Dear Editor, It has been reported in the media that GPs are prescribing psychiatric drugs called SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) to women for ‘anxiety and depression’ that are, according to studies, causing defects such as malformed hearts.

Anti-depressant drugs have courted controversy for decades because of the adverse drug reactions associated with them. Marketed as ‘designer medical bullets,’ the public has been warned time and again that antidepressants can cause suicidal and violent behaviour, are known to potentially cause neurological disorders, including facial and body tics and now, to add to the list, birth defects.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, a story featured in the Lancet in July reported that GPs were poor at spotting depression.

Consider Prof Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull last year, whose work resulted in headlines that proclaimed ‘anti-depressant drugs don’t work’. We are bombarded with information pushing us towards a chemical ‘fix’ where anti-depressant drugs continue to be prescribed based upon the cornerstone of psychiatry’s disease model today, the theory that a ‘brain-based chemical imbalance’ causes so-called ‘mental illness’. Popularised by marketing, this notion is a myth, psychiatric wishful thinking. Whatever way it is dressed up, it is playing Russian roulette with a child’s life.

Brian Daniels, Citizens Commission on

Human Rights (United Kingdom)