These "personality changes" on Prozac can sometimes turn into tragedies.

Here is a case reported today from SSRI Stories of a man who was given Prozac when he actually had Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. Over a period of almost two years, while on the Prozac, his personality changed and he eventually died from a bizarre action.

Here is the story:

http://www.ssristories.com/show.php?item=3606

Paragraph 14 reads: "In January 2008, he saw Dr Francis Roberson, of the Ridgeway Medical Practice in Plympton, Plymouth, complaining of anxiety and panic attacks. He was prescribed anti-depressant drugs."

"Later, Mathew saw Dr Stephen Robinson at the same medical practice, and was prescribed the anti-depressant fluoextine [Prozac] as the original prescription was causing unpleasant side-effects and had done little to ease his anxiety."

Paragraphs 21 through 24 read: "Mr Swan, of Tern Gardens, Plympton, Plymouth, said he noticed a change in Mathew's behaviour from early in 2008."

"He became more distant, was fidgety and restless and would fall asleep suddenly. Mr Swan said he also witnessed Mathew suffer a panic attack in a bank queue."

"He said Mathew also became disillusioned with his work that he had previously loved, and had various run-ins with colleagues."

This, said Mr Swan, was totally out of character.

http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Plymouth-man-died-inhaling-aerosol-gases/article-1320479-detail/article.html

Plymouth man died after inhaling aerosol gases
Tuesday, September 08, 2009, 11:45

Servier makes Stablon, which acts as the opposite of SSRIs. Is that the reason for the study?

That paper was written as a marketing tool for Agomelatine, known by the brand names VALDOXAN/THYMANAX in Europe. That's a low-efficacy, but liver-toxic antidepressant which finally got EU approval earlier this year after failing in 2006. It was launched in April 2009 in Germany and later in the UK and is soon to be launched in other EU countries.

It failed in all but one of the active-controlled efficacy studies, and the effect size against placebo is less than 0.18 (I was able to calculate it from alternate sources, Servier is hiding key facts carefully). So that's only half of the usual SSRI/SNRI effect size and they have to go after weaknesses of other antidepressants to get some market share.


By the way, the already well-known liver toxicity of Agomelatine makes it obsolete. The EU approval assessment report describes several serious hepatic AEs, among them cytolytic hepatitis - while less than 4000 people took Agomelatine in the trials, mostly for short periods of time. So it does not seem like a very rare phenomenon. That's a potentially deadly side effect the SSRIs are lacking.

The good news for US citizens is that Agomelatine obviously failed in all of the US phase III trials conducted by Servier's licensee Novartis, so the FDA application is delayed at least until 2012, which means a market entry in 2014, if it comes at all.

Sincerely
-PhilRS.

Excellent piece of news by PhilRS. Thank you.

"It was a wild party and several of the women in the cast were openly hitting on me. I was too zonked on Procaz [sic] -- too removed -- to care and went home alone."

Look at it this way, with Prozac, even if you didn't go home alone, nothing would have happened anyway. :)

This happened to me on abilify. I assumed it was from the zombification of being on an antipsychotic, but perhaps it was the antidepressant qualities of the medication?

I would assume the flatness, as well as the sexual dysfunction, is related to dopamine/catecholamine suppression secondary to unnatural levels of serotonin being prevented from being eliminated by your brain.

I can't stand the feeling of numbness and I have no idea why so many people seem to abuse such numbing / sedating medications as benzodiazepines and SSRIs. I don't want to feel nothing, I want to feel better.