How bad are psychiatric drugs for the brain

like lexapro, effexor, wellbutrin, xanax, seroquel, zyprexa? what is it that is so bad about them?

squash wrote:like lexapro, effexor, wellbutrin, xanax, seroquel, zyprexa? what is it that is so bad about them?

dependance. situationally if you rely on meds to fix your problems, you depend on them. Xanax itself can become physically addicting if taken long enough. also the side effects are incredibly invidualistic so depending on the person you cna have severe to mild/no side effects.

sometimes they are needed. Sometimes they are simply to stabilize you while you work out the underlying issue and once you and your therpaist are comfortable with your progress, you will get weened off them. If your confident in your ability to not do anything drastic, you can work out the underlying issues without meds.

I personally dont like the drugs because of the potential side effects and the issue of dependency. The two antidepressants i took turned me into a zombie. I felt it was better to be sad than to feel absolutely nothing. Im not sad, and im not happy, didnt seem like a way to live.personal opinion though.

I read some researches that they definitively can cause brain damage. http://www.ahrp.org/risks/biblio0100.php

They also do not address the underlying causes of the brain symptoms. The brain is part of the body. They do not work for many people. They trade symptoms in the brain for symptoms in the rest of the body, and sometimes do not even help the symptoms in the brain. There are different causes of the brain symptoms. Some may be emotional reasons, or spiritual reasons, or nutritional reasons, or hormonal reasons, or immune/inflammatory reasons. Trying to just tweak brain chemicals without understanding cause or without addressing other issues can be damaging. It is not just damage to the brain. There are always trade-offs except when addressing actual underlying cause of the brain problems. Oh - and even when you no longer need them they can cause horrible horrible horrible withdrawal symptoms (physical and psychiatric worse than what you took them for in the first place). That's a great way for pharmaceutical companies to keep people on them for life.

I am not anti psychiatry. But I do want doctors to not treat with just psychiatric meds and then think they are done. That should only be used if necessary to stabilize a severely ill person enough to then begin to truly help the person with whatever underlying problem the person has.

You might be interested in the following thread: schizophrenia/topic75418.html

Although patients, families and the public were not informed - some would argue they were deceived - clinical psychiatrists and researchers have long known about severe adverse drug reactions (ADR) and disabling changes in the central nervous system in a high percentage of patients taking standard neuroleptic drugs. Foremost among these is "tardive dyskinesia" (TD), an often irreversible, disfiguring disorder of the central nervous system resulting in a variety of involuntary movements, particularly of the tongue, lips, and jaw. muscle movements which affects 40% to 60% of patients taking neuroleptics. Recent research findings corroborate earlier reports (since 1970) linking TD to a deterioration of cognitive functions (see below).

http://www.ahrp.org/risks/biblio0100.php

Was a great link thank you, I don't want anyone in my family victimized by psychiatry . One member just started SRIs and thats often the beginning of a nightmare like mine. When they start treating the side effects with more drugs causing more side effect leading to more drugs...

Update: Tardive psychosis is a form of psychosis induced by the use of current (dopaminergic) antipsychotics by the depletion of dopamine and related to the known side effect caused by their long-term use, tardive dyskinesia.

In addition to dopaminergic upregulation in the nigrostriatal tracts, many investigators have suggested that dopaminergic upregulation may occur in mesolimbic or mesocortical tracts, leading to a worsening of psychosis beyond the original level. This phenomenon has been called 'tardive psychosis' or 'supersensitivity psychosis'.

This is very real, the rebound reaction to neuroleptics or "antipsychotics" as they like to call them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardive_psychosis ,
http://knowledgeisnecessity.blogspot.co ... dence.html

Like they did with me they will blame this reaction on "your Illness" as further proof you need more of the offending poison.

Take a good long honest look back at your life before and then after psychiatric drugs and then ask what caused the all the "illness".

First, I never never ever heard of this condition before! Antipsychotics can CAUSE permanent psychosis? Wow! They are being used more and more frequently for people with depression and even many children with behavior and emotional problems, such as when they have suffered abuse and neglect, or even if they are having bad dreams or are hyper. I am stunned by this as I would not have imagined this potential condition.

Then this rhodiola being used for tardive dyskinesia. Interesting. It is stimulating. I know someone for whom this worked better than an antidepressant. Without any side-effects. (Not to worry - under doctor supervision) I know someone else with tardive dyskinesia. I think I should tell my friend with the tardive dyskinesia about the rhodiola!!

I have taken Lexapro, Zoloft, and all kinds, but they never seemed to do anything for me, causing me to think my troubles were somehow psychosomatic, relating to actual mental trauma, and not something that could be "fixed" by a drug, although if I am ever given a stronger drug such as hydrocodone by a doctor, like after a dental operation, I do notice it reduces anxiety. I recently had an operation, and just before they shot something into my IV, and said it was like Valium, and this drug erased all dread and anxiety immediately! I don't remember the name of it.

michijo wrote:I have taken Lexapro, Zoloft, and all kinds, but they never seemed to do anything for me, causing me to think my troubles were somehow psychosomatic, relating to actual mental trauma, and not something that could be "fixed" by a drug, although if I am ever given a stronger drug such as hydrocodone by a doctor, like after a dental operation, I do notice it reduces anxiety. I recently had an operation, and just before they shot something into my IV, and said it was like Valium, and this drug erased all dread and anxiety immediately! I don't remember the name of it.

This makes me think it actually is physical, but perhaps related to systemic inflammation or some other condition rather than just brain chemistry. Have you ever read the research concerning inflammation? They take the serum from an animal acting "depressed" and put it into a control animal and voila - that one acts depressed, also. The connection is believed to be inflammatory molecules. I think they were cytokines.
Here are three things that may interest you:
To READ:Inflammation, Schizophrenia, and Bipolar Disorder
To LISTEN to: Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle to combat depression (It is the second piece in).
To WATCH: Inflammation and Neuropsychiatric Illness Treatment and Testing Protocol

They may have given you hydroxyzine. I think the name-brand for that is Atarax. It is often given before surgery as it has an anxiolytic effect, but is actually an antihistamine!

Jaspar wrote:

michijo wrote:I have taken Lexapro, Zoloft, and all kinds, but they never seemed to do anything for me, causing me to think my troubles were somehow psychosomatic, relating to actual mental trauma, and not something that could be "fixed" by a drug, although if I am ever given a stronger drug such as hydrocodone by a doctor, like after a dental operation, I do notice it reduces anxiety. I recently had an operation, and just before they shot something into my IV, and said it was like Valium, and this drug erased all dread and anxiety immediately! I don't remember the name of it.

This makes me think it actually is physical, but perhaps related to systemic inflammation or some other condition rather than just brain chemistry. Have you ever read the research concerning inflammation? They take the serum from an animal acting "depressed" and put it into a control animal and voila - that one acts depressed, also. The connection is believed to be inflammatory molecules. I think they were cytokines.
Here are three things that may interest you:
To READ:Inflammation, Schizophrenia, and Bipolar Disorder
To LISTEN to: Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle to combat depression (It is the second piece in).
To WATCH: Inflammation and Neuropsychiatric Illness Treatment and Testing Protocol

They may have given you hydroxyzine. I think the name-brand for that is Atarax. It is often given before surgery as it has an anxiolytic effect, but is actually an antihistamine!

Depression could come from a lot of sources, including vitamin D deficiency. Bad diet and nutritional problems mess up the brain. For instance, I just ate a bunch of raw vegetables, broccoli, string beans, etc, ate them uncooked, and drank black tea. I feel fairly alert and not succumbing to depressive tendencies.

Depression could also come from superficial social reality, which lacking depth, fails to fulfill people. I think many Mexican immigrants to the USA develop depression when faced with the superficiality of California, even if they make relatively more money than they are used to.

squash wrote:like lexapro, effexor, wellbutrin, xanax, seroquel, zyprexa? what is it that is so bad about them?

Hey Squash,

Most of the drugs you have mentioned can have some pretty nasty side effects and you should discuss these with your doctor however, none of the drugs you mentioned are "bad for the brain". The two exceptions are seroquel and zyprexa which when given in high enough doses for a long period of time can cause Tardive dyskinesia.

With that said, do not stop taking your medication suddenly because this can cause very severe withdrawal effects. Talk to your doctor about how to wheen yourself off of any medication you no longer want to take.

In regards to some of these comments I just wanna clean things up a bit.

Jaspar wrote:They also do not address the underlying causes of the brain symptoms. The brain is part of the body. They do not work for many people. They trade symptoms in the brain for symptoms in the rest of the body, and sometimes do not even help the symptoms in the brain. There are different causes of the brain symptoms. Some may be emotional reasons, or spiritual reasons, or nutritional reasons, or hormonal reasons, or immune/inflammatory reasons. Trying to just tweak brain chemicals without understanding cause or without addressing other issues can be damaging. It is not just damage to the brain. There are always trade-offs except when addressing actual underlying cause of the brain problems. Oh - and even when you no longer need them they can cause horrible horrible horrible withdrawal symptoms (physical and psychiatric worse than what you took them for in the first place). That's a great way for pharmaceutical companies to keep people on them for life.

Jaspar seems to be presupposes that the mind is an entity that is removed from the body which exerts influence on brain activity. Thus, it seems reasonble to say that psychiatric medications do not deal with the real cause of mental and emotional suffering because the real cause of mental and emotional suffering is a problem with a seperate entity: the mind. Only by dealing with this entity can we hope to free ourselves from mental and emotional suffering.

Although this presupposition is not falsifiable by any observation or premise, in the sense that, we could have minds that exist parallel to brain activity, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that mental states are a product of brain activity. Therefore, it makes no sense to treat the mind as a seperate entity from an active brain such that this seperate entity is the source of mental and emotional suffering. Spiritual and emotional problems are problems that arise from having an active brain that produces a consciousness that is capable of having spirtual and emotional problems. Addressing either of this problems with medications or psychosocial interventions modulates brain activity in such a way that it deals with the source of the problem which is consciousness and the corresponding brain activity (keep in mind that I'm talking about correspondence and coexistence and not causation. Again, all we know for certain is that mental states correspond/coexist with brain activity and changes to one entails changes to the other because they are the same entity. Depression, anxiety, psychosis etc. is both a mental state and a neurological event.)

Jaspar wrote:I am not anti psychiatry. But I do want doctors to not treat with just psychiatric meds and then think they are done. That should only be used if necessary to stabilize a severely ill person enough to then begin to truly help the person with whatever underlying problem the person has.

In regards to this, it seems again that Jaspar's presupposition comes back. If someone has schizophrenia and they are stabilized with medication it really makes no sense to take them off their medication so they can return to a psychotic state unless you are presupposing that the source of schizophrenia is not brain activity but, an unspecified problem with the mind that exerts influence onto the brain. By acknowledging that an active brain and the mind are the same entity the suggestion of going off your medication seems entirely unsupportable and dangerous (one might also suggest the overwhelming amount of evidence that this has terrible consequences).

TruthSpeak wrote:Update: Tardive psychosis is a form of psychosis induced by the use of current (dopaminergic) antipsychotics by the depletion of dopamine and related to the known side effect caused by their long-term use, tardive dyskinesia.

In addition to dopaminergic upregulation in the nigrostriatal tracts, many investigators have suggested that dopaminergic upregulation may occur in mesolimbic or mesocortical tracts, leading to a worsening of psychosis beyond the original level. This phenomenon has been called 'tardive psychosis' or 'supersensitivity psychosis'.

This is very real, the rebound reaction to neuroleptics or "antipsychotics" as they like to call them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardive_psychosis ,
http://knowledgeisnecessity.blogspot.co ... dence.html

Like they did with me they will blame this reaction on "your Illness" as further proof you need more of the offending poison.

Take a good long honest look back at your life before and then after psychiatric drugs and then ask what caused the all the "illness".

In regards to this, TruthSpeak seems to be suggesting that antipsychotics (which stablize persons with psychosis so there is really no need to introduce quotations that imply that there efficacy is alledged) are poison because they can negatively affect your dopaminergic neurons. Although this is true, for persons with schizophrenia this is the only effective treatment. Despite the claims of many internet sites, antipsychotic medication is the only evidence based treatment of schizophrenia and the development of antipsychotics has radically improved the lives of persons with schizophrenia. Also, if left untreated schizophrenia has devestating effects including a drastic reduction in the efficacy of any treatment. Antipsychotics have horrible side effects including an exponential increase in the risk of heart disease, diabetitis, cancer and tardive dyskinesia however, the benefits far outweigh the costs for this population.

There certainly is good reason to be suspect of the off label use of antipsychotics on populations that these drugs were never tested on or approved for use like children, adolescents, seniors with dementia and many other groups but to suggest that these drugs are ineffective or dangerous in general is totally unsupportable and demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of psychopharmocology and it's benefit for populations for which antipsychotics are for.

Merry Christmas!