Personal Experiences of adverse psychiatric side effects of medicines or anaesthetics, causing depression and other mood changes

I have put some very personal interviews on the Vimeo web site.

These were people who attended our last conference and wanted to share with others their pain, or sometimes how they overcame the difficulties caused by ADRs. They want to help others by sharing their stories. When Jon Medland speaks about his son, who took his life shortly after starting a course of Roaccutane/isotretinoin, to treat some spots on his back, the family were devastated. I met John and his wife Pam when they came to our 2004 conference. We had invited the Coroner following the inquest, to speak too.

Jon and Pam have made efforts to get better warnings out and through their pain and with great dignity, have met with politicians and the regulatory body to try to persuade them to create awareness that a medication can change a person to the extent that they are not thinking logically. This can lead to death, which may be termed suicide. However in many cases the person is not really in command of their actions, they just happen. They do not intend to hurt the families they love.

People should always look to what happens when any form of chemical that affects brain cells is used.
Roaccutane for example goes to retinoid receptors that are in the brain, this changes the cells.

Drugs that change the way we think and feel such as antidepressants, may not always do the job we wish them to. They may change our thinking to such an extent we act totally out of character.

Drugs for physical problems may have the same chemicals as drugs for psychological problems, as in the case of drugs for sickness. These can cause physical side effects such as tardive dykinesia the same as the neuroleptic drugs. There are only a limited amount of chemicals and molecular targets that are used and juggled to create the medicines we use.

If you wish to share your experience with the world, either have a video or recording or wish to be interviewed, please contact us. The charity APRIL is focussed on psychological iatrogenic (treatement induced) illness. This includes withdrawal problems. We may be able to include your story eventually on a planned new web site to be dedicated to personal experiences of psychiatric ADRs.
We need to raise the funding for this major project, so any help or contributions will be welcomed.

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