Desperately seeking answers

Mental health
1

it all started a year ago to the day....my girlfriend was finding it hard to cope with the fact that her teenage daughter was an absolute pain in the backside to a point were we both cud not cope and she went back to live with her dad. As she came from a broken family herself she felt guilty and we had an argument I left and she decided to try and hang herself in the garage...well thank god she didn't go through with it.I decided to call the mental health crisis team they came and decided she needed to be on anti depressants....this is were it all went wrong in a big way and my life changed.After the trip to the doctors they put her on an anti depressant which I can't remember the name .After a week she was sleep walking while her eyes are open and talking,as well as standing on the dressing table in the middle of the night unaware she is doing it and talking and threw the TV on the floor .Back to docs to be told a load of gobble de gook and in comes the setralapan ....now these little fellas are worst...

symptoms are ,diarrhoea 18 times a day...vomiting blood...deep sleep to a degree I can't wake her up and have to phone ambulance ...anger...after 8 months the doc said stop taking them immediately ,which your not supposed too.Appointment was made for the hospital for camera up the bum and after 2 months of waiting for the results they say her colon is damaged but wouldn't admit it was the tablets.The big problem with this story is the symptom no one seems to what it is...When she gets the slightest bit stressed or tired she looks like she's drunk ,slurring and wobbling when she walks as if she's drunk. This happens nearly everyday and I'm done with it.Its affected our relationship in a big way .The local GP are a complete waste of time and we will be going to a solicitor and are sueing them when this all over

Can any one give me any answers plzzzzzzzzz

2

Rod, it really does sound as if there might be something else going on with your girlfriend - I mean with her physical health. I'm assuming she's had full blood tests etc. (though I understand your feelings of disgust with your GP).

That being said, I've seen for myself the appalling physical and mental side-effects some psychotropic drugs can produce, so can fully sympathise.

I don't know what to suggest, but can only tell you the steps I went through when researching the devastating side-effects one drug produced on a close friend of mine. (I'm a former nurse, btw, albeit general not psychiatric, so capable of doing a bit of informed research.) The drug concerned wasn't sertraline, which I think is what you're referring to, but a frequently-prescribed anti-psychotic. Totally different class of drug, but the process of hunting down information would be the same.

When my friend started losing the use of both hands three months after starting the drug, I initially scoured the internet, but could find no reference to this side-effect. I then emailed the local office of the original manufacturer giving a detailed list of her symptoms... not expecting to get even an acknowledgement. To my amazement, I received a total of seven calls from their local office and their European HQ, asking for more details. I came to the conclusion this wasn't the first time they'd heard of this problem, though there wasn't a word about it on any internet sites. Btw, you can easily find out who originally developed sertraline via Wikipedia. (I don't know if it'is out of patent now.)

I found other useful sources of information by "lurking" on a number of forums for people taking the medication. These sites can often yield far more information as to real side-effects than scientific websites.

The end result was that I managed to gather enough information not to convince my friend's doctor (of course!) but at least to give me the confidence to pressurise him into reducing the dose. By constant battering at the unsympathetic nursing and medical staff in the psycho-geriatric unit where she's detained, I've managed to convince them to reduce the drug to a minimum level over the past six months. They've now grudgingly agreed to withdraw it altogether as of next month. She's 80 years old, suffering from mild dementia and was unnecessarily prescribed a whole range of powerful anti-psychotic drugs when she became aggressive - hence her need for a "champion". There hasn't been a totally happy ending, but at least she has fully regained the use of her dominant hand, and is now much more alert and taking an interest in things, both of which have significantly improved her quality of life - and she hasn't become aggressive again. Her doctor is now taking all the credit for my research and is going to submit a paper to a learned journal but, hey, it worked and that's all that counts!

What I'm saying is - by all means consult a solicitor, but do as much research as you can yourself. In the meantime, I hope your girlfriend can find peace and a healthy recovery.

3

Thank you so much for the reply,the nhs in this country is 1 big joke,the idiot gps don't give a toss they just want to palm you off with a drug and don't care about the consequences.She has had every blood test going apart from 1 which we will get the results on Wednesday when we go to our new GP surgery as I am sort of barred out of the old 1 due to voicing my opinion which they don't like.There pathetic its Yarm medical centre

4

I sympathise totally.  I managed to get my poor old Mum bumped off her GP's practice by politely enquiring as to why he'd never once taken her blood pressure in 20 years of treating her for bronchitis and asthma. (It was 200/140 when they took it at the hospital after she fell over and broke her arm at age 75.) His answer, unbelievably, was: "Well, she's never had any symptoms of high BP". Like he'd never heard of it referred to as "the silent killer".

The UK has a particular problem due to serious under-funding of the NHS. However, the other problem is that almost the entire medical profession, worldwide, is virtually controlled by Big Pharma. That's especially true in the area of mental health, where endless generations of "miracle drugs" are churned out without adequate testing, or - worse still - with suppression of results that don't suit the companies. Not just mental health though - don't even get me started on the issue of statins!

I'm afraid the only real solution is for members of the public to educate themselves a little more about some of the drugs that are out there. There are plenty of simple medical sites that will explain how various medications work... and plenty of forums for people who take them, where you can wise up on the effects the manufacturers don't want you to know about.

5

My girlfriend is only 40....will let you know what happens on wednesday