If every single person currently taking psychotropic medications or antidepressants were to be pulled off these deadly drugs and given a new, safer regimen instead, society would be much better off. This is the larger inference of a new review published in The BMJ (British Medical Journal), which found that more than half a million people in the West die every year from psych meds, which authors found have “minimal” benefits and a multitude of harmful side effects.

Researchers from the Nordic Cochrane Centre, an independent drug safety analysis group based out of Denmark, looked at the data on antidepressant and dementia drugs and found that, in most cases, they could cease to be administered across the board without inflicting any harm on patients. The demonstrated benefits of these widely administered drugs are lacking, researchers found, and many patients are taking them needlessly.

The paper, entitled “Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?” looked at a series of randomized trials on antidepressant and dementia drugs and found that, contrary to popular belief, virtually none of these studies took an honest look at the drugs’ “side” effects. Likewise, patients who took placebo pills during clinical trials fared roughly the same as those who took the actual drugs, suggesting that psych meds don’t even work in the first place.

Using a meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials in patients with dementia, researchers discovered that more patients die from taking FDA-approved antidepressants than do patients who take no drugs, or who use other unconventional treatment methods. Similarly, the all-cause mortality rate was found to be 3.6% higher among patients who take newly-approved antidepressants compared to patients who take no antidepressants.

“Their [the drugs’] benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal,” wrote Peter C. Gotzsche, a Nordic Cochrane Centre professor, about the utter uselessness of psych meds.

Industry research on antidepressants heavily manipulated: psych meds kill, and people would be better off without them

Most industry-funded studies favoring psych meds tend to skew the sample groups and test data so much that the results end up becoming meaningless. Underreporting of deaths, according to Nordic, is another major problem in the clinical trial process. The group estimates that the suicide rate among antidepressant users is some 15 times higher than what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports publicly.

Meanwhile, doctors continue to prescribe psych meds to patients who don’t actually need them, contributing to the roughly 5 million deaths that have now occurred from these drugs in the West just in the past decade. Pharmaceutical industry lobbying encourages doctors to prescribe these deadly medicines to patients in exchange for cash bribes, vacations, fancy meals and other lavish perks.

All of this, combined with the fact that patients are often manipulated through industry-funded research to take harmful drugs, blows the lid wide open on the corrupt psych med industry. Psych meds have been proven to destroy the brain, and their only perceived benefit is providing temporary, but never lasting, relief.

“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm — by dropping all antidepressants, ADHD drugs and dementia drugs… and using only a fraction of the antipsychotics and benzodiazepines we currently use,” added Gotzsche. “This would lead to healthier and more long-lived populations.”

Antidepressants don’t work, and they often make things much worse for suffering patients

Clearly controversial, Gotzsche’s study is both timely and relevant, as antidepressants continue to make headlines for their involvement in school shootings, airplane crashes and other unfortunate events often blamed on terrorists or guns themselves. It makes a strong case for putting an end to the antidepressant racket and helping people recover from being tricked by drug industry sleight of hand.

When all is said and done, the drug industry essentially manufactures fake studies that, by design, are meant to put whatever drug that’s being tested into the positive category in terms of safety and efficacy. Upon further analysis, however, it becomes clear that the drugs simply don’t work as claimed, and often injure many patients along the way.

“Because psychotropic drugs are immensely harmful when used long term, they should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients,” finalized the authors.

“We need new guidelines to reflect this. We also need widespread withdrawal clinics because many patients have become dependent on psychiatric drugs, including antidepressants, and need help so that they can stop taking them slowly and safely.”

The full study is available for free viewing here:
BMJ.com.

Be sure to check out Gotzsche’s book Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare here:
Amazon.com.

A free chapter from his book can also be accessed here:
RadcliffeHealth.com.[PDF]

Sources for this article include:

http://www.bmj.com

http://rt.com

http://www.independent.co.uk

http://www.theguardian.com

http://www.arafmi.org[PDF]

http://www.amazon.com

http://www.radcliffehealth.com[PDF]