Teenscreen... TMAP... medicating soccer moms... mothers to be... now the unborn.
Do these drugs give the wee ones Tardive Dyskinesia, a kind of St. Vitus' Dance in the womb, too?

You've got taken.

This has been known since the 1980's at least. The issue that they're trying to cover is lamictal causes mental retardation too and GSK knew it before it was marketed (animal studies and mechanism same as valproate). A possible reason it's higher with valproate is because it's a combination with others and valproate inhibits epoxide hydrolase. (The others form epoxides including lamictal.)

Funny how this didn't start coming out until lamictal is going off patent.

Phil do you know off-hand what a "normal" IQ would be for a 3-year-old?

In the article I read on the study it did not list a normal IQ so I could not figure out how much or if the other drugs effected a child's IQ.

Dr Healy is a hero..
Honest, ethical and truthful..
Rare for a psychiatrist..

Hey Salmon,

That's what I suspected, especially when the article I read didn't compare the other drugs to a normal IQ. Can you tell me what normal IQ would be?

Cheers,

Evie

truthman30:

Dr. Healy supports the use of ECT to treat psychiatric illnesses. In fact, he co-wrote an entire book about ECT in which he lamented the fact that it is not used often enough, especially given its evidence base. Do you still think he is "honest, ethical and truthful"?

Healy is honest about most everything, even thoughhe has taken Pharma money. ECT has caused great and permanent harm and even death - in a member of my immediate family back when death from it was common. Don't know how common memory loss is today. However, in REAL manic depression, if suicidal/psychotic depression just won't quit, for days and weeks on end - now that hospitals are in and out affairs for the most part, and humane home help is almost impossible to find, and humane day programs won't usually take someone this ill plus they are usually self-pay, and Soteria Houses were done away with, so it all falls on the famiy: collapse or suicide may be the only alternatives to ECT. In that sense, it is humane. As seen with my own eyes...do you think it would have been the first pick of my suffering family member and me, knowing someone of the next older generation who was killed by it. No, not defending coercion, ever, by any means. And not ruling out possible memory or other impairment if done too often or wrong or whatever.

Dr.Peter Breggin,the dangers of ECT:

"Animal studies show diffuse brain damage following ECT: the most common findings are petechial or pinpoint hemorrhages throughout the brain and surrounding blood vessels, as well as areas of gliosis and neuronal degeneration, with patches of cell death (ghost cells and neuronophagia). Occasionally larger hemorrhages and edema of the brain are found. These findings are also seen on human autopsies performed on ECT patients."

In an extreme situation, such as described above it becomes a choice of life (albeit with the chance of mild-moderate(?) impairment - saw none in my child post ECT )- or certain death, we opted for life. But this level of severity is very rare. The other people I met getting ECT did not have similar pre-ECT stories to tell...