Jake McGill-Lynch Photo Credit: cchr.org.uk
Jake Lynch, a healthy 14 year old British child was diagnosed with anxiety and put on Prozac in 2013. Just a few weeks later he committed suicide.
His parents, Stephanie McGill and John Lynch were devastated. The grieving mother said “My son had no history of self-harm, depression or suicidal thoughts, he’d just had anxiety. But 46 days after starting on Prozac, he shot himself. I later discovered to my horror that Prozac has a higher risk of suicide in children and adolescents. It was the first time I’d heard about these side-effects — if I’d known before, there is no way I would have taken that risk with my child, especially as Jake wasn’t even depressed.” 1
Imagine the horror and betrayal felt by these parents knowing that Jake’s psychiatrist neglected to warn them of Prozac’s potential dangers.
Another bereaved parent who wants to remain anonymous has personally searched coroner reports that date back a decade. This man asserts he has discovered 3,600 suicides related to antidepressant use. Seventy of these suicide victims were children.2
Although this is not considered a scientific study, that father is not alone in his assertions.
Dr. Joanna Moncrieff is a senior lecturer in psychiatry at University College London. She says that there are definite signs that antidepressants pose a suicide risk for young people. She states, “My profession has failed to do enough research to understand what these drugs do in the brain. And until we know more, I believe we should stop giving them to young people.”
In Jake’s case, he was sent to a psychologist when someone at his school decided an essay he had written was “dark.” The psychologist diagnosed him with a mild case of Asperger’s syndrome. Jake’s mom wanted him to receive talk therapy, but instead a psychiatrist saw the youngster for 10 minutes and prescribed Prozac, supposedly to “help him with his exams.”
Like many parents, Jake’s father assumed the psychiatrist knew what she was doing. John states, “Within days of starting Prozac, for the first time in his life Jake had problems getting to sleep and would wake up early. He became withdrawn and moody. At the time I put it down to teenage hormones, and more schoolwork.”
Less than a week after he began taking Prozac, Jake walked out of a mock exam. When he got home, he cried uncontrollably for hours.
Instead of investigating this troublesome development in her patient, Jake’s psychiatrist merely doubled the dosage.
His moodiness continued. When they saw the psychiatrist after 19 days, Jake’s mom told her she didn’t think the drug was working. The psychiatrist reassured her that the symptoms would be gone in three or four weeks.
The psychiatrist was wrong. Jake shot himself three weeks later. 3
As early as 1990, the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) published this information:
“Six depressed patients free of recent serious suicidal ideation developed intense, violent suicidal preoccupation after 2-7 weeks of fluoxetine (Prozac) treatment. This state persisted for as little as 3 days to as long as 3 months after discontinuation of fluoxetine. None of these patients had ever experienced a similar state during treatment with any other psychotropic drug.” 4
In other words, for over 25 years it has been widely known that Prozac can create suicidal thoughts and actions. Seemingly, only insane maniacs would continue to market and prescribe such a drug. This is apparently the case.
It is time to stop crediting psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies with “having the public’s best interest at heart”, when this is continually disproved.
How many more youngsters will we lose to suicide before the psychiatric “industry of death” is shut down for good?
1 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3503456/Weeks-Prozac-Jake-14-took-life-aren-t-parents-warned-suicide-risk-children-anti-depressants.html
2 ibid
3 ibid
4 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2301661
My deepest heartfelt sympathy to this family and the many others who have suffered such an incomprehensible and unnecessary lose due to the negligence, hubris and greed of the pharmaceutical industry and the doctors who follow blindly. Twenty years ago I was given Paxil for mild post partem depression and spent the next five years in and out of psychosis from a toxic, fraudulently manufactured batch of pills out of the Glaxo Smith Kline plant in Cidra Mexico. During those five years, I lost my 14 month old son and new born daughter, my husband, my home and my soul. I thought of suicide many times to relieve the mental and emotional anguish and questioned why I was miraculously still alive. In June, my daughter was taken to the ER by her father for mild anxiety. She was admitted, given two heavy anti psychotic drugs, sedatives and anti depressants. They did this for five days. She would only be released if it was to a psychiatric hospital for inpatient treatment. From the first day I was fighting the administration, claiming negligence and fraud. She had not even been seen by a doctor, had no diagnosis and they were forcing her into a facility that I knew would continue to drug her. In brief, she was in that hospital five days before I could get her out. Again, she was on heavy doses of anti psychotics and sedatives that SHE DID NOT NEED in the first place. She was gone. My beautiful, vibrant, intelligent daughter who was attending the School of Journalism, modeling, falling in love and being an ambitious 19 year old with her whole life ahead of her- had been erased with overdoses of antipsychotics and other drugs that flooded her brain. All because of mild anxiety that could have been resolved with some yoga and a healthy diet. She has been picked up by the police several times, taken to the county mental hospital where they have restrained her for refusing to take the meds, and injected her with criminal levels of haloperidol, abilify, ativan,and risperidol. then left her in restraints, in solitary confinement – all because she refused the meds, which she has the right to do. She is home again, confused, in and out of rage and sadness, and is asking questions like a two year old does about everything. She literally has been reduced to a toddler and she talks of suicide often. She is in so much emotional pain and she doesnt remember or understand why. I am afraid to leave her for fear she will act on her ideas. I have looked for a doctor outside of psychiatry and am met with no anwsers. I do not want her to go through what I did all those years ago. I remember the terror and the darkness that suffocated me because of the Paxil as though it was yesterday. I know I survived it so I could be here for my daughter. But, I am not doing a very good job of helping her. There are countless doctors who want to help by putting her on the drugs that started this. Their answer is to keep her sedated and compliant, and her father is fine with that. I know there must be a different way and I am educating myself on homeopathy, herbal remedies and Chinese medicine. I may not be able to bring her back from the trauma her brain has experienced, but, I will be damned if I will allow them to take her away from me forever. Any suggestions or comments on finding maybe a neurologist in the southwest who specializes in repairing the adverse effects of pharmaceutical toxicity would be appreciated. Sorry this is so long, but I feel it is important for people to be aware of how unethically the health industry operates, how hubris and greed will continue to allow harmful, even fatal, decisions to be made that are counter-intuitive to the welfare of those seeking genuine help.