My Bad – Mothering Magazine Promotes “Antipsychotics” Not Just Zyprexa

Note

For background you should read the following blog posts:

• Mothering Magazine Publishes Letter Reaming Them for Being So “Anti-drug”
• Open Letter to the Editor of Mothering Magazine – Re: “Beat The Baby Blues” by John Breeding and Amy Philo

Recently John Breeding and I published an open letter to the editor of Mothering Magazine. After reading an unsettling letter to the editor which promoted Katherine Stone’s Postpartum Progress in the next edition of Mothering, I sent out an alert to everyone that they should express their disapproval with the magazine for promoting antidepressants and Zyprexa.

Even though the editor, Peggy O’Mara, had not responded to our letter when John Breeding emailed it to her (for weeks), she did choose to respond to one of the other letters to the editor (within three hours) as follows:

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

My first reaction was, “OMG she is so full of it, yes they did.”

So I set out to find the old article. Unfortunately, I no longer have the hard copy because I gave it away at my speech in April in Austin. I searched for everything online and then I realized that I had probably made a technical mistake. I eventually figured out how it happened – that I had mistakenly come to think of their May 2007 article as one where they recommended Zyprexa. What I found online was a categorical statement that moms can take antipsychotics while breastfeeding and that antipsychotics are required for psychosis. I then remembered that at one point, in disbelief at Mothering’s promotion of antipsychotics for breastfeeding, I went to Thomas Hale’s website and searched for antipsychotics, and found that he was recommending Zyprexa for breastfeeding. Then, over time the two pieces of advice began to merge in my mind as I talked and wrote about them. What can I say, I’ve had a pretty busy 3 1/2 years and rewired lots of brain cells to devote large portions of my mind to the task of cramming for law school finals every semester. My bad.

Filed under: adverse drug reactions, antidepressants, pharmacology, Postpartum Progress, Postpartum Support International, PPD, antidepressants, Beat the Baby Blues, Breastfeeding, Breastfeeding and Depression, breastfeeding on antidepressants, breastfeeding on antipsychotics, Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, meds, Mothering Magazine, Paxil, Peggy O'Mara, SSRI, Thomas Hale, Wellbutrin, Zachary Stowe, Zoloft, Zyprexa

Mothering Magazine Publishes Letter Reaming Them for Being So “Anti-drug”

Note

Please see an update to this entry on the following blog post:

• My Bad – Mothering Magazine Promotes “Antipsychotics” Not Just Zyprexa

Today I received Mothering magazine in the mail. On this month’s front cover, their motto is “Inspiring Natural Families since 1976.”

Several years ago I was a subscriber and, after a personal encounter with Mothering’s online censorship of information on the side effects of psychiatric drugs posted to their discussion board, and their ridiculous endorsement of Zyprexa for nursing mothers, I wrote requesting that my subscription be canceled. Yet they continue to send me their magazine which, honestly, I meet at the mailbox with more annoyance than I do junk mail and bills.

In the September / October edition another article was published on breastfeeding helping moms to “Beat The Baby Blues.” John Breeding and I composed a letter to the editor criticizing them for endorsing SSRIs and Zyprexa for breastfeeding. After receiving no response from Mothering Magazine, we published it as an open letter. Today I received the November / December issue. (Thanks for killing trees with the free reading materials, Peggy.)

In the letters to the editor this month they chose to publish one letter from a somewhat anonymous “Christina A.” of Ottowa, Ontario. In this letter Christina A., who cannot apparently brave the use of her own last name, claims emphatically that natural health methods cannot help PPD and she knows this because she tried them all. She says that after nine weeks without sleep (nine weeks without any sleep “at all,” she claims), she went on meds and weaned her baby.

I applaud Christina A. for being brave enough to protect her baby from drug exposure and for standing up to people who would tell her that she should have kept breastfeeding. She captured perfectly the tremendous insanity that is making its way through communities of breastfeeding advocates -that because we know breastfeeding is awesome, then we must all continue breastfeeding no matter what psychiatric drugs we decide to take.

Yet it is astounding that they chose to publish this letter which, in addition to ridiculous claims that there are not any natural health methods that can treat PPD, at the end endorses Postpartum Progress… the blog of Katherine Stone, who was exposed for financial conflicts of interest in Evelyn Pringle’s series on The MOTHERS Act.

Kinda makes you wonder if Mothering Magazine is working with Cohn & Wolfe just like Zach Stowe, or if they were just waiting for an opportunity to promote PSI and Katherine Stone.

I decided to ask everyone to send in their own letter to the editor. You can actually post it directly on their Facebook page (unless they decide to delete it). If you will send me a copy I will publish a few on the cause websites.

Here’s the information:

Activism Opportunity – Mothering Magazine tells readers to breastfeed on antidepressants and Zyprexa

I have posted our open letter to the editor of Mothering Magazine on their own discussion board. Here is the link:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=19073&uid=50053357208

To show Mothering Magazine how you feel about their endorsement of antidepressants and Zyprexa for breastfeeding moms, please go to the Mothering Magazine facebook page, and you may have to click “Like.”

Then click on the link above (assuming that they don’t delete it) and reply to the message that I posted. The message simply has a short intro followed by the open letter.

Unfortunately, Mothering Magazine has not yet published our letter, but they have chosen to publish one reaming them for claiming that natural health methods could help PPD. Apparently the only criticism that they are open to is that which criticizes them for not being even more pro-psychiatric drugs for nursing moms.

Here is our letter: http://uniteforlife.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/open-letter-to-the-editor-of-mothering-magazine-re-beat-the-baby-blues-by-john-breeding-and-amy-philo/

To send a letter to the editor yourself, write to: letters@mothering.com;

Copy: peggyo@mothering.com; melissac@mothering.com; cynthiam@mothering.com

Please also Bcc: amyphilo@yahoo.com. I will publish several on the cause websites myself.

Thanks for your help.

Filed under: antidepressant side effects, antidepressants, Katherine Stone, pharmacology, Postpartum Progress, Postpartum Support International, PPD, Katherine Stone, Mothering, Mothering Magazine, Peggy O'Mara, Postpartum Progress

Open Letter to the Editor of Mothering Magazine – Re: “Beat The Baby Blues” by John Breeding and Amy Philo

Note

Please see updates to this letter on the following blog posts:

• My Bad – Mothering Magazine Promotes “Antipsychotics” Not Just Zyprexa
• Mothering Magazine Publishes Letter Reaming Them for Being So “Anti-drug”

To The Editor:

In May 2007 Mothering magazine published an article titled “Overcoming Postpartum Psychosis.” It featured the story of a woman who nursed while taking antipsychotic drugs but eventually found recovery through alternative means. The article also featured an excerpt from Kathleen Kendall-Tackett stating that Zyprexa was a good antipsychotic to use for breastfeeding moms who go psychotic.

This month (Sept/Oct 2010 edition of Mothering) the same article promoting Zyprexa to breastfeeding mothers is referenced at the end of the Kathleen Kendall-Tackett article on breastfeeding helping moms to “Beat the Baby Blues.” Adding insult to injury, you chose to publish a graphic encouraging the use of Wellbutrin, Paxil, and Zoloft for breastfeeding as though they are “compatible.” Based on what definition of compatible?

That breastfeeding helps alleviate depression, and co-sleeping helps prevent depression, is a wonderful topic for an article. We are very deeply concerned, however, about the misinformation regarding breastfeeding on psychotropic drugs! With all due respect to the admirable premise of the article, helping to encourage breastfeeding, it is a tragic mistake to encourage the notion that mothers can safely breastfeed while taking the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa—a drug that is well-documented to cause excessive sedation, diabetes, permanent neurological damage and high rates of death. Zyprexa is an extremely toxic and dangerous drug, and decidedly unsafe for babies.

After examining the literature critically we are sure that in 2007, the existing data, including one study cited by Thomas Hale as evidence of supposed safety which examined blood samples from only six babies, did not warrant a statement by anyone that Zyprexa is fine for nursing. As just one example of why it is still the case that Zyprexa cannot be considered safe for babies, consider a 2008 article by S. Gentile (J Clin Psychiatry, 2008; 69(4): 666-73.), “Infant safety with antipsychotic therapy in breast-feeding: a systematic review,” which specifically warns against using Zyprexa in breastfeeding mothers, stating, “The drug seems to be associated with an increased risk of inducing extrapyramidal reactions in the breast-fed babies.”

A vital omission for a magazine with such a critical eye on research is to forward any information based on studies, without mentioning that the research was conducted by people under Senate investigation for financial conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies.

Kathleen Kendall-Tackett has published other misleading statements in the past regarding antidepressant effectiveness. One example was a statement in an article on PPD alternatives in Leaven magazine, which claimed that antidepressants and exercise worked at relieving depression equally, when the actual study showed that by the end of the experiment, the medication groups relapsed while the exercise groups improved.

Presumably the editors of Mothering assume that mothers must be told to use antidepressants or antipsychotics because they cannot possibly be expected to get through the horrors of depression or psychosis without taking psychiatric drugs. The assumption is that babies will miss out if their mothers wean them. We think it is a regrettable mistake to ignore the immediate risk of death to the infant in favor of a hypothetical benefit from taking psychiatric drugs.

For a magazine such as Mothering to condone the use of drugs during breastfeeding that cause infants to develop serotonin syndrome, or vomit, aspirate, suffer seizures, slip into comas and die from various toxic reactions, and to ignore the other serious nonfatal risks of these drugs is unconscionable. The wide readership of breastfeeding advocates gives your magazine added responsibilities, and we urge you to reconsider your position.

Mothering has taken seriously the topics of the risks of medicated births, vaccines, circumcision, and even chemicals in toys. In almost every respect Mothering is satisfied with nothing less than perfection in the information conveyed which can affect the way that we raise our children. But we see a blind spot when it comes to the so-called experts that Mothering endorses on the topics of postpartum depression and psychosis.

We encourage the magazine to spend some time investigating the deaths of babies linked to psychiatric drugs and breastfeeding. If you refuse to address the issue honestly you will lose not only the trust of your readers, but credibility in the much larger community of critics and informed consent advocates.

Sincerely,

John Breeding, PhD
Amy Philo

Filed under: antidepressants, antipsychotics, pharmacology, PPD, Pregnancy, antidepressants, Beat the Baby Blues, Breastfeeding, Breastfeeding and Depression, breastfeeding on antidepressants, breastfeeding on antipsychotics, Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, meds, Mothering Magazine, Paxil, Peggy O'Mara, SSRI, Thomas Hale, Wellbutrin, Zachary Stowe, Zoloft, Zyprexa