!8: Buyers Defibrillation Paddles: 2011

!±8± Side Effects of Mental Illness Drugs Cause Sudden Death

Schizophrenia is a scary and difficult chronic mental illness- both for the person AND for their family who all have to live with the diagnosis. In most cases, antipsychotic medications need to be taken forever to control the disturbing symptoms. But rarely is anyone told that these medications not only double the risk of sudden cardiac death, but also put the sufferer at risk for several other chronic illnesses as well.

The severe mental condition that has been termed schizophrenia is NOT the 'multiple personality disorder' that many think of when they hear the term, but is a different mental illness characterized by bizarre behaviors like paranoia, hearing voices, and having hallucinations. It is often acquired after a stressful life event and occurs swiftly and unpredictably in what is known as a 'psychotic break'. This is devastating for the patient and their family who suddenly have to live with a diagnosis of mental illness. And that is just the first step in a life filled with doctors, hospitals, medications and psychiatrists- with little hope to ever really have a normal life again.

Schizophrenia and a handful of medications forever..

There is no 'cure', in traditional medicine, for Psychosis; and a prescription for one or more 'antipsychotics' with names like Haldol and Risperdal, along with a cocktail of other drugs often prescribed for anxiety, depression and sleep are frequently on the menu. But what these people are rarely, if ever, told about are the long term side effects of these drugs. While doctors are ever prescribing anticholesterol 'statins', aspirin and blood pressure medications in order to achieve a 1 - 2% reduction in heart disease, they are knowingly giving schizophrenic individuals, who generally get their first psychotic break as a teenager or young adult, a shortened lifespan from the medications that they are prescribing.

In the research available on these drugs, it is well known that Sudden Cardiac Death is a 'side effect' of antipsychotic medications. In fact, these medications DOUBLE the risk of sudden cardiac death. In the beginning, however, it does not give them the "heart disease" of clogged arteries that we associate with heart attacks. The immediate risk of antipsychotics is that they give sufferers a high risk for a very specific disorder called 'Prolonged Q-T interval'.

Prolonged Q-T Interval gets its name from the prolonged time that it takes for the electrical activity of the heart to return to normal after each heartbeat. But this extra time isn't measured in minutes or seconds, but in hundredths of a second- making it difficult to diagnose. But this extra millisecond can have the devastating consequence of putting the taker of these medications into an abnormal cardiac rhythm called Ventricular Fibrillation- which will quickly lead to death without immediate emergency care. And this will come on without pain, shortness of breath or any of the other 'warning signs' of a heart attack because it is not clogged arteries that are the problem, but the electrical system that is the primary problem.

Even worse, antipychotics don't just put people into your vanilla, standard everyday Ventricular Fibrillation that generally responds well to the dramatic 'paddles on the chest, everybody get away from the patient and shock them' type of defibrillation that you see on television. It actually puts them into a very specific TYPE of Ventricular Fibrillation called Torsades de Pointes, that doesn't change to a normal rhythm with the shocks and heart starting medications that are the 'standard protocol' for restarting the heart. Instead, 'Torsades' requires an immediate infusion of intravenous magnesium. As hospitals and emergency rooms have magnesium at hand, this shouldn't be such a hard thing to do; but unfortunately, Torsades de Pointes is fairly rare and is difficult to recognize, so in many cases it is not even considered until the shocks and CPR are not working- and by then it is often too late for the magnesium to be effective.

But wait, there's more...

Not only do antipsychotics double the risk of deadly heart rhythms, but they ALSO increase the risk of getting diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity- which are risk factors for 'regular' heart disease complete with clogged arteries, angioplasty and open heart surgery. Fortunately, true psychosis is rare- so doctors don't prescribe these dangerous medications unless they are absolutely necessary... right?

Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. In fact, over 200,000 people in the US are newly diagnosed each year and hundreds of thousands of prescriptions for antipsychotics are written every year. And despite virtually NO studies having been done, they are being given to adolescents, children and even PRESCHOOLERS as young as TWO YEARS OLD! Most of these are prescribed by PRIMARY physicians without the child having even had an evaluation by a psychiatrist. And almost half were written, not for schizophrenia as they are intended, but for ADD and ADHD for which the drugs have never even been tested!

"Rates of (doctor's office) visits that resulted in a psychotropic prescription increased from 3.4 percent in 1994-1995 to 8.3 percent in 2000-2001. By 2001, one out of ten office visits by adolescent males resulted in a prescription for a psychotropic medication." Trends in the use of psychotropic medications among adolescents, 1994 to 2001.

So, while researchers who study the cardiac death risk profile of antipsychotic drugs are advocating "sharp reductions" in the use of these agents- doctors are ignoring this advice and are steadily increasing the number of antipsychotic drugs prescribed each year. These patients, who are often children and teens without true schizophrenia, will somehow have to deal with several chronic health conditions that will not only shorten their lives, but decrease the quality of a life already made more difficult by mental illness.