Letters from Generation Rx (2017) - full transcript

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[wind blowing]

[slow atmospheric singing]

I've had to renegotiate
that memory

over and over and over again.

Gravel spitting and water
flying and kids screaming.

It was the summer
after I turned eight.

We never really knew
what to expect from mum.

During a particularly bad swing,

she went through some really
desperate days there and

she put us all in the Bronco

and took us for a drive
down to the river.



Before we got to the river,
she was 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'll all feel better soon,

"we re all gonna
feel better soon"

My memories of that moment are
really in black and white.

I'm not sure I ever really met
my mum again after that point.

[slow guttural singing]

- A strange story out of
Florida this morning,

where the mother of
three children drove

into the ocean off
of Daytona Beach.

The pregnant mum spoke of demons

before driving into
the Atlantic...



Police say they've never
seen anything like this...

The tiny city of Newburgh New
York is trying to come to grips

with the deaths of
3 young children

who died when their mother drove
them into the Hudson River.

We are talking about
a tragedy in this city

that I would say is
probably second-to-none.

- It all unfolded at this
boat ramp Tuesday evening.

- Any effort to
locate the vehicle,

difficult at best, it was not
floating, it was underwater.

- Among the victims are
2-year old Lance Pierre

and his 11-month old sister.

- Perhaps we should take
nothing for granted:

not our loves, nor our lives,

our families or friends,

even our sanity.

One minute, all is well,

the next, we re plunged
into darkness,

unable to process what is real,

and what is madness.

Autumn Stringham realized
this all-too-young.

- It was the summer
after I turned eight.

- She should not be alive,
and she knows it.

- That was the moment

that shattered trust.

How do you...

You know, how do you trust
anybody after that?

- Forced to confront a mystery
beyond her comprehension,

she spent decades haunted,

in search of answers,

in pursuit of peace.

When something like killing
all six of her children

made 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 dig
it up to back out of that.

And that's an
incredible victory

for somebody
in that state of mind.

You know, there
are other mothers

who don't win that battle.

- In exchange for
this redemption,

there was a price, however.

And it's taken me thirty years

to, um...

to be able to find the...

the beautiful side
of that memory.

- Autumn's mum did
eventually die by suicide,

alone on a country road.

Tony Stephan was now widowed

with eight children at home.

- I'm laying in bed
at night in my room

listening to a house
full of mourning;

and it just shattered
the whole family.

It just shattered the
children, it shattered me.

- It has become 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 homes and churches.

They're all over the news.

Try as we might
to understand them, we can't.

Try as we might to ignore them,
they call to us still.

We called the paramedics,

they tried feverishly
to revive her.

And I was trying to give her
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation

but I knew something was wrong
because her body was cold.

- It's 2004. 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 the world:

- Hello, I'm Candace Downing.

- Candace... hanged herself.

When Candace first died,
we asked ourselves,

how could we not know
that she was unhappy?

- The Downings didn't realize it
at the time, of course,

but her case
was not a rare event.

No. Candace was far from alone.

- She started on this drug
somewhere around January.

And these things
make you unafraid.

They make you do things
you wouldn't do normally.

They make you...

able to put a rope around
your neck and hang yourself.

Caitlin died at home
and we found her,

and she'd probably had been dead

for maybe at the
most five minutes

when we found her.

She'd hanged herself
in the guest bedroom upstairs.

It really is like a perfect
mystery murder novel.

I mean, it's almost like
killing somebody

with an icicle and it melts
and the weapon is gone.

- They were still
dizzy from death,

traumatized and broken,

when they solved the mystery.

The drugs responsible,
they say, are called SSRIs

and they're among the
best-selling drugs in the world.

It was a sample pack of Paxil.

Cipralex.

Sertraline, which is Zoloft.

And the maximum dose of
Zoloft legally allowed.

There was one thing in her
system in the coroner's report:

a therapeutic dose of
Fluoxetine hydrochloride.

SSRIs are better known
as antidepressants.

These are some
symptoms of depression.

Psychiatric drugs like
SSRIs have been defended

with religious zeal
by their believers

and damned by others

as some of the most dangerous
drugs on the planet.

Distinguishing truth from
fiction has been a challenge,

and this has placed the public
in the unenviable position

of de-constructing
the scientific

and medical dogma on their own,

in the midst of a 30-year
social experiment.

As Director of the National
Institutes of Mental Health,

Thomas Insel has been at
the centre of a storm

of contradictions about
the use of these drugs.

I think that we have to be very
humble about this right now,

because we've often been
so self-congratulatory,

because we have, after all,

many people feel,
made great strides.

The numbers don't
really support that.

- Dr. Insel's candour is sure
to shock and upset many,

on all sides of the debate.

The word failure is one
few have dared to utter.

Fundamentally, why
have we failed here?

Why has the suicide
rate not come down?

Why have the measures,
disability,

whatever those might be,

why have those continued
to go up instead of down?

All of the numbers are going
in the wrong direction,

so where, where have we failed?
What's gone wrong here?

- The answers,
according to Insel,

run contrary to the standard
arguments put forth

by mental health professionals.

- A lot of people say it's
because of stigma and access.

The fact is that
actually more people are

getting more treatment
than ever before,

so it's hard for me to
quite believe that.

I would just submit that
from the NIMH perspective,

the answer about
why we've failed

is a little more disruptive.

And that answer is that
we don't know enough.

- To hear the Director
of the NIMH say now that

all of the exultations
about psychotropics

from the media, from academia,

from the profession,
from governments,

were not merited is unsettling.

After billions of prescriptions

and hundreds of billions of
dollars in drug company profits,

how did this occur?

I think that our field
has gone off track here

by devoting so much
of its resources

over the last 20 to 30 years,

both publicly and privately,

just trying to understand
how the drugs work.

If the drugs were
truly curative,

if it was like trying
to understand how

insulin 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 psychotic disorders.

They don't, in any
sense, provide a cure.

This change of heart contradicts
what we've been told

about psychiatric drugs
for a generation now

and raises serious questions
about how and why these drugs

have been dispensed so
indiscriminately to millions.

- I was massively drugged.

I tried drug after drug.

I did what they told me to do.

I used to take tranquillizers,

bezodiazepines,

that's all I did was
pop pills all day.

They just kept handing
me pills, you know,

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 non-existent person.

I mean, I was just...

I had a heartbeat and that's
really all that I had.

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's sort of like they
were just was given to me

as like a panacea 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 an 8 or 9-year-old,
I really believed that,

until I began
really experiencing

all those horrible side-effects

and it eventually changed
me into not even a person,

but like a monster.

I was horrible.

Doctors, to a large
degree, have abandoned

their Hippocratic oath,
which is to do no harm.

And that is, it's like
a pill for every ill.

They are knee jerk
prescribers, many of them.

In fact, it has been shown
that the average doctor

will make a decision
to prescribe a drug

within 19 seconds of
seeing a patient.

Using antidepressants, or any
of the psychiatric drugs

is simply not understood,

it's not explained,
it's not dwelt upon.

I think they're in a
different class of drug from

most of the drugs we take
for our other ailments.

- In the 80s and 90s,
SSRIs were the first

in a class of new
mental health potions

heralded as wonder drugs
and miracle cures.

They were extolled as
safe and effective

solutions for the age-old
problem of depression

and were marketed as such.

Thus began an aggressive march
towards a new era in psychiatry,

one which boasted chemicals for
the mental health conditions

that had dogged humankind
for millennia.

Thirty years later, however,
the window on that era,

and its bold proclamations,
appears to be closing.

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
all in the middle

of a public health experiment

that's been going on for
the last 50-60 years

and more intensively
for the last 30 years.

My prediction, I don't
think I'll live to see it

but my prediction
is, that some day,

we will look back at
the antidepressant era

and have the view of
prescribing antidepressants

that now we have
of blood-letting.

- Irving Kirsch
rocked psychiatry

with an appearance on 60 Minutes

and an explosive book,
The Emperor's New Drugs.

Three times he tested
the data on SSRIs,

three times, he verified that
prescription antidepressants

were no better than
taking a sugar pill.

Still, he was under
fire from critics

who vowed to prove him wrong.

People started doing
other studies.

They said, well maybe you
did your statistics wrong.

Critics, opponents, they
took our data an re-did it.

The FDA has done its
own meta-analysis,

looking at all of
the antidepressants

they've ever approved.

And they got the same result.
Everybody gets the same result.

In the immediate, it could
make a huge difference.

You could have someone
going from being

psychotic to being
non-psychotic,

which is a pretty amazing
change in behaviour.

But what I think what
we need to recognize

that's happened
over the last 50 years

is that they haven't shown to be
as good as we thought they were.

- Yet, in the case of
psychiatric drugs,

informed choice is
a bit of a misnomer

and finding the path of
least risk can be daunting.

In this vacuum, millions
have been harmed,

simply due to a
lack of knowledge.

Psychiatrists
knowledge and training

in the area of
psycho-pharmacology

is completely
inadequate, in my view.

And this is partly
because of the focus

on the disease-centred model.

Psychiatrists have
been so obsessed

with what disease
different drugs treat,

they haven't looked at
the drugs as drugs,

and they haven't
understood all the

harmful effects the
drugs can produce.

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 a place,

but we need to also
stop and recognize

that there is a cost to this

and that there are people
who are struggling

for other reasons now
because of the side effects

associated with
these medications.

- While the drug companies
ruthlessly defended

their magic bullets in the
Courts and through the Press,

they were, in effect,
stigmatising

people who were
harmed by using them.

The long lens of
history has revealed

that the troubling effects of
these chemicals were well-known,

years before FDA and
other regulatory bodies

actually approved SSRIs.

This is hard for me
because I tried to

commit suicide in front
of my five children.

I attacked him with
a kitchen knife.

I took the 9mm automatic,

sat down on the bed and
put the gun to my head.

After being on
Prozac for 21 days,

my wife shot and killed both
of these two boys right here.

Eli Lilly calls Prozac the
wonder drug and I wonder why?

Thinking back on how
this drug affected me,

does a wonder drug rob
you of a conscience?

Does a wonder drug
make you forget

the difference between
right and wrong?

In the early 1990's this
issue had reached a peak,

was Prozac causing
violence and suicide?

But what happened was that their
psycho-pharmacology committee,

almost everybody
on the committee

worked for the drug companies.

So the conflicts of
interest was so enormous

that the FDA had to
give them all letters

forgiving them of their
conflicts of interest

so they couldn't be sued.

- What about your
concern regarding

something like Prozac that,

very well documented:
28,000 adverse reports,

1600 suicides associated
with that drug.

Well, drugs that go through
our very rigorous testing

and review process are very
well understood chemicals.

And drugs are recognized to
have both risks and benefits,

that's why they go through
a rigorous evaluation,

and when those products are
put out on the market,

we have a good
scientific understanding

of both the risks and benefits.

And that's laid out in
very detailed labelling

that physicians then use
to decide whether to

prescribe those products
to their patients.

Side effects are part
of pharmaceuticals,

that's recognized,
and that's why

we re so carefully
scientifically.

Well, nothing could be
further from the truth than

the chemical is
well understood

or that the FDA was careful.

Actually, what the FDA
was careful about

was to consciously
cover-up every

really dangerous adverse
effect of Prozac.

- ...was on the list of things
we were gonna get into...

- Why don't you...

turn the camera off
so we can talk?

- They did nothing,
absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly
was busily hiding

everything they could about the
increased rates of suicidality.

It was a matter of how do we
cover it up? How do we hide it?

At every step of the process,

towards approval and
marketing thereafter,

was designed to hide
and mislead the public

and physicians about the
suicide side effect.

Leigh Thompson, the chief
scientist at Lilly

writes in February 7, 1990,

that he had a
conversation with

Dr. Paul Leber at 6:15
in the morning.

Now, think about that.

You work for the United
States government,

the taxpayers of the
United 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, by the way, if you
want to send me something,

I've got this special back
line over here at the FDA.

Send it through
back channels, you know,

so other people don't get it

just feed me this
info on the QT.

I mean it's extraordinary.

- Lilly's own secret
files implicate

the FDA's Paul Leber, Robert
Temple and Thomas Laughren

as being complicit
in a scheme to

whitewash the dark
facts about Prozac.

There are some very
telling documents

that show the cosy relationship
between FDA officials

and Eli Lilly in those early
years, in the early 1990s.

Lilly employees or
Lilly personnel

referring to certain members of
FDA as our friend in the FDA.

they're our defender.

They were working hard to
get over this suicide issue

and they referred to
the suicide issue

as a public relations problem.

- Eli Lilly has been called
The House That Prozac Built.

Before the drug was introduced,

Lilly reported earnings
of 600 million dollars annually.

Prozac changed Lilly's fortunes,

and the company banked at
least 21 billion dollars

in profits from the drug over
the life of their patent.

[pop music]

- When I say to some people,

prescriptions drugs are
the fourth leading

cause of death in our society,

that seems to be
the dividing line.

There's some people who
already know it's true,

who have read about
it and understand it.

Then there's others who think,

Oh, that's a myth.
That can't be true.

They simply can't conceive of
that, so they stop listening.

- Terence Young is a Member
of Parliament in Canada,

serving Oakville, Ontario,
just outside of Toronto.

After a prescription drug caused

the death of his
daughter Vanessa,

he founded an advocacy
group, Drug Safety Canada.

Vanessa collapsed
in front of me.

Her heart had stopped, basically
as she stood up to go upstairs.

When you lose a child your
world is upside down.

I was thrown into a
study of medicine,

of medical 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 the loss of Vanessa.

So it was, in a sense,
my way of grieving.

And, um...

It started the day she died.

- For five 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 modern society.

They find a way to create
a financial interest

in every institution
in our society

that we rely on for
critical thought.

They have money in our
universities, in our colleges,

in our hospital
boards, in the media,

and they almost always win.

- The loss of his daughter,

coupled with the shocking
truths he uncovered

through his medical research,

led him to write Death
By Prescription

and become one of
Canada's most ardent

proponents of informed choice.

- GlaxoSmithKline just
paid the largest fine

in the history of
the United States

related to fraud and criminal
acts for a drug company.

They paid 3 billion dollars
for illegal marketing

of Paxil, Wellbutrin, and
Avandia,

Paxil and Avandia both having
been drugs that caused

a lot of deaths due to
adverse drug reactions.

And they paid it in cash.

This action constitutes the
largest healthcare settlement

in United States history.

It was in their business plan.

Because those three drugs,

in the years involved sold
25 billion dollars worth.

And the drugs are marked up
in the thousands of percent.

GSK distributed Paxil with
false and misleading labelling.

What GSK did was encourage the
use of Paxil for children

who are dealing with depression,

with false messages about
safety and effectiveness.

This unlawful promotion
put children at risk

of taking drugs
that were unproven

to be effective for them,

and have been shown to
increase the risk of suicide.

- These fraudulent practices
were locked away for decades,

protected by
institutions and doctors

and the drug companies
themselves.

Psychiatric and
scientific ethics

were cast aside in
exchange for profits.

No one went to jail and
real people paid the price.

[singing Oh Danny Boy]

Brennan wore his
heart on his sleeve.

He just adored
social situations.

He loved to sing from
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 gift shop

that he would sing Danny Boy

to all the senior citizens
on the bus tour there

and just broke out into song

and had his own little
audience at Peggy's Cove.

[singing Oh Danny Boy]

Yeah, what I miss most about
Brennan is, he came in,

he'd always give me a hug.

Hey dad, how're you doing?

Give me a hug. I still
think to this day

he's going to walk
through the door.

We were driving,
not too long ago,

Nancy, myself and our
other son Hayden,

and I looked in the back
seat and Hayden was sleeping,

and I looked to see
if Brennan was there.

Just out of habit, to see
if he was sleeping too.

I saw Brennan walk out of this
house, he was very robotic.

Brennan, where you going?

It's okay mum, I
just got to go.

Puts on his winter coat.

Brennan, it's hot out today.

It's okay mum, 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 mum, I
just got to go.

And I said, well, I need
you here for a minute.

No, it's okay mum,
I just got to go.

And that's all he
could say to me,

and this was a child who
was very articulate,

who was so verbose that
sometimes you would just say

okay, okay, enough,
enough already.

- Four days prior,
Brennan went to

the family doctor
with a chest cold

and inexplicably came
home with a sample pack

of the antidepressant Cipralex.

At the time of his
disappearance,

he was exhibiting the
classic signs of Akathisia.

When Brennan went missing
I drove the roads

for hours just north of here.

And I did every side road,
every conservation area,

every lane way looking for him.

One of the things
that he didn't have

was a great sense of direction.

I thought maybe he had gone
for a hike in the bush

and got turned around and
couldn't find his way out,

and I went looking for him.

that's what was going through
my mind the whole time.

I let him go out
the door

and that was the last
time I saw him alive.

And he bought his rope
from a local store

and drove to a
conservation area,

texted us,

and then hanged himself.

- Before long,
other teens across

the Canadian province
of Ontario were dying,

just like Brennan did.

For Terence Young, the problem
hit close to home again,

when friends and constituents
faced the same horror

he and the McCartneys had.

My wife called my son
Hart to the phone

and we heard him say a few words

and he banged the phone
down and ran upstairs,

obviously quite upset.

We went and said,
What happened?

he said, Sara Carlin
hanged herself.

And we had met Sara,
who was 18 years old,

just a few weeks before
on our back deck,

they were part of the same
social group in Oakville.

They'd play guitar
and sing songs

and do karaoke or whatever.

[piano and singing]

Because of my own research the
first 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 the cause

of Sara Carlin's
demise, her suicide.

She started on this drug
somewhere around January.

And these things
make you unafraid.

They make you do things
you wouldn't do normally.

They make you...

able to put a rope around
your neck and hang yourself.

A young woman hanging herself is

an extremely rare
thing to happen.

She went home one Saturday night
at two o'clock in the morning,

took off her make-up and hanged
herself in her parents basement.

I reached out to Terence
at one point 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 a great connection
and with Terence's help,

we got the inquest.

The doctors wouldn't
talk to us after.

We fought hard for
an inquest because

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 of the side effects
was suicidal thinking.

Everyone told us it's
not going to happen,

you'll never get an inquest
on a prescription drug.

So it goes to show you what
a couple of Dads can do.

I worked with Sara's dad, Neil.

We pushed very hard
to get an inquest.

Um, I asked as Chair
of Drug Safety Canada

to be party to that inquest
and I was turned down.

But the coroner did allow
me to be an expert witness

on drug communications,
which I did.

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 Sara
Carlin's death.

Well, the whole point of
the inquest was to see

whether or not antidepressants
played a part in Sara's death!

The courts acknowledge
that this medication

can increase thoughts of suicide
in particular patients,

but they don't think
the medication

played a role in
Sara Carlin's death.

- The Coroner in Ontario
resisted every request

by the Carlin's to get the truth

about the death
of their daughter.

But the Carlin's were willing
to risk everything to get it.

We basically mortgaged
our home to the hilt

to try and get some answers,

but to me, it was worth it to
have that doctor up on the stand

and the 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?

Well because, he said, she
wouldn't have taken it.

Did you tell her parents?
"No."

"Did you tell anybody?
No.

Coroners see the suicides;

investigate the suicides.

Coroners don't want
to do anything.

Coroners are medical doctors.

The coroners are the first line
of defence for the industry.

- And at the inquest,

the odds were stacked
against the Carlins.

- The jury, I think,
was very courageous.

But they were specifically
instructed by the coroner

that they couldn't actually
find Paxil as a cause.

- The jury made 12 key
recommendations,

these were detailed
recommendations

to prevent similar deaths,

six of them were aimed
at the drug industry

and the drug company.

So if they didn't think
that Paxil caused or played

a critical role in
Sara Carlin's death,

they certainly wouldn't have
put six recommendations

aimed at the pharmaceutical
industry in their decision.

It took me a year
to get the strength

to write to the Chief Coroner.

I said, you know, It
came to my attention that

"you, in fact, had the
cause of death changed.

I said, how can the
coroner's office

"have such a lack
of transparency?

I received a letter back
basically telling me

that it was criminal offence
to meddle with the jury.

And if I didn't stop meddling

I would be charged
and put in jail.

I believe where
we are right now,

those of us who
understand the true risks

and have been trying to warn
others and make change,

we're at the bleeding edge.

Not the leading
edge, because the

leading edge hasn't
even started yet.

We're at the bleeding edge,

we're the ones they think
we sort of lost it.

I know 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 that
realize I'm not exaggerating.

In fact, the evidence 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 is trying
to get people to

believe something
that's so unbelievable.

- Our mission, per Se, is
to be vocal about this,

because if It saves one life,
then it's all worth it.

As much as it, um, every
time we talk about it,

it re-traumatizes us,

makes us relive the experience.

But it is what Brennan would
have wanted us to do.

[music - Danny Boy]

- Were you 240lbs of fury?

Oh Goodness, yes.

And I was not easy to deal with.

My son Joseph at that
time was 15 years of age.

Extremely ill.

- Like, it didn't
matter what it was.

- Very very violent.

- The drop of a pin
would set me off.

- You could actually
say he would be

everything a school yard
shooting is made out of.

[phone rings]

911, where's your emergency?

He was diagnosed with bipolar
effective disorder one.

In the years after Debbie
Stephan drove the family's

1990 Bronco into a raging river
with her children inside,

the mental states of
both Autumn Stringham

and her brother Joseph
Stephan deteriorated.

- They didn't understand what
their Mother was going through,

that would take
her to that point

that she would be prepared to
remove herself from this life,

and all of the
children with her.

- Whether the cause was
genetics or sheer trauma,

they both were diagnosed
with bipolar disorder,

just like their mum.

I was very very down.

You begin to lose hope because
there's no joy in life at all.

There's no happiness
to be found.

And that was the
state of our family.

- Joseph, in particular,
seemed headed for disaster.

He was just a
sweetheart, but, boy,

when he hit puberty,
he really went over,

and became incredibly manic and
incredibly violent in his mania.

He was scary.

My dad was scared.

Joseph was medicated
with lithium.

I believe he was taking
750 milligrams of lithium

and he was up to 900
milligrams of lithium

for a period of time
to try and control it.

Was I having huge mood swings?

Yeah, that stuff definitely
started, I mean,

I'd been through a lot of pain
with the death of my mother

and various events that
happened in my life.

After my mother had
committed suicide,

uh,

I was the most violent
person that I knew of.

I used to wander the
streets at night

and I'd go pick fights
with the local people

and I had this
aluminium bat I'd found

and I beat it against the curb

so it was just
jagged and torn up,

and, you know, that was
my weapon of choice.

And, I mean, I'm lucky I never
touched anybody with that thing,

but that's where it was headed.

I mean, it wouldn't
have been very long

before something
actually happened.

- My children were
already saying to me,

Come on dad.

"You've got to get him
out of the house.

"he's going to kill somebody.

"You've got to do
something, Dad.

It didn't matter what we
threw at this situation,

it wasn't going to get better

and I'm going to lose
him to a suicide,

or he's going to have to
be institutionalized.

- A thousand miles away, Autumn
was also struggling desperately.

Now married with a
child, she, too,

was caught in the grip
of her mother's madness.

- At that point in my life,

I just felt like
everything was ashes.

You know, I'd just lost
my mum to suicide.

My diagnosis had been
upgraded, so now I was

rapid-cycling bipolar one with
schizophrenic tendencies,

which was, it
seemed really dark,

like I wasn't going
to get over that.

And so I had actually
planned to commit suicide.

With one child ingesting
a five-drug cocktail

and contemplating suicide

and the other engulfed
by violent thoughts,

Tony Stephan's family
was under siege.

My daughter at the same time had

been in and out of
the psych ward,

struggling with the same issues
as her mother and her brother

and was on five
different medications.

She had been through major
medication changes.

It wasn't working.

At the very, very best,
it wasn't working.

So, I was left in
a terrible state,

a terrible state where I
had to find an answer,

because you see, my
family was literally

coming unglued before my eyes.

I was going to lose my family.

- Beset by grief and confused by

the cruelty of his
circumstances,

he began to look for answers;
some way out of this madness.

- Sheer and utter desperation.

It was a journey that would
reshape his life forever.

- he started studying everything
that he could about bipolar

and recognizing a
lot of the patterns

that he'd seen with my mum

in all the years that
they've been married, and

I think it really helped him to

see that the needed to
do something about it.

- Do something, but what?

The experts had all weighed in:

both his children
were spiralling

into the same orbit
as their mum

and there seemed little
hope he could save them.

But Stephan resolved
to find an answer

and prevent any further
suicides in his family.

I was at the bottom
of a pit and I

had many different
psychiatrists,

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.

You know, how could
such a beautiful thing

of life, giving birth,
cause such trauma?

I just remember being very
unhappy, very sad and hopeless.

I never thought it would end and

just saw no way
to get out of it.

The drugs made me
completely emotionless;

they made me not care;

I didn't care about
anything around me.

The only thing I saw was my pain

and the drugs made me
numb to anything else.

- I was diagnosed with
Tourette's Syndrome.

So in order to treat
the Tourette Syndrome,

I was put on medications.

When I was little, 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
of the medication

that I was going through all
these horrible changes.

I will probably never get over

the horrible guilt
and the horrible -

I think that part of her
childhood was stolen from her.

They began to basically

just force me to
take the medication

which made me feel as
though I had been betrayed

by absolutely everybody,
because I felt as though

they were giving me
these toxic things that

were making me sick and
violent and horrible.

I didn't know by her not
wanting to take the medicine

that she was really
trying to say to me,

You know what? This
isn't working.

But what eight year old
can verbalize that?

And 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.

They completely put their faith
in this particular psychiatrist

who I don't think had my best
interests in mind at all.

My doctor decided that electric
shock therapy would be good

because I was drug-resistant.

So I mean, we had tried
for almost a year.

He just kept saying,
let's try more drugs.

We'll give you this. We'll do
this. More shock therapy.

Well, really? Like, how
much more can my body take?

I was 100 pounds and dying.
I literally was dying.

My psychiatrist decided that

electric shock would
be the next step,

so I did a series of eight,

so eight sessions of that.

The ECT was a
horrible experience.

I loved going to
school and learning,

I had to drop out of school

and really couldn't
do the things in life

that I'd always done
and wanted to do.

For about 16 years,

I was hospitalized every year
for up to three months.

Finally in the last five
years of my illness,

I... I just said, "no more."

"If you ever take me to the
hospital again," I said,

"I will kill myself.

When my mum would call
him, sort of frantic,

like, Melissa's
having a reaction,

or Melissa's having an
episode of violence,

or Melissa's hurting herself,

he would say, make her
take the medication!

The psychiatrist said,
"If she doesn't listen,

and she doesn't want to
take the medication,

you just call 911

and go over and visit
the psych hospital

because that's
where she'll go."

Gosh, I've got a list of like
20 different medications

I was on by the time
I was about 11.

Um, we just had bags and bags
full of pills and pills,

in massive doses that I
shouldn't have been,

no child should have
been prescribed.

It got to the point where
they prescribed Haldol

and that's when I really got
more concerned than ever.

My mum and my sister
basically found me

in the game room sitting
on the floor like,

completely zoned-out.

And I just remember
this feeling of,

"I'm going to die, I'm going
to die, I'm going to die."

[singing] And
if she falls,

There will be no one
there to catch her

When she falls, there will
be no one there to catch her

And hold on.

Melissa ended up in
the emergency room.

She had a very serious
psychotic reaction.

I was like, oh, this is
it, I've completely...

gone crazy.

This is insane. I don't, I
don't know who I am anymore.

I don't know what
I'm doing anymore.

I called my paediatrician and
he was there in ten minutes

and he said to the nurse,
"Get her off of that shit."

that's what he said.

- It was a very very low point,

often the case that I
would contemplate suicide

just because I...

didn't know who I was anymore

and, um, all these side effects

that I as experiencing
were so scary.

You don't give a
9-year kid Haldol.

- As millions filled their
psychotropic prescriptions,

most without anything
resembling sound medical advice,

other dark and troubling
events kept occurring,

without a whisper of warning.

[phone ringing]

911, what is your emergency?

- ...been shot at West-side
school... middle school.

- Been what?

- Been shot at West-side
middle school.

- OK.

- We need an ambulance
as soon as possible

- OK. Do you know who's
done the shooting?

- Every time we get one of
these horrible killings,

mass murder, some will take
advantage of that to say,

look, we need more
forced treatment.

What we really need
to investigate

is what role are
psychiatric drugs

playing in such mass killings?

Are people coming off drugs?

Are they on the drugs and
experiencing akathisia?

And there's plenty of evidence
in the research literature

in the way that actually
psychiatric drugs can

lend themselves
to violent actions.

One, You can have
this inner-agitation.

Two, coming off, you can have
a worsening of symptoms,

and the third part
is, these drugs

can diminish frontal
lobe activity,

the very part of the brain
that when you get a really

bad idea like taking a gun
and going into a school

that's the part of your 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.

Every time there is some
bizarre act of violence

in the United States or Canada,

like a school shooting
or mass shooting,

it is so difficult to find
any mention if the shooter

was on anti-psychotics or
antidepressant drugs.

And yet in every case
I've been able to find,

the person who was
shooting was either

on an antidepressant drug

or had recently withdrawn
from an antidepressant drug.

And so there is some
kind of real correlation

which no one is
properly investigating.

- As part of the
research for his book

called The Book of Woe,

Gary Greenberg was embedded
with psychiatrists

as they debated the
new edition of the

Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders,

the DSM-5.

All along, It's been
clear that the DSM

is essentially a
work of fiction.

It's the way psychiatrists
have of saying that

if there are mental disorders,

if they exist in nature the way

that illnesses like
Diabetes exist,

then these are what they are.

Changing the way we
understand ourselves,

is intimately related
to the development

of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual.

The DSM is often
referred to as

the Bible of
psychiatric disorders.

It is the quintessential
diagnostic instrument.

Over 400,000 mental
health professionals

in the United
States use the DSM,

and in order to get 3rd
party reimbursement,

one has to have a DSM diagnosis.

So the DSM is extremely
instrumental.

- In 2005, two
respected academics,

Lisa Cosgrove of UMass-Boston

and Sheldon Krimsky of Tufts,

released their investigation
into conflicts-of-interest

between DSM-4 panel members and
the pharmaceutical industry.

- I think the data really
speak for themselves.

The strongest statistics include
the panel members for

the mood disorders
and schizophrenia

and psychotic disorders.

A hundred percent of
those panel members

and yes, that's right,
every single panel member

has financial associations with
the pharmaceutical industry.

And if you look at it in terms
of the sheer amount of money,

um, the antidepressant market
and the anti-psychotic markets

are the fourth and fifth
leading therapy classes

of drugs with annual sales

of 20 billion and 14
billion respectively.

You know, the argument is well
we're getting the best people;

the best people are
consulting for the industry,

and therefore, the concept of

disinterestedness is
completely destroyed.

And it's a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

If you set up the system
so that you permit people

with conflictual relationships
to be on committees

whose decisions will have

financial impacts
on an industry,

then the whole thing
is running on

its own cycle of self-interest.

So there are 170
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 association

with a pharmaceutical company.

- Embedded with the new
DSM-5 working committee,

Gary Greenberg found
himself caught

in a fire fight of
words and passions

over the future of psychiatry.

When the DSM is revised,
there are fights,

and in this
particular case there

were some really intense fights,

because there was an
attempt on the part

of the American
Psychiatric Association

to finally come up with
the DSM to end all DSMs.

Now you can't expect to
revise a staple like the DSM

for the first time in 20 years

without experiencing
some glitches,

and believe me, we had
more than our share.

It was like being in
the middle of a war.

But the APA kept its composure,

rallied when attacked
by our enemies,

and occasionally by
our friends, too,

to make the DSM a
resounding success.

And uh, it didn't work.

They failed and they found
it very difficult to

walk back from 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, had
written the last DSM.

- This political infighting
left millions of consumers

with psychiatric
diagnoses in limbo.

The DSM decision-makers may
not have considered that

but their actions over the last
30 years have reverberated

in sad and profound ways.

- Pretend that I'm
the Glaxo CEO.

What would you
like to say to me?

[chuckles]

Yeah...

- For David Carmichael,
there are good reasons

why this is is not an
easy question to answer.

- My Dad and I have
always been really close.

Um, you know, both my
parents did everything

for my brother and I.

If there was, you know, a
sport we wanted to pick up,

or if there was something we
wanted to do, we did everything.

My dad built my brother a
half pipe in our backyard

and it was like a
professionally built half pipe.

Like, this thing was phenomenal.

And we had kids from all
over the neighbourhood

come there to ride it
because it was huge.

There's nothing more
exhilarating than being a dad.

In everything I've ever done,
it was magical moments.

Our daughter, Gillian
was born in 1990,

and our son, Ian
was born in 1992.

And both my wife and I took a
nurturing approach to parenting.

They didn't get
everything they wanted,

but they certainly had
a lot of opportunity

when they were young.
And it was wonderful.

My brother got into
dirt jumping as well,

so my Dad built my brother a
dirt jump at our cottage.

My brother would just spend
hours out there and he loved it.

- I remember the deliveries
like they were yesterday.

I remember the snowstorm
I had to get through

when Ian was being
delivered in 1992.

It was December the 14th,
that's when he was born,

I got a call at the
organization I was working at,

got home, got in the car.

He was rushed right
in the delivery room.

It was a very quick delivery.

Gillian took over 20 hours.

Ian was very quick.

We were the ideal
family on the block

and I had a lot of
friends who just

would continuously tell me that,

that we were a perfect family.

- The Carmichael's perfect
family began to unhinge

shortly after David
began taking Paxil.

I really didn't know very
much about mental illness

until when I was 45 years old,

and I had my first
major depression.

And I was treated with
Paxil and in fact,

when I look back on it now,

there's no question
I was a manic

when I was on Paxil
for the first time.

That was the very
first time that I

I ever even looked at the
issues around drugs,

and side effects of drugs.

I noticed that there
was a big difference

before he started
taking medication

and then while he was
taking the medication.

I remember him snapping on me
about something very small

and I remember him spending
so much time at his office.

I remember him being...

just being more quiet and

not being himself and
looking stressed out, and...

just looking different.

You know, when I went to the
doctor I was prescribed Paxil.

And I had gained a
fair bit of weight,

I, um, had sexual
dysfunction issues,

and my resting heart
rate was higher.

And there was just...

this tremendous discomfort with
being on that particular drug.

It really made me wonder, you
know, should I be on it?

- Like so many who
tumbled into the world

of antidepressants
without forethought,

David Carmichael did so unaware
of the potential dangers.

When I was on Paxil, we had no
idea it could trigger delusions,

or, none of that was out
in the public domain.

For so many years, I just
assumed my doctor knew best.

I learned about the side
effects the hard way.

It's like I can't
participate in life,

I'm too busy worrying.

- When everything happened,

I had just finished Grade 8.

For my friends, who
knew my father,

they just knew that
something was wrong,

because they knew
who my dad was.

And you just would never
in a million years think

that he would do
something that he did.

Yeah I... parenting was
a high priority of mine,

to be the best parent possible.

And to have it end this way
is pretty devastating.

[slow soulful singing]

- David Carmichael had been on
60mg of Paxil for two weeks

when he and Ian set
out for one of

their favourite
father-son activities:

a BMX bike competition
in London, Ontario.

- What I've learned in
this journey is

I no longer take for
granted even one breath.

Things get reduced
to the minutes,

and you know you have the
strength for that minute.

[girls singing] It's
a whole new world

and that's the place
I've never been,

When I'm way up here...

David and I were
friends in college.

We were both accounting majors.

David was that
funny,

brilliant guy that you
always wanted in your group.

- David was a guy you'd
want to be around.

that's about the best
way to explain.

When you met him,
he was gregarious,

he was open, he was
funny; he was very witty.

- My dad was a very
caring Father,

very funny, too.

He'd wake me up in
the morning singing

whatever group I was
into at the time:

it was Spice Girls
when I was little

he's a brilliant auditor.

Auditing for a major
corporation is stressful

and there's a lot of
things that go with it

if you want to do
the right thing.

- David was a guy who,
like any of us,

had his share of challenges
in life, we all do.

Especially in a big
financial company,

there's stresses in our work,
there's pressures.

Um, you know, we have kids
to raise, bills to pay.

We went to the psychiatrist
in early 2006 and he said,

well, what about Prozac?

- You have a chemical imbalance.
Let's put you on Prozac.

It's the standard of care.
It's what they do.

It's almost a marketing
strategy that works, you know?

It's not my fault.
I have a disease.

Within days of ingesting Prozac,
David Crespi became troubled.

Towards the end of just talking
back and forth and he said,

Do you ever feel like life
is too dark to go on?

It's crazy. It's not
the way I think.

Those thoughts aren't
natural to me.

I recall a few events
from the day before

that would suggest that
he was going psychotic.

David was jumping out of the bed
and walking around a throw rug

and hitting each corner and
then jumping back into bed.

And I'm going, what
are you doing?

He goes, it just feels good.

Well, now I attribute
that to akathisia.

[police radio]

Code 6 - 105
North Avenue 52.

Our tragedy was
January 20, 2006.

On that day, took all
the kids to school,

left to go get my haircut,

left the girls in the care
of their loving father;

they wanted to spend
time with him.

When I came back into
the neighbourhood after

being gone for an hour
and fifteen minutes,

I saw a police barricade,
and I saw some of my

very concerned neighbours
coming towards me.

The police officer asked
my name and he said,

we're going to need
you in this house

[phone rings]

- Police Department.

- Yes. I just killed my two
daughters.

- You just what?

- I just killed
my two daughters.

I called my dad
in California and

I made sure my stepmother was
right next to him, and I said,

you know, Dad, I have to tell
you something really hard."

I said, "I'm in the back
of a police car and

I've just been told that David
killed Sam and Tess.

- What did you do to them?

- I stabbed them.
- You stabbed them?

- Yeah.

- How many times
did you stab them?

- I don't know. I
don't remember.

- OK, keep talking
to me, because you

sound like you're a
little bit tired.

- This is for real

- I know, I know It's real, Sir.

Everybody is on their way, okay?

Cathy, my stepmother adored Sam
and Tess, as we all did

started wailing.

And I could hear her on the
speaker phone and my dad goes,

Honey, Dave would not do that.

"David is not like that.
You're mistaken.

I went, I wish I were, but I'm
in the back of a squad car...

[siren]

The Crespi children
were escorted

from school by the police

and were told nothing until
Kim arrived at the station.

- they really thought that
their dad had killed himself.

- My Mum came in and told us,

they're telling me that
Dad killed your sisters.

We had to use the language,
they're telling me ,

because we couldn't believe that
that's what actually happened.

- The idea of him killing
Tess and Sam was so foreign,

but they knew something
had happened.

And that's how the
whole thing started.

- I went to the doctor and
I can remember saying,

I'm afraid I may hurt someone.

Well she said, You re too
compassionate to do that.

"that's just the
depression talking.

Never was anybody saying,
the medicine can do this.

Psychosis, the drug,
killed our daughters.

Who I am was chemically altered.

My Dad in his right mind

wouldn't have done
anything like this.

I can remember this battle of
these thoughts aren't real.

Because when you have a complete
psychotic break like that,

and you kill two of your most
treasured people in your life,

people that every other day,

every other day he would
have died for them.

What I did was done on a
cocktail of legal drugs.

We were doing what the
doctors told us to do.

We were being responsible.

Just because something's legal
doesn't mean It's safe.

I suspect anybody hearing
my story will go,

yeah, that's not going
to happen to me,

but it could.

If it happened to us, it
could happen to anyone.

But I know for certain,

that I know what caused the
death of my daughters.

I know it was the pills.

And for all of that,
we're serving

two back-to-back life sentences.

[slow soulful singing]

On July 31st, 2004, I had been
on Paxil for three weeks.

I took Ian to a hotel room
in London, Ontario and...

at 3 o'clock in the morning,

thinking that he had
permanent brain damage,

that he was in living hell, he
was going to kill my daughter,

Gillian, and he was going
to harm other kids

and my wife was going to
have a nervous breakdown,

which were my five delusions,

I strangled him,

and I sat with his body
for six hours until

I called the police at 9
o'clock in the morning,

very calmly saying that
I'd committed homicide

and opened the door 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 in living hell.

And I stayed with him
as long as possible.

- For 14 long days, David
Carmichael was psychotic,

and suffered drug withdrawals
in his jail cell,

before awakening to
the ultimate terror.

- The psychosis
lasted for two weeks

and after I came out
of my psychosis

a couple of weeks after
everything happened,

I was devastated.

I cried for three days

in segregation at the London
Middlesex Detention Centre.

I could not believe
what I had done.

- Ian was laid to rest
by David's family.

It would 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 likely
cause of this unthinkable act.

Dr. Peter Breggin says
he's seen it all before.

Many people do not have the
array of enzymes in their livers

to properly destroy SSRI drugs

when they get in
the bloodstream.

So the drugs pass
through the liver,

and they don't get,
quote, "metabolised",

meaning they don't
get broken down.

So might get the equivalent
of a 10 mg dose of an SSRI,

but your blood level
is 30 or 40 mg.

And there are studies out of
Australia

correlating the violence

with the lack of the
enzyme for these drugs.

The public has no understanding

of how Paxil or other SSRI

could trigger a homicidal
psychotic episode

and they may not care,

you know, but there is
evidence based on DNA

that Paxil did cause me
to kill my son, Ian.

And it's something that
I have to live with.

Even when I'm out in the public,

you know, my stigma
is off the chart

compared to the stigma
around mental illnesses.

But if people beat
me up emotionally

when I'm out there, that's fine.

They'll never beat
me up as much as

I beat myself up
for a long time.

- 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.

I realized who he was before,

who he was during
the period of time

that he was taking
the medication,

and I realized that they
were two different people.

- David credits Gillian
as the reason he

did not take his own
life while in prison.

There were several times
when I was either in jail

or in a psychiatric
hospital where

I felt like taking my own life.

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 know Gillian, whatever she
was doing, wherever she was,

was thinking that she wanted
her dad back in her life too.

How can I not accept him back?

he's, you know, he's
an amazing man.

he's my father and I love him.

- David Carmichael was found

not criminally responsible
for his son's death

as two psychiatrists,

one working for the defence
and one for the prosecution,

both agreed that
he was psychotic

at the time of the tragedy.

The public is not going
to care about this.

You know, no empathy
for me, but I think,

I'll tell you what the
pain will never go away.

- Ian was just an amazing person
and he was an amazing brother.

And he was an amazing
friend and amazing son.

He just, he had so much life.

Yeah.

Sorry.

- Pretend that I'm
the Glaxo CEO.

What would you
like to say to me?

[chuckles]

Yeah.

If you were the
GlaxoSmithKline CEO,

I would like to...

encourage you to be more honest
with the Canadian public.

And if there are
serious side effects

to any one of your drugs,

it's not just about
sending out notices

to health care professionals
that many of them never read.

You've got to go directly
to consumers and

make them aware of
some of these dangers.

That's a responsibility that
you have as a drug company.

- I was only put on for weight
loss - weight loss!

- My sister did commit
suicide in front of Lindsay...

- That gun I later learned was

loaded with hollow
point bullets...

[cacophony of voices]

-... and the only way to have

peace and serenity
again was to die.

- Do all of you want to take
this drug?

Do all of you want
to walk around

humiliated for the
rest of your life?

- Thirteen years
had passed since

the dramatic 1991
FDA-Prozac hearings.

By 2004, The British
government had virtually

banned SSRIs for children
and young adults,

in light of the real risk
of suicide and violence.

But in America, the US
FDA remained unconvinced,

and demanded more studies.

This was welcome
news at Pfizer, GSK,

and The House That Prozac Built.

- We didn't know what the
result was going to be.

We had no idea, but
we wanted, we thought

getting as right an
answer as possible

was the right thing to do.

In 1983, nine years
before the launch

of Zoloft in the United States,

21 years before the
FDA required Pfizer

to put a black box
warning on it,

Pfizer had done a
healthy volunteer trial

on Zoloft in the UK.

They recruited 12
women to this trial.

Half of them were
to be given Zoloft,

the other half were
given a placebo.

The trial was due to
run for two weeks

but stopped after a week because

every single woman
taking Zoloft

had become anxious,
apprehensive, agitated.

One or two had begun to voice
thoughts about harming others.

All of the things
that led FDA to put

a black box warning on
this drug 21 years later

were there in 83.

What was more, Pfizer looked
at this trial and wrote down,

Zoloft has caused
this problem.

- For Mathy Downing, and
thousands like her,

the earth-shattering epiphanies
came weeks too late.

Ironically, it happens
that the doctor that

approved Zoloft as an
antidepressant for children,

Tom Laughren, ironically,
I know this man.

because both of his
daughters attended school

with my daughters
for eight years.

- For over 20 years,
Thomas Laughren was

head of FDA's
psycho-pharmacology division.

I had no idea he worked
at FDA until I saw him

on the FDA panel three
weeks after Candace died.

I sat there with my husband and
we listened for eight hours

while person after person after
person basically told our story.

I went up to speak with him when
the meeting was over and I said,

where can I find information
about those contraindications?

And he told me he
would give me

a list of people for
me to talk to,

and then I never
spoke to him again.

I mean, he's a father of two
of my daughters friends.

I really did think
he would help me,

I thought he would
follow through

and help me gain the information
I needed, but he didn't.

- As fate would have it,
yet another FDA hearing

on SSRIs and violence was
held in September 2004.

In one brief,
emotionally-charged moment,

Mathy Downing stepped
up the microphone.

And when I spoke at the FDA
hearings on September 13,

I addressed him personally.

- After months of grieving
and too-few answers,

Mathy Downing finally let loose.

The blood of these children
are on your hands.

I remember seeing Mathy Downing
stand up at the hearing

and confront the...
Laughren and the other

FDA panel members
and say, you know,

the blood of my daughter
is on your hands.

And she was right.

- Later, Mathy Downing
learned that Thomas Laughren

had been in the thick
of the sSRI controversy

since well before the
1991 Prozac hearings.

Some of the people
we find as

the original culprits,
the problem at FDA,

Dr. Bob Temple; Thomas
Laughren is horribly guilty.

All these same individuals
were involved

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 more

to determine if this
is a serious risk,

they looked the other way.

- Laughren left FDA in 2012
and started a new business,

dedicated to helping
drug companies

get FDA approval
for their drugs.

But he was not alone
at the intersection

of public service and
personal profit.

I do not find from
the evidence today

that there is credible evidence
to support a conclusion

that antidepressant drugs
cause the emergence

and/ or the intensification
of suicidality

and/or other violent behaviours.

- When Dr. Daniel
Casey resurfaced,

nine years after the 1991
Prozac hearings he chaired,

he did so as a paid expert
witness for Pfizer.

Attorney Andy Vickery
conducted the deposition.

- You were the Chairman of that

committee for several
years, right?

Yes.

The chairman of that committee

who is moderating it in a public
building in a public place

was wearing a bullet proof vest.

- Dr. Casey, did you wear

a bulletproof vest
to that meeting?

Yes.

- Had you ever worn one
prior to that time?

No.

- Have you ever worn one since?
- No.

...because he thought one
of the family members

of the people being harmed
by Prozac would shoot him.

- You certainly did not
believe it was the folks

on the Eli Lilly side
of the coin, did you?

No.

No conflict of interest?

- And yet that would not
effect your objectivity.

- Is that your testimony?
- Yes.

- Others, like
Harvard University's

influential
Dr. Joseph Biederman,

also seem to display an
unnerving indifference

to their conflicts-of-interest.

Here, Biederman
was being deposed

as a key thought-leader ,

one of those most
responsible for spreading

the off-label use of the
anti-psychotic Risperdal

to millions of teens.

In a remote town in western
Canada,

the Stephan family was
facing a life and death

struggle in the shadow
of the Rocky Mountains.

Two of Debbie Stephan's
children were exhibiting

the same symptoms that had
ultimately claimed her life:

Joseph was becoming
frighteningly violent

and his sister Autumn was
succumbing to severe bipolar,

with its mercurial mood swings.

Their father, Tony
Stephan, was desperate

and searching for any way
to save his children,

when drug after drug failed.

The answer came from what seemed
the unlikeliest of places:

micro nutrients,
mainly minerals.

- I remember the earlier
days of doing the testing

with nutrients and
different things.

I think they were
trying to reduce

some liquid mineral thing to...

you know, so you didn't have to
drink a whole cup of something,

it could be an ounce,

and I don't think it
worked very good,

and it smelled funny.

I remember the smell
and I can still

taste it in the
back of my throat.

I think they burned
it, I'm not sure.

At first it didn't work.
It did not work.

- I just remember
I was out camping

and I had a little bottle
of, I call it rust water,

it was the colour of rust,

and I was supposed to
drink a little ounce

of that every day,
a couple of times.

And so I would be doing that.

I mean, it was so
experimental,

I didn't even really understand
what we were really doing here.

We put him on a cocktail
that contained vitamins,

minerals, antioxidants
and amino acids.

I was absolutely livid
when I found out that

he had taken Joseph off
of his medication,

and I said some
terrible things to him.

I, I... told him
it was on his head,

the next suicide in this family
was going to be his fault.

- I remember about six
weeks into this 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.

It was like one day
waking up and a fog

had completely lifted,
and that was amazing.

It was a very real turning
point in my life.

- With Joseph on the
mend, Tony Stephan

then turned his attention
to his daughter Autumn,

who had been in and
out of psych wards.

- I ended up in my dad's custody

and he has a friend who
was 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 they would have
legal justification

to force me to go on this
micro-nutrient stuff.

And at time, it was like
this crazy concoction

with liquids and powders, and
you know, pills and things

and I had said no, and
my husband had said,

No. We re not doing that.

And my psychiatrist said, No!

In fact, he said,
don't rock the boat.

"You will die. Do not go
off of this medication.

And I was on that five-drug
cocktail at the time.

And so I had absolutely
no intention of

doing what my dad
had already started

with my brother
Joseph, no intention.

I won't say that I forced
her to do it because

that doesn't sound
politically correct,

but I constrained her to do it.

You know, and she
just didn't believe

that 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.

So they waited 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 who

happened to be a
psychiatric nurse,

um, stuffed me with a bunch
of Ativan and put me to bed.

And then, while I was still
really nicely sedated,

began force feeding
me the concoctions.

- Back in 1996, when I first
met Autumn Stringam,

it was the first day I also
met her father Tony Stephan.

And was sitting there in front
of us, completely normal,

very bright, very articulate,
very charming young woman,

um, doing very well on
vitamins and minerals,

but she had lived through this
horrible, horrible period

and could remember
it so vividly.

Uh, it was very impressive.

You knew that you were
hearing a true story,

and I think that that
has come through

consistently with Autumn.

I recognize that a
huge percentage

of people with bipolar
commit suicide

and it just as
easily could have been me,

and it isn't, because something

really beautiful
happened in my life.

And I have to acknowledge that,
you know, that's not just mine

to take and run away
with, but that there's

a lot of good
that can be done in the world,

knowing what I know now.

- These were just three
people from Southern Alberta,

who believed that they had fixed
two children in Tony's family

and they did it with vitamins
and minerals off the shelf.

And they just desperately
wanted a scientist somewhere

to take them seriously
and do some research.

- When Stephan and Truehope
approached Dr. Kaplan in 1996,

she was the Director of
Behavioural Research

for the University of Calgary.

As a scientist, she
was highly sceptical,

and thought the
notion of utilising

minerals for mental illness
was simply preposterous.

I think Bonnie, when
we first met her,

she kind of thought
that we were flaky

because all of a sudden, you
have these two strange dudes

coming from Southern Alberta
and they've got this idea

that you can take people
suffering with these

intractable, incurable
mental disorders

and change them and
bring them around,

when all along, science
hasn't been able to do that.

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

is reflective of our lack of
education about nutrition,

and the fact that blood
is bathing the neurons

in our brain every
minute of every day,

bringing oxygen and what?

Micro-nutrients to make
those brain cells work.

- Stephan and his
co-founder created

a non-profit called Truehope

and after years of
experimentation,

they developed a mineral-based
formula called Empower Plus.

Intrigued by Autumn and Joseph's
successful transformations,

Dr. Kaplan and others continued
studying the formula

for bipolar disorder,
ADHD, and depression.

Some people call this a
micro-nutrient sledgehammer,

because it's all
of the vitamins,

and a very long list
of dietary minerals.

The patients in this
sample got much better,

in fact more than
50 percent better.

Quite a few of them were more
than 75 percent better.

- He wasn't trying
to build an empire

when he set out to
save me and Joe.

It was not a deliberate act.
He's not a formulator.

It was a conversation
that led to an 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 for that

and I think it's changed the
course of his whole life.

- As it has with Dr. Kaplan.

When she first
presented her findings

about the Truehope
mineral-vitamin combination

to the Canadian
Psychiatric Association's

Annual Meeting in 2001,

she and the company were
immediately under attack.

When I went to graduate school,

they did not prepare me
to be personally attacked

for just doing
objective research.

That was a little shocking.

We took a lot of arrows for
about five years especially,

longer for the Truehope people,
but it was very, very tough.

When you try and investigate
a new paradigm,

the resistance is incredible.

I watched Dr. Kaplan
go through this.

We had major resistance
form Health Canada

shutting down trials.

I mean, here, the
Alberta government

had provided 554,000 dollars

so that she could
continue the work.

And Health Canada came in
and swathed the trial.

They destroyed it.

- Health Canada not only
shut down Dr. Kaplan's

scientific investigation into

micro-nutrients and
mental health,

they ordered Truehope to stop
manufacturing Empower Plus.

When the company refused,

they seized the product
at the US-Canadian border

and banned it for
sale in Canada.

- Why?

We're talking about
vitamins and minerals here.

Well, what that tells
you is anything that

challenges
commercial interests,

such as that maybe
micro-nutrients or

nutrients are a
good thing to do,

boy, there are powerful forces
behind a commercial story,

and they will come forth.

- When Truehope fought back
through the Courts, and won,

it wasn't long thereafter
that Health Canada

mobilized the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police

to conduct a guns-drawn raid at
the Truehope offices in Alberta.

Health Canada spent
2 million dollars

to prosecute Truehope
for charges,

that had they been found guilty,

would have amounted
to a 375 dollar fine.

Um, they lost.
Health Canada lost,

but all of those costs
to defend ourselves

were not recouped
from Health Canada.

Despite Pharma's
falsified science

and billion-dollar fines
for fraudulent marketing

and in spite of millions who
were harmed by psychiatric drugs

Health Canada decided that
it was this tiny non-profit

that needed to be
shown the full might

of the Canadian government.

There has been a huge bias
against nutrition research.

Who's triggering that?

Who, what is the
political agenda

that is continually bombarding
us with the message

that taking vitamins
and minerals

might not be a good thing?
I don't get that.

But the result is that
there is a lot of bias

against people who say not
only should we take them,

we should be studying it more

and we should see whether or not

there's treatment benefit
from vitamins and minerals.

What I'm going to
talk about today

may sound as radical as
hand washing 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 to avoid,

treat or lessen mental illness.

- After nearly two decades of
wrangling with Health Canada,

and three-quarters of a million
dollars in court costs

and legal fees for Truehope,

Bonnie Kaplan, Julia
Rucklidge, and

others continue to investigate

the use of nutrients
as a primary treatment

for mental health.

Yet the road has been
anything but easy.

I was very aware
of how many people

were incredibly sceptical
about this work.

I was trained as a scientist

and we need to
evaluate the evidence.

What has astounded me is the
obstacles that we faced

in order to try to answer
what's a, I think,

a very important question
for our community.

I happen to think that
medications are very important,

especially in acute crises.

But, to me they're the
supplement, in the ideal world.

I believe that it would
be more beneficial

to a lot of people especially
developing children,

um, to be treated first with
everything psychosocial,

family therapy, etcetera,

and nutritional, which is not

going to cause any
long term harm,

and that that should be primary
intervention.

It took me two more
months to get off

of the rest of my medication

and I'd say the better
part of the year

before I felt like I was
just really stable.

There are going to be
people who want to say

that, you know, I'm just
trying to make a lot of money

off of a big made-up story, but
my mother's dead in the ground.

Her dad's dead.

We all know how that happened.

She had a prescription,
and there's

some things you just
can't argue with, you know?

And uh...

and I'm not dead.

And I've got four healthy
kids and a great marriage.

And that's something I didn't
expect

would ever happen with me.

[slow music]

The lesson of a generation's
worth of psychiatric experiments

is that regulators didn't
protect the public;

doctors didn't protect
their patients;

journalists refused to
ask the tough questions;

the pharmaceutical
companies played

the system and
profited handsomely;

and millions suffered,
died, became addicts,

or were otherwise harmed.

You know, a lot of times
parents think that

their eight or nine-year-old
just won't understand;

it's just easier to just
give them the medications.

But not telling your kid why
they're taking the medication

or what the medication
is supposed to do

can be really harmful.

And having that
kernel of knowledge

that these things that
I was experiencing

weren't me but were
caused by a medication,

I think would've been...

would've saved a lot
of pain.

A lot of pain.

We've been through a lot.

And she stopped
taking the drugs and

a new kid, you know,
came forward.

Straight As at the
University of St. Thomas;

summa cum laude;
valedictorian; unbelievable.

Here is this child that I
was afraid would never get

out of her bedroom is now
doing what she's doing.

So...

Um, at any rate,

it's, it's a great thing that
I have a kid who has

the tenacity and the...
had the ability

to tell us what she needed.

And I'm afraid there are a lot
of kids who aren't like that,

and they're going to be
in a stupor or worse.

- These are stories of
those who have fallen

and of those who have
somehow survived.

Many lost sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters,

and their tragedies forced these

private people out
of the shadows.

They wanted answers

and were not interested in
the politics of medicine.

If the truth had been
afforded us decades ago,

millions would have been
spared similar fates.

It's a very primitive thing,
missing your children.

You miss their warmth
and their smell

and their lovely,
lovely presence.

- Perhaps change is coming,
albeit too slowly.

But until it occurs, we should
take nothing for granted:

not our loves, nor our lives,

or the gift of our
families and friends.

As these Letters From
Generation Rx have taught us,

there is peril in
the conventional

wisdom of treating
so many people

so indiscriminately, with such
powerful, life-changing drugs.

You know, if somebody
said to me that

Brennan could come back to life
and I'd never see him again,

but I know that he
could live his life,

the biggest loss for me,

is the wonderful life
he could have had.

'Cause he would 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.

- As they mourn every
birthday, every holiday;

every anniversary of
a loved one's death,

their only prayer is to
stop this from happening

to anyone else.