Letters from Generation Rx
afilm by Kevin P. Miller
©2017 KolaFilms LLC
Letters from Generation RX—Complete
Opens withhaunting music as shots of Rocky Mountains are revealed;
Autumn: I’ve had to renegotiate that memory over and over andover again.
(old Churchin the middle of nowhere as musical chant begins)
Autumn: …gravel spitting and water flying and kids screaming…
(photo ofAutumn as youngster)
Autumn: It was the summer after I turnedeight …
(long shotreveals rural road as 1990 Ford Bronco appears)
Autumn: We never really knew what toyexpect from Mom. During a particularly bad swing, she went through some reallydesperate days .. and she put us all in the Bronco and took us for a drive downto the river.
(soulfulchant continues as low angle of Bronco speeds by)
Autumn: Before we got to the river, shewas just purely robotic. She decided it was time for all of us .. to die. “It’s time to die; we’re all gonna feel better soon; We’re all gonna feel better soon…we’ll all feel better soon…”
(soulfulchant increases as Bronco takes hard turn down a dirt road)
Autumn: When something like killing all sixof her children made sense enough to put the kids in the Bronco and drive intothe river—I see it.
(Bronco headsdown muddy road, swerving as it increases speed)
Autumn: My memories of that moment arereally in black and white
(rear shot ofBronco revealing river; quick-cut of various angles of Bronco hitting the riverat full speed)
Autumn: I’m not sure I ever met my Mom again after that point
(soulfulchant increases as camera shifts from water level to underwater; then title:LETTERS FROM GENERATION RX as bubbles float upward)
2 secondsunder black, then new music starts, amid sounds of ocean waves - video revealswaves violently lashing a minivan)
News voice: ...a strange story out of Floridathis morning, where the mother of three children drove into the ocean off ofDaytona Beach …
News: The pregnant mom spoke of demons before driving intothe Atlantic...
Newsvoice: Police say they’ve never seen anything like this ..
(cut toNewburgh, NY news video from Associated Press)
AP Reporter: The tiny city of Newburgh NY is trying to come togrips with the deaths of 3 young children who died when their mother drove theminto the Hudson River. . .
Nicholas Valentine, Mayor, Newburgh, NY: “we are talking about a tragedy inthis city that is probably second-to-none…”
AP Reporter: It all unfolded at this boat rampTuesday evening
Fire Chief, Newburgh, NY: …any effort to locate the vehicle,difficult at best...it was not floating—it was underwater.
Reporter SOT: among the victims are 2-year old Lance Pierre and his11-month old sister.
Tilda:Perhaps we should take nothing for granted: not our loves, nor our lives —our familiesor friends — even our sanity. One minute, all is well …the next, we’re plunged into darkness, unable to process what isreal — and what is madness.
(bronco hitswater - splash sfx)
Tilda: Autumn Stringham (String-um) realized this all-too-young.
Autumn: It was the summer after I turned eight.
Tilda: She should not be alive—and she knowsit.
Autumn: That was the moment that shattered trust. How do youtrust anybody after that?
Tilda: Forcedto confront a mystery beyond her comprehension, she spent decades haunted …in search ofanswers … in pursuit of peace.
Autumn:. . .when something like killing all six of her childrenmade sense enough to put the kids in the Bronco and drive into the river—I see it:gravel spitting and water flying and kids screaming. Somehow she managed to digit up to back out of that—and that’s anincredible victory for somebody in that state of mind. There are other motherswho don’t win that battle.
Tilda: Inexchange for this redemption, there was a price, however …
Autumn:(fighting toregain composure) …and it’s taken me thirty years....to be able to find thebeautiful side of that memory. . .
Tilda: Autumn’s mom did eventually die by suicide — alone on acountry road. Tony Stephan was now widowed — with eight children at home.
Tony Stephan: I’m laying in bed at night in my roomlistening to a house full of mourning; and it just shattered the whole family.It just shattered the children, it shattered me.
Tilda: It hasbecome so commonplace—these irrational acts and horrific deeds—that we’ve almost become numb to it. We’ve seen them in schools and public spaces .. in homesand churches. They’re all over the news. Try aswe might to understand them, we can’t. Try as wemight to ignore them .. they call to us still.
Andy Downing (Parent): We called the paramedics, they tried feverishly torevive her. And I was trying to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but Iknew something was wrong because her body was cold.
Tilda: It’s2004. Andy Downing’s world has just been shattered;his daughter, a victim of an unimaginable act of violence. But it was how this 11-year old girl died that truly horrified theworld:
Candace Downing home video: Hello, I’mCandace Downing
Tilda: … Candace .. hanged herself.
Mathy Downing (Parent): When Candace first died, we asked ourselves, ‘how could we not know that she was unhappy?’
Tilda: The Downing’s didn’t realize itat the time, of course, but her case was not a rare event. No …Candace … was far from alone.
Nancy McCartney (Parent): He texted us .. and said, “Mom, I love you and I will see you soon.” He texted his dad, and said, “I’ll call worksoon. I love you and I will see you soon.” Texted his brother, and said, “I love you Hayden. I will see you soon” - and then he hanged himself.
Rhonda Carlin (Parent): She started on this drug somewhere in January. Andthese things make you unafraid. They make you do things you wouldn’t do normally. They make you able to put a rope aroundyour neck and hang yourself.
Linda Hurcombe (Parent): Caitlin died at home and we found her, and she’d probably had been dead for maybe at the most fiveminutes when we found her. She’d hangedherself in the guest bedroom upstairs.
Kristina Gehrki (Parent): It really is like a perfect murdermystery novel. I mean, it’s almost likekilling somebody with an icicle and it melts and the weapon is gone.
Tilda: Theywere still dizzy from death .. traumatized and broken .. when they solved themystery. The drugs responsible, they say, are called SSRIs .. and they’re among the bestselling drugs in the world.
Rhonda: It was a sample pack. . .ofPaxil.
Nancy: Cipralex
Mathy: Sertraline, which is Zoloft
Kristina: (clip6-18:32): themaximum dose of Zoloft legally allowed
Linda: There was one thing in her systemin the coroner’s report: a therapeutic dose offluoxetine hydrochloride.
Tilda: SSRIsare better known as antidepressants.
intercutZoloft TV ad—
Tilda:Psychiatric drugs like SSRIs have been defended with religious zeal by theirbelievers — and damned by others as some of themost dangerous drugs on the planet.
Distinguishingtruth from fiction has been a challenge, and this has placed the public in theunenviable position of deconstructing the scientific and medical dogma ontheir own, in the midst of a 30-year social experiment. As Director of theNational Institutes of Mental Health, Thomas Insel has been at the center of astorm of contradictions about the use of these drugs.
Thomas Insel, MD: I think that we have to be very humble about thisright now, because we’ve often been soself-congratulatory, because we have, after all, many people feel, made greatstrides. The numbers don’t reallysupport that.
Tilda: Dr. Insel’s candor is sure to shock and upset many - on allsides of the debate. The word “failure”is one fewhave dared to utter.
Insel: Fundamentally,“why have we failed here?”Why has thesuicide rate not come down? Why have the measures, disability, whatever thosemight be, why have those continued to go up instead of down? All of the numbersare going in the wrong direction, so where, where have we failed? What’s gone wrong here?
Tilda: The answers, according to Insel,run contrary to the standard arguments put forth by mental healthprofessionals.
Insel: A lot of people say it’s because of stigma and access. The fact is that actuallymore people are getting more treatment than ever before, so it’s hard for me to quite believe that. I would justsubmit that from the NIMH perspective, the answer about why we’ve failed is a little more disruptive. And that answeris that we don’t know enough.
Tilda: Tohear the Director of the NIMH say now that all of the exultations aboutpsychotropics - from the media, from academia, from the profession, fromgovernments — werenot merited —isunsettling. After billions of prescriptions and hundreds of billions of dollarsin drug company profits — how did this occur?
Insel: I think that our field has goingoff track here by devoting so much of its resources over the last 20 to 30years, both publicly and privately, just trying to understand how the drugswork. If the drugs were truly curative, if it was like trying to understand howinsulin helps somebody with diabetes, that might be defensible. But you’ve got medications here that—at most—reduce some of the symptoms of mood disorders, of psychoticdisorders. They don’t, in any sense, provide a cure.
Tilda: Thischange of heart contradicts what we’ve been toldabout psychiatric drugs for a generation now — and raises serious questions abouthow and why these drugs have been dispensed so indiscriminately to millions.
Jeri Oler (Patient): I was massively drugged. I tried drug after drug. Idid what they told me to do. I used to take tranquilizers, benzodiazepines…that’s all i did was pop pills all day.
Nicole Monkman (Patient): They just kept handing me pills. “Here, let’s try this,” “Let’s try this,”“Let’s try this.” And I felt like a walking pharmaceutical company,really. And nothing was working. I was drugged out. I was a nonexistent person. I had a heartbeatand that’s really all that I had.
Melissa Binstock (Patient): I was just sort of given these pills and said, “Swallow this. Take that. Chew this.” And I was never told: “Well, you might experience these side-effects,”or “This actually might not work.” It was like they were just was given to me as like apanacea like, “This is going to fix your Tourette’s. This is going to fix your OCD.This is going to fix everything and everything is going to be all better.”Really, as an8 or 9-year-old, I really believed that, until I began really experiencing allthose horrible side-effects that eventually changed me into not even a person,but like a monster. I was horrible.
Terence Young(Authorand Member of Canadian Parliament): Doctors, to a large degree, have abandonedtheir Hippocratic oath, which is to do no harm. That is, it’s like a pill for every ill. They are knee jerkprescribers, many of them. In fact, it has been shown that the average doctorwill make a decision to prescribe a drug within 19 seconds of seeing a patient.
GARY GREENBERG, Ph.D (Author and Psychotherapist):Using antidepressants, or any of the psychiatric drugs is simply notunderstood, it’s not explained, it’s not dwelt upon. I think they’re in a different class of drug from most of the drugswe take for our other ailments.
Tilda: In the80s and 90s, SSRIs were the first in a class of new mental health potionsheralded as “wonder drugs” and “miracle cures.” They were extolled as “safe and effective” solutions for the age-old problemof depression — and were marketed as such. Thus began an aggressivemarch towards a new era in Psychiatry, one which boasted chemicals for themental health conditions that had dogged humankind for millennia. Thirty years later,however, the window on that era, and its boldproclamations, appears to be closing.
Gary Greenberg: What are we doing? I mean,especially when it comes to children, we don’t really know how the drugs work, we don’t know whether they work, we don’t know whether they’re neurotoxic, and so that means we’re in the middle of a public health experiment that’s been going on for the last 50-60 years—and moreintensively for the last 30 years. And it could be that 100 years from now,they’ll look back at us like we look atthe Romans who poisoned themselves with their lead pipes, saying, “look at some of the effects of the widespread use of these drugs. Lookat what these people did.”
Irving Kirsch (Author and Psychologist):My prediction—I don’t think I’ll live to see it—but my prediction is, that someday, we will look back at the antidepressant era and have the view ofprescribing antidepressants that now we have of bloodletting.
Tilda: IrvingKirsch rocked psychiatry with anappearance on 60 Minutes and an explosive book, The Emperor’sNew Drugs.
Three timeshe tested the data on SSRIs — three times, he verified thatprescription antidepressants were no better than taking a sugar pill. Still, hewas under fire from critics who vowed to prove him wrong.
Kirsch: People started doing other studies.They said, “well maybe you did your statisticswrong.” Critics, opponents, they took our data an re-did it.The FDA has done its own meta-analysis, looking at all of the antidepressantsthey’ve ever approved. They got the sameresult. Everybody gets the same result.
(at end, showFDA Meta-analysis graphic with FDA HHS logo)
RobertWhitaker (Author, Journalist, PulitzerFinalist): I was abeliever in this story. I wrote stories about how psychiatric disorders arecaused by chemical imbalances—these fix them. I can rememberwriting a story about depression screening day. “Isn’t that a good thing? Go get screened.” So I was a believer in a story of psychiatry as astory of progress. We were learning about the brain, we were learning about thebiological underpinnings of these disorders, and we had drugs that fixed thosebiological problems. That is what I believed as a science writer. So I wasstunned—when you actually go to the research, it’s not there. The whole story starts fallingapart.
Tilda: As thewar of words over psychotropics intensified in the new century, journalistRobert Whitaker weighed in with Anatomy of An Epidemic —and quicklyfound he, too, had a target on his back.
Pundits saidWhitaker would have “blood on his hands” if people stopped taking theirmedications as a result of his book.
Yet, when the Director of NIMH wasasked to evaluate Whitaker’s analysis ofthe science behind psychiatric drugs, Dr. Insel said this:
THOMAS INSEL, Dir., NIMH: I will take one piece of what he said to heart—and I thinkit’s an important one. And his commentis just to observe that in spite of this enormous increase in the use ofantidepressants, antipsychotics, and other neuroleptic or psychotropicmedications, which is that broad class, over the last 2 to 3 decades—it’s been difficult to demonstrate a commensuratedecrease in morbidity, that is, disability or mortality, measured by suicide.Now, in other areas of medicine, if you increase the use of your medicationtwofold, threefold, sixfold, you will see—we have seen, reductions inmorbidity and mortality.
ADD “SHAKER”SFX for Pillsvideo
Now, we canargue about whether in those people that get the right medication at the rightdose for the right duration, there really have been lives saved. There are beenreductions in disability and every one of us has seen people who have donebeautifully, and whose lives have been saved by the use of medication. But at apopulation level, his observation needs to be taken very seriously.
Julia Rucklidge (Professor of Clinical Psychology,University of Canterbury): In the immediate, it could make a huge difference. Youcould have someone going from being psychotic to being non-psychotic, which isa pretty amazing change in behavior. But what I think what we need to recognizethat what’s happened over the last 50 yearsis that they haven’t shown to be as good as we thoughtthey were.
Barry Turner (Senior lecturer in science, medialaw, & public administration, University of Lincoln - UK): All of these drugs are known tocreate benefit for people. All I am concerned about is that they have aninformed choice. If the public wants to take Prozac, if the public wants totake Paxil, they should have the opportunity to do so. But they should do so inan informed way.
Tilda: Yet, in the case of psychiatricdrugs, “informed choice” is a bit of a misnomer. . .andfinding the path of least risk can be daunting. In this vacuum, millions havebeen harmed, simply due to a lack of knowledge.
Joanna Moncrief (Academic psychiatrist and authorof The Bitterest Pills -UK): Psychiatrists’ knowledge and training in the areaof psychopharmacology is completely inadequate, in my view. And this is partlybecause of the focus on the disease-centered model. Psychiatrists have been soobsessed with what disease different drugs treat, they haven’t looked at the drugs as drugs, and they haven’t understood all of the harmful effects the drugs canproduce.
Julia Rucklidge:It’s time for us to stop and reflect on this and say, “Okay. Where are we at with the use of medications?” It serves a purpose, it’s got aplace, but we need to also stop and recognize that there is a cost to this andthat there are people who are struggling for other reasons now because of theside effects associated with these medications.
Nicole Monkman (patient): I was on Seroquel, Lithium,Clonazepam, Imipramine; I’ve triedevery antidepressant, every mood stabilizer, every antipsychotic,Benzodiazepines. I mean, do they tell you that it’s six days or something very minute for thoseBenzodiazepines, because they’re soaddictive? They don’t tell you that. Then, they say intwo weeks, “your anxiety is higher so here aresome more pills.” You try coming off that stuff. It’s worse than,they say, than coming off of heroin. It’s hell—it’s hell.
Melissa Binstock (patient): One of my best friends is bipolar,and she has been medicated her entire life until about three or four years ago.And we talk about it. We have horror stories—we swap them, you know. [Laughter].It’s almost a competition like whosecould be worse? I’ve got some pretty awful stories,but so does she. And I feel it’s prettycommon among people that have grown up being on pills.
JenniferKinzie (MentalHealth Counselor): My first main position in my field, the human services fieldwas in a group home, and these youths were on 5, 6, 7 medications. They wouldbe on Risperdal and Seroquel, they would be on Paxil and Zoloft—it was justan incredible amount of poly-pharmacy that took place. So I can have empathyfor those who don’t “get it,” because I didn’t get it.
Tilda: Toomany times, injured parties say, they were greeted not by empathy—but by apathy instead. They report being ignoredby the regulatory agencies, law enforcement, elected officials, and worst ofall, by their doctors and the medical community as a whole.
LEAVE SLIGHT SPACE - TOO TIGHT
Victims ofviolence, suicide, and a host of other serious adverse effects were dismissedas anecdotes — and told that their experiences were attributable to the disease—not the drug.
David Healy,MD (Psychiatrist,psychopharmacologist, scientist, and author): When I treat you and put you on apill, let’s say you turn blue, and then we halt the pill and you turn back to yournormal color. And then we put you on the pill again and you turn blue again.Until very recently, everyone would agree that that was a convincingdemonstration that this pill caused at least you to turn blue. Now weare told that that’s an anecdote. It didn’t happen.
Tilda: While the drug companies ruthlesslydefended their magic bullets in the Courts and through the Press, they were, ineffect, stigmatising people who were harmed by using them. The long lens ofhistory has revealed that the troubling effects of these chemicals were well-known - years before FDA and other regulatorybodies actually approved SSRIs.
cg: FDA PROZAC HEARINGS, 1991
Pallie Carnes: This is hard for me because I tried to commitsuicide in front of my five children
Irene Dotson: I attacked him with a kitchen knife
Debra Douglas: I took the 9mm automatic, sat down on the bed andput the gun to my head.
TuckerMoneymaker: After being on Prozac for 21 days, my wife shot andkilled both of these two boys right here
Pallie Carnes: Eli Lilly calls Prozac the wonder drug and I wonderwhy? Thinking back on how this drugaffected me, does a wonder drug rob you of a conscience? Does a wonder drugmake you forget the difference between right and wrong?
Peter Breggin,MD (psychiatrist and author): In the early 1990’s this issue had reached a peak, “Was Prozac Causing Violence and Suicide?” But whathappened was that their psychopharmacology committee, almost everybody on thecommittee worked for the drug companies. So the conflicts of interest was soenormous that the FDA had to give them all letters forgiving them of theirconflicts of interest so they couldn’t be sued.
cg: 1993
Kevin P. Miller to FDA Chief (1993): What about your concernregarding Prozac? It is very well documented: 28,000 adverse events, 1600suicides associated with that drug.
Michael R. Taylor,Deputy Director, FDA: Well, drugs that go through our very rigorous testingand review process are very well understood chemicals. And drugs are recognizedto have both risks and benefits, that’s why they go through a rigorous evaluation, and whenthose products are put out on the market, we have a good scientificunderstanding of both the risks and benefits. That’s laid out in very detailed labeling that physiciansthen use to decide whether to prescribe those products to their patients. Sideeffects are part of pharmaceuticals—that’s recognized, and that’s why we’re socarefully scientifically.
Peter Breggin,MD: Well, nothing could be further fromthe truth that “the chemical is well understood” or that the FDA was careful.Actually, what the FDA was careful about was to consciously cover-up everyreally dangerous adverse effect of Prozac.
FDA employee: Kevin, this wasn’t on the list of things we were supposed to talk about(interrupted by other FDA employee)
Michael R.Taylor: Why don’t you turn the camera off so we can talk?
Breggin, MD: They did nothing, absolutelynothing. Meanwhile, Eli Lilly was busily hiding everything they could about theincreased rates of suicidality.
Karen BarthMenzies: It was amatter of how do we cover it up? How do we hide it? Every step of the process,towards approval and marketing thereafter, was designed to hide and mislead thepublic and physicians about the suicide side effect.
Andy Vickery (Attorney and Patient Advocate):Leigh Thompson, the chief scientist at Lilly writes in February 7, 1990, thathe had a conversation with Dr. Paul Leber at6:15 in themorning. (show document with digital typingsfx) Now, thinkabout that. You work for the United States government, the taxpayers of theUnited States government, and your job is to be my watchdog. Do you think I’m going to call you at 6:15 in the morning?
And oh, bythe way, if you want to send me something, I’ve got this special back line overhere at the FDA. Send it through backchannels, you know, so other people don’t get it…just feed me this info on the QT. It’sextraordinary.
Tilda: Lilly’s own secret files implicate the FDAs Paul Leber,Robert Temple and Thomas Laughren as being complicit in a scheme to whitewashthe dark facts about Prozac.
Karen BarthMenzies (atty): Thereare some verytelling documents that show the cozy relationship between FDA officials and EliLilly in those early years, in the early 1990s. Lilly employees or Lilly personnelreferring to certain members of FDA as “our friend” in the FDA. “They’re our defender.”They wereworking hard to get over this suicide issue and they referred to the suicideissue as “a public relations problem.”
MUSIC BRIDGE: “COMMONSENSE”
Tilda: By1997, Prozac had become America’s mostreported drug to Medwatch, with over 39,000 serious adverse-effect events onfile. Since only 1% of the actual number of events are reported throughMedWatch, this means that nearly four million people in the US alone hadalready reported experiencing mania, anxiety, agitation, hostility,hallucinations, suicidal ideations, and more.
Breggin, MD : when you’re working on these things and you find this out, youthink to yourself “what what kind of world are weliving in?” That there’s so muchsleight-of-hand and manipulation and fraud going on—to deceivethe American public and the world from the fact that drugs are causing peopleto kill other people and to kill themselves. It is astonishing.
Tilda: EliLilly has been called “The House That Prozac Built.” Before the drug was introduced, Lilly reported earnings of $600 millionannually. Prozac changed Lilly’s fortunes —and thecompany banked at least $21 billion dollars in profits from the drugover the life of their patent.
music rampsup; fade toblack, title appears:
Sara, Brennan, and God’s Coroner
MUSIC: ANJA SINGS: “I GUESS IT HAPPENED ON PURPOSE…BUT LATELY THINGS HAVE BEEN GETTING QUITE INTENSE…”
TerenceYoung, Member ofParliament, Ontario, Canada: When I say to some people, “prescriptions drugs are the fourthleading cause of death in our society,” that seems to be the dividingline. There’s some people who already know it’s true, who have read about it and understand it. Thenthere’s others who think, “Oh, that’s a myth. That can’t be true.”They simplycan’t conceive of that, so they stoplistening.
Tilda:Terence Young is a Member of Parliament in Canada, serving Oakville, Ontario,just outside of Toronto. After a prescription drug caused the death of hisdaughter Vanessa, he founded an advocacy group, Drug Safety Canada.
Terence: Vanessa collapsed in front of me.Her heart had stopped, basically as she stood up to go upstairs. When you losea child your world is upside down. I was thrown into a study of medicine, ofmedical jargon, of how the health care system works and when it doesn’t work. And I didn’t ask for it, but it was my way of dealing with theloss of Vanessa. It was, in a sense, my way of grieving. It started the day shedied.
Tilda: Forfive years, Young investigated the practices of the medical and drug industries.And in doing so, he says, he realized how Pharma’s influence had permeated every construct of modernsociety.
Terence: They find a way to create afinancial interest in every institution in our society that we rely on forcritical thought. They have money in our universities, in our colleges, in ourhospital boards, in the media — and they almost always win.
Tilda: Theloss of his daughter—coupled with the shocking truths he uncovered throughhis medical research — led him to write “Death By Prescription” and become one of Canada’s most ardent proponents of “informedchoice.”
Terence Young: Glaxo SmithKline just paid the largest fine in thehistory of the United States related to fraud and criminal acts for a drugcompany. They paid 3 billion dollars for illegal marketing of Paxil, Wellbutrinand Avandia—Paxil and Avandia both having beendrugs that caused a lot of deaths due to adverse drug reactions. And they paidit in cash.
SUICIDE 2MUSIC
James Cole (Deputy US Attorney General):This action constitutes the largest healthcare settlement in United Stateshistory.
TerenceYoung: It was intheir business plan. Because those three drugs, in the years involved sold $25billion dollars’ worth. And the drugs are marked upin the thousands of percent.
Carmen Ortiz (U.S. Attorney-Massachusetts):GSK distributed Paxil with false and misleading labeling. What GSK did wasencourage the use of Paxil for children who are dealing with depression withfalse messages about safety and effectiveness.
DanielLevinson (InspectorGeneral, Health and Human Services): This unlawful promotion putchildren at risk of taking drugs that were unproven to be effective for them,and have been shown to increase the risk of suicide.
Tilda: Thesefraudulent practices were locked away for decades —protected byinstitutions and doctors and the drug companies themselves. Psychiatric andscientific ethics were cast aside in exchange for profits - no one went to jail- and real people paid the price.
fade to black
NancyMcCartney: Brennan worehis heart on his sleeve. He just adored social situations. He loved to singfrom a very young age, music was part of our life and part of what he adored.To the point where one of the nicest memories we have, was he was at Peggy’s Cove with his aunt Meryl and decided at the giftshop that he would sing “Danny Boy” to all the senior citizens on thebus tour there. He just broke out into song and had his own little audience atPeggy’s Cove.
music: “Oh, Danny Boy. . .oh, Danny boy. . .”
Shaun McCartney: Yeah, what I miss most aboutBrennan is when he came in, he’d always giveme a hug. “Hey dad, how’re you doing?”Give me ahug. I still think to this day that he’s going to walk through the door. We were driving, nottoo long ago, and it was Nancy, myself and our other son Hayden — and I looked in the back seat andHayden was sleeping and I looked to see if Brennan was there. Just out ofhabit, to see if he was sleeping too.
Nancy: I saw Brennan walk out of thishouse, he was very robotic.
(a dreamlikereenactment - blurry - medium shot of Brennan murmuring as he puts his coat andhat on) -Nancy:“Brennan, where you going?” - “It’s okay mom, I just got to go.” Puts on his winter coat. “Brennan,it’s hot out today.” - “It’s okay mom, I just got to go.” Puts on his winter hat. I said, “Brennan, it’s hot out today you won’t need that.” - “It’s okay mom, I just got to go.” I said, “well, I need you here for a minute.” - “No, it’s okay mom, I just got to go.”That’s all he could say to me, and this was a child who wasvery articulate, who was so verbose that sometimes you would just say “okay, okay, enough, enough already.”
Tilda: Fourdays prior, Brennan went to the family doctor with a chest cold andinexplicably came home with a sample pack of the antidepressant Cipralex. Atthe time of his disappearance, he was exhibiting the classic signs ofAkathisia.
Shaun: When Brennan went missing I drovethe roads for hours just north of here. And I did every side road, everyconservation area, every laneway looking for him. One of the things that hedidn’t have was a great sense ofdirection. I thought maybe he had gone for a hike in the bush and got turned aroundand couldn’t find his way out, and I wentlooking for him. That’s what was going through my mindthe whole time.
Nancy: He texted us and said, “Mom, I’msorry. I’m sorry I was mad about the cat. “I love you and I will see you soon.”He texted hisdad, and said, “I’ll call work soon. I love you and Iwill see you soon.” Texted his brother, and said, “I love you Hayden. I will see you soon” — and then he hanged himself.
Shaun: When Brennan went missing, I hadno concern about him having taken his life. None. None whatsoever. Because itwould have been the farthest thing from my mind that that happened. And it wasn’t until I was standing at the door and the coroner andsix other people walked up to the door, that I knew Brennan had passed.
Nancy: We’ve lost part of our hearts and they say “there’s no greater pain than losing yourchild.” And I believe it. I let him go out thedoor and that was the last time I saw him alive. And he bought his rope from alocal store and drove to a conservation area .. texted us .. and then hangedhimself. That’s when hell started.
Shaun: For me, after that point in time,as a parent, I struggled with it greatly. I looked for signs for things that Imissed. Things that I should have seen, that was my responsibility as a parent.
Tilda: All of Brennan’s teachers, friends and teammates struggled too. “Why was there no sign?” they asked. “Some warning?” But none came.
Nancy:Brennan’s friends, his teachers, were allsaying, “how come we didn’t know? We were out for dinner withhim on Saturday night. Why didn’t he talk to us?” For them, they all felt they had let him down, when infact, it was the drug that caused his suicide.
Tilda: Beforelong, other teens across the Canadian province of Ontario were dying, just likeBrennan did. For Terence Young, the problem hit close to home again, whenfriends and constituents faced the same horror he and the McCartney’shad.
Terence: My wife called my son Hart to thephone and we heard him say a few words and he banged the phone down and ranupstairs, obviously quite upset. We went to him and said, “What happened?” He said, “Sara Carlin hanged herself.” And we met Sara, who was 18 yearsold just a few weeks before on our back deck, they were part ofthe same social group in Oakville. They’d play guitar and sing songs and do karaoke.
Sara karaoke clip
Terence: Because of my own research thefirst thing I thought about when an otherwise healthy young person dies is, “Was a prescription drug involved?” And of course it was. In fact,there is no doubt in my mind that Paxil — and withdrawing from Paxil was thecause of Sara Carlin’s demise, her suicide.
Rhonda Carlin: She started on this drug somewhere in January. Andthese things make you unafraid. They make you do things you wouldn’t do normally. They make you able to put a rope aroundyour neck and hang yourself.
Terence: A young woman hanging herself is anextremely rare thing to happen. She went home one Saturday night at two o’clock in the morning, took off her makeup and hangedherself in her parents basem*nt.
Neil Carlin: I reached out to Terence at onepoint because I was in contact with the Coroner’s office. I was starting to put the pieces together.It wasn’t until after Sara’s death that we actually started to connect the dots.We’re bereaved fathers, we have agreat connection and with Terence’s help, wegot the inquest.
Rhonda: The doctors wouldn’t talk to us after. We fought hard for an inquestbecause we needed to understand, and after Sara had died,then we started doing research on the drug. That’s when we really found out about the drug. That’s the first time that we realized that Paxil, one ofthe side effects was suicidal thinking.
Neil: Everyone told us it’s not going to happen—“You’ll never getan inquest on a prescription drug.” So it goes to show you what acouple of Dads can do.
Terence: I worked with Sara’s dad, Neil. We pushed very hard to get an inquest. Iasked as Chair of Drug Safety Canada to be party to that inquest and Iwas turned down. But the coroner did allow me to be an expert witness on drugcommunications, which I did.
Rhonda: There’s a videotape of the coroner’s counsel saying on the very first day of the inquest,“We will show that Paxil did not play a part in SaraCarlin’s death.” Well, the whole point of the inquest was to see whetheror not antidepressants played a part in Sara’s death!
MichaelBlain, Attorney representing Ontario Coroner’s Office:Courtsacknowledge that this medication can increase thoughts of suicide in particularpatients, but they don’t think the medication played arole in Sara Carlin’s death.
Tilda: TheCoroner in Ontario resisted every request by the Carlins to get the truth aboutthe death of their daughter — but the Carlins were willing torisk everything to get it.
Rhonda: We basically mortgaged our hometo the hilt to try and get some answers, but to me, it was worth it to havethat doctor up on the stand and the question was asked, our lawyer asked him, “Did you tell Sara that Paxil might cause her to want to kill herself?”And he said, “No, I didn’t.” “Why didn’t you tell her that?” “Because,” he said, “she wouldn’t have takenit.” “Did you tell her parents?”“No.” “Did you tell anybody?” “No.”
Neil: Coroners see the suicides; investigatethe suicides. Coroners don’t want to doanything. Coroners are medical doctors. The coroners are the first line ofdefense for the industry.
Tilda: And at the inquest, the odds werestacked against the Carlins.
Rhonda: The jury, I think, was verycourageous. But they were specifically instructed by the coroner that theycouldn’t actually find Paxil as a cause.
TERENCE: The jury made 12 keyrecommendations and six of them—these were detailed recommendationsto prevent similar deaths—six of them were aimed at the drug industry and thedrug company. So if they didn’t think thatPaxil caused or played a critical role in Sara Carlin’s death, they certainly wouldn’t have put six recommendations aimed at the pharmaceutical industryin their decision.
Tilda: As wasthe case with Sara Carlin, any questions about possible links between theantidepressant Cipralex and Brennan McCartney’s sudden death were quickly rebuffedby the Ontario Coroner’s office.
Nancy McCartney: We met with the coroner privately about a monthafterwards and at that meeting it was just sort of niggling in the back of ourminds: Is it possible that this medication, the only new thing in Brennan’s life, is it possible that thiscould have caused his death? The coroner, the investigating coroner, quickly saidno. . .
Shaun McCartney: My thing is, they won’t even consider it. So I’m saying to myself, if that happened to our son, howmany other people haven’t they documented, haven’t they tracked? They’re saying statistically that not that many people areon the drug.
Shaun: And they’re saying, they haven’t recorded it. Nobody’s recorded that. If we hadn’t kept pressing and kept pushing that envelope withthe coroner’s office, none of this would bedocumented. None of it.
Nancy: Before Brennan’s death, I would have said, “Oh, no, they are doing their best,” and we feel very let down by them.They have not looked at Brennan’s deathobjectively, and Brennan doesn’t have thejustice that he needs.
Rhonda Carlin: It took me a year to get the strength to write to theChief Coroner. I said, “It came to my attention that you, in fact, had thecause of death changed.” Isaid, “How can the coroner’s office have such a lack oftransparency?” I received a letter back basicallytelling me that it was criminal offense to meddle with the jury. If I didn’t stop meddling I would be charged and put in jail.
Terence: I believe where we are right now,those of us who understand the true risks and have been trying to warn othersand make change, we’re at the bleeding edge. Not theleading edge, because the leading edge hasn’t even started yet. We’re at the bleeding edge, we’re the ones they think who have sort of lost it. Iknow drug reps have been telling people in Ontario for years, “oh this poor guy lost his daughter, he’s lost his mind, he’s exaggerating stuff.” Then there’s others thatrealize I’m not exaggerating. In fact, theevidence backs it up. My book has 200 footnotes. It’s totally evidence based. I’ve never been challenged. I’ve never been threatened with a lawsuit. The hurdle istrying to get people to believe that is something so unbelievable.
RHONDA:I’m gathering my strength. I haveboth letters, and I didn’t meddle, butit came to my attention and I know it happened. I guess I’m to the point now where I am so beaten down—if you wantto put me in jail, go ahead.
Nancy: Our mission, per se, is to bevocal about this, because if it saves one life, then it’s all worth it. As much as it, every time we talk aboutit, it re-traumatizes us, makes us relive the experience. But it is whatBrennan would have wanted us to do.
end withDanny Boy and pastoral view of Ontario lake
HEALTH CANADARx DRUG ABUSE AD: “Last year, over 80,000 Canadian kids used Prescriptiondrugs to get high, even though it can be very dangerous. Talk with your kidsabout prescription drug abuse.”
LEAVE 1-2 SECONDS MORE SPACE BEFORE TITLE:
“UNDER SIEGE”
KPM: “Were you 240lbs of fury?”
Joe Stephan: Oh Goodness, yes. And I was not easy to deal with.
Tony Stephan: My son Joseph at that time was 15years of age. Extremely ill.
Joe Stephan: It didn’t matter what it was
Tony Stephan: very very violent
Joe Stephan: the drop of a pin would set meoff
Tony Stephan: You could actually say he wouldbe everything a schoolyard shooting was made of.
Sfx:911-where’s your emergency?
Tony Stephan: he was diagnosed with bipolareffective disorder 1
SFX: enginenoise from Bronco -video ofBroncoaccelerating -
Tilda: In the years after Debbie Stephandrove the family’s 1990 Bronco into a raging riverwith her children inside, the mental states of both Autumn Stringham and herbrother Joseph Stephan deteriorated.
Tony Stephan (father):They didn’t understandwhat their Mother was going through, that would take her to that point whereshe would be prepared to remove herself from this life—but all thechildren with her.
Tilda:Whether the cause was genetics or sheer trauma, they both were diagnosed withbipolar disorder … just like their Mom.
Tony Stephan: I was very very down. You begin to lose hope becausethere’s no joy in life at all. There’s no happiness to be found. And that was the state ofour family.
Tilda: Joseph, in particular, seemedheaded for disaster.
Autumn: He was just a sweetheart, but,boy, when he hit puberty, he really went over, and became incredibly manic andincredibly violent in his mania. He was scary. My dad was scared.
Tony Stephan: Joseph was medicated with lithium. I believe he wastaking 750 milligrams of lithium and he was up to 900 milligrams of lithium fora period of time to try and control it. . .
Joe Stephan: Was I having huge mood swings? Yeah, that stuffdefinitely started. I’d been through a lot of pain withthe death of my mother and various events that happened in my life. After mymother had committed suicide, I was the most violent person that i knew of. Iused to wander the streets at night and I’d go pick fights with the local people and I had thisaluminum bat I’d found and I beat it against thecurb. It was jagged and torn up—and that was my weapon of choice. I’m lucky I never touched anybody with that thing, butthat’s where it was headed. It wouldn’t have been very long before something actuallyhappened.
end with Joe-filmed from behind- yelling “Hey, get back here…” -
Tony Stephan: My children were already saying to me, “Come on dad. You’ve got to gethim out of the house. He’s going tokill somebody. You’ve got to dosomething, Dad.” It didn’t matter whatwe threw at this situation, it wasn’t going toget better — and I’m going tolose him to a suicide, or he’s going tohave to be institutionalized.
Tilda: Athousand miles away, Autumn was also struggling —desperately. Now married with achild, she, too, was caught in the grip of her mother’smadness.
Autumn Stringham: At that point in my life, I justfelt like everything was ashes. I’d just lostmy mom to suicide. My diagnosis had been upgraded, so now I was “rapid-cycling bipolar one with schizophrenic tendencies,” which was –it seemedreally dark, like I wasn’t going toget over that. And so I had actually planned to commit suicide.
Tilda: Withone child ingesting a five-drug co*cktail and contemplating suicide and theother engulfed by violent thoughts, Tony Stephan’s family was under siege.
Tony Stephan: My daughter at the same time hadbeen in and out of the psych ward, struggling with the same issues as hermother—and her brother—and was on five differentmedications. She had been through majormedication changes. It wasn’t working. Atthe very, very best, it wasn’tworking. So, I was left in a terriblestate, a terrible state where I had to find an answer, because you see, myfamily was literally coming unglued before my eyes. I was going to lose myfamily.
Tilda: Besetby grief and confused by the cruelty of his circ*mstances, he began to look foranswers .. some way out of this madness.
Autumn: Sheer and utter desperation.
Tilda: It wasa journey that would reshape his life — forever.
Autumn: He started studying everything thathe could about bipolar and recognizing a lot of the patterns that he’d seen with my mom in all the years that they’ve been married, and I think it really helped him tosee that the needed to do something about it.
Tilda: Dosomething — but what? The experts had all weighed in: both hischildren were spiraling into the same orbit as their Mom — and there seemed little hope hecould save them. But Stephan resolved to find an answer — and preventany further suicides in his family.
cg:O’ What a Tangled Web We Weave
Nicole Monkman: I was at the bottom of a pit. I had many differentpsychiatrists, many different hospitals, many facilities that I had to go to.And they just kept handing me pills. I wouldn’t call it “angst,” I would just clearly call it hell. How could such abeautiful thing of life, giving birth, cause such trauma?
Sonya: I just remember being veryunhappy, very sad and hopeless. I neverthought it would end and just saw no way to get out of it.
Jeri Oler: The drugs made me completelyemotionless; they made me not care; I didn’t care about anything around me. The only thing i sawwas my pain and the drugs made me numb to anything else.
Melissa Binstock: I was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome. So, um, in order to treat the TouretteSyndrome, I was put on medications.When I waslittle, I would just have these really violent mood swings and panic attacks,insomnia, hypersomnia; there were periods where I couldn’t eat, there were periods I would eat too much. So,all of these really confusing things were happening to me and I, at that time,didn’t realize that it was because ofthe medication that I was going through all these horrible changes.
CathyBinstock (mother): I will probably never get over thehorrible guilt and the horrible – I think that part of her childhoodwas stolen from her.
MB: They began to basically just forceme to take the medication which made me feel as though I had been betrayed byabsolutely everybody, because I felt as though they were giving me these toxicthings that were making me sick and violent and horrible.
Cathy B: I didn’t know by her not wanting to take the medicine thatshe was really trying to say to me “You know what? This isn’t working”but whateight year old can verbalize that? The psychiatrist kept saying to me “She needs this. She has to have this” and the psychiatrist was our family friend and I trusted him.
MB:(4:20) Theycompletely put their faith in this particular psychiatrist who I don’t think had my best interests in mind at all.
Nicole: My doctor decided that electricshock therapy would be good because I was “drug-resistant.” We had tried for almost a year. Hejust kept saying, “We’ll try more drugs. We’ll give you this. We’ll do this – more shock therapy.” Well, really? How much more can mybody take? I was 100 pounds and dying. I literally was dying.
LEAVE SLIGHT SPACE
Sonya: my psychiatrist decided thatelectric shock would be the next step, so I did a series of eight sessions ofthat.
SLIGHT SPACE
The ECT was ahorrible experience. I loved going to school and learning—I had to dropout of school. I really couldn’t do thethings in life that I’d always done and wanted to do.
Jeri: For about 16 years, I washospitalized every year for about three months. Finally in the last five yearsof my illness, I said, “No more. If you ever take me to the hospital again, Iwill kill myself.”
Melissa: When my mom would call him, sort offrantic, “Melissa’s having a reaction,” or “Melissa’s having an episode of violence,”or “Melissa’s hurtingherself,” he would say, “Make her take the medication!”
Cathy B: The Psychiatrist said “If she doesn’t listen, andshe doesn’t want to take the medication, youjust call 911 and go over and visit the psych hospital because that’s where she’ll go.”
Melissa: Gosh, I’ve got a list of like 20 different medications I wason by the time I was about 11. We just had bags and bags full of pills andpills, in massive doses that no child should have been prescribed.
Bob Binstock (father): It got to the point where theyprescribed Haldol where I got really more concerned than ever.
Melissa: My mom and my sister basically foundme in the game room sitting on the floor completely zoned-out. I just rememberthis feeling of, "I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die."
music break: Anja Øyen Vister
“…and if she falls, there will be noone there to catch her .. when she falls, there will be no one there to catchher .. and Hold On to ..”
Cathy Binstock (mother): Melissa ended up in the emergencyroom. She had a very serious psychotic reaction.
Melissa: I was like, “Oh, this is it, I've completely gonecrazy. This is insane. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what I'mdoing anymore.”
CathyBinstock: I called mypediatrician and he was there in ten minutes and he said to the nurse, “Get her off of that sh*t.” That’s what he said.
Melissa: It was a very very low point, andwas often the case that I would contemplate suicide just because i didn’t know who i was anymore and all these side effectsthat i as experiencing were so scary.
Cathy: You don’t give a 9-year kid Haldol.
Anja Øyen Vister music carries out for 5-7seconds…
Tilda: Asmillions filled their psychotropic prescriptions — most without anything resembling sound medical advice — other darkand troubling events kept occurring .. without a whisper of warning.
Andy Vickery (Attorney): If you’re thinking about taking a psychoactive drug, bear inmind that the pill you’re taking may look little, but itis designed to alter the chemistry of your brain in a way that’s specifically intended to affect your mood and yourbehavior; to affect the very chemical, serotonin, that affects judgment, andaggression. So you’re taking something that can turnyou into a monster.
GARY GREENBERG (Author and Psychotherapist):These drugs have been sold as the equivalent of insulinfor diabetes or aspirin for a headache. The problem is, when you’re told that, you don’t quite grasp that what you’re really doing is you’re changing your consciousness. You’re changing the way your mind works.
Andy Vickery: It’s hard for any of us to accept the notion that a drugcould make me do something—really anything that I don’t want to do, but particularly something that’s completely contrary to my personality and my moralsand my values. You know, it could make me kill someone.
(audio sfx) Phone rings: “911, where’s your emergency?
Woman: There’s been a student shot at WestsideMiddle School.
911 Operator: There’s been what?
Woman: a student shot at Westside MiddleSchool
911 Operator: ok.
Woman: we need an ambulance as soon as possible
911 operator: do you know who done the shooting
Woman: no, we do not….
RobertWhitaker (Journalistand Author): Everytime we get one of these horrible killings, mass murder, some will takeadvantage of that to say, “look, we needmore forced treatment.”
What wereally need to investigate is what role are psychiatric drugs playing in suchmass killings? Are people coming off drugs? Are they on the drugs andexperiencing akathisia? And there’s plenty ofevidence in the research literature in the way that psychiatric drugs canactually lend themselves to violent actions. One, You can have thisinner-agitation.
Two, Comingoff, you can have a worsening of symptoms, and the third part is, these drugscan diminish frontal lobe activity, the very part of the brain that when youget a really bad idea like taking a gun and going into a school—that’s the part ofyour brain that’s supposed to kick in and say, “that’s a really evil idea —don’t do it.” But these drugs will diminish that activity.
Terence Young (Member of Parliament, Canada): Every time there is some bizarreact of violence in the United States or Canada, like a school shooting or massshooting, it is so difficult to find any mention if the shooter was onantipsychotics or antidepressant drugs.
And yet inevery case I’ve been able to find, the personwho was shooting was either on an antidepressant drug or had recently withdrawnfrom an antidepressant drug. And so there is some real correlation which no oneis properly investigating.
Robert Whitaker: Why have we never had a good investigation—why? Because obviously, if we found there was anassociation—time and time again—that would be another thing that would really crimpthis commercial activity. Which tells you there are powers-that-be who don’t want that question investigated.
fade to black under cacophony ofnews reports and audio - for 2-6 seconds - as it finally fades, we hear:
Kevin P. Miller: What are some of the things in the profession — in the treatment of these mentalhealth conditions that you think are working exceedingly well right now?
GaryGreenberg: Uh, well, I’m not sure ifthere are any. I mean, there’s nothing inthe literature that would indicate that any kind of mental illness isresponsive to any particular treatment with any kind of “strong signal.”
Tilda: Aspart of the research for his book called “The Book of Woe,” Gary Greenberg was imbedded withpsychiatrists as they debated the new edition of the Diagnostic and StatisticalManual of Mental Disorders—the DSM-5.
Greenberg: All along, it’s been clear that the DSM is essentially a work offiction. It’s the way psychiatrists have ofsaying, “If there are mental disorders, ifthey exist in nature the way that illnesses like Diabetes exist, then these arewhat they are.” Changing theway we understand ourselves, is intimately related to the development of theDSM.
LisaCosgrove, Ph.D (Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston; co-author, Psychiatry Under theInfluence): The DSM is often referred to asthe Bible of psychiatric disorders. It is the quintessential diagnosticinstrument. Over 400,000 mental health professionals in the United States usethe DSM, and in order to get 3rd party reimbursem*nt, one has tohave a DSM diagnosis. So the DSM is extremely instrumental.
GaryGreenberg: …and so, when anyone from the outside questions it — or someone from the insidequestions it too directly, the usual thing is to repudiate them.
Tilda: In 2005,two respected academics, Lisa Cosgrove of UMass-Boston and Sheldon Krimsky ofTufts, released their investigation into conflicts-of-interest between DSM-4panel members and the pharmaceutical industry.
LISA COSGROVE: I think the data really speak forthemselves. The strongest statistics include the panel members for the mooddisorders and schizophrenia and psychotic disorders. A hundred percent of thosepanel members and yes—that’s right—every singlepanel member has financial associations with the pharmaceutical industry.
Wall St/Stockexchange/Pharma logos
And if youlook at it in terms of the sheer amount of money, the antidepressant market andthe antipsychotic market are the fourth and fifth leading therapy classes ofdrugs with annual sales of 20 billion and 14 billion respectively.
SheldonKrimsky, Ph.D (TuftsUniversity): You know, the argument is “well we’re getting the best people; thebest people are consulting for the industry,” and therefore, the concept ofdisinterestedness is completely destroyed. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you set up the systemso that you permit people with conflictual relationships to be on committeeswhose decisions will have financial impacts on an industry, then the wholething is running on its own cycle of self-interest.
LISA COSGROVE: The problem is that they couldleverage their prestigious position on the DSM into very lucrative consultingcontracts and really influence prescribing habits.
NEED MORE AUDIO SPACE
So there are170 DSM panel members. That is the total inclusive of all the working groups.Of those 170 panel members, 56 percent had at least one financial associationwith a pharmaceutical company.
Tilda:Embedded with the new DSM-5 working committee, Gary Greenberg found himselfcaught in a firefight of words and passions over the future of psychiatry.
Greenberg: When the DSM is revised, there arefights, and in this case, intense fights, because there was an attempt on thepart of the American Psychiatric Association to finally come up with “the DSM to end all DSMs.”
JeffreyLieberman, (fmr.Pres. of American Psychiatric Association): Now you can’t expect to revise a staple like the DSM for the firsttime in 20 years without experiencing some glitches, and believe me, we hadmore than our share.
Greenberg: It was like being in the middleof a war…
Jeffrey Lieberman: But the APA kept our composure—rallied when attacked by our enemies, and occasionallyby our friends, too, to make the DSM a resounding success.
Greenberg: and, uh, it didn’t work. They failed and they found it very difficultto walk back from all the promises that they’d made. And the people that took them on weren’t the Scientologists—they were psychiatrists. One of them, in fact, hadwritten the last DSM.
begin music, “Kaval Siri”
Tilda: Thispolitical infighting left millions of consumers with psychiatric diagnoses inlimbo. The DSM decision-makers may not considered that. . .but their actionsover the last 30 years have reverberated . . . in sad and profound ways.
Kevin P.Miller: Pretendthat I’m the Glaxo CEO. What would youlike to say to me?
David Carmichael: [Long Pause-then Laughter-then sigh] - total=22seconds
Tilda: ForDavid Carmichael, there are good reasons why this is is not an easy question toanswer.
GillianCarmichael: My Dad and Ihave always been really close. Both my parents did everything for my brotherand I. If there was a sport we wanted to pick up, or if there was something wewanted to do, we did everything. My dad built my brother a half pipe in ourbackyard and it was like a professionally–built half pipe. This thing was phenomenal. We hadkids from all over the neighborhood come there to ride it because it was huge.
DavidCarmichael: There’s nothing more exhilarating than being a Dad. Ineverything I’ve ever done, it was magicalmoments. Our daughter, Gillian was born in 1990, and our son, Ian was born in1992. And both my wife and I took a nurturing approach to parenting. They didn’t get everything they wanted, but they certainly had alot of opportunity when they were young. It was wonderful.
Gillian: My brother got into dirt jumpingas well, so my Dad built my brother a dirt jump at our cottage. My brotherwould just spend hours out there and he loved it. . .
David: I remember the deliveries likethey were yesterday. I remember the snowstorm I had to get through when Ian wasbeing delivered in 1992. It was December the 14th that’s when Ian was born. I got a call at the organizationI was working at, got home, got in the car. He was [laughter] rushed right in the delivery room.It was a very quick delivery. Gillian took over 20 hours. Ian was very quick.
Gillian: We were the ideal family on theblock and I had a lot of friends who just would continuously tell me that thatwe were a perfect family.
Tilda: TheCarmichael’s perfect family began to unhingeshortly after David began taking Paxil.
David: I really didn’t know very much about mental illness until when I was45 years old, and I had my first major depression. And I was treated with Paxiland in fact, when I look back on it now, there’s no question I was a manic when I was on Paxil forthe first time. That was the very first time that I ever even looked at theissues around drugs—and side effects of drugs.
Gillian: Well, I noticed that there was abig difference before he was taking the medication and then while he was takingthe medication. I remember him snapping on me about something very small and Iremember him spending so much time at his office. I remember him being morequiet and not being himself and looking stressed out — and just looking different.
David: When I went to the doctor I was prescribedPaxil. And I had gained a fair bit of weight, i had sexual dysfunction issues,and my resting heart rate was higher. And there was just this tremendousdiscomfort with being on that particular drug. It really made me wonder, “should I be on it?”
Tilda: Likeso many who tumbled into the world of antidepressants without forethought,David Carmichael did so unaware of the potential dangers.
David: When I was on Paxil, we had noidea it could trigger delusions,
none of thatwas out in the public domain. For so many years, I just assumed my doctor knewbest. I learned about the side effects the hard way.
Paxil Ad— RE: SIDE FX
Gillian: When everything happened, I hadjust finished Grade 8 and for my friends, who knew my father, they just knew thatsomething was wrong, because they knew who my dad was. And you just would neverin a million years think that he would do something that he did.
begin “Kaval Siri”
David (with red eyes): Yes, parenting wasa high priority of mine to be the best parent possible. And to have it end thisway—it was pretty devastating.
Tilda: DavidCarmichael had been on 60mg of Paxil for two weeks when he and Ian set out forone of their favorite father-son activities: a BMX bike competition in London,Ontario.
“Kaval Siri” as b-roll of some awesome jumpsilhouetted by the sun - dissolves into bright sun - then WHITE with screams ofjoy trailing off..
Kim Crespi: What I’ve learned in this journey is that i no longer
END KAVAL SVIRI
take forgranted—even one breath. Things get reducedto the minutes—and you know you have the strengthfor that minute.
video: Crespi girls singing, “it’s a whole new world…”
Kim: David and I were friends incollege. We were both accounting majors. David was that funny, brilliant guythat you always wanted in your group.
Peter Tonon: David was a guy you’d want to be around. That’s about the best way to explain it. When you met him,he was gregarious, he was open, he was funny; he was very witty.
JessicaCrespi: My dad wasa very caring Father; very funny, too. He’d wake me up singing whatever group i was into at thetime: it was Spice Girls when I was little…
Kim Crespi: He’s a brilliant auditor. Auditing for a majorcorporation is stressful and there’s a lot of things that go with it if you do the rightthing.
Peter Tonon: David was a guy, like any of us,had his challenges in life — we all do. Especially in a big financial company,there’s stresses in our work; we havekids to raise, bills to pay.
Kim: We went to the psychiatrist inearly 2006 and he said, “well, whatabout Prozac?”
David Crespi: You have a chemical imbalance.Let’s put you on Prozac.
Kim Crespi: It’s the standard of care. It’s what they do. . .
David Crespi: It’s almost a marketing strategy that works, you know? “It’s not my fault. I have a disease.”
Tilda: Withindays of ingesting Prozac, David Crespi became troubled.
Jessica Crespi: Towards the end of just talkingback and forth and he said, “Do you everfeel like life is too dark to go on?”
David Crespi: It’s crazy. It’s not the way i think. Those thoughts aren’t natural to me.
Kim Crespi: I recall a few events from theday before that would suggest that he was going psychotic. David was jumpingout of the bed and walking around a throw rug and hitting each corner and thenjumping back into bed. And I’m going “what are you doing?” He goes, “it just feels good.” Well, now i attribute that toakathisia.
intercutpolice band radio crosstalk
Kim Crespi: Our tragedy was January 20, 2006.On that day, I took all the kids to school, left to go get my haircut, left thegirls in the LOVING CARE of their father; they wanted to spend time with him.When I came back into the neighborhood after being gone for an hour-fifteenminutes, I saw a police barricade, and I saw some of my very concernedneighbors coming towards me.
INSERT POLICE CAR WITH FLASHING LIGHTS - OR, TAKE THE SAME CLIP OF THEIRHOUSE - AND RUN IT IN REVERSE!
The policeofficer asked my name and i said my nameand he said “we’re going to need you in this house”
sfx: sound ofphone dialing: and then “911, where’s your emergency?”
(911-Call)
911 Dispatch: Police Department
David Crespi: Yes. i just killed my twodaughters.
911 Dispatch: You just what?
David Crespi: i just killed my two daughters.
Kim Crespi: I called my Dad in California andI made sure my stepmom was there, and i said, “Dad, I have to tell you somethingreally hard. I’m in the back of a police car and i’ve been told that David killed Samand Tess.”
David Crespi911 call:
911 Operator: What did you do to them?
David Crespi: I stabbed them
911 Operator: You stabbed them?
David Crespi: Yeah.
911 Operator: How many times did you stab them
David Crespi: I don’t know.
911: Keeptalking to me, because you sound a little bit tired
David Crespi: This is for real
911 Operator: Oh, I know it’s for real, Sir. Everybody is on their way, okay?
INSERT “SUICIDE1”BY VICKI
Kim Crespi: And Cathy, my stepmom adored Samand Tess—as we all did—and she started wailing. And I could hear her on thespeakerphone and my Dad goes, “Honey, Dave would not do that. David is not like that. You’re mistaken.” And I said, “I wish I were, but I’m in the back of a squad car…”
SFX of siren sounding. view from the back seat of thepolice car looking forward as the siren wails.
Tilda: TheCrespi children were escorted from school by the Police and were told nothinguntil Kim arrived at the station.
Kim Crespi: They really thought that their dadhad killed himself.
LEAVE TINY AUDIO SPACE-TOO TIGHT
JessicaCrespi: (teary-eyed) My Mom came in and told us, “they’re telling me that Dad killed yoursisters.” We had to use the language “they’re telling me” because we couldn’t believe that is what actually happened.
Kim Crespi: The idea of him killing Tess andSam was so foreign, but they knew something had happened. And that’s how the whole thing started. . .
David Crespi: I went to the doctor and i canremember saying “I’m afraid I may hurt someone.” And she said, “You’re too compassionate to do that.That’s just the depression talking.” NEVER was anybody saying, “the medicine can do this.”
Kim Crespi: Psychosis—the drug—killed ourdaughters.
David Crespi:Who I am waschemically altered.
JessicaCrespi: My Dad in hisright mind wouldn't have done anything like this.
David Crespi: I can remember this battle of “these thoughts aren’t real.”
Kim Crespi: Because when you have a completepsychotic break like that, and you kill two of your most treasured people inyour life—people that every other day—every other day he would have died for them.
David Crespi: What I did was done on a co*cktailof legal drugs.
Kim Crespi: We were doing what the doctorstold us to do. We were being responsible.
David Crespi: Just because something’s legal doesn’t mean it’s safe.
Kim Crespi: I suspect anybody hearing mystory will go, “yeah, that’s not going to happen to me,” but it could. If it happened tous, it could happen to anyone. .
Begin “Kaval Siri”again -
David Crespi: But I know for certain, I knowwhat caused the death of my daughters. I know it was the pills.
Kim Crespi: And for all of that, we’re serving two consecutive life sentences.
music; celldoor sfx; - return to b-roll silhouette of bmx biker in the glare of the sun.screams of laughter as we see the slo-mo shot of the silhouette then turn toblack
DavidCarmichael: On July 31st,2004, I had been on Paxil for three weeks. . .and I took Ian to a hotel room inLondon, Ontario.
B-roll-out-of-focus hotel barely evident
David: At 3:00 in the morning, thinkingthat he had permanent brain damage, that he was in living hell, he was going tokill my daughter, Gillian, and he was going to harm other kids, and my wife wasgoing to have a nervous breakdown—which were myfive delusions—I strangled him, and I sat with hisbody for six hours until I called the police at 9:00 in the morning, verycalmly saying that I’d committed homicide and opened thedoor for them, and then I was arrested and charged with first degree murder.When the police came in and arrested me, they asked me why didn’t I run. I said,“I wanted to stay with my son. He’s in a better place now. He was inliving hell.” And I stayed with him as long aspossible.
Tilda: For 14long days, David Carmichael was psychotic - and suffered drug withdrawals inhis jail cell .. before awakening to the ultimate terror.
DavidCarmichael: The psychosislasted for two weeks and after I came out of my psychosis a couple of weeksafter everything happened, I was devastated. I cried for three days insegregation at the London Middlesex Detention Centre. I could not believe whatI had done.
Tilda: Ianwas laid to rest by David’s family. Itwould be months before DNA tests indicated that Carmichael’s body was unable to metabolize the Paxil he’d ingested — and that the drug was the likelycause of this unthinkable act. Dr. Peter Breggin says he’s seen it all before.
Peter Breggin, MD (Psychiatrist and Author): Many people do not have the arrayof enzymes in their livers to properly destroy SSRI drugs when they get in thebloodstream. So the drugs pass through the liver, and they don’t get metabolized, meaning they don’t get broken down. You might get the equivalent of a10 mg dose of an SSRI, but in your blood it is 30 or 40 mg. And there arestudies correlating the violence with the lack of the enzyme for these drugs.
DavidCarmichael: The publichas no understanding of how Paxil or other SSRI could trigger a homicidalpsychotic episode—and they may not care, but there isevidence based on DNA that Paxil did cause me to kill my son, Ian. It’s something that I have to live with. Even when I’m out in the public, my stigma is off the chartcompared to the stigma around mental illnesses. But if people beat me upemotionally when I’m out there, that’s fine. They’ll never beat me up as much as I beat myself up for along time.
VO: For her part, Gillian—who was only 14 when the tragedy occurred—says she grew up the day she grasped what had really happened to her father.
GillianCarmichael: I realizedwho he was before, who he was during the period of time that he was taking themedication, and I realized that they were two different people.
Tilda: Davidcredits Gillian as the reason he did not take his own life while in prison.
David: There were several times when I waseither in jail or in a psychiatric hospital where I felt like taking my ownlife. What kept me going was my daughter, Gillian. I had one line and it was, “I’m a good dad. I’m going to be a dad again.” And that was my hope. And I knowGillian, whatever she was doing, wherever she was, was thinking that she wantedher dad back in her life too.
Gillian: How can I not accept him back? He’s an amazing man. He’s my father and I love him.
Tilda: David Carmichael was found “not criminally responsible” for his son’s death — as two psychiatrists—one working for the defense and one for theprosecution, both agreed that he was psychotic at the time of the tragedy.
David: The public is not going to careabout this (motioning tohimself crying). There’s no empathy for me, but I think, I’ll tell you what … the pain will never go away.
Gillian: Ian was just an amazing person andhe was an amazing brother. And he was an amazing friend and amazing son. Hejust had so much life. [tears up] yeah.. sorry…
Kevin P. Miller: Pretend that I’m the Glaxo CEO. What would youlike to say to me?
DavidCarmichael: [Long pause- 22 seconds]
David: If you’re the GlaxoSmithKline CEO, I would like to encourageyou to be more honest with the Canadian public. And if there are serious sideeffects to any one of your drugs, it’s not just about sending out notices to health careprofessionals that many have never read. You’ve got to go directly to consumers and make them awareof some of these dangers. That’s aresponsibility that you have as a drug company.
fade to black…
under black—confusing mix of voices under black.Then—very, very slowly BEGIN revealingvideo—little-by-little—as if it were like a video of thesun rising. begin cacophony of 1991 Prozac hearing testimonials under black
Pallie Carnes: I was only put on it for weight loss. WEIGHT LOSS!
Susan Williams: My sister did commit suicide infront of Lindsay
Debra Douglas: That gun, I later learned, wasloaded with hollow-point bullets and I shudder to think what could havehappened…
Mike Donnelly: The only way to have peace andserenity again was to die
Robin Schott: Do all of you want to take thisdrug? Do all of you want to walk around humiliated for the rest of your life…
Tilda:Thirteen years had passed since the dramatic 1991 FDA-Prozac hearings. By 2004,The British government had virtually banned SSRIs for children and youngadults, in light of the real risk of suicide and violence. But in America, theU.S. FDA remained unconvinced—and demandedmore studies. This was welcome news at Pfizer, GSK, and The House That Prozac Built.
Dr. Bob Temple, Food and Drug Administration: We didn’t know what the results would be. We had no idea, butwe thought getting as right an answer as possible was the right thing to do.
David Healy, MD: In 1983, nine years before thelaunch of Zoloft in the United States, 21 years before the FDA required Pfizerto put a black box warning on it, Pfizer had done a healthy volunteer trial onZoloft in Leeds in the UK. They recruited 12 women to this trial. Half of themwere to be given Zoloft, the other half were given a placebo. The trial was dueto run for two weeks but stopped after a week because every single woman takingZoloft had become anxious, apprehensive, agitated. One or two had begun tovoice thoughts about harming others — all of the things that led FDA toput a black box warning on this drug 21 years later—were there in ’83. What was more, Pfizer looked at this trial andwrote down, “Zoloft has caused this problem.”
Tilda: ForMathy Downing—and thousands like her—the earth-shattering epiphanies came weeks too late.
Mathy: Ironically, it happens that thedoctor that approved Zoloft as an antidepressant for children—Tom Laughren—ironically, I know this man. I’ve known him for quite a while because both of hisdaughters attended school with my daughters for eight years. . .
Tilda: Forover 20 years, Thomas Laughren was head of FDAs psychopharmacologydivision.
Mathy: I had no idea he worked at FDAuntil I saw him on the FDA panel three weeks after Candace died. I sat therewith my husband and we listened for eight hours while person after personbasically told our story. I went up to speak with him when the meeting was overand I said, “Where can I find information aboutthose contraindications?” And he told me he would give me a list of people forme to talk to—and then I never spoke to himagain. I mean, he’s a father of two of my daughters’ friends. I really did think hewould follow through and help me gain the information I needed, but he didn’t.
Tilda: Asfate would have it, yet another FDA hearing on SSRIs and violence was held inSeptember 2004. In one brief, emotionally-charged moment, Mathy Downing steppedup the microphone.
Mathy: And when I spoke at the FDAhearings on September 13, I addressed him personally.
Tilda: Aftermonths of grieving—and too-few answers, Mathy Downingfinally let loose.
Mathy: The blood of these children areon your hands. (gasps fromcrowd)
Peter Breggin, MD - I remember seeing Mathy Downingstand up at the hearing andconfront Laughren and the other FDA panel members and say “the blood of my daughter is on your hands.” And she was right.
Tilda: Later,Mathy Downing learned that Thomas Laughren had been in the thick of the SSRIcontroversy since well before the 1991 Prozac hearings.
KAREN BARTHMENZIES (Attorney andPatient Advocate): Some of the senior officials at FDA, some of the people we find as theoriginal culprits—the problem at FDA, are Dr. BobTemple; Thomas Laughren is horribly guilty. All these same individuals wereinvolved back in the early 90s when this risk was being raised and identified,and rather than pursuing safety concerns or requiring drug companies to do moreto determine if this is a serious risk, they looked the other way.
Tilda:Laughren left FDA in 2012 and started a new business, dedicated to helping drugcompanies get FDA approval for their drugs. But he was not alone at theintersection of public service and personal profit.
DANIEL CASEY,MD (from 1991 Prozac Hearings): I do not find from the evidencetoday that there is credible evidence to support a conclusion thatantidepressant medications cause the emergence or intensification ofsuicidality and/or other violent behaviors…
Tilda: WhenDr. Daniel Casey resurfaced—nine yearsafter the 1991 Prozac hearings he chaired—he did so as a paid expert witness for Pfizer.Attorney Andy Vickery conducted the deposition.
Vickery deposition: You were the Chairman of that committee for severalyears, right?
Dr. Casey: Yes.
Vickeryinterview: Thechairman of that committee who is moderating it in a public building in apublic place was wearing a bullet proof vest
Vickery deposition: Dr. Casey, did you wear a bulletproof vest to thatforum?
Dr. Casey deposition: (startled) Yes.
Vickery deposition: Had you ever worn one prior?
Dr. Casey: No.
Vickery deposition: Have you ever worn one since?
Dr. Casey deposition: No
Vickeryinterview: ….because he thought one of the family members of thepeople being harmed by Prozac would shoot him.
Vickerydeposition: Youcertainly did not believe it was the folks on the Eli Lilly side of the coin,did you?
Dr. Casey deposition: (smirks, then quickly changesexpression) No
Vickery interview:No conflictof interest?
Vickery deposition: …and yet that would not effect your objectivity. Isthat your testimony?
Casey: Yes.
Tilda: Others, like Harvard University’s influential Dr. Joseph Biederman (Bead-err-Min) also seem to display an unnervingindifference to their conflicts-of-interest. Here, Biederman was being deposedas a key “thought-leader” — one of those most responsible forspreading the off-label use of the antipsychotic Risperdal to millions ofteens.
Attorney deposition: Professor, what rank are you?
Biederman: Full Professor
Attorney deposition: What’s after that?
Biederman: God.
Attorney: Did you say‘God?’
Biederman: Yeah.
SLATE:
Text: Dr. Biederman earned more than $1.6million from drug makers for promoting antipsychotics as a mainline treatmentfor pediatric bipolar disorder.Even afterwithholdingthe depth of his financialconflicts-of-interestfromCongressional investigators,Biederman wasnever penalized for his ethicsviolations.
fade toblack. LEAVE 2-3SECONDS
- Then titleappears:
Netherworld
KristinaGehrki: She hadbeautiful blue eyes. . .she was very smart, artistic-incredibly artistic. ..was very inquisitive. . .she seemed to root for the underdog, and would try tohelp people who were maybe less fortunate .. that quality of caringabout others and caring about the world at large. It was with her until thenight before she died.
Tilda: There’s no doubt that Natalie Gehrki was a creative spirit … an artist. Her mind wandered withthoughts of Bukowski and Oscar Wilde .. often with inspired optimism and an endearingchildlike innocence. But there was also confusion .. and yes, darkness. ..visits to a netherworld Natalie couldn’t understand.
“Drowning”Scene: Natalie is hit with water in theface as the vision shifts to drowning…with water violently whippingaround her.
ACTRESS as Natalie: “The memories of everything I’ve ever done wrong since thebeginning of my own moral recognition come flooding in all at once like hightide .. and the cold water wakes me from a dream. I suddenly realize I’ve forgotten how to swim, but thewaves pay no mind and pull at my useless body. Reality burns just as bad assaltwater. First it’s in my eyes, then it’s in my mouth, trickling down into my lungs, fillingme to capacity. Painful memories anchor me. . .and the sea is getting rougherand there is no more shore. Waves whip from every direction, and the ocean ismerciless and I cannot breathe.
LEAVE PREGNANT PAUSE
I am drowning.. please help.”
(natalie descends underwater, arms aloft as bubbles rise towards camera)
How did I forget how to swim?
LEAVE PREGNANT PAUSE
How do I remember?”
Lennon song, “How?”(by Anja):
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way to turn?
How can I go forward into somethingI’m not sure of?
Oh no, oh no…
Tilda: Bornwith juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, Natalie was prescribed a strong drug calledMethotrexate - a cancer drug - to combat it. On doctors’ advice, she began using antidepressants in the 5thgrade. The year was 2005, and Natalie was only 11—the same age as Candace Downing when she was diagnosedwith ‘text anxiety’ and prescribed Zoloft.
Kristina: One day, I walked into Natalie’s room. . . she wasn’t showing any emotion and she was very monotone withme. And she said,
ACTRESS asNatalie: ”Mom, Sometimes I think about killingmyself, but I know I can’t, so I won’t.”
Kristina: And I said, “oh my God, Natalie, why?”
ACTRESS as Natalie: In my mind, it made complete sense at the time.
Tilda:Kristina rushed Natalie to the hospital. When she was admitted, no one therementioned that the side effects likely stemmed from the Prozac she was given.Instead, they supplemented the Prozac with Benadryl and the antipsychotic,Risperdal.
ACTRESS as Natalie: (Harleigh05 @ 1:26): I cried uncontrollably as a malestaff member put a hospital wristband over my wrist. He prescribed meRisperdal, a powerful anti-psychotic, which of course, I knew nothing about.But I had to do what he told me to, so I took it.
Kristina: In the hospital, she was asked towrite down her feelings: I wish I could stop thinking about wanting to killmyself. . . I hate my mom, I hate my dad, I hate my brother, I hate my house, Ihate my life. And I don’t know why.
(Harleigh06 @ 47 sec -which is take 3): I don’t trust modern medicine orpsychiatrists at all. My textbook psychiatrist continued to tell me everytime I cried and begged to be released: “If you really want to go, you haveto listen and follow everything I say.”
Tilda:Throughout Natalie’s teen years, her online diarycomplained of a lack of sleep, in between ruminations on the human existence .. . her existence.
(Harleigh13 @2:24) “My secrets build up inside of me like the tsunami wavemy brother and I saw on TV once. The secrets are ready to crash over, ready todestroy. I will not let them.
Kristina: When you give a person a drug, andyou don’t tell them about any of the sideeffects, and they get side fx. . .they are going to attribute them tothemselves or their underlying condition.
(Harleigh13 @59 sec): “every day i’m breathing is a small miracle”
Kristina: She attributed all her side effectsto herself.
(Harleigh14 @2:11 sec): “I wish I could figure out how Ifeel about who I really am.”
Tilda: In2012, Natalie was switched to Zoloft—and by November, her doctor increased the dose from100mg to 150mg — unbeknownst to the Gehrki’s.
(Harleigh14) at59seconds: “Picturing myself in the future is an impossible conceptfor my mind to comprehend. It’s like trying to explain colors to someone born blind. Ijust can’t do it.”
Tilda: In Februaryof 2013, without seeing her patient, the doctor increased Natalie’s dose—over thephone—from 150mg to 200mg—the maximum dose legally allowed. Four days later, onthe afternoon of February 6th, Natalie was struggling:
(Harleigh08)at 1:40 seconds: I keep coughing up blood. I’m not hungry. It’s time for me to take my meds.
Tilda: …and the world was closing in….
Kristina: in my daughter’s last months, weeks, days, hours, she had a chemicalimbalance in her brain—and it wasprescribed for her
(Harleigh07)at 2:15 seconds: I was different before, and now I have changed -chemically, maybe: neurologically, who knows?
Kristina: . . .she did not have a chemicalimbalance before she took the prescription. . .but she certainly had a chemicalimbalance when she died. . .
(Harleigh09)at 1:51 seconds: The silence grows around me in petals, warm andburgundy, wrapping a thorny fence. . .Do I cry, scream out, beg?
Lennon song: How can we go forward intosomething we’re not sure of?
Kristina: This is a poisoning, this is not a “traditional suicide”— and we oughtnot call it such, because by using that very word we create a false reality. becauseit is not only disrespectful to the victim and their families, but to call itthat also plays into the hands of the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors.Because byusing that very word, we create a false reality.
(Harleigh11)at 10 seconds: I’m very sorry. I have failed. But it’s okay, I’ll be much happier this way. Burymy body under a tree, somewhere deep in the woods. Take care of Gypsy for me.Move on—I’m not worth mourning.
Kristina: I fear for other Natalie’s out there, and I almost beg people, “Don’t be me. Don’t be our family.” … Because (chokes up) Our daughter is gone. And shewanted life. She deserved to live. And she’s not here anymore.
close outwith music. . .
fade to black
CG (on black)appears:
“One joy scatters a hundred griefs.”
-Chinese saying
Tilda: IN AREMOTE TOWN IN WESTERN CANADA, the Stephan (Steff-enn) family was facing a life and deathstruggle in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Two of Debbie Stephan’s children were exhibiting the same symptoms that hadultimately claimed her life: Joseph was becoming frighteningly violent — and his sister Autumn wassuccumbing to severe bipolar, with its mercurial mood swings. Their father,Tony Stephan, was desperate — and searching for any way to save his children, whendrug after drug failed. The answer came from what seemed the unlikeliest ofplaces: micronutrients - mainly minerals.
JosephStephan: I rememberthe earlier days of doing the testing with nutrients and different things. Ithink they were trying to reduce some liquid mineral thing so you didn’t have to drink a whole cup; maybe just an ounce. AndI don’t think it worked very good, and itsmelled funny. I remember the smell and can still taste it in the back of mythroat. (smirks) I think they burned it—I’m notsure.
Tony Stephan: At first it didn’t work. It did not work.
JosephStephan: I justremember I was out camping and I had a little bottle of—I call it rust water— it was the color of rust, and I wassupposed to drink a little ounce of that every day, a couple of times. And so Iwould be doing that. I mean, it was so experimental that I didn’t really understand what we were doing.
Tony Stephan: We put him on a co*cktail thatcontained vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and amino acids.
AutumnStringham: I wasabsolutely livid when i found out that he had taken Joseph off of his medication, and I said some terriblethings to him. I told him it was on his head—the next suicide in this family was going to be hisfault.
Tony Stephan: I remember about six weeks intothis program that we sat together on the couch and he said “where was I? what happened to me?why was i so angry all of the time?” I said, “Don’t go there, you don’t have to. Live the day now. You’re here. Be in the present.”
Joseph: It was like one day wakingup and like a fog had completely lifted, and that was amazing. It was a veryreal turning point in my life.
Tilda: WithJoseph on the mend, Tony Stephan then turned his attention to his daughterAutumn, who had been in and out of psych wards.
AutumnStringham: I ended upin my dad’s custody and he has a friend whowas a male psych nurse who decided to hang around the house a lot and honestly,I look back on it now, I think that they were waiting for a moment when theywould have legal justification to force me to go on this micronutrient stuff.At that time, it was this crazy concoction with liquids and powders, and pillsand things and I had said no, and my husband had said, “No. We’re not doing that.” My psychiatrist said, “No.” In fact, he said, “Don’t rock the boat. You will die. Donot go off of this medication.” And I was on that five-drugco*cktail at that time. So, I had absolutely no intention of doing what my dadhad already started with my brother Joseph—no intention.
Tony Stephan: I won’t say that I forced her to do it because thatdoesn’t sound politically correct (smirks), but I constrained her todo it. And she just didn’t believethat this was going to work at all. And I said, “Just keep taking your medications.I don’t care. You know how to take your meds.Take this with it. Just keep taking it.”
AutumnStringham: So theywaited until I had a little med breakthrough and I went rummaging for a knife,and there was some screaming involved, and he and this friend of his whohappened to be a psychiatric nurse, stuffed me with a bunch of Ativan and putme to bed. And then, while I was still really nicely sedated, began forcefeeding me the concoctions.
BonnieKaplan, Ph.D (Professor,Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary): Back in 1996, when I first metAutumn Stringam, it was the first day I also met her father Tony Stephan. Shewas sitting there in front of us, completely normal, very bright, veryarticulate, very charming young woman, doing very well on vitamins andminerals, but she had lived through this horrible, horrible period and couldremember it so vividly. It was very impressive. You knew that you were hearinga true story, and I think that that has come through consistently with Autumn.
AutumnStringham: I recognizethat a huge percentage of people with bipolar commit suicide and it just aseasily could have been me, and isn’t, because something really beautiful happened in mylife. And I have to acknowledge that that’s not just mine to take and run away with, but thatthere’s a lot of good that can be done inthe world, knowing what I know now.
Dr. BonnieKaplan: These werejust three people from Southern Alberta, who believed that they had “fixed” two children in Tony’s family and they did it with vitamins and mineralsoff the shelf. And they just desperately wanted a scientist somewhere to takethem seriously and do some research.
Tilda: WhenStephan and Truehope approached Dr. Kaplan in 1996, she was the Director ofBehavioural Research for the University of Calgary. As a scientist, she washighly skeptical—and thought the notion of utilisingminerals for mental illness was simply preposterous.
Tony Stephan: I think Bonnie, when we first mether, she kind of thought that we were flaky because all of a sudden, you havethese two strange dudes coming from Southern Alberta and they’ve got this idea that you can take people sufferingwith these intractable, incurable mental disorders and change them and bringthem around, when all along, science hasn’t been able to do that.
Dr. Kaplan: And I thought, “Well, that’s impossible. You can’t do that. There’s no way it would have that effect.” But I think that line of thought isreflective of our lack of education about nutrition, and the fact that blood isbathing the neurons in our brain every minute of every day, bringing oxygen and—what? Micronutrients to make those brain cellswork.
Tilda:Stephan and his co-founder created a non-profit called Truehope—and after years of experimentation, they developed amineral-based formula called Empower Plus. Intrigued by Autumn and Joseph’s successful transformations, Dr. Kaplan and otherscontinued studying the formula for bipolar disorder, ADHD, and depression.
Kaplan (TV clip: 2001): Some people call this a ‘micronutrient sledgehammer,’because it’s all of the vitamins, and a verylong list of dietary minerals. The patients in this sample got much better, infact more than 50% better. Quite a few of them were more than 75% better.
AutumnStringham: He wasn’t trying to build an empire when he set out to save meand Joe. It was not a deliberate act. He’s not a formulator. It was a conversation that led toan idea that led to an answer and that’s all he was ever in it for. And he’s faced so much opposition for doing the right thing.He’s faced a lot of opposition forthat and I think it’s changed the course of his wholelife.
Tilda: As ithas with Dr. Kaplan. When she first presented her findings about the Truehopemineral-vitamin-combination to the Canadian Psychiatric Association’s Annual Meeting in 2001, she — and the company — were immediately under attack.
Dr. Kaplan: When I went to graduate school,they did not prepare me to be personally attacked for just doing objectiveresearch. That was a little shocking. We took a lot of arrows for about fiveyears especially, longer for the Truehope people, but it was very, very tough.
Tony: When you try and investigate anew paradigm, the resistance is incredible. I watched Dr. Kaplan go throughthis. We had major resistance form Health Canada shutting down trials. Here,the Alberta government had provided $554,000 so that she could continue thework. Health Canada came in and swathed the trial. They destroyed it.
COMMON SENSEmusic bed
Tilda: HealthCanada not only shut down Dr. Kaplan’s scientific investigation into micronutrients andmental health,
START WIDE ON STUDY—ZOOM INTO “THIS STUDY HAS BEEN TERMINATED”
they orderedTruehope to stop manufacturing Empower Plus. When the company refused, theyseized the product at the US-Canadian border — and banned it for sale in Canada.
Tony: Why? We’re talking about vitamins and minerals here.
RobertWhitaker (PulitzerPrize finalist): Well, what that tells you is that anything that cha llenges commercialinterests, such as micronutrients might be a good thing to do, boy, there arepowerful forces behind a commercial story—and they will come forth.
Tilda: WhenTruehope fought back through the Courts—and won—it wasn’t long thereafter that Health Canada mobilized theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police to conduct a guns-drawn raid at the Truehopeoffices in Alberta.
Ian Stewart: Health Canada spent $2 million toprosecute Truehope for charges—had they beenfound guilty—would have amounted to a $375 fine.They lost— Health Canadalost, but all of those costs to defend ourselves were not recouped from HealthCanada.
Tilda:Despite Pharma’s falsified science—and billion-dollar fines for fraudulent marketing
BLACK HEALTHCANADA LOGO W/ PINK FLAG
— and in spite of millions who were harmed bypsychiatric drugs—Health Canada decided that it was this tiny non-profit that needed to be shown the fullmight of the Canadian government.
BonnieKaplan: There hasbeen a huge bias against nutrition research. Who’s triggering that? Who – what is the political agenda thatis continually bombarding us with the message that taking vitamins and mineralsmight not be a good thing? I don’t get that.The result is that there is a lot of bias against people who’s saying “Not only should we take them, we should be studying itmore and we should see whether or not there’s treatment benefit from vitaminsand minerals.”
Julia Rucklidge (TedX talk at 55sec): What I’m going to talk about today may sound as radical as handwashing sounded to a mid-19th century doctor—and yet it is equally as scientific.It is the simple idea that optimizing nutrition is a safe and viable way toavoid, treat or lessen mental illness.
Tilda: Afternearly two decades of wrangling with Health Canada—and three-quarters of a million dollars in court costsand legal fees for Truehope, researchers Bonnie Kaplan, Julia Rucklidge, andothers continue to investigate the use of nutrients as a primary treatment formental health. Yet the road has been anything but easy.
Rucklidge: I was very aware of how manypeople were incredibly skeptical about this work. I was trained as a scientistand we need to evaluate the evidence. What has astounded me is the obstaclesthat we faced in order to try to answer what, I think, a very importantquestion for our community.
Bonnie Kaplan: I think there are two thingsabout the Truehope formula that are really special. One is that it’s broad spectrum—not just vitamins but both vitamins and dietaryminerals.
Anotheraspect of looking at the weight of the science is to look at replication,replication not within the same laboratory, not in the same hands but whenother people say
CHANGE BACK TO CAM1
“Aha, I’m getting the same result.” So, it’s very important that the use of broad-spectrumformulas is being replicated in multiple countries, in New Zealand, in theUnited States, in Canada, with different formulations, in the UK, in Holland,in Australia, that is extremely important.
Fristad: What people get concerned about isif a company is trying to simply market their ware without enough sciencebehind it; people become very skeptical, very quickly.
So what Iwould say in favor of Truehope, is that none of us who are investigating theproduct have any financial ties to the company whatsoever,
FRISTAD STUDY
and then theyhave absolutely no ties whatsoever in how we publish our findings. So they haveno authority over what we write, where we publish it, where we submit it, etc.
Rucklidge: There have been times where I’ve been at absolute despair and say, “Why am I doing this?” Because I have gone through somany obstacles to be able to run the studies that I do. Some of the obstacles I’ve come across have shocked me. It’s not fair for me to say them on camera of what kindsof things that I’ve had to deal with from members ofmy community.
KPM: Have you been betrayed?
Julia R: Yes…uh-huh…yep.
KPM: Is this, dare I say, ‘dangerous’ work for you to embark on?
Mary Fristad: Well, I wouldn’t have started my career this way. That might haveended my career.
Kaplan: Would I do it again? I don’t know if I would have the energy to deal with HealthCanada again.
Mary Fristad: It is understandable that peoplewould have questions, I would simply ask that people then be open-minded to theresults as the science evolves.
Tilda: In reality, though, Truehope—and nutrition research in general—is in danger of becoming extinct. Despite being themost studied dietary supplement in the world, good scientists often fear thepolitical consequences of studying nutrition’s effects on the brain.
Rucklidge: It makes perfect logic to me thatwe should investigate other options. If someone comes along and has some intriguingdata that shows that symptoms can be controlled by another method that may notcome along with so many risks, then I think it’s in our place as scientists to study it.
Kaplan: I happen to think that medicationsare very important— especially inacute crises. But, to me they’re thesupplement. I believe that it would be more beneficial to a lot of peopleespecially developing children, to be treated first with everythingpsychosocial, family therapy, etcetera, and nutritional, which is not going tocause any long term harm, and that that should be primary intervention.
Tilda: For people who have become wellutilising vitamins and minerals—aftersuffering from the fog of pharmaceuticals—they cannot conceive ever going back.
Nicole: I found out about Truehope afterhaving my last child. It was the darkest hours of my life, days, months and itended up being two years. I have a huge amount of gratitude that I need to sendto Truehope, the whole, entire program of it. It kind of makes me emotional.They changed my life. For so many other people, they’re changing lives every day. If we, as parents, asmothers, as fathers, as brothers, as sisters, can just take a look at that…
Sonya: In the fall of 1996, we contactedDr. Kolb and he told us about Tony Stephan and Truehope. We had been lookingfor some alternatives. We’d giveneverything the psychiatrist had suggested, we gave it all a try. Nothing wasworking. We felt there must be something else. I think here’s a product that worked for me. It helped me. Thereare no side effects. I’m afunctioning part of society. I’m not on thefloor in a ball crying all the time. I mean, that was my life before. I cancontribute to the wellbeing of my own family and my community and, hopefully,society. And Truehope has helped. Maybe, it’s not for everybody but the option needs to be there.
Jeri: You know, they always talk aboutthe placebo effect. I don’t think aplacebo effect last 11 years, but if it does, bring it on. I’ll keep it. (laughs)
Autumn: I don't want to begiving people false hope that everything about their mental illness is going toturn around, flip a switch, and tada – a magic pill. That’s not the case, but my goodness, just stopping the hallucinations, justthat would’ve been enough to keep me on it therest of my life because that was huge. It took me two more months to get offthe rest of my medication and I’d say the betterpart of the year before I felt like I was just really stable.
There are going to be people who want to say that I’m just trying to make a lot of money off of a big made-upstory, but my mother’s dead in the ground. Her dad’s dead. We all know how that happened. She had aprescription, and there’s some things you just can’t argue with. I’m not dead. I’ve got four healthy kids and a greatmarriage. And that’s something I didn’t expect would ever happen with me.
EPILOGUE
TILDA: Thelesson of a generation's worth of psychiatric experiments is that regulatorsdidn't protect the public; doctors didn't protect their patients; journalistsrefused to ask the tough questions; the pharmaceutical companies played thesystem and profited handsomely; and millions suffered, died, became addicts, orwere otherwise harmed.
END w EARLIER MELISSA B-ROLL WALKING BY THE CAMERA IN SLO-MO;
Melissa: You know, alot of times parents think that their eight- or nine-year-old just won'tunderstand; it's just easier to just give them the medications. But not tellingyour kid why they're taking the medication or what the medication is supposedto do can be really harmful. Having that kernel of knowledge that these thingsthat I was experiencing weren't me but were caused by a medication, I thinkwould've saved a lot of pain. A lot of pain.
Bob B: We’ve been thru alot. And she stopped taking the drugs and a new kid came forward. Straight A’s at the Univ.of St. Thomas; summa cum laude; valedictorian; Unbelievable. Here is this childthat i was afraid would never get out of her bedroom is now doing what she’s doing. (chokesup) So, it’s a great thingthat i have a kid who has the tenacity and the ability to tell us what sheneeded. And I’m afraid thereare a lot of kids who aren’t like that, and they’re going to bein a stupor—or worse.
Tilda: Theseare stories of those who have fallen —
and of thosewho have somehow survived. Many lost sons and daughters .. brothers and sisters… and their tragedies forced these private people out ofthe shadows. They wanted answers—and were notinterested in the politics of medicine. If the truth had been afforded usdecades ago, millions would have been spared similar fates.
LindaHurcombe: These arevery primitive things, missing your children.You miss their warmth and their smell and their lovely, lovely presence.
VOX: Perhaps change is coming, albeittoo slowly. But until it occurs, we should take nothing for granted: not ourloves .. nor our lives .. or the gift of our families and friends. As these Letters From Generation Rx have taught us .. there is perilin the conventional wisdom of treating so many people .. so indiscriminately ..with such powerful, life-changing drugs.
ShaunMcCartney: If somebodysaid to me that Brennan could come back to life and I’d never see him again, but I know that he could livehis life, the biggest loss for me, is the wonderful life he could have had. Hewould have been a great dad. He was a great friend to everybody. If that’s what it took, then I would do that in a second.
Tilda: Asthey mourn Every birthday, every holiday; every anniversary of a loved one'sdeath, their only prayer is to stop this from happening .. to anyone else.
-fin-
EPILOGUE-Slates
After15 years of political infighting, MP Terence Young’s legislation, BillC-17 passed unanimously in November 2014. Named Vanessa’s Law after Mr. Young’s daughter, the lawgives the Health Minister the power to recall unsafe drugs, requiresmandatory adverse reaction reporting throughout Canada, and provides an onlinepublic registry with all clinical trial data about pharmaceutical drugs. BillC-17 also demands greater transparency from Health Canada — Canada’s version of the FDA.
RobertWhitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic appeared on the NewYork Times bestseller’s list for the first time in April of2015. Whitaker was honored by the Investigative Reporters and EditorsAssociation with their 2010 Book Award for Best Investigative Journalism forAnatomy of an Epidemic.
AutumnStephan Stringham’sstory about her family’s battle with mental illness, APromise of Hope was published by Harper-Collins Canada. Within months, itbecame a Canadian bestseller.
DavidCrespi is still in prison for the drug-induced deaths of his daughters. Hiswife Kim is committed to freeing him.
