Psychiatric drug ER trips approach 90,000 a year
“Bad reactions to psychiatric drugs result in nearly 90,000 emergency room visits each year by U.S. adults, with anti-anxiety medicines and sedatives among the most common culprits.
“A drug used in some popular sleeping pills was among the most commonly involved sedatives, especially in adults aged 65 and older.
“Most of the visits were for troublesome side effects or accidental overdoses and almost 1 in 5 resulted in hospitalization.
“The results come from an analysis of 2009-2011 medical records from 63 hospitals that participate in a nationally representative government surveillance project. The study was published [July 9, 2014] in JAMA Psychiatry.
“Overall, the sedative zolpidem tartrate, contained in Ambien and some other sleeping pills, was involved in almost 12 percent of all ER visits and in 1 out of 5 visits for older adults.”
Read the full MSN News article here.
An unexpected finding of the study was that rates of antipsychotic, sedative, anti-anxiety, and antidepressant adverse drug event emergency room visits were highest among adults aged 19 to 44 years.
We expect that most people do not realize that Ambien is a psychiatric drug, since it is usually prescribed as a sedative for insomnia. In fact, drugs of this nature are variously called “anti-anxiety drugs” or “minor tranquilizers” or “sedative hypnotics.”
Today, at least 20 million people worldwide are prescribed these “minor tranquilizers.”
Daily use of therapeutic doses is associated with physical dependence. Addiction can occur after 14 days of regular use. Of the 72 different reported adverse reactions, some are anxiety, hostility, aggression, depression, sleep-walking, sleep-driving, and suicide. The typical consequences of withdrawal are anxiety, depression, sweating, cramps, nausea, psychotic reactions and seizures. Elderly people taking these drugs for anxiety or insomnia are at increased risk for motor vehicle crashes. There is also a “rebound effect” where the individual experiences even worse symptoms than they started with as a result of chemical dependency; medical experts point out that this is the drug effect, not a “mental illness.”
Courts have determined that informed consent for people who receive prescriptions for psychotropic (mood-altering) drugs must include the doctor providing information about possible side effects and benefits, ways to treat side effects, and risks of other conditions, as well as information about alternative treatments. Yet very often, psychiatrists ignore these requirements.
All patients should first see a non-psychiatric medical doctor, especially one who is familiar with nutritional needs, who should obtain and review a thorough medical history and conduct a complete physical exam, ruling out all the possible problems that might cause the person’s symptoms.
There are far too many effective options to list them all here. Psychiatrists, on the other hand, insist there are no such options and fight to keep it that way. Patients and physicians must urge their local, state and federal government representatives to endorse and fund non-drug health care options instead of dangerous psychiatric drugs.