For those who have access to BBC, there is a new documentary on the subject of antidepressants.
It features parts of some of the PSSD Network testimonial videos.
It’s an interesting watch, for those interested.
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Here is a more accessible non-BBC link:
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A fantastic milestone
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Much of the material will be familiar to people who follow RxISK, etc. but the personal anecdotes are remarkable.
One of the earliest published authors on PSSD has herself lived with the condition for nearly 30 years. I wasn’t able to find a disclosure in any past publications, and her own comments suggest this documentary may be the first time she’s discussed it publicly. It’s quite moving.
It’s amazing to see something like this on Panorama. I believe the rough equivalent in the U.S. would be something like 60 Minutes.
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Yes Audrey Bahrick’s story in this documentary is heart-wrenching. What I find unsettling is that the documentary makers are seemingly not very interested in her story either. Her story basically stops after saying “thank you” for coming to visit and hear her out. As if all she wanted was to be heard. I’m pretty sure she wants action, outrage, justice, some kind of follow-up after starting an incredibly difficult conversation, that this is real and affects hundreds of thousands of people.
The narrative focus of the documentary gets unclear and hazy around the halfway mark.
The focus very much seems shift to the patients still taking antidepressants having difficulty trying to come off them, rather than about those who have already stopped them long ago and are permanently castrated or have side effects that never recovered, even after decades.
In my view, people struggling with permanent emotional blunting and sexual numbing for 27+ years after they quit a drug is a far worse implication than people struggling to come off the drug and needing guidance how to wean off. I mean that’s important and worrisome too, but hello? Can we please focus on the elephant in the room?
Especially when Joanna Moncrieff and Erick Turner are saying things that are far more unnerving and have far larger implications about this whole issue at large. Not just about the drugs themselves, but also how the pharmaceutical industry is allowed to operate despite not having any evidence and the unbelievable degree to which they are allowed to manipulate the narrative of the safety profile of drugs for marketing purposes. Some of the excerpts that are being read out loud from the confidential documents that were obtained are utterly sociopathic.
What Erick is saying about the amount of negative studies in FDA trials should be deeply unsettling and indicates a global public safety concern. He implies very heavily that the FDA is not strict enough in the safety assessment of not just SSRIs, but any drug.
The documentary makers seem to be too willing to allow multiple perspectives on the ‘risk-safety-benefit’ discussion instead of emphasizing what most other speakers in the documentary are very clearly saying: “The risk is not worth it and these drugs are not safe, there is no proof that they work as described, and there are horrible life-altering permanent side effects that are systematically being denied by the medical world.”
I understand that neutrality is the point of a documentary, but when one side of the conversation has proven to be a decades-old web of carefully constructed lies then I feel like you have to start logically assessing whose voice deserves to be heard.
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Well said!
We need to contact the BBC panorama for showing them the SSRI scandal isn’t a single case. Telemarketing sells dangerous finasteride, well known making young men impotent for three decades, and SSRIs for hairloss and premature ejaculation without ever seen a doctor. With the Handy number even Josef Stalin, Hasso the Dog or Adolf Hitler gets the prescription from the online prescription doctor.
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Yes. I think a detailed exposé of tele"health" is in order.
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I agree that PSSD got significantly less attention than SSRI withdrawal issues, which is unfortunate. I suspect this is because there are simply more people affected by the former issue. Further, withdrawal issues are generally non-sexual in nature and thus less stigmatizing. Thus, many more patients and doctors are willing to acknowledge it. Two of the medical professionals interviewed for the documentary experienced this issue themselves.
With PSSD, most of the patients who are willing to speak out are very young or won’t disclose their identities. It’s very fortunate that the filmmakers were able to find Audrey Bahrick here. Additionally, the only prominent psychiatrist who speaks openly about the problem is David Healy, who has a complex and sometimes antagonistic relationship with the press.