Healthy Skepticism Library item: 63

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Publication type: news

Johnston L.
My wife killed herself because of Prozac, so why is it still being prescribed?
SUNDAY EXPRESS 2004 Dec 12

Full text:

My wife killed herself because of Prozac, so why is it still being
prescribed?

Chemical warfare expert, Professor Alastair Hay discovered his wife’s body
hanging from a ladder attached to their garage roof just weeks after she was
prescribed Prozac.

As a leading scientist he studied the link between the best-selling
antidepressant and suicide and sent his evidence to the Government drug
watchdog. Now, more than two years on, Department of Health officials have
ordered doctors to cut back on the use of Prozac-style drugs – taken by
about 3.5 million every a day – following concerns over the risks of
suicide.

Professor Hay, 57, believes his wife Wendy could still be alive if the
Government had acted sooner.
I met Wendy at a college dance. We were both studying at the Royal Holloway
College, London. I was bowled over. A year and a half later we were married;
she was 21 and I was 23.

We moved from London to be near my first graduate job as a reader in
chemical pathology at Leeds University. Wendy was an excellent researcher
and librarian and spoke French, Italian, Spanish and German and soon got her
own research work. She had a very strong social conscience and her first
commission was looking at library provision for disabled people, but she
also worked for Amnesty International.

After she had our only child, Tom, in 1980 she developed postnatal
depression, but got better. Even after she had two miscarriages, in 1986 and
1988, and got really low on the subsequent anniversaries of each, we still
didn’t anticipate what was to come.

Then in 1998 there was a terrible road accident outside our house. Two
motorcyclists had come screaming down the road and had run under a milk
tanker and Wendy went to help.
Afterwards she began to have vivid flashbacks of the bodies of those bikers
and their severed limbs.
She got panic attacks and stopped eating and sleeping properly. She was only
5ft 3ins and her weight dropped to just six stone.
One Saturday things got very bad. She was screaming and I was trying to calm
her down, but eventually I rang a locum GP who diagnosed anxiety-related
depression.

After a follow-up consultation, she was prescribed Seroxat – a similar drug
to Prozac. After just one dose she became really agitated, shaky and
restless. She looked dreadful and couldn’t even hold a cup and saucer. I
rang the GP to say she was having a bad reaction.
But he said: ‘She has a simple choice. She either takes the drug or she has
depression.’

After a spell in a psychiatric hospital, when she was put on Prozac, she
came home. I took some time off work and read up as much as I could on
cognitive therapy – a type of counselling that is very successful for people
with anxiety disorders. As the waiting list to get this professionally was
two years, I became her counsellor.

Slowly she improved, and in July 2001 we got her off Prozac and things
started to look up. She had started to eat and was feeling better. We even
took a break – the first in years – to Dublin.
However, in June the following year, she rang me at work and said: ‘Ali,
it’s back’. She had been hit by another bout of depression. She tried to
deal with it without Prozac, but it didn’t work, so we went back to our GP
who prescribed Prozac again. Within two weeks her sleeping and eating
patterns worsened.

Then, in the early evening of September 17, she told me she wanted to take
the dog out. She said she would go to see some friends. She then rang to say
they weren’t in. She told me she would go for a walk and be back soon.
A little while later she called back and asked me to put some pasta on for
Tom, as he was back on holiday from university. Wendy had arranged to pick
up Tom from the bus stop and when she didn’t arrive he called me.

I was a bit cross, went out to get into my car and saw that her car was
still in the garage with the dog in the back. When I got to the garage door
I saw a scarf hanging down from a ladder. I just knew then what had
happened. She’d used a scarf to screen her face and had used my belt as a
noose which she’d tied on to the ladder.
An inquest concluded that Prozac could have caused Wendy’s death. Coroner
David Hincliff recorded an unusual narrative verdict that the drug ‘may or
may not have contributed’ to her death.
The drug manufacturers sent a team of legal experts to defend the drug, I
had a medical expert who categorically blamed Prozac and, although I was
pleased with the verdict, as far I was concerned, it didn’t go far enough.
We acted fast, says agency

The Ageny responsible for regulating drug use admits that it does not look
at all the data on antidepressants such as Prozac and instead relies heavily
on summaries of clinical trials.
A spokeswoman claimed however that the Medical and Health Products
Regulatory Agency “has acted faster than any other regulator in the world to
take action on emerging safety issues”.

Ramo Kabbani, who founded the Prozac Survivors Group, said people could
suffer longterm damage from the drugs. “Because the Government has failed to
take appropriate action they are not getting medical care, help from social
services or benefits that they need, “ she said.