Another Day Another Anti-depressant (Again)
On July 10, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Rexulti (brexpiprazole, an atypical antipsychotic) tablets to treat adults with so-called schizophrenia and as an add-on treatment to an antidepressant medication to treat adults with so-called major depressive disorder. We are now starting to see the TV ads for this.
Rexulti is manufactured by Tokyo-based Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. and its partner Lundbeck. It might be marketed as a replacement for Abilify (aripiprazole), although clinical trials for its usage to treat ADHD were discontinued, likely due to lack of efficacy. It is still a new drug that has not been tested over a long-term in a real-world population.
Rexulti and other such drugs have a Boxed Warning alerting health care professionals about an increased risk of death associated with the off-label use of these drugs to treat behavioral problems in older people with dementia-related psychosis.
The Boxed Warning also alerts health care professionals and patients to an increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults taking antidepressants.
It has the same pattern of debilitating side effects as any other antidepressant or antipsychotic, including addiction and suicidal thoughts and actions. The most common side effects reported by participants taking Rexulti in clinical trials included weight gain and an inner sense of restlessness (akathisia), such as feeling the need to move.
Rexulti is being touted as producing less akathisia, restlessness, and insomnia than other drugs, but it is important to be skeptical of this marketing due to the fact that clinical trials reported all of these side effects. Like all antipsychotics, Rexulti will likely have severe withdrawal symptoms.
While the way Rexulti works is completely unknown, it affects serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine neurotransmitters in the brain; and this effect is called a “serotonin-dopamine activity modulator”. Messing with neurotransmitters in the brain without really understanding how they work is serious business; we don’t recommend it. In any case, we can guarantee that this chemical-in-the-brain-based hypothesis is bogus. Full Informed Consent should be your watchword.
Rexulti was studied in two 6-week clinical trials of 1,054 patients aged 18-65. The patients selected for the studies took another antidepressant for at least 8 weeks. Twenty patients discontinued participation due to adverse reactions. The incidences of akathisia and restlessness, and some other side effects, increased with increases in dose.
We must recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists and other medical practitioners fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness” and stigmatize unwanted behavior as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. Taking such damaging drugs as Rexulti prevents people from finding out what is really wrong and fixing that.
CCHR believes that everyone has the right to full informed consent. FIND OUT! FIGHT BACK!