Studies Show SSRIs Make You Worse, but Make Big Pharma Wealthy

     Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors are a class of antidepressant that – in theory anyway – allow more serotonin to remain in the synapses of the brain’s nerve cells and, hence, “make you feel better.” They are the most commonly prescribed antidepressants and include Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft.

     Several studies show that not only do they not work any better than placebos, but that they actually make you worse.

     The 2006 NIMH funded STAR*D study was the first to show that SSRIs were not only relatively ineffective in the short term, but that they had a negative effect on well being in the long term. The study’s results showed that being prescribed an SSRI for several months was no more effective than taking a placebo. Being prescribed an SSRI for a year was actually less effective than taking a placebo.

     More recent studies confirm those findings. Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic lists the scientific evidence that shows SSRIs worsen mental disorders rather than alleviating them. Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen has shown that SSRIs create brain disturbances, not correct them, and medical journal editor Dr. Giovanni Fava has found that SSRIs increase the chances of depressed patients relapsing and, worse yet, decrease their chances of ever recovering.

     In 2017 Dr. Peter Goetzsche reviewed 17 drug trials and found that SSRIs double the risk of suicide and violence for those being prescribed them. In 2018 a Journal of the American Medical Association article specifically named Celexa as the major SSRI in the STAR*D study which causes depression, not relieves it.

     Of course, you’d never know that from Big Pharma’s ongoing marketing of the “value” of taking SSRIs. Their overriding message is that SSRIs correct the “chemical imbalance” of serotonin in the brain to alleviate your depression or anxiety…even though there is no scientific evidence for any such chemical imbalance.

     2024 revenue in the US for antidepressants was $8.6 billion. SSRI’s accounted for almost half that. In the twenty years from 1998 to 2018 antidepressant use rose from 18.4 million to 70.9 Americans. Half of those were prescribed SSRIs.

     That’s an awful lot of selective serotonin uptake that has nothing to do with your depression or anxiety. But that is $4.3 billion dollars worth of annual serotonin happiness in the pockets of Big Pharma.

     (Thanks to Allan Leventhal, Professor Emeritus at American University, for his article in Mad in America alerting readers to this and to the valuable work of the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group over the years in exposing these dangers).