Researcher: Psychiatric Drugs Are Responsible For 500,000 Deaths Every Year

According to a leading Danish scientist, drugs used to treat psychiatric disorders in the west may be responsible for the deaths of half a million people over the age of 65.

“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. This would lead to healthier and more long-lived populations.” says Professor Peter Gøtzsche, the Research director at Denmark’s Nordic Cochrane Centre.

His research was published in the British Medical Journal and is likely to stir some serious controversy, but his concerns aren’t exactly unfounded.

Under-reporting of deaths in industry funded trials is another major flaw. Based on some of the randomized trials that were included in a meta-analysis of 100,000 patients by the US Food and Drug Administration, I have estimated that there are likely to have been 15 times more suicides among people taking antidepressants than reported by the FDA—for example, there were 14 suicides in 9,956 patients in trials with fluoxetine and paroxetine, whereas the FDA had only five suicides in 52,960 patients, partly because the FDA only included events up to 24 hours after patients stopped taking the drug.” Gøtzsche says in his research.

An additional study of patients around 55 years old found benzodiazepines and similar drugs resulted in a death rate twice as high. But sadly, the reality of living without these drugs can be scary to people who have been prescribed them.

“We need new guidelines to reflect this,” writes Gøtzsche. “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.”