The asylum closed and these patients were turfed out into the community; the suicide rate rose.

Draw your own conclusions... I'm sure you will

if you get a diagnosis of schizophrenia a bottle of pills will be handed to you and you will be sent back out into the community. this is how schizophrenia is treated these days. antipsychotics have been hailed as the reason psychiatric hospitals have been emptied.

deinstitutionalisation comes with a bottle of pills or fortnightly injection, we all know that.

psychopharmacology has medicalised schizophrenia as a disease with out any medical proof and main stream society has been deceived into believing sz is a real disease and all sufferers must take their meds (meds that cause suicide). psychopharmacology has done whatever it can to alienate and stigmatise diversity, it's the way they run their business and make money. haven't you ever been told to take your meds? there is no social support for people with sz, they are viewed as having chemical imbalances in their brains, they are isolated, alienated, stigmatised against and told to take their pills. pills that cause suicide either from direct side effects such as akathisia or because the sz is turned into an obese zombie and the self esteem issues that surround being transformed into such a zombie. and lets not forget the people that are forcefully drugged with these toxic meds this is all thanks to the medical model and the treatment model which is meds!!!!

there's deinstitutionalisatism and other social reasons for suicide covered. there both linked to the medical model treatment paradigm which most reading this study already understand.

you're interpretation of the study means very little to me, the ahrp and psychrights are spearheads for human rights in mental health. they are listened to, respected and they achieve positive change.

hundreds of thousands of people are forcefully drugged everyday under the premise that these antipsychotics stop suicide and violence, this is complete #######4. there has been a 20 fold increase in suicide since this treatment model was put in place.

In the very beginning, I asked my psychiatrist , " is it safe?". He said, "yes". I really want to thank you GUEST again for warning me. I'm still experiencing sideeffects after three months off it. I know it would have been worst if I had stayed on it longer. I hope it is not permanent. I'm still taking the ginkgo and flaxseed oil.

ALSO, I WAS DECEIVED IN THINKING I HAD TO TAKE MY MEDICATION. I WAS ABOUT TO RUN AWAY UNTIL I FOUND A THERAPIST TELLING ME ," THEY CANNOT DO THAT" they are *******!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous wrote:you're interpretation of the study means very little to me, the ahrp and psychrights are spearheads for human rights in mental health. they are listened to, respected and they achieve positive change.

My interpretation doesn't differ from that quoted in the study's conclusion.

If so much positive change is being achieved, why then is there a move to allow legislation that would allow lobotomy without the patient's consent in the UK? Seems like we're moving backwards, not forwards.