SSRI usage among pregnant women and the harms to unborn babies; and we ought to begin with some contextualisation. Most holistic doctors consider Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (or SSRI) antidepressants to be one of most harmful mass-prescribed drugs on the market. However, unlike the most other drugs, which are just unsafe and ineffective, SSRIs also have a fairly unique problem—which is that they have been culpable in violin outbreaks that have resulted in the loss of lives beyond the person taking them.

More specifically, since SSRIs first entered the market, many have noticed the unusual correlation between their consumption and completely out of character violently psychotic behavior, such as extremely disturbing homicides or suicides being committed by the individual. As the years have gone by, more and more evidence has accumulated (e.g., through lawsuits against the drug companies) that SSRIs cause psychotic violence, and in parallel, as the usage of these drugs has spiked, more and more grisly killings have occurred.

The pharmaceutical lobby and the mainstream media’s response has been to dismiss this as mere correlation that does not point to causation. However, the violent risks of SSRIs have gradually become more acceptable to talk about (e.g., after the Minneapolis Catholic School shooting, they once again came under scrutiny). In turn, each time a mass shooting happens, the mainstream media would try to monopolise the discussion with the same, tired script, in which they state that we need to ban all guns and have more mental health care (which is code for prescribing more psychiatric meds or SSRIs for everyone). Fortunately, this script is losing its appeal and SSRIs are more and more frequently being mentioned each time a mass shooting happens.

Secondly, one of the most common arguments used to dismiss the link between SSRIs and psychotic violence is that people who are mentally ill are more likely to be on psyche meds, so the “correlation” between psych meds and psychotic violence is simply a product of pre-existing mental illness and would have happened independently of the psyche med.

However, while claiming “correlation is not causation” makes it possible to refute this link while sounding intelligent in the process, there are a number of major problems with this argument. First, there is a lot of evidence tying SSRI usage to these events, including clinical trial data that was hidden from the public. Second, there is often a black-box warning on the SSRIs for them increasing the risk of suicide, something which can only be possible if some degree of causation does in fact exist. Third, these psychotic events are completely out of character for the individuals who commit them, and in many cases they report a very similar (and disconcerting) narrative of what they experienced prior to and during the shooting.

Furthermore, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (being SSRIs) have a similar primary mechanism of action to cocaine! More specifically, SSRIs block the reuptake of Serotonin, and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (or SNRIs), which are also commonly prescribed, block the reuptake of Serotonin and Nore-pine-phrine (but, henceforth “SSRI refers to both SSRI and SNRI). These are similar to cocaine in that cocaine blocks the reuptake of Serotonin, Norepinephrine, and Dopamine. And so, considering that SSRIs have this chemical effect, much like cocaine does, clearly, correlation between SSRIs and mass shootings or psychotic behaviour DOES equal causation. And this is why SSRIs keep reappearing in discussions of people with mental illnesses that are found at the centre of mass shootings or other questionable and fatal behaviours. And so, evidently, they are a drug that is reasonably dangerous both to those who consume it directly and those who do not.

DEVELOPMENT: SSRIs, PREGNANCY AND THE HARMS ON UNBORN CHILDREN

Now with all that we have discussed, as far as the problems and dangers associated with SSRIs, this problem takes another concerning form when it comes to pregnant women and their unborn babies. As we alluded to at the beginning of our discussion, across the world, thousands of pregnant women are being prescribed antidepressants while few are warned about the potential harms to their unborn babies.

This concern came to the forefront at a 2-hour expert panel convened on the 21st of July this year, by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and moderated by Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, who is the agency’s senior adviser for clinical sciences. During the expert panel, a lineup of doctors, scientists, and former regulators gathered to examine a thorny question, which is: Do selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (or SSRIs) cause more harm than good when used during pregnancy? As you would expect, their opinions were not unanimous, HOWEVER, all agreed on one striking fact being that there are no “gold-standard” randomised trials that have addressed the issue.

And not only is this an issue on its own, but it exposes a dangerous pattern in the medical and pharmaceutical industries where pregnant women and babies are often not considered as a primary demographic for which to have separate trials, that measure the impact of pharmaceuticals on their health – because as you would recall, this happened with the COVID jabs as well. For instance, Dr Marty Makary, who is now heading the FDA under this second Trump administration, well back in the year 2023, he noted that the COVID vaccine was recommended for pregnant women with zero data. They started a trial for pregnant women in an effort to prove the safety of the COVID jab, but then “they mysteriously stopped the trial after 349 women enrolled in the study… and the results of those 349 women have never been made public”.

So, yes, much like how there were no “gold standard” randomised trials before the  COVID jabs were given to pregnant women, there ALSO are no “gold-standard” randomised trials that have addressed the issue on whether SSRIs are safe for unborn babies.

ADDRESSING THE QUIET CENSORSHIP IN DISCUSSIONS ON MENTAL HEALTH

But, now, instead of sparking serious debate, the just alluded to FDA panel was savaged by the media. And the ferocity of the reaction served to highlight how unnecessarily difficult it has become for some to speak honestly when the message challenges psychiatric drugs. And there are two underlying reasons behind this quiet censorship in discussions on mental health and psychiatric drugs that require urgent attention.

The first reason is that psychiatric issues were re-defined to be a chronic, life long struggle as opposed to an illness that one can be alleviated from. In particular, though psychiatric medications have existed since the 1950s, the idea of taking them permanently gained ground around the 1980s, as a biological view of mental “illness” replaced a more psychological one. Drugs like Prozac were promoted as correcting the “chemical imbalance” causing depression, an imbalance that would theoretically be lifelong. Pharmaceutical companies, seeing lifelong patients of psychiatric drugs as a profit making avenue, obviously embraced the idea.

As a result of this, a shift occurred then from defining [mental states] as episodic, temporary experiences to incurable brain diseases. Psychiatric language ALSO shifted from using terms like “reaction” or “disturbance” to “disorder” and “disease.” This was intended in part to reduce stigma. BUT the shift also had striking consequences for big pharma’s ability to have life long patients. This is to say that depression (for example) that is a “reaction” or “disturbance” implies not just a limit but an origin, while “disorder” does not—furthermore, the former terms emphasises cause over chemicals.

But, beyond the definitional changes, there was also a practical problem with this shift in seeing mental illness as a chronic suffering. In particular, medications like antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, and antidepressants were in most cases developed for short-term use. Many trials of psychiatric drugs last less than two months, even though the length of time spent on a medication increases the difficulty of stopping it.

Then the second reason behind the quiet censorship in discussions on mental health and psychiatric drugs is that in a world where being able to claim victimisation has been made a means of political currency, in a broader victim economy, many have thus opted to form an identity around some form of suffering, and mental health is one of the options. More specifically, being afflicted with a mental health disorder is turned into an identity: you often hear this when people discuss mental health disorders with possessive language, in statements such as “I am depressed, or I am schizophrenic”, or I have ADHD. This possessive language suggests that the speaker has embraced the illness as being an intrinsic part of who they are, and thus often also build a dependent relationship with drugs associated with the disorder.

As a result of this, when those critical of psychiatric drugs or the perception of mental health disorders being a permanent and incurable state speak up, it becomes almost inevitable for those who’ve taken possession of the mental health disorder to push against this because they cannot differentiate between constructive discourse and an attack on their personality. And so, this is why even the media (which is often financed by pharma advertising money) savaged the FDA panel when they pushed back on SSRIs from pregnant women.

So, with this in mind, let’s proceed to discuss the concerns articulated by the panel. First, FDA Commissioner Dr Marty Makary opened the session with a stark warning. He stated that the US government is at risk of losing the broader battle of addressing mental health in the United States, because the more antidepressants are prescribed, the more depression there is. He cautioned that serotonin plays a crucial role in foetal development and warned that SSRIs have been “implicated in postpartum haemorrhage, pulmonary hypertension, cognitive downstream effects in the baby, as well as cardiac birth defects.”

Similarly, maternal–foetal medicine specialist Dr Adam Urato was unequivocal. He stated that never before in human history have we chemically altered developing babies like this…and this is happening without any real public warning”, meaning that patients are routinely misled. In fact, according to Dr Urato, the only counselling pregnant mothers often receive is that SSRIs do NOT affect the baby or cause complications. But, this is simply not accurate or adequate, especially because FDA’s own labels fail to warn about harms such as preterm birth, pre-eclampsia, or the fact that SSRIs alter foetal brain development.

Dr Adam Urato also pointed to ultrasound studies showing SSRI-exposed foetuses with “different movement and behaviour patterns,” and noted that newborns can present with “jitteriness, breathing difficulties, and higher rates of admission to the neonatal intensive care unit.”  By his count, “a dozen consecutive MRI studies” now demonstrate that prenatal SSRI exposure alters the developing brain. And this should not be a surprise considering that SSRIs have been found to cross the placenta and enter the foetal brain. Therefore, if these drugs alter the mom’s brain, they likely can also affect the babies.

And by the way, published research has raised similar concerns. For instance, a BMJ study found birth defects occurred 2 to 3.5 times more frequently in babies exposed to paroxetine or fluoxetine early in pregnancy. A JAMA Psychiatry study found venla-faxine was associated with the highest number of defects. And a 2018 meta-analysis covering more than nine million births found a modestly increased risk (11%) of congenital malformations linked to early SSRI use. But, here’s more on some of the critical takes that were shared in the course of the FDA panel.

TAPERING OFF SSRIs IS ALSO HARDLY DISCUSSED WITH PREGNANT WOMEN

However, it is not just the harm of the foetus that is seldom discussed with pregnant mothers, because Dr Josef Witt-Doerring, who is a psychiatrist and former FDA official, said that women often come to him unaware of the risks, and as such they feel incredibly betrayed by the medical establishment. So, he helps patients then taper off psychiatric drugs, but warns that there’s a black hole of knowledge on how to taper these medications – which is  a systemic issue intentionally curated because pharmaceutical companies want long term patients, so they keep making more money.

The interest in tapering pregnant women off SSRIs is further underscored by a 2021 meta-analysis, which reviewed 13 studies and found that up to 30% of infants exposed to SSRIs in the womb developed withdrawal symptoms—tremors, muscle tone abnormalities, rapid breathing, and respiratory distress—while unexposed infants showed none. The authors concluded that “tapering and discontinuation of antidepressant drugs before and during the early phase of pregnancy are worth attempting to prevent the occurrence of this syndrome.” They recommended non-drug therapies such as cognitive-behavioural therapy as the first choice.

IS THE AUTISM RISK FROM SSRIs REAL?

So, let’s proceed to what I think was a lingering thought in your mind as well, in the duration of this discussion on SSRIs, pregnant women and harms to unborn babies, which is: is there a link between a pregnant mother’s ingestion of SSRIs and autism in their unborn baby? Well, in light of this question, several experts said the potential for SSRIs to influence neurodevelopment is being brushed aside too quickly.

For instance, Dr Jay Gingrich, who is a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, pointed to animal studies showing serotonin’s vital role in brain development, particularly in forming cortical maps. However, SSRIs may disrupt that process. While he cautioned that translating animal data to humans is difficult, Dr Jay Gingrich added that these effects are relatively subtle, but they are there.

Furthermore, in 2018, Dr Gingrich and colleagues found that SSRI-exposed infants had enlarged gray matter in the amygdala and insula, and stronger white matter connections, compared with babies whose mothers had untreated depression or no depression.

Similarly, during the FDA panel on the 21st of July, Psychiatrist Dr David Healy reminded the panel that this concern is hardly new. In 2009, a jury found that Paxil caused birth defects and GlaxoSmithKline paid over $1 billion to settle 800 related lawsuits. And yet, since that verdict, five times more women have taken SSRIs during pregnancy.

Furthermore, Dr David Healy Data added that linking SSRIs to autism has actually existed for more than a decade! And yet, despite this, media outlets continue to insist the autism link has been debunked. But as psychiatrist Dr Joanna Moncrieff put it, most studies that claim to disprove the link between autism and SSRI intake by pregnant mothers are underpowered…in that they fail to rule out harm, or the causal link. And so, it remains that autism is indeed an orchestrated crisis, largely curated through pharmaceutical interventions.

Written By Lindokuhle Mabaso

 “The War Against the Corruption in the Psychiatric Industry”, and we ought to begin with the fact that the outcomes used in psychiatric drug trials are not meaningful, and psychiatric diagnoses and names of drug classes are also problematic. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (or DSM-5), which is  the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States, major depression “causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.” It is the other way around. People become depressed because of spiritual afflictions, medications they take, or because they have difficulties in their lives. Seldom is it because they are attacked by some arbitrary depression monster that can be killed with so-called antidepressants, in the same way that antibiotics are supposed to kill bacteria.

Furthermore, patients want to have normal levels of functioning and to enjoy a meaningful life. Yet, there has not been a single placebo-controlled trial of depression drugs that reported on such outcomes except one, which was unethical because the drugs were abruptly withdrawn in half the patients, which harmed them substantially, as they developed abstinence symptoms. The study was based on the understanding that patients on paroxetine reported statistically significant deterioration in functioning at work, relationships, social activities, and overall functioning. But, the study was also by Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of fluo-xetine, which has an active metabolite with a half-life of one to two weeks. And so, to manipulate the outcome, and try to prove a comparative advantage of using fluo-xetine (as opposed to paroxetine), the drugs were abruptly withdrawn in half the patients. Thus, little harm will be done to patients on fluoxetine during a five-day period where the drug was changed to a placebo unbeknownst to the patients (hence the unethical conduct).

But, in addition to such acts of corruption during trials, the outcomes in psychiatric drug trials are measured on rating scales even though the results cannot tell us whether the patients have improved in any way that is important for them. But we can exclude this possibility because the effects obtained with such scales are considerably lower than the least clinically relevant difference to placebo, both for depression drugs and psychosis drugs. Thus, the drugs don’t work, not even for very severe degrees of depression. And yet, this is not what the patients are being told.

So, how did we get to this point? I think it is because pharmaceutical companies never had an objective and observable benefit to prove. And this is because psychiatric diagnoses often do not have a biological basis, and are rather a standardised observation. You’d recall that we have discussed this here on ‘The War Room’ with respect to ADHD (which uses a questionnaire to justify putting expectedly active children on meds), or even gender dysphoria – which is quite simply not a thing, except body discomfort that comes with puberty, or social contagion.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PROBLEM: PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS WERE PRESENTED AS CHRONIC MEDICATION

Let’s also revisit the relationship between psychology and pharmakeia, also known as big pharma. Psychiatric medicines work by altering the nervous system. Stopping or decreasing too fast is a wrenching physical adjustment that can create the same states the drugs are meant to fix: depression, anxiety, confusion, and more. Even unpleasant feelings in the brain itself. We then have to ask: Is there an alternative? Well, in 1794, a doctor named Philippe Pinel said something revolutionary to his French audience. Dr Pinel declared psychological issues curable. By “cure,” Dr Pinel meant an outcome psychiatry still fails to embrace: which is hope for the course of medical treatment to come to an end, which would mean that psychiatric treatment is not created to be a chronic experience. Well, there’s context for why this idea is critical to highlight even in the status quo.

For some context, though psychiatric medications have existed since the 1950s, the idea of taking them permanently gained ground around the 1980s, as a biological view of mental “illness” replaced a more psychological one. Drugs like Prozac were promoted as correcting the “chemical imbalance” causing depression, an imbalance that would theoretically be lifelong. Pharmaceutical companies, seeing lifelong patients of psychiatric drugs as a profit making avenue, obviously embraced the idea.

As a result of this, a shift occurred then from defining [mental states] as episodic, temporary experiences to incurable brain diseases. Psychiatric language ALSO shifted from using terms like “reaction” or “disturbance” to “disorder” and “disease.” This was intended in part to reduce stigma. BUT the shift also had striking consequences for big pharma’s ability to have life long patients. This is to say that depression (for example) that is a “reaction” or “disturbance” implies not just a limit but an origin, while “disorder” does not—furthermore, the former terms emphasises cause over chemicals.

But, beyond the definitional changes, there was also a practical problem with this shift in seeing mental illness as a chronic suffering. In particular, medications like antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, and antidepressants were in most cases developed for short-term use. Many trials of psychiatric drugs last less than two months, even though the length of time spent on a medication increases the difficulty of stopping it. ALL of this to say that there is an abundance of research that show the harms of psychotropic, or antipsychotic drugs.

BIG PHARMA-FUNDED PSYCHIATRISTS CLAIM THERE IS NO WITHDRAWAL FROM PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS

Despite these problems, you’d recall that we’ve highlighted that psychology made staying on psychiatric drugs something of a virtue; in that “staying on meds” has become not just the likely outcome in psychiatry but a test of virtue. “Good” patients are said to be those that stay on meds, while bad patients don’t, often because they’re “so sick they do not even know they’re sick.” This mentality is rooted in the presumption that to take meds is to acknowledge there’s something wrong with you; to shun them means something even worse. Yet drug withdrawal is far slower and harder than most people, including doctors, realise. Its effects are often misread as a return of symptoms. And yet, big pharma is paying psychiatrists to claim that this is not the case!

More specifically, psychiatrists have been accused of downplaying the risks of antidepressant withdrawal in a new study. The paper claims, with confidence, that withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants are minimal and easily managed, contradicting previous evidence. It also suggests that patients should be reassured when discontinuing medication. The study was led by researchers at Imperial College London and King’s College London. They identified the types and frequencies of the symptoms people experience when stopping antidepressants. They found that “most people do not experience severe withdrawal”. The paper claims that symptoms are usually “mild” and “short-lived”. However, psychiatrists, psychologists and patients have widely criticised the study due to its reliance on short-term clinical trials lasting only 8-12 weeks. The reality is that people most often use antidepressants for years. Alongside this, it ignores the lived experience of thousands of people (which is valuable empirical experience-based insight).

In the UK alone, there are around nine million people on antidepressants. Long-term use of antidepressants has been linked to weight gain, bleeding, emotional numbness, suicidal thoughts and feelings, falls, and additional poorer long-term outcomes. And since the 90s, patients have reported unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when stopping the medications. Furthermore, a 2024 Lancet review discovered that one in six people will experience discontinuation symptoms when stopping antidepressants. Another study found that for 40% of people, withdrawal symptoms lasted over two years, with 80% of these people moderately or severely impacted by them. In total, one in four were unable to stop the medications and returned to them.

Studies also suggest that the longer someone takes an antidepressant, the more likely they are to experience prolonged and severe withdrawal symptoms. And so, this raises big questions about the number of people who try, fail and ultimately continue taking the medication for the rest of their lives. Evidently psychiatric drugs, and in particular antidepressants are really difficult to stop consuming.

IF PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS ARE NOT PROVEN TO BE EFFECTIVE, WHAT ARE THEY BEING USED FOR?

So, considering how addictive, dangerous and yet ineffective for the claimed purpose these drugs are, we then ought to ask ourselves: if these psychiatric drugs are not proven to be effective, then what are they used for (besides serving as a profit making avenue for pharmaceutical companies who know they are not making people better?. Well, SSRIs are a crucial focus in answering this question. Most holistic doctors consider Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (also known as SSRI) antidepressants to be one of most harmful mass-prescribed drugs on the market. However, unlike the other drugs, which are just unsafe and ineffective, SSRIs also have a fairly unique problem—which is that they can kill people who are NOT even taking the drugs.

More specifically, since SSRIs first entered the market, many have noticed the unusual correlation between their consumption and completely out of character violently psychotic behavior, such as extremely disturbing homicides or suicides being committed by the individual. As the years have gone by, more and more evidence has accumulated (e.g., through lawsuits against the drug companies) that SSRIs cause psychotic violence, and in parallel, as the usage of these drugs has spiked, more and more grisly killings have occurred.

The pharmaceutical lobby and the mainstream media’s response has been to dismiss this as mere correlation that does not point to causation. However, the violent risks of SSRI’s have gradually become more acceptable to talk about (e.g., RFK Jr. has mentioned them during his presidential campaign and not backed down when challenged on the point). In turn, each time a mass shooting happens, the mainstream media would try to monopolise the discussion with the same, tired script, in which they state that we need to ban all guns and have more mental health care (which is code for prescribing more psychiatric meds or SSRIs for everyone). Fortunately, this script is losing its appeal and SSRIs are more and more frequently being mentioned each time a mass shooting happens.

WITH SSRIs CORRELATION DOES (IN FACT) EQUAL CAUSATION

One of the most common arguments used to dismiss the link between SSRIs and psychotic violence is that people who are mentally ill are more likely to be on psyche meds, so the “correlation” between psych meds and psychotic violence is simply a product of pre-existing mental illness and would have happened independently of the psyche med.

However, while claiming “correlation is not causation” makes it possible to refute this link while sounding intelligent in the process, there are a number of major problems with this argument. First, there is a lot of evidence tying SSRI usage to these events, including clinical trial data that was hidden from the public. Second, there is often a black-box warning on the SSRIs for them increasing the risk of suicide, something which can only be possible if some degree of causation does in fact exist. Third, these psychotic events are completely out of character for the individuals who commit them, and in many cases they report a very similar (and disconcerting) narrative of what they experienced prior to and during the shooting.

Furthermore, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (being SSRIs) have a similar primary mechanism of action to cocaine! More specifically, SSRIs block the reuptake of Serotonin, and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (or SNRIs), which are also commonly prescribed, block the reuptake of Serotonin and Nore-pine-phrine (but, henceforth “SSRI refers to both SSRI and SNRI). These are similar to cocaine in that cocaine blocks the reuptake of Serotonin, Norepinephrine, and Dopamine. And so, considering that SSRIs have this chemical effect, much like cocaine does, clearly, correlation between SSRIs and mass shootings or psychotic behaviour DOES equal causation. And this is why SSRIs keep reappearing in discussions of people with mental illnesses that are found at the centre of mass shootings or other questionable and fatal behaviours.

THE PHARMACEUTICAL LOBBY’S ROLE IN COVERING THE DANGERS OF SSRIs

With what we’ve just discussed: from the addictive nature of psychiatric drugs, to the dangers of SSRIs, immediately, we have to ask why this information is not as mainstream as it should be – especially considering the number of people consuming these drugs. First, as we’ve discussed here on the War Room a number of times, this has to do with the pharmaceutical lobby and the tactics that it uses to cover its ills – ranging from lobbying government to implement legislation that protects the pharmaceutical industry from being held liable, to manipulating political processes through corrupting politicians with financial incentives, and also establishing  quid-pro-quo relationship with doctors when they over prescribe their drugs.

But, the other crucial reason that this information was not as mainstream as it ought to be is because the pharmaceutical lobby also captured the mainstream media through advertising revenue, which allows them to regulate what is said about pharmaceutical products.

Written By Lindokuhle Mabaso