Tag: children

Fortune Magazine, by David Stipp

Can Prozac make you want to die? The idea seems strange, given that the drug and similar antidepressants are supposed to do just the opposite. Yet that is what Kimberly Witczak believes happened to her husband. Two years ago Tim “Woody” Witczak killed himself at age 37, soon after going on Pfizer’s Zoloft–the top-selling member of Prozac’s class of drugs, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Her husband was an upbeat, happy man, says Kim Witczak. Shortly before his death he had been named vice president of sales at a startup that sold energy-efficient lighting. When anxiety about the new job caused insomnia, he was prescribed Zoloft. He began suffering from nightmares, profound agitation, and eerie sensory experiences after a couple of weeks on the medicine–at one point, she says, he said he felt as if his head were detached from his body. Then he seemed to calm down. But about five weeks after his first dose, he hanged himself from the rafters in their garage when Kim was out of town. He left no suicide note.

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) — Oscar Cabanerio has been waiting in an experimental drug testing center in Miami since 7:30 a.m. The 41- year-old undocumented immigrant says he’s desperate for cash to send his wife and four children in Venezuela.

More than 70 people have crowded into reception rooms furnished with rows of attached blue plastic seats. Cabanerio is one of many regulars who gather at SFBC International Inc.’s test center, which, with 675 beds, is the largest for-profit drug trial site in North America.

Across the U.S., 3.7 million people have enrolled in drug tests sponsored by the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. The companies have outsourced 75 percent of experimental drug trials to centers like SFBC, a leader in a $14 billion industry.

Doctors are at odds over the treatment of children affected by ADHD … to drug them or not to drug them?

Michelle Wiese Bockmann reports.

At the age of 10, Brandon Frances screamed for hours on end, suffered psychotic episodes and daily beat his mother.

A pediatrician in Perth diagnosed Brandon with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when he was four, and for the next seven years he was constantly medicated with a cocktail of up to six different drugs to control his behaviour.

Now 13, Brandon no longer takes the medication, is behaving and doing well at school. Eighteen months ago doctors at a Perth public hospital clinic found Brandon did not have ADHD, but a learning disorder. His entire treatment was changed.