In August of 2009 ABC News did a story on antidepressant use in pregnant women, with one of the sections entitled “Fresh Guidance on Antidepressant Use in Women”. Fresh guidance, indeed. The only thing fresh about it was that a number of the academic psychiatrists who had been receiving large sums of money to serve on various “Women’s Health” consulting boards related to mental health paid for by the pharmaceutical industry, who were also being paid to fan out across the country and give lectures designed to convince psychiatrists to give SSRIs to pregnant and lactating women, were being quoted in the article as stating that antidepressants were safe to give in pregnant and lactating women. That was, in fact, far from the truth. It has been known for quite some time that SSRIs can induce cardiac defects, increase the risk of miscarriage, and cause other problems like Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH). The drugs cross the placental barrier, for Christ’s sake. Would you take a drug that messes with the brain’s serotonin receptors in your unborn baby, willingly? Hopefully not! Why not just use crack cocaine?
Amy Philo, a mom who developed severe psychiatric symptoms as a result of being given Zoloft in the post-partum period, was contacted by ABC News about their story, but she was never put on the air. Instead, ABC went with a mom who took antidepressants during pregnancy.
Amy Philo and son
See Amy Amy Philo Speaks Out on the Mother\’s Act.
Since 80% of the efficacy of antidepressants is purely placebo effect, the much vaunted effects of the mainstream academic psychiatry establisment to get all pregnant women with depressive symptoms on an SSRI, which held the risk of injury or death to their in utero babies, something they would have to live with for the rest of their lives, in exchange for a 4% or so bump over placebo on a depression rating, all of the ranting and raving of mainstream psychiatry over the tragedy of the depressed mom, and this bullshit about how she won’t connect with her baby when it is born, seems a bit overblown, no? The true risks of SSRIs to pregnant and lactating mothers and their babies are now becoming known, thanks to excellent journalist reporting by people like Evelyn Pringle. Hopefully it can save some lives. And babies.
i’m no doctor, but doesn’t progesterone regulate mood and cause contentment, and isn’t a pregnant woman kind of a progesterone factory?
i always thought that post-partum depression was explained by the sudden shut off of progesterone after all those months.
so where are all these so-depressed-that-they-need-to-be-medicated women coming from?
[...] “Fresh Guidance for Pregnant Women on Antidepressants, Indeed.” Fresh Guidance for Pregnant Women on Antidepressants, Indeed. [...]
My best guess is that it’s women who start taking meds before pregnancy or from PPD in the past but cannot get off of them because they can be so incredibly difficult for so many to withdraw from. The disease mongering campaign has gained some ground in the past several years and pregnant women have been marketed to relentlessly from people like Zachary Stowe and Katherine Stone, both friends of Cohn & Wolfe in Atlanta – the firm that helped develop Paxil as the Social Anxiety Disorder drug.
Just go check out the “warrior moms” over at “Postpartum Progress” or the disease mongerers of Postpartum “Support” International who passed a MOTHERS Act type of law in New Jersey.
I’d also be willing to bet that a lot of it has to do with misinformation being spread around by people associated with those groups who have infiltrated the internet on every site possible from Dooce to Mothering.com and La Leche League’s website to the What to Expect website and too many other mommy websites to list – convincing mothers that people like Thomas Hale who are “experts” in meds in milk and people like Zach Stowe and MGH are the real experts, and all those moms out there who are busy taking care of their sick babies or who are grieving their dead babies are just making it all up.
I find it disgusting that people can go around on the internet promoting drugs off label to mothers and nothing happens to them but if you want to talk about vitamins and herbs or massage or some other kind of “alternative” then you’re suddenly practicing medicine without a license or making an unapproved claim that the FDA / FTC will attack.
Go look up Lauren Hale, Katherine Stone of Postpartum Progress, and just google “is it ok to take antidepressants when you’re pregnant / breastfeeding” and see how many of the posts are saying it is and quoting one of the so-called experts that either Thomas Hale cites in his drug those nursing babies crap or that Evelyn Pringle exposed in her numerous birth defects / Mothers Act / Paxil articles.
The really scary thing is that now they are promoting Zyprexa for nursing moms based on a study which “tested” 6 babies. I am sure that the antipsychotics will be next.
If you want to see the reports made to the FDA over the past 4 years go to momsandmeds.com – there is a link to the decrypted FDA MedWatch reports database at the bottom.
I am sure that the antipsychotics will be next — to be the subject of a major marketing push for pregnant women… is what I meant to write.
http://uniteforlife.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/a-persons-a-person-no-matter-how-small/
I wrote this last year and just saw it tonight and felt like I should use it to add to my comments – which apply to the ABC story’s drug pushers in addition to the rest of them.
Just saw Katherine Wisner give GR here. Was like a commercial for drug companies. Cited the evidence for two fold or higher risk of anencephaly and craniosyntosis (Alwan, NEJM 2007) and cardiac defects (septal) Lonik NEJM 2007, Suri 2007, and 6 fold increased risk of primary pulmonary hypertension (Chambers, NEJM 354; 579 2006 also see Andrade Pharmacoepid drug safety) as well as animal study showing that SSRIs caus an increase in pulmonary smooth muscle growth which explains PPH (Fornaro Am J Resp Crit Care 2007 176;1036). Also reduced birthweight and more preterm babies with long term motor dysfunction. And then it was all blown off as the numbers of affected cases are small. But its more than Toyota related deaths! (14)
Wow I would think being in the presence of someone like that would make my skin crawl. Shari Lusskin’s paper presentation on drugs in pregnancy goes through some of the birth defects and then says “recommendation is still to treat” – the page with the pharma disclosures had a picture of a woman holding her finger over her mouth saying shhhhhhhhhh…. as though it was funny!
Katherine Stone got money funneled from Pfizer to give talks on perinatal mood disorders and two other ladies from the board of PSI got grants from Eli Lilly for their “excellence” in “helping” women – I think it was $15,000 to go to the nonprofit of their choice.
And we wonder why they say this junk and put babies at risk…
“It is difficult for a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Here is a much older document I wrote a long time ago based on the previous MOTHERS Act back before Evelyn Pringle was writing articles and researching all the conflicts of interest. I used that Eli Lilly tooth fairy document to look up all the conflicts I could find for the front groups endorsing the MOTHERS Act and I also put in some stuff on Shari Lusskin who was on the President’s Advisory Council for PSI. See page 2 – some of that may be outdated but you get the idea. Google Evelyn Pringle MOTHERS Act and the conflicts of interest are listed in almost every article…
P.S. Hell yes it is more than 14 deaths… over a recent 4 year period there were 1,031 reports of infant deaths (including miscarriage and other infant deaths) to FDA’s MedWatch for psych drugs – 647 AERs for Effexor, and antidepressant reports included 150 premature babies, 145 spontaneous abortions, 208 heart disease cases and 218 other birth defects. I think that was just for SSRI antidepressants but I am not sure. Since only 1-10% of AERs are ever reported then the numbers of actually dead babies could be between 10,000 and 100,000 in the past four years. With the number of babies with heart disease being around 2,080 and 20,800 from SSRIs depending on how many reports are not being submitted to the FDA.
I would hope it’s the smaller number but with 13% of women taking antidepressants during pregnancy and one third taking psych drugs at some point, who knows!!!
I feel sorry for all the babies and their mothers – almost more sorry for the mothers for having to live with the choices that they made. As for people like Wisner, I don’t feel sorry for them. I just think that they must be building up their own bad karma. Maybe they’ll come back as chickens on a McDonald’s farm.
Here is a brochure for the Indiana Star Foundation… and here are the tables from the FDA database…
Maybe Wisner would like to read through those reports.
1 Month Pregnant – How to Tell If You Are 1 Month Pregnant Part 1…
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