Andrea Roberts Story Archive from Dallas Morning News

The following is the original news article mentioning Andrea Roberts being on Zoloft. Andrea’s brother John has written in to provide an link to an archived version of the story  on Google, but we cannot locate the original on the Dallas Morning News website. So we are wondering why it may be missing from the DMN site.

A memorial video for the family is here:

John’s comments:

I was about to share the old link that the DMN reported about Andrea being on Zoloft with an friend, only to find that it’s been wiped from their site.  If you google the following string, it will show 4 results with all the same headline:

“andrea roberts” site:dallasnews.com zoloft 

…but when you click each link, you get the following error message:

“The page you are looking for has moved or is no longer available. The site map below outlines the new site and its related RSS feeds. If you are unable to find what you’re looking for, please contact us for assistance” 

Do we have any recourse here, to force them to republish the story?  To me, this is a serious breach of their journalism, and reeks corporate arm-twisting from Pfizer, et al.

Thanks
John

Coroner: FM mom who killed family took anti-depressants

It’s unclear if drug found in Zoloft played role in family’s killing

10:35 PM CDT on Monday, August 27, 2007

By JEFF MOSIER / The Dallas Morning News
jmosier@dallasnews.com

The Flower Mound mother accused of killing her husband and children and then committing suicide last month had a history of depression and paranoia and was taking the drug found in the anti-depressant Zoloft, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office.

Andrea Roberts, 41, and her family were found dead July 31 at their home in the 1800 block of Marble Pass Drive. She and her husband, Michael, 41, and their two children, 11-year-old Micayla and 7-year-old Dylan, died from gunshot wounds.

Studies have found that in some cases, Zoloft and other drugs in the same class can increase suicidal thoughts, particularly among young people.

Officer Steven Caldwell, a Flower Mound police spokesman, said there’s probably no way to know whether the medication was a factor in the suspected murder-suicide.

“It’s a very odd and rare occurrence for a medication to make somebody think that it was OK to shoot their family,” he said. “I don’t know that we could ever put the correlation together.”

Linda Anderson, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, said that Ms. Roberts was apparently taking Zoloft or its generic equivalent at a normal, therapeutic dosage. It was unclear how long Mrs. Roberts had been taking the anti-depressant.

In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration ordered companies that manufacture Zoloft and some other anti-depressants to place warning labels on the prescriptions after clinical trials suggested the drugs could increase the risk of suicidal thoughts in some children and teenagers. Those drug companies agreed this May to expand the warnings to include adults ages 18 to 24 at the request of the FDA.

Pfizer Inc., the maker of Zoloft, has agreed to out-of-court settlements in several lawsuits filed by the families of people who committed suicide after taking the drug.

Police said that Mrs. Roberts left a suicide note, but the contents have not been released to the public.

Filed under: pharmacology

When you sow the wind,

you reap the whirlwind…

A quick note from Jenny:

Those of us in the Psychiatric Survivor Community have watched this most recent assassination in Arizona with a sort of detached horror.

Many of us have been speaking out for so long that we have grown weary, and even numb, to yet another atrocity likely connected in some form or fashion to psychiatric medications.

It has not yet been reported which psychiatric medications have been ingested during the life of the shooter, the media seem to want to pin this one on Pot and illegal drugs.

But I want his full psychiatric history going back to his early childhood to be fully disclosed in the press, and I am calling on the authorities handling this case to make certain this one is not covered up the way that the Virginia Tech shooter was.

I was on my Facebook page today and came across this image posted by one of my friends:

As a former Bradley Childbirth Educator I was incensed that this type of attitude exists in American Obstetrics, not surprised, just enraged.

You Medical people claim to care about our “Welfare” and the health of our unborn children???

And yet you refuse to work with parents who have been educated on how to give birth to their children without drugs?

We are sowing the wind with our children with the use of all of these medications;  Pregnancy and Birth Drugs, Psychiatric Meds while breastfeeding, Vaccines, Antibiotics, and Behavioral Meds when their little bodies and minds reel from the toxic overload.

The Bradley Method is a problem and Dr. Andrew Wakefield is the Devil Incarnate??? NONSENSE!!!

Sometimes I feel so sickened by the lies, I just want to scream in frustration.

It is time for parents to throw off the shackles that bind them.  No more Medical Slavery for us or our families.

Two stories blazed across the headlines today…

The House of Representatives voted to overturn the healthcare bill and World Net Daily is reporting that the new Governor of Hawaii can’t find Obamas Birth Certificate.

What this means is that every piece of legislation that the fake President has voted on these past two years is null and void and the deadly Mothers Act is dead in the water…now we just need to send his foreign ass out of the White House in the biggest Ass Kicking America has ever seen.

No more Medical Slavery and Global Medical Fascism!

Jenny Hatch

Filed under: anitdepressants and pregnancy, Jenny Hatch, mothers act, pharmacology, Big Pharma Frauds, Fake President, Jenny Hatch, mothers act

TIME Magazine on Psych Drugs and Violence

Top Ten Legal Drugs Linked to Violence

By Maia Szalavitz Friday, January 7, 2011

When people consider the connections between drugs and violence, what typically comes to mind are illegal drugs like crack cocaine. However, certain medications — most notably, some antidepressants like Prozac — have also been linked to increase risk for violent, even homicidal behavior.

A new study from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices published in the journal PloS One and based on data from the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System has identified 31 drugs that are disproportionately linked with reports of violent behavior towards others.

Please note that this does not necessarily mean that these drugs cause violent behavior. For example, in the case of opioid pain medications like Oxycontin, people with a prior history of violent behavior may seek  drugs in order to sustain an addiction, which they support via predatory crime. In the case of antipsychotics, the drugs may be given in an attempt to reduce violence by people suffering from schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders — so the drugs here might not be causing violence, but could be linked with it because they’re used to try to stop it.

Nonetheless, when one particular drug in a class of nonaddictive drugs used to treat the same problem stands out, that suggests caution: unless the drug is being used to treat radically different groups of people, that drug may actually be the problem. Researchers calculated a ratio of risk for each drug compared to the others in the database, adjusting for various relevant factors that could create misleading comparisons.

10. Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq) An antidepressant which affects both serotonin and noradrenaline, this drug is 7.9 times more likely to be associated with violence than other drugs.

9. Venlafaxine (Effexor) A drug related to Pristiq in the same class of antidepressants, both are also used to treat anxiety disorders. Effexor is 8.3 times more likely than other drugs to be related to violent behavior.

8. Fluvoxamine (Luvox) An antidepressant that affects serotonin (SSRI), Luvox is 8.4 times more likely than other medications to be linked with violence

7.Triazolam (Halcion) A benzodiazepine which can be addictive, used to treat insomnia. Halcion is 8.7 times more likely to be linked with violence than other drugs, according to the study.

6) Atomoxetine (Strattera) Used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Strattera affects the neurotransmitter noradrenaline and is 9 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to the average medication.

5) Mefoquine (Lariam) A treatment for malaria, Lariam has long been linked with reports of bizarre behavior. It is 9.5 times more likely to be linked with violence than other drugs.

4) Amphetamines: (Various) Amphetamines are used to treat ADHD and affect the brain’s dopamine and noradrenaline systems. They are 9.6 times more likely to be linked to violence, compared to other drugs.

3) Paroxetine (Paxil) An SSRI antidepressant, Paxil is also linked with more severe withdrawal symptoms and a greater risk of birth defects compared to other medications in that class. It is 10.3 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to other drugs.

2) Fluoxetine (Prozac) The first well-known SSRI antidepressant, Prozac is 10.9 times more likely to be linked with violence in comparison with other medications.

1) Varenicline (Chantix) The anti-smoking medication Chantix affects the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, which helps reduce craving for smoking. Unfortunately, it’s 18 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to other drugs — by comparison, that number for Xyban is 3.9 and just 1.9 for nicotine replacement. Because Chantix is slightly superior in terms of quit rates in comparison to other drugs, it shouldn’t necessarily be ruled out as an option for those trying to quit, however.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/07/top-ten-legal-drugs-linked-to-violence/#ixzz1APrGSh5M

Filed under: antidepressants, violence, Chantix, homicidal, prescription drugs, psychiatric drugs, TIME Magazine, violence

Peggy O’Mara’s Response to Letter to the Editor of Mothering Magazine

Following the email on November 23 from Peggy O’Mara which stated:

We have not recommended Zyprexa in any of our articles.
Peggy

I wrote Peggy a reply the same day. Her reply to me follows that on December 20. Since she has asked that I share it with everyone I am posting both here for your benefit so that her reply will be in context. I apologize for the delay – I have been extremely busy the past three weeks and out of town, etc. Our letter to the editor (a revised version) is being considered for the March/April edition of Mothering magazine.

On 23 Nov, 2010, at 11:31 PM, Amy Philo wrote:

Dear Peggy,Thank you for responding to this letter to the editor from another activist. Did you receive the letter that John Breeding and I sent you several weeks ago? After we received no response we published it as an open letter. I did see the letter published in this month’s issue which refers readers to Katherine Stone’s Postpartum Progress and claims that nothing short of medication can help PPD. Perhaps you are still considering publishing further, more accurate information for your readers.

I could have misremembered the use of the term Zyprexa from your article and inserted it in my mind into the excerpt which tells moms to use antipsychotic drugs and continue breastfeeding in 2007. If that is the case I apologize.  I recently gave away my copy of that month’s issue before seeing your September / October article which promotes antidepressants to breastfeeding mothers, so if I am mistaken then that is my fault for getting rid of your magazine before your September edition came out, which necessitated another letter.

I would be happy to clarify the Zyprexa issue in our letter to the editor and modify it to say simply that your magazine recommended the use of “antipsychotic drugs” if it’s true that the word Zyprexa or Olanzapine has not been mentioned in any Mothering articles / posts as a choice that moms should consider.

I do remember after reading your 2007 article, going to Thomas Hale’s website and looking for any studies relating to antipsychotics and discovering that he was recommending Zyprexa on the basis of a study of the blood of six babies.

I gave my copy of your May 2007 article to a friend at a speech I gave in April so I don’t have the hard copy. However this is what I found online regarding the information that you forwarded on antipsychotics. 

These quotes below are from the excerpt that was included with the “Losing It” article from 2007 (I guess you may have had another title like “Overcoming Postpartum Psychosis” or “Victory Over Postpartum Psychosis” or something to that effect on the cover.)

Here is the Losing It article where Sarah Fields from Postpartum Support International writes about how she was on antipsychotics while breastfeeding and refers readers to Thomas Hale.http://mothering.com/health/losing-it

“Self-Care: According to Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, PhD, IBCLC, postpartum depression can be eased by use of an “adjunct treatment to help the body heal itself, but not necessarily as primary treatment. With psychosis, medications are necessary to stabilize symptoms. After that, adjunct treatments can help prevent another episode. That would be the safest course.”8

Kendall-Tackett encourages mothers who want to continue breastfeeding to do so, even through a psychotic episode. To facilitate breastfeeding, she advises: “Mothers need a supportive environment, where mom and the baby can stay together but the baby is safe. Mothers and their care providers also need to know about which medications are compatible with breastfeeding.” The best resource for that is Dr. Thomas W. Hale’s book, Medications and Mothers’ Milk.9″

Filed under: antidepressants, antipsychotics, Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Mothering Magazine, Peggy O'Mara, pharmacology, Postpartum Progress, Sarah Fields, Zyprexa

Viral Video: Psych Visit

This video has gone viral. Let’s share it… Awesome job Kimbriel.

Of course this applies to pretty much every psychiatric “diagnosis” in the DSM.

Filed under: Bipolar Disorder