Suicide and Murder — Side Effects of Medication

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published October 5, 2019.

According to a 2017 study,¹ 1 in 6 Americans between the ages of 18 and 85 were on psychiatric drugs in 2013, most of them antidepressants. Of them, 84.3% reported long-term use, and having filled three or more prescriptions during the study year.

Despite such pervasive antidepressant use, we’ve not seen any improvement in depression rates. On the contrary, it just seems to be getting worse, and the highest rates of depression are now reported among 18- to 25-year-olds.²

Suicide rates are at an all-time high as well. Statistics reveal suicide rates rose 31% between 2001 and 2017.³ In 2017, nearly 47,000 Americans committed suicide, making it the 10th most common cause of death that year.

While antidepressants are routinely used as a first-line treatment for depression, evidence suggests they cause more problems than they solve. Several studies have shown their effectiveness is on par with placebo,^4,5 and some of the worst side effects have long been ignored, or worse, hidden.

Among them is the risk of violent acts against oneself and others. Research shows the proportion of adults taking at least one drug where suicide is a potential side effect hit 23.5% as of 2013, up from 17.3% in 2005,^6,7 and 38.4% of American adults were in 2014 on one or more medications that can cause depression as a side effect.^8,9,10,11,12

Unfortunately, doctors are more likely to prescribe an antidepressant than do the detective work required to determine whether the depression might be caused by a drug you’re on. Aside from antidepressants, some 200 different drugs have been identified as having depression as a side effect,^13,14 including birth control pills and drugs for heartburn, allergies and pain.

Psychiatric Medication and Violence

Many studies have noted that psychiatric drugs can destabilize patients to the point of suicide or homicide. In a June 4, 2019, article,¹⁵ “The Depression Pill Epidemic,” professor Peter C. Gøtzsche highlights some of his own research that showed antidepressants “double the occurrence of events that can lead to suicide and violence in healthy adult volunteers.”

Other research¹⁶ has shown antidepressants “increase aggression in children and adolescents by a factor of 2 to 3 — an important finding considering the many school shootings where the killers were on depression pills,” Gøtzsche writes.¹⁷

In 2017, Wendy Dolin was awarded $3 million by a jury in a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil. Dolin’s husband committed suicide six days after taking his first dose of a Paxil generic, and evidence brought forth in the case convincingly showed his suicide was the result of the drug, not emotional stress or mental illness.¹⁸

In fact, according to Dolin’s legal team, Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, GSK’s own clinical placebo-controlled trials revealed subjects on Paxil had nearly nine times the risk of attempting or committing suicide than the placebo group.¹⁹

An internal GSK analysis of its suicide data also showed that “patients taking Paxil were nearly seven times more likely to attempt suicide than those on placebo,” Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman reports, adding:²⁰

“Jurors in the Dolin trial also heard from psychiatrist David Healy, one of the world’s foremost experts on Paxil and drugs in its class … Healy told the jurors that Paxil and drugs like it can create in some people a state of extreme ’emotional turmoil’ and intense inner restlessness known as akathisia …

‘People have described it like a state worse than death. Death will be a blessed relief. I want to jump out of my skin,’ Dr. Healy said. Healthy volunteer studies have found that akathisia can happen even to people with no psychiatric condition who take the drug …

Another Paxil side effect known to increase the risk of suicide is emotional blunting … apathy or emotional indifference … [E]motional blunting, combined with akathisia, can lead to a mental state in which an individual has thoughts of harming themselves or others, but is ‘numbed’ to the consequences of their actions. Drugs in the Paxil class can also cause someone to ‘go psychotic, become delirious,’ Dr. Healy explained.”

Eli Lilly Hid Prozac’s Dangers

Another antidepressant notorious for its adverse mental health effects is Prozac, made by Eli Lilly. A scientific and medical expert for over 100 plaintiffs suing Eli Lilly over violence and suicide in the early ’90s was Dr. Peter Breggin. In his blog, Breggin talks about the first case brought before the court:²¹

“Joseph Wesbecker was on Prozac in September 1989 when he walked into his workplace, a Louisville, KY printing plant, shot dead eight colleagues, wounded 12 others, and killed himself. Survivors and relatives of the dead took Lily to court in 1994. They claimed that Wesbecker’s violence was due to Prozac.”

To this day, it was the worst mass shooting in Kentucky history. The Wesbecker case also turned out to be more dramatic than expected. So much so, Breggin wrote a book about it, “Medication Madness,” published in 2008.

His incentive for writing the book was the fact that it was later determined that the trial was rigged. Eli Lilly won the Wesbecker case. The jury decided Prozac was not at fault for the devastating loss of life. However, the judge later discovered Eli Lilly “had paid the plaintiffs to throw the trial by withholding damaging evidence,” Breggin writes.²²

According to a September 12, 2019 article²³ in the Louisville Courier Journal (a USA Today publication), the payoff amount in question was $20 million. Surprisingly, the damaging evidence plaintiffs agreed to withhold was not about Prozac but, rather, another Eli Lilly drug called Oraflex.

However, the agreement between Eli Lilly and the plaintiffs in the case also resulted in many of the documents Breggin evaluated and testified about from ever being known outside the courtroom. (PDFs of the key documents are available on Breggin’s blog.²⁴)

“After the trial, with its secret agreement between the plaintiffs and the drug company, the documents once held by plaintiffs’ attorney Paul Smith could not be recovered by other attorneys or their experts. Their disappearance was so thorough that other attorneys in the consortium of combined Prozac suits … apparently did not know that they ever existed …

I … continued to cite them as a medical expert in product liability lawsuits against Eli Lilly. However, the drug company has reached sealed settlements in every Prozac product liability case in which I have been an expert. In this manner the company has avoided making the documents public in a trial,” Breggin explains.²⁵

BMJ Accuses Eli Lilly of Hiding the ‘Smoking Gun’

The vanished documents didn’t become public knowledge until 2004, when they were anonymously sent to the BMJ, which published them along with an article. “Though criticizing the BMJ for saying that the company had in effect hidden the smoking guns, Eli Lilly never actually contested the allegations surrounding the documents,” Breggin writes.²⁶

Just what did the vanished documents show? That Prozac significantly increased the risk of suicide. In a letter to the BMJ, Breggin authenticates the documents and explains their importance:²⁷

“The second group of documents is a 1985 in-house analysis by Eli Lilly in which the company found a large statistically significant increase in suicide attempts for patients taking Prozac during their placebo controlled clinical trials.

Twelve suicide attempts were found in the Prozac group and only one each in the control group and the comparison drug, a tricyclic antidepressant. Even after the company winnowed out six of the suicide attempts, the remaining 6:1 ratio was alarming.

Furthermore, Eli Lilly hid many of their Prozac-related suicide attempts under false categories (see ahead). Like the activation study, Eli Lilly withheld the suicide study and did not turn it over to the German regulatory agency or to the FDA.

The third group of documents involves a study conducted by the FDA concerning increased spontaneous postmarketing reports of ‘hostility’ and ‘intentional injury’ on Prozac. The FDA used a comparison antidepressant, trazodone, as a control.

The FDA found a relative increase of reports of hostility and intentional injury per prescription of Prozac compared to trazodone. The spike in Prozac reports occurred even before any public controversy surrounding Prozac and violence. After the Wesbecker trial, I repeatedly attempted to obtain the FDA study through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The FDA finally told me that these documents were lost.

The fourth group of documents includes in-house Eli Lilly memoranda showing that the company consciously hid Prozac-induced suicidal acts under misleading categories, such as ‘no drug effect,’ so that they remained undisclosed to the FDA. In one memo, an Eli Lilly employee expresses shame and regret about hiding this data.”

Prozac Victims Paid to Shield Damaging Data on Another Drug

As for the $20 million payoff, that was, as mentioned, to prevent plaintiffs from bringing out damaging evidence about Oraflex — a different drug entirely. As explained by the Louisville Courier Journal:²⁸

“In exchange for the payment, the plaintiffs — eight estates and 11 survivors — agreed to withhold damaging evidence about the arthritis drug Oraflex that Lilly withdrew from the market.

Lilly pleaded guilty to 25 criminal misdemeanor counts for failing to report adverse reactions that patients suffered from the drug, and the drug company feared that the Prozac jury would be more inclined to rule against the drugmaker if it learned of it. The plaintiffs agreed that if the jury found Lilly liable, they would not seek damages, nor would they appeal the verdict if they lost.”

The payoff was made without the knowledge of the judge, John Potter, and when he discovered it, Potter fought for the disclosure of the details of the agreement, including the amount. Louisville Courier Journal reports:²⁹