And yet, when adverts for pharmaceutical medications play on television, those adverse reactions are listed.
I strongly suspect that the health care field is not as reckless and uncaring about the fact that these reactions can occur, as you'd like to admit.
They recognized a hazard, and addressed it.
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Hi Karrie,
Its only US ads that have to state the full list... not Canada. The reason is because under the US FDA they have "black box warnings" and the US FDA said that the black box warning had to be public as well as included in each box before handed to the consumer...
In Canada we dont have a "black box warning" per se .. we have "adverse reactions" and the disclosure of ours is geered to the doctors and pharmacists and medical profession... not the people..
I just want to take this oppurtunity to clarify what I have written on the subject... This is my overall opinion in relation to this subject..
I personally dont think that doctors (for the most part) are uncaring... In my opinion the medical profession is money driven. In my journey of researching this subject, I came to see that everything about our pharmaceuticals are all about the almighty dollar.
Thats not to say I dont see a purpose for some meds.... I do believe there are some good ones ...
I have concluded (from my findings) that the pharmaceutical companies drive for profit, affects doctors and pharmacists too. There are many GPs that have no clue about withdrawal or the side effects. They are made to believe that the adverse reactions are so rare that they dont need to consider them. Yet when I looked to see how adverse reactions were reported and tallied and found that there are no mandates for the medical profession to report them.
I learned that the biggest market for drug stores are psychopharmaceuticals. As soon as money and profit enter in an equation it is my opinion that money counts more than anything.
I think the pharmacists are aware that these pills are dangerous and many claim that it is the doctors responsibility to assess a person so the pharmacist does not feel the obligation to give adverse reaction reports to people in fear of scaring the person. Knowong that the drug stores too profit in their dispensarie fees, doesnt sit well with me as again money is a driving factor.
So far in my opinion I have seen that there is nothing in place that allows any type of monitoring on these adverse reactions and how often they may be happening.
The privacy laws prevent the public from seeing things that could be comon trends and the people who could be helping to rule out, or confirm there is a connection dont.. (coroners)
Coroners get the med history and family input and then fill out the forms with a cause and manner which would be for example hanging as the cause and suicide as the manner... they dont eloborate (even if it was their opinion) it is not their place and they will not be starting.
Law enforcement inadvertantly protects these potential trends by sealing their investigation of a given murder suicide and closing their file where there investigation is private ..even from the families..
Law enforcement could tell us so much... In cases where they have access to someones phone email and computers and medical history they could see when the changes started i.e when he lost reality ...etc and when any ideation started .. it may be able to be connected with a drug and does change etc.. but we cant get access.. The only chance would be public inquiries and they would have to be individual and I dont see that happening anytime soon.
The people who were involved are dead and we wont know from them .....
Health Canada doesnt collect data of break downs of different categories of drugs given out each year so stats canada cant give the stat of how many more prescriptions are being written each year.
The few studies that are done are done by doctors where the funding is done through the pharmaceutical companies..
And the media doesnt like to do to much reporting on this issue as not wanting to bite the hands that feed them.. They talk about mental illness but not medication. I have noticed every second commercial Canadian and the US is about how depression is Ok and fixable and encourages people to go and get "treatment" they are targetting the workplace currently. More ads to let us know its ok to take pills.
This is all my opinions and much of the conclusions I have ,made were reading many of the Acts and making phone calls so there arent really links that I have at hand... I will say that anyone reading ones opinion is research individuals can do themself...again this is what I have found for myself... and its why I write on it because if others have the same concerns, they may do their own research too.. I am of the bellief that education is the answer and the more people that are aware of these adverse affects and lack of control and monitoring, they may pass along the word... I dont think there can be any changes until society demands to learn more about these drugs and their effects. I do agree that it is an uphill battle as these drugs are involved with mental illness so it is easy for mental illness to be the scape goat.. What I have seen in many of these cases personally is that the people were described as good non violent people and then after taking drugs they committed heinous acts totally opposite of who they had been their entire life.. A few maybe but there are so many like this I believe it is a valid concern. If anyone disagrees with you disagree what I have concluded its OK. I just have the idea that I can share my opinion here on this forum..