Friday 6 June 2014

An Expert by Experience writes about side effects of her son.

Dribbling, tardive dyskinesia (which I have witnessed in my son) slurred voice (I was once traumatised by phoning a helpline and somebody had a horribly slurred voice) are in my opinion, appalling. I do not think a drug should be licensed, if it produces these effects.

Several years ago, my son was forced to take Clozapine, on the orders of a desperate, burnt- out and frankly very incompetent psychiatrist. My son, ended up on a medical ward, on intravenous drip, immobilised, vomiting, vomiting, vomiting, non-stop for a whole week. I was going mental, phoning psychiatrist who tried to fob me off with "it's a virus". I asked if anyone else on the psychiatric ward, where my son was imprisoned at the time had come down with a virus. He said no. As viruses are normally very catching, this alarmed me. I protested, but was completely ignored.

At the end of the week, thank God, the psychiatric nurses, placed around my son's hospital bed, to stop him escaping (he had run off to France, was okay for three months, ran out of money, come back, readmitted to hospital), alerted the psychiatrist that the vomiting might be due to the Clozapine. Clozapine withdrawn, torture ended temporarily.

A few years later, I came across an article, some unfortunate had died, obstructed bowel, directly caused by Clozapine. The coroner had ruled, as mental patients, object to taking care of their physical health, the doctors could not be blamed, so my panic had been justified. My son could have died, the psychiatrist could have got away with killing him.

At a tribunal regarding my son, I voiced my horror at the terrible side-effects, I was completely discounted, ignored, brushed aside as if I was stupid and unreasonable.

5 comments:

  1. Congratulations on being such a caring mother and raising your voice against such opposition. Thanks for taking a courageous stand for all the people who have being given harmful drugs without informed consent. You are the kind of change we want to see in the world!

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  2. Ben, We are a global family.We can, We will and We must continue to expose the evil forces of Big Pharma.Reality being We have two forces the legal Big Pharma and the illegal epidemic of heroin Love & Peace Tim Nolan

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  3. Well said Ben - and I'm glad your son was taken off this dreadful drug. My son is now on it for the 5th time. Side effects are unbearable. Frequent urintaion, and the dribbling, nightmares and in my son's case, tardive tourettism.
    It can cause constipation. If not noticed can result in death. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/07/call-inquiry-deaths-psychiatric-hospital
    So the coroner blames the patients? Eighteen months ago Dr Alex Mitchell et al, Leicetser University, said they had found that deaths from drug side effects were 4 times higher than the suicide rate. Why? Because psychiatrists were not testing and monitoring drug side effects.

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    1. My son's psychiatrist was recently pushing to have my son change from resperidone to clozapine. Their view was he needed the change to lift the negative symptoms. There were just too many horrible clozapine side affects after some research. Instead we opted for slow weaning from 4mg resperidone, at .5mg at a time and trying to encourage him with other life style changes, the latter not that easy. His new psychiatrist has been supportive. The first signs that something was different, was he was waking earlier and then needing a cat nap, but it seemed to settle. After 6 weeks, he seems better alert and his memory is improving. There's no doubt that resperidone stabilized his psychotic episodes, but we questioned the negative symptoms. Is it possible that drugs also numb, desensitize? We were not keen to jump from one drug to another to alleviate the negatives, and cope with new side effects. It just didn't seem right. But for now, we are pursuing this new path. I feel our son is buried deep beneath the sea of pharma, and it's time for him to emerge. As a family we are better equipped with understanding the nature of schizophrenia, and pray for guidance. Ben, you're an awesome dad, I wish you and your son well.

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  4. Thanks- it is in fact a mother's story (not mine) and a very powerful one!

    Thanks,
    Ben

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