[Dion]

Originally Posted by peter12

I strongly disagree with this post. Today's drugs have to undergo rigourous testing and scrutiny before being approved for medical use. An SSRI, like Lexapro, or an SNRI, like Cymbalta, can give you that extra safeguard to prevent stress or stop an anxiety attack in its tracks. All they do is increase the amounts of chemicals, like seritonin, which are depleted through anxiety attacks.

If drugs have to undergo rigourous testing and scrutiny before being approved for medical use why do we keep seeing drugs pulled from the market?

Serzone was pulled from Canadian and other world markets in 2004. It was also a drug that I had used for 6 months. It's quite a shock to find out a drug you were using wasn't that safe.

Bristol-Myers Squibb announced today that it is pulling its antidepressant Serzone (nefazodone) from the U.S. market. The controversial antidepressant has already been banned from sale in many countries because of links to cases of liver failure and injury, and at least 20 deaths.

http://mentalhealth.about.com/od/psy...serzone504.htm

Then you have the FDA stepping in due to concerns of suicide events happening while taking antidepressents.

FDA officials expressed great frustration that drug companies had been slow in supplying data from their unpublished antidepressant trials.

GlaxoSmithKline was singled out for mislabelling suicide related events that were possibly associated with paroxetine under the heading “emotional lability.”

During a 10 hour hearing, experts weighed the official presentations of uncertain scientific data against powerful emotional testimony from dozens of families whose children have killed themselves or others after taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor—a class including fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), and paroxetine (Paxil, Seroxat).

In a surprise move on 2 February, a panel of scientific advisers of the US Food and Drug Administration urged the agency to warn that new anti-depressants may increase the risk of suicidal thinking or behaviour among children and teenagers.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...i?artid=338125

After a two-day hearing, two U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory committees have recommended that packages of antidepressants carry a "black box" warning - which is the highest FDA warning level -- indicating that the drugs can increase suicidal tendencies in children and adolescents.

http://www.suicide.org/fda-black-box-warning.html

Truth is there are long term studies done by the drug companies before they hit the market. It's left in the hands of doctors and psychiatrists to report the adverse side effects to the FDA and other health agencies. We as patients become guinea pigs for these newer medications.