UW-Madison helps students learn through well-being exercises - suicide prevention month

September is Suicide Prevention month; give a moment of support to all of those who have family problems, health struggles, job issues, worries of any kind and just needs to know that someone cares. BUT BEYOND THAT: depression is regulated by the amygdala. You can cure or alleviate depression thru meditating, for the science behind it, search Richard Davidson, U of Wisc. Learn how to meditate and teach it to your loved ones. Then contemplate the notion that you chose this life for a reason, its not random. In that choice, is all you need to know about why you're on the planet. What lessons you chose to learn, what difficulties you chose to overcome. Meditate on all those you've helped, or who have helped you, and thank them in your heart. Then open your heart to everyone and all things, and know that whatever is bothering you, like a raging storm, will eventually pass, and you can affect its passing via meditation or mindfulness. My 2 cents on suicide prevention month.

Some folks associate meditation with religious or holistic or natural cures. My point is, the science, the actual data, the peer reviewed data, shows that a particular form of meditation ("tonglen") cures or alleviates symptoms of depression by directly affecting the amygdala and its ability to regulate seratonin.

If someone has been using seratonin release inhibitors (for depression, anxiety, nervousness, sleep) theres a safe, no side effect, medically proven alternative to paxil, zoloft, prozac. 

You don't have to be a monk to learn tonglen, but davidson himself told me its what he used in his ground breaking study. 

I believe any doctor who doesn't acknowledge alternates to medication either hasn't read the study, doesn't believe the results, or is addicted to prescribing meds with severe side effects. It's not an "alternative medicine" option, in my opinion, it should be the main prescription, with psychotropic meds reserved to treat the extreme cases. 


We tend to dismiss evidence if it doesn't fit the money making paradigm. It's not an opinion on my part, as i attended a lecture at UCLA where Davidson presented his evidence to a room full of doctors and psychiatrists eager to hear of a way to not "prescribe psychotropics to teens" as one doc put it. "Tonglen can cure or alleviate symptoms of depression." It should be taught in med schools worldwide. My two cents.

Prozac for Kids - A Warning for Parents everywhere

In the book "Flipside" I talk about how there is an alternative to SSRI drugs as described in the research of Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin. He's proven scientificially that meditation can "alleviate or cure symptoms of depression." 

I'm writing about the topic in my next book "It's A Wonderful Afterlife" about SSRI drug use in children in light of the recent shootings across the nation.  (I'm not a Doctor, nor do I dispense medicine. I'm a journalist and filmmaker who is reporting what is out there.)

Every mass shooting we've had in the country since Columbine has included SSRI drugs. 

Meaning the shooter had a history of mental illness, and either a history of being given seratonin release inhibitors or some other drug that affects the ability to know right from wrong.  It's not my opinion, it's part of the record and autopsy reports.

Combine 14 hours of playing "Warcraft" (as in the case of the recent shooting in Santa Barbara) along with easy access to guns and we have a perfect recipe for continuing mayhem.

While researching this information for my next book, in a section about why the "veil" appears to be thinning between the afterlife and our world - there's a discussion of how prescribed drugs appear to be affecting our life path.  I searched the National Institute of Mental Health's website for some details and found this article - no longer online but cached.  

It details how Doctors (may be or) are over prescribing these SSRI drugs to children.  It's in the document.  It's being done.  And it's not part of the national discussion on gun control AT ALL.

I post this article here because it needs to be read to any parent who is considering a Doctor's recommendation to use SSRI drugs with their children.

(On a personal note, I was approached by a teen in Santa Monica, who begged me to help him stop his parents from forcing him to take prescription drugs.  It was out of the blue, I happened to be driving by and saw a distraught mom crying with her son. He came to my car window and said "Please help me. My parents want me to take these drugs for what they claim is a mental illness. I don't want to take them."  I asked the mom if they were SSRI drugs. She said "I'm not comfortable discussing this with you."  On her cellphone I could hear her husband saying "Who the hell are you talking to?"  The father was in the pharmacy, buying the drugs. I wrote down Davidson's name and handed the mom the note to do the research.)

I am not arguing that SSRI drugs like Prozac can't help people.  There are many adults that claim that they do.  But we are talking about giving these drugs to humans under 25 years of age. And the NIMH's own document shows that there is a danger in doing so.  Not my opinion - their own words:

<<<<<"Antidepressant Medications for Children and Adolescents: Information for Parents and Caregivers"

"Depression is a serious disorder that can cause significant problems in mood, thinking, and behavior at home, in school, and with peers. It is estimated that major depressive disorder (MDD) affects about 5 percent of adolescents.

Research has shown that, as in adults, depression in children and adolescents is treatable. Certain antidepressant medications, called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), can be beneficial to children and adolescents with MDD. Certain types of psychological therapies also have been shown to be effective. However, our knowledge of antidepressant treatments in youth, though growing substantially, is limited compared to what we know about treating depression in adults."

(So they admit that there's little research on the topic, but it doesn't stop them from giving these drugs to children) 

"Recently, there has been some concern that the use of antidepressant medications themselves may induce suicidal behavior in youths. Following a thorough and comprehensive review of all the available published and unpublished controlled clinical trials of antidepressants in children and adolescents, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public warning  in October 2004 about an increased risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior (suicidality) in children and adolescents treated with SSRI antidepressant medications. In 2006, an advisory committee to the FDA recommended that the agency extend the warning to include young adults up to age 25."

(In fact, they issued "BLACK BOX" warnings on the drugs because kids might kill themselves (or others))

"More recently, results of a comprehensive review of pediatric trials conducted between 1988 and 2006 suggested that the benefits of antidepressant medications likely outweigh their risks to children and adolescents with major depression and anxiety disorders. The study, partially funded by NIMH, was published in the April 18, 2007, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.1

What Did the FDA Review Find?

In the FDA review, no completed suicides occurred among nearly 2,200 children treated with SSRI medications. However, about 4 percent of those taking SSRI medications experienced suicidal thinking or behavior, including actual suicide attempts—twice the rate of those taking placebo, or sugar pills."

(I gather that's not enough to stop them from prescribing them.)

"In response, the FDA adopted a "black box" label warning  indicating that antidepressants may increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in some children and adolescents with MDD. A black-box warning is the most serious type of warning in prescription drug labeling.

The warning also notes that children and adolescents taking SSRI medications should be closely monitored for any worsening in depression, emergence of suicidal thinking or behavior, or unusual changes in behavior, such as sleeplessness, agitation, or withdrawal from normal social situations. Close monitoring is especially important during the first four weeks of treatment. SSRI medications usually have few side effects in children and adolescents, but for unknown reasons, they may trigger agitation and abnormal behavior in certain individuals.

What Do We Know About Antidepressant Medications?

The SSRIs include:

fluoxetine (Prozac)

sertraline (Zoloft)

paroxetine (Paxil)

citalopram (Celexa)

escitalopram (Lexapro)

fluvoxamine (Luvox)

Another antidepressant medication, venlafaxine (Effexor), is not an SSRI but is closely related.

SSRI medications are considered an improvement over older antidepressant medications because they have fewer side effects and are less likely to be harmful if taken in an overdose, which is an issue for patients with depression already at risk for suicide. They have been shown to be safe and effective for adults.

However, use of SSRI medications among children and adolescents ages 10 to 19 has risen dramatically in the past several years. Fluoxetine (Prozac) is the only medication approved by the FDA for use in treating depression in children ages 8 and older. The other SSRI medications and the SSRI-related antidepressant venlafaxine have not been approved for treatment of depression in children or adolescents, but doctors still sometimes prescribe them to children on an "off-label" basis. In June 2003, however, the FDA recommended that paroxetine not be used in children and adolescents for treating MDD.

Fluoxetine can be helpful in treating childhood depression, and can lead to significant improvement of depression overall. However, it may increase the risk for suicidal behaviors in a small subset of adolescents. As with all medical decisions, doctors and families should weigh the risks and benefits of treatment for each individual patient.

What Should You Do for a Child With Depression?

A child or adolescent with MDD should be carefully and thoroughly evaluated by a doctor to determine if medication is appropriate. Psychotherapy often is tried as an initial treatment for mild depression. Psychotherapy may help to determine the severity and persistence of the depression and whether antidepressant medications may be warranted. Types of psychotherapies include "cognitive behavioral therapy," which helps people learn new ways of thinking and behaving, and "interpersonal therapy," which helps people understand and work through troubled personal relationships.

Those who are prescribed an SSRI medication should receive ongoing medical monitoring. Children already taking an SSRI medication should remain on the medication if it has been helpful, but should be carefully monitored by a doctor for side effects. Parents should promptly seek medical advice and evaluation if their child or adolescent experiences suicidal thinking or behavior, nervousness, agitation, irritability, mood instability, or sleeplessness that either emerges or worsens during treatment with SSRI medications.

Once started, treatment with these medications should not be abruptly stopped. Although they are not habit-forming or addictive, abruptly ending an antidepressant can cause withdrawal symptoms or lead to a relapse. Families should not discontinue treatment without consulting their doctor.

All treatments can be associated with side effects. Families and doctors should carefully weigh the risks and benefits, and maintain appropriate follow-up and monitoring to help control for the risks.

What Does Research Tell Us?

An individual's response to a medication cannot be predicted with certainty. It is extremely difficult to determine whether SSRI medications increase the risk for completed suicide, especially because depression itself increases the risk for suicide and because completed suicides, especially among children and adolescents, are rare. Most controlled trials are too small to detect for rare events such as suicide (thousands of participants are needed). In addition, controlled trials typically exclude patients considered at high risk for suicide.

One major clinical trial, the NIMH-funded Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS)2, has indicated that a combination of medication and psychotherapy is the most effective treatment for adolescents with depression. The clinical trial of 439 adolescents ages 12 to 17 with MDD compared four treatment groups—one that received a combination of fluoxetine and CBT, one that received fluoxetine only, one that received CBT only, and one that received a placebo only. After the first 12 weeks, 71 percent responded to the combination treatment of fluoxetine and CBT, 61 percent responded to the fluoxetine only treatment, 43 percent responded to the CBT only treatment, and 35 percent responded to the placebo treatment.

At the beginning of the study, 29 percent of the TADS participants were having clinically significant suicidal thoughts. Although the rate of suicidal thinking decreased among all the treatment groups, those in the fluoxetine/CBT combination treatment group showed the greatest reduction in suicidal thinking.

Researchers are working to better understand the relationship between antidepressant medications and suicide. So far, results are mixed. One study, using national Medicaid files, found that among adults, the use of antidepressants does not seem to be related to suicide attempts or deaths. However, the analysis found that the use of antidepressant medications may be related to suicide attempts and deaths among children and adolescents.3"

(Congress held hearings in 1991 about the rash of suicides which resulted in these drug makers being forced to put "Black Box" warnings on them.  In 2010 Congress held more hearings into why so many soldiers were doing the same while using the drugs.)

"Another study analyzed health plan records for 65,103 patients treated for depression.4 It found no significant increase among adults and young people in the risk for suicide after starting treatment with newer antidepressant medications.

A third study analyzed suicide data from the National Vital Statistics and commercial prescription data. It found that among children ages five to 14, suicide rates from 1996 to 1998 were actually lower in areas of the country with higher rates of SSRI antidepressant prescriptions. The relationship between the suicide rates and the SSRI use rates, however, is unclear.5

New NIMH-funded research will help clarify the complex interplay between suicide and antidepressant medications. In addition, the NIMH-funded Treatment of Resistant Depression in Adolescents (TORDIA ) study, will investigate how best to treat adolescents whose depression is resistant to the first SSRI medication they have tried. Finally, NIMH also is supporting the Treatment of Adolescent Suicide Attempters (TASA ) study, which is investigating the treatment of adolescents who have attempted suicide. Treatments include antidepressant medications, CBT or both.">>>>>>> (end of article)

So there you have it.  They know they're being over prescribed. They know that doctors are prescribing SSRI drugs to children that haven't been tested.  And I'll be damned - they're not warning the parents. 

 WELL I'M WARNING THE PARENTS.

If your kid is precribed SSRI drugs GRAB THE DOCTOR BY THE shoulder and shake them. SHOUT "ARE YOU CRAZY???? WHAT ABOUT MEDITATION? HAVE YOU LOOKED INTO THE RESULTS THAT SHOW THAT MEDITATION CAN ALLEVIATE OR CURE THE EFFECTS OF DEPRESSION????"

Then hand them an article you've downloaded from the internet about the work of Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin which proves his results in a scientific setting.

I don't know how else to put it. 

Death by Prozac: curing yourself from depression via Tibetan meditation

FROM THE BBC.CO.UK WEBSITE:

Anti-depressants' 'little effect'

Anti-depressant prescription rates have soared

New generation anti-depressants have little clinical benefit for most patients, research suggests.

A University of Hull team concluded the drugs actively help only a small group of the most severely depressed.

Marjorie Wallace, head of the mental health charity Sane, said that if these results were confirmed they could be "very disturbing".

But the makers of Prozac and Seroxat, two of the commonest anti-depressants, said they disagreed with the findings.

A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said the study only looked at a "small subset of the total data available".

Reviewed data

And Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, said that "extensive scientific and medical experience has demonstrated it is an effective anti-depressant".

There seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients Professor Irving Kirsch University of Hull Q&A: Anti-depressant study Popularity of 'happy pills'

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, has announced that 3,600 therapists are to be trained during the next three years in England to increase patient access to talking therapies, which ministers see as a better alternative to drugs.

Patients are strongly advised not to stop taking their medication without first consulting a doctor.

The researchers accept many people believe the drugs do work for them, but argue that could be a placebo effect - people feel better simply because they are taking a medication which they think will help them.

In total, the Hull team, who published their findings in the journal PLoS Medicine, reviewed data on 47 clinical trials.

They reviewed published clinical trial data, and unpublished data secured under Freedom of Information legislation.

They focused on drugs which work by increasing levels of the mood controlling chemical serotonin in the brain.

These included fluoxetine (Prozac) and paroxetine (Seroxat), from the class known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), alongside another similar drug called venlafaxine (Efexor) - all commonly prescribed in the UK.

The number of prescriptions for anti-depressants hit a record high of more than 31 million in England in 2006 - even though official guidance stresses they should not be a first line treatment for mild depression.

There were 16.2m prescriptions for SSRIs alone.

The researchers found that the drugs did have a positive impact on people with mild depression - but the effect was no bigger than that achieved by giving patients a sugar-coated "dummy" pill.

People with severe symptoms appeared to gain more clear-cut benefit - but this might be more down to the fact that they were less likely to respond to the placebo pill, rather than to respond positively to the drugs.

Lead researcher Professor Irving Kirsch said: "The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very great.

"This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments.

"Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed to provide a benefit."

Professor Kirsch said the findings called into question the current system of reporting drug trials.

Reviewing guidance

Dr Tim Kendall, deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Unit, has published research concluding that drug companies tend only to publish research which shows their products in a good light.

These medicines have been licensed by a number of regulatory authorities around the world, who looking at all the evidence, have determined that they do work better than placebo Dr Richard Tiner Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Readers' experiences

He said the Hull findings undermined confidence in the ability to draw meaningful conclusions about the merit of drugs based on published data alone.

He called for drug companies to be forced to publish all their data.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is currently reviewing its guidance on the use of antidepressants.

Marjorie Wallace of Sane commented: "If these results were upheld in further studies, they would be very disturbing.

"The newer anti-depressants were the great hope for the future.... These findings could remove what has been seen as a vital choice for thousands in treating what can be a life-threatening condition."

Dr Andrew McCulloch, of the Mental Health Foundation, said: "We have become vastly over-reliant on antidepressants when there is a range of alternatives.

"Talking therapies, exercise referral and other treatments are effective for depression.

"It is a problem that needs a variety of approaches matched to the individual patient."

Dr Richard Tiner, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said there was no doubt that there was a "considerable placebo effect" from anti-depressants when treating people with mild to moderate symptoms.

But he said no medicine would get a licence without demonstrating it was better than a placebo.

Dr Tiner said: "These medicines have been licensed by a number of regulatory authorities around the world, who looking at all the evidence, have determined that they do work better than placebo."

Some years ago I met this Swiss filmmaker in Moscow. She was there with her husband's film at the film festival, and was in mourning because he'd just killed himself. I asked what she thought happened. She said "I don't know - he was happy, ready to come to this festival, and he went to his doctor because he was exhausted, and he gave him some pills and the next thing I know he kills himself." I asked if the pills were Prozac. She said yes.

I told her about another friend, in Italy near my ancestral home town in Cadore. This guy was in his 60's, a happy go lucky fella who didn't have a care in the world. He told his doc he was tired, and needed something to help him sleep. Same story. Started taking Prozac, killed himself.

Most people don't know that Congress had hearings to try and figure out why so many people were killing themselves after taking psychotropic drugs. The results? Zippo. Inconclusive. Hard to prove someone didn't want to kill themselves.

Look at most of the gun shootings in high schools and you'll find psychotropic drugs were involved with the students (Columbine included) Here's the deal as I see it:

We have a fight or flight part of our brain that keeps us on the planet. When you're driving down the street, you don't turn into oncoming traffic because of this modulator in your head. I once did a series of interviews with severely depressed people, one of whom described walking "around the planet, trying to figure out ways to kill himself." This part of his brain was malfunctioning - telling him to kill himself instead of to protect himself.

Apparently, up to 10% of the people who take psychotropic drugs have a 'side effect' which disrupts this mechanism in the brain. So.. they stop having the ability to feel happy or sad, because they're being modulated, and they lose the ability to tell the difference between their inner and outer worlds - if they feel rage, but have no outlet for it, it can translate into 'let's pick up a gun' or 'let's kill ourselves.' Or as I call it "Death by Prozac."

When history looks back on this era, it's going to be the time of the drugs which altered people's psyches. I'm not a fan of Scientology, I firmly believe that it's a fantasy religion created from L. Ron Hubbard's psyche, and has no more roots in reality than Joseph Smith did. (I also believe they probably had similar psychic experiences that influenced them profoundly, but that's a topic for another time). However, the Scientologists, Tom Cruise included, are spot on when they try to point out that psychotropic drugs are bad for you. Where we differ greatly is how to cure depression. I don't think getting clear is the answer, as it's another panacea, and leaves your treatment in someone else's hands. I think the most promising research in the area has been done by Richard Davidson of the Univ of Wisconsin.

(Davidson with HHDL, photo Waisman Center, Univ. of Wisconsin)

I recently attended a conference at UCLA, filled with psychiatrists, who had come to hear Davidson talk about his research into the amygdala, the part of the brain that regulates depression and happiness. And basically, as Time magazine noted, he laid out the skills that people can learn to make themselves happier, less depressed, and drug free. The questions from the audience were from doctors concerned about giving teenagers psychotropic drugs. Davidson's work is profound, and I think should be included in every doctor's bag - even pediatricians. Here's an article from Science Daily a few days ago.

The cure is pretty simple. A Tibetan meditation called "Tonglen." (I know it's Tonglen because I asked him after the lecture which specific Tibetan meditation he asked his subjects to use to get the profound results.) I won't describe the meditation here, because in order to learn it requires a certain amount of skill, education, and perhaps a guided teacher. You don't have to study under the Dalai Lama to learn it, however, it would be better if you sought out a teacher of meditation, a yoga class for example, which can teach the breathing meditation to begin. Once you've mastered ten minutes a day, you could graduate to a next level. However, Davidson did tell me that in his version of the Tonglen meditation, he asked his subjects not to meditate on curing the ills of a particular person, but on the society in general. This note will make sense to those of you who know about Tonglen meditation, and for those who might be depressed and want to learn about it, check out Davidson's work, or Tibetan meditation in particular.

Anyways, if you have a loved one who is depressed, or if you're depressed, I'd think it would be worth trying to figure out a natural method to cure it, before risking that you'd be part of the ten percent who die from this drug use. What have you got to lose?

That's a wrap.