Letters from Generation Rx

a film by Kevin P. Miller

 

 

 

©2017 Kola Films LLC

 

 

 

 

Letters from Generation RX—Complete

Opens with haunting music as shots of Rocky Mountains are revealed;

Autumn: I’ve had to renegotiate that memory over and over and over again.

(old Church in the middle of nowhere as musical chant begins)

Autumn: …gravel spitting and water flying and kids screaming…

(photo of Autumn as youngster)

Autumn: It was the summer after I turned eight …

(long shot reveals rural road as 1990 Ford Bronco appears)

Autumn: We never really knew what toy expect from Mom. During a particularly bad swing, she went through some really desperate days .. and she put us all in the Bronco and took us for a drive down to the river.

(soulful chant continues as low angle of Bronco speeds by)

Autumn: 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’re all gonna feel better soon… we’ll all feel better soon…”

(soulful chant increases as Bronco takes hard turn down a dirt road)

Autumn: 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.

(Bronco heads down muddy road, swerving as it increases speed)

Autumn: My memories of that moment are really in black and white

(rear shot of Bronco revealing river; quick-cut of various angles of Bronco hitting the river at full speed)

Autumn: I’m not sure I ever met my Mom again after that point

(soulful chant increases as camera shifts from water level to underwater; then title: LETTERS FROM GENERATION RX as bubbles float upward)

2 seconds under black, then new music starts, amid sounds of ocean waves - video reveals waves violently lashing a minivan)

 

 

News voice: ...a strange story out of Florida this morning, where the mother of three children drove into the ocean off of Daytona Beach …

News: The pregnant mom spoke of demons before driving into the Atlantic...

Newsvoice: Police say they’ve never seen anything like this ..

(cut to Newburgh, NY news video from Associated Press)

AP Reporter: The tiny city of Newburgh NY is trying to come to grips with the deaths of 3 young children who died when their mother drove them into the Hudson River. . .

Nicholas Valentine, Mayor, Newburgh, NY: “we are talking about a tragedy in this city that is probably second-to-none…”

AP Reporter: It all unfolded at this boat ramp Tuesday 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 his 11-month old sister.

Tilda: 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.

(bronco hits water - 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 knows it.

Autumn: That was the moment that shattered trust. How do you trust anybody after that?

Tilda: Forced to confront a mystery beyond her comprehension, she spent decades haunted … in search of answers … in pursuit of peace.

Autumn:. . .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. There are other mothers who don’t win that battle.

Tilda: In exchange for this redemption, there was a price, however …

Autumn: (fighting to regain composure) …and it’s taken me thirty years....to be able to find the beautiful side of that memory. . .

Tilda: Autumn’s mom did eventually die by suicide — alone on a country road. Tony Stephan was now widowed — with eight children at home.

Tony Stephan: 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.

Tilda: 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.

Andy Downing (Parent): 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.

Tilda:  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:

Candace Downing home video: Hello, I’m Candace 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 it at 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 work soon. 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. 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.

Linda Hurcombe (Parent): 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.

Kristina Gehrki (Parent): It really is like a perfect murder mystery novel. I mean, it’s almost like killing somebody with an icicle and it melts and the weapon is gone.

Tilda: 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 bestselling drugs in the world.

Rhonda: It was a sample pack. . .of Paxil.

Nancy: Cipralex

Mathy: Sertraline, which is Zoloft

Kristina: (clip6-18:32): the maximum dose of Zoloft legally allowed

Linda: There was one thing in her system in the coroner’s report: a therapeutic dose of fluoxetine hydrochloride.

Tilda: SSRIs are better known as antidepressants.

intercut Zoloft TV ad—

Tilda: 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 deconstructing 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 center of a storm of contradictions about the use of these drugs.

Thomas Insel, MD: 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.

Tilda: Dr. Insel’s candor is sure to shock and upset many - on all sides of the debate. The word “failure” is one few have dared to utter.

Insel: 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? 

Tilda: The answers, according to Insel, run contrary to the standard arguments put forth by mental health professionals.

Insel: 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.

Tilda: 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?

Insel: I think that our field has going 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.

Tilda: 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.

Jeri Oler (Patient): I was massively drugged. I tried drug after drug. I did 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 heartbeat and 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 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 that eventually changed me into not even a person, but like a monster. I was horrible.

Terence Young (Author and Member of Canadian Parliament): Doctors, to a large degree, have abandoned their Hippocratic oath, which is to do no harm. 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.

GARY GREENBERG, Ph.D (Author and Psychotherapist): 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.

Tilda: 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.

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 more intensively for the last 30 years. And it could be that 100 years from now, they’ll look back at us like we look at the Romans who poisoned themselves with their lead pipes, saying, “look at some of the effects of the widespread use of these drugs. Look at 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 some day, we will look back at the antidepressant era and have the view of prescribing antidepressants that now we have of bloodletting.

Tilda: 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.

Kirsch: 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. They got the same result. Everybody gets the same result.

(at end, show FDA Meta-analysis graphic with FDA HHS logo)

Robert Whitaker (Author, Journalist, Pulitzer Finalist): I was a believer in this story. I wrote stories about how psychiatric disorders are caused by chemical imbalances—these fix them. I can remember writing 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 a story of progress. We were learning about the brain, we were learning about the biological underpinnings of these disorders, and we had drugs that fixed those biological problems. That is what I believed as a science writer. So I was stunned—when you actually go to the research, it’s not there. The whole story starts falling apart. 

Tilda: As the war of words over psychotropics intensified in the new century, journalist Robert Whitaker weighed in with Anatomy of An Epidemic — and quickly found he, too, had a target on his back.

Pundits said Whitaker would have “blood on his hands” if people stopped taking their medications as a result of his book.

Yet, when the Director of NIMH was asked to evaluate Whitaker’s analysis of the 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 think it’s an important one. And his comment is just to observe that in spite of this enormous increase in the use of antidepressants, antipsychotics, and other neuroleptic or psychotropic medications, which is that broad class, over the last 2 to 3 decades—it’s been difficult to demonstrate a commensurate decrease in morbidity, that is, disability or mortality, measured by suicide. Now, in other areas of medicine, if you increase the use of your medication twofold, threefold, sixfold, you will see—we have seen, reductions in morbidity and mortality.

ADD “SHAKER” SFX for Pills video

Now, we can argue about whether in those people that get the right medication at the right dose for the right duration, there really have been lives saved. There are been reductions in disability and every one of us has seen people who have done beautifully, and whose lives have been saved by the use of medication. But at a population 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. You could have someone going from being psychotic to being non-psychotic, which is a pretty amazing change in behavior. But what I think what we need to recognize that what’s happened over the last 50 years is that they haven’t shown to be as good as we thought they were.

Barry Turner (Senior lecturer in science, media law, & public administration, University of Lincoln - UK): All of these drugs are known to create benefit for people. All I am concerned about is that they have an informed choice. If the public wants to take Prozac, if the public wants to take Paxil, they should have the opportunity to do so. But they should do so in an informed way.

Tilda: 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.

Joanna Moncrief (Academic psychiatrist and author of The Bitterest Pills -UK): Psychiatrists’ knowledge and training in the area of psychopharmacology is completely inadequate, in my view. And this is partly because of the focus on the disease-centered 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 of the harmful effects the drugs can produce.

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 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.

Nicole Monkman (patient): I was on Seroquel, Lithium, Clonazepam, Imipramine; I’ve tried every antidepressant, every mood stabilizer, every antipsychotic, Benzodiazepines. I mean, do they tell you that it’s six days or something very minute for those Benzodiazepines, because they’re so addictive? They don’t tell you that. Then, they say in two weeks, “your anxiety is higher so here are some 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 whose could be worse? I’ve got some pretty awful stories, but so does she. And I feel it’s pretty common among people that have grown up being on pills.

Jennifer Kinzie (Mental Health Counselor): My first main position in my field, the human services field was in a group home, and these youths were on 5, 6, 7 medications. They would be on Risperdal and Seroquel, they would be on Paxil and Zoloft—it was just an incredible amount of poly-pharmacy that took place. So I can have empathy for those who don’t “get it,” because I didn’t get it.

Tilda: Too many times, injured parties say, they were greeted not by empathy—but by apathy instead. They report being ignored by the regulatory agencies, law enforcement, elected officials, and worst of all, by their doctors and the medical community as a whole.

LEAVE SLIGHT SPACE - TOO TIGHT

Victims of violence, suicide, and a host of other serious adverse effects were dismissed as 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 a pill, let’s say you turn blue, and then we halt the pill and you turn back to your normal 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 convincing demonstration that this pill caused at least you to turn blue. Now we are told that that’s an anecdote. It didn’t happen.

Tilda: 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.

cg: FDA PROZAC HEARINGS, 1991

Pallie Carnes: This is hard for me because I tried to commit suicide 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 and put the gun to my head.

Tucker Moneymaker: After being on Prozac for 21 days, my wife shot and killed both of these two boys right here

Pallie Carnes: 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?

Peter Breggin, MD (psychiatrist and author): In the early 1990’s this issue had reached a peak, “Was Prozac Causing Violence and Suicide?” But what happened was that their psychopharmacology 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.

cg: 1993

Kevin P. Miller to FDA Chief (1993): What about your concern regarding Prozac? It is very well documented: 28,000 adverse events, 1600 suicides associated with that drug.

Michael R. Taylor, Deputy Director, FDA: 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. That’s laid out in very detailed labeling 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.

Peter Breggin, MD: Well, nothing could be further from the 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 every really 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, absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, Eli Lilly was busily hiding everything they could about the increased rates of suicidality.

Karen Barth Menzies: It was a matter 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 the public 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, that he had a conversation with Dr. Paul Leber at 6:15 in the morning. (show document with digital typing sfx) 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 backchannels, you know, so other people don’t get it…just feed me this info on the QT. It’s extraordinary.

Tilda: Lilly’s own secret files implicate the FDAs Paul Leber, Robert Temple and Thomas Laughren as being complicit in a scheme to whitewash the dark facts about Prozac.

Karen Barth Menzies (atty): There are some very telling documents that show the cozy 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.”

MUSIC BRIDGE: “COMMON SENSE”

Tilda: By 1997, Prozac had become America’s most reported drug to Medwatch, with over 39,000 serious adverse-effect events on file. Since only 1% of the actual number of events are reported through MedWatch, this means that nearly four million people in the US alone had already 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, you think to yourself “what what kind of world are we living in?” That there’s so much sleight-of-hand and manipulation and fraud going on—to deceive the American public and the world from the fact that drugs are causing people to kill other people and to kill themselves. It is astonishing.

Tilda: Eli Lilly has been called “The House That Prozac Built.” Before the drug was introduced, Lilly reported earnings of $600 million 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.

music ramps up; fade to black, 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…”

Terence Young, Member of Parliament, Ontario, Canada: 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.

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 his daughter 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 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. It was, in a sense, my way of grieving. It started the day she died.

Tilda: 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.

Terence: 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.

Tilda: 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.”

Terence Young: Glaxo SmithKline 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.

SUICIDE 2 MUSIC

James Cole (Deputy US Attorney General): This action constitutes the largest healthcare settlement in United States history.

Terence Young: 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.

Carmen Ortiz (U.S. Attorney-Massachusetts): GSK distributed Paxil with false and misleading labeling. What GSK did was encourage the use of Paxil for children who are dealing with depression with false messages about safety and effectiveness.   

Daniel Levinson (Inspector General, Health and Human Services): 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.

Tilda: 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.

fade to black

Nancy McCartney: 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. He just broke out into song and had his own little audience at Peggy’s Cove.

music: “Oh, Danny Boy. . .oh, Danny boy. . .”

Shaun McCartney: Yeah, what I miss most about Brennan is when 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 that he’s going to walk through the door. We were driving, not too long ago, and it was 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.

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

(a dreamlike reenactment - blurry - medium shot of Brennan murmuring as he puts his coat and hat 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 was very articulate, who was so verbose that sometimes you would just say “okay, okay, enough, enough already.”

Tilda: 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.

Shaun: When Brennan went missing I drove the roads for hours just north of here. And I did every side road, every conservation area, every laneway 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.

Nancy: He texted us and said, “Mom, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was mad about the cat. “I love you and I will see you soon.” He texted his dad, and said, “I’ll call work soon. 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.

Shaun: When Brennan went missing, I had no concern about him having taken his life. None. None whatsoever. Because it would 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 and six 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 your child.” And I believe it. 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. 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 I missed. 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 all saying, “how come we didn’t know? We were out for dinner with him on Saturday night. Why didn’t he talk to us?” For them, they all felt they had let him down, when in fact, it was the drug that caused his suicide.

Tilda: 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 McCartney’s had.

Terence: 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 to him and said, “What happened?” He said, “Sara Carlin hanged herself.” And we 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.

Sara karaoke clip

Terence: 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.

Rhonda Carlin: She started on this drug somewhere in 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.

Terence: 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 makeup and hanged herself in her parents basement.

Neil Carlin: 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.

Rhonda: 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.

Neil: 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.

Terence: I worked with Sara’s dad, Neil. We pushed very hard to get an inquest. 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.

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 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!

Michael Blain, Attorney representing Ontario Coroner’s Office: 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.

Tilda: The Coroner in Ontario resisted every request by the Carlins to get the truth about the death of their daughter — but the Carlins were willing to risk everything to get it.

Rhonda: 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 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 taken it.” “Did you tell her parents?” “No.” “Did you tell anybody?” “No.”

Neil: 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 defense for the industry.

Tilda: And at the inquest, the odds were stacked against the Carlins.

Rhonda: 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.

TERENCE: The jury made 12 key recommendations and six of them—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.

Tilda: As was the case with Sara Carlin, any questions about possible links between the antidepressant Cipralex and Brennan McCartney’s sudden death were quickly rebuffed by the Ontario Coroner’s office.

Nancy McCartney: We met with the coroner privately about a month afterwards and at that meeting it was just sort of niggling in the back of our minds: Is it possible that this medication, the only new thing in Brennan’s life, is it possible that this could have caused his death? The coroner, the investigating coroner, quickly said no. . .

Shaun McCartney: My thing is, they won’t even consider it. So I’m saying to myself, if that happened to our son, how many other people haven’t they documented, haven’t they tracked? They’re saying statistically that not that many people are on 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 with the coroner’s office, none of this would be documented. 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 death objectively, and Brennan doesn’t have the justice that he needs.

Rhonda Carlin: It took me a year to get the strength to write to the Chief Coroner. I said, “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 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 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 who have 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 that is something so unbelievable.

RHONDA: I’m gathering my strength. I have both letters, and I didn’t meddle, but it 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 want to put me in jail, go ahead.

Nancy: 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, 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.

end with Danny Boy and pastoral view of Ontario lake

HEALTH CANADA Rx DRUG ABUSE AD: “Last year, over 80,000 Canadian kids used Prescription drugs to get high, even though it can be very dangerous. Talk with your kids about 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 15 years 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 me off

Tony Stephan: You could actually say he would be everything a schoolyard shooting was made of.

Sfx: 911-where’s your emergency?

Tony Stephan: he was diagnosed with bipolar effective disorder 1

SFX: engine noise from Bronco -video of Bronco accelerating -

Tilda: 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.

Tony Stephan (father):They didn’t understand what their Mother was going through, that would take her to that point where she would be prepared to remove herself from this life—but all the children with her.

Tilda: Whether the cause was genetics or sheer trauma, they both were diagnosed with bipolar disorder … just like their Mom. 

Tony Stephan: 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.

Tilda: Joseph, in particular, seemed headed for disaster.

Autumn: 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.

Tony Stephan: 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. . .

Joe Stephan: Was I having huge mood swings? Yeah, that stuff definitely started. 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, 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 aluminum bat I’d found and I beat it against the curb. It was jagged and torn up—and that was my weapon of choice. I’m lucky I never touched anybody with that thing, but that’s where it was headed. It wouldn’t have been very long before something actually happened. 

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 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.

Tilda: 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.

Autumn Stringham: At that point in my life, I just felt like everything was ashes. I’d just lost my mom 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.

Tilda: 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.

Tony Stephan: 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.

Tilda: Beset by grief and confused by the cruelty of his circumstances, he began to look for answers .. some way out of this madness.

Autumn: Sheer and utter desperation.

Tilda: It was a journey that would reshape his life — forever.

Autumn: He started studying everything that he 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 to see that the needed to do something about it.

Tilda: Do something — but what? The experts had all weighed in: both his children were spiraling into the same orbit as their Mom — and there seemed little hope he could save them. But Stephan resolved to find an answer — and prevent any 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 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. How could such a beautiful thing of life, giving birth, cause such trauma?

Sonya: 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.

Jeri Oler: 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.

Melissa Binstock: I was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome. So, um, 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.

Cathy Binstock (mother): I will probably never get over the horrible guilt and the horrible – I think that part of her childhood was stolen from her.

MB: 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.

Cathy B: 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? 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) They completely 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 electric shock therapy would be good because I was “drug-resistant.” We had tried for almost a year. He just 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 my body take? I was 100 pounds and dying. I literally was dying.

LEAVE SLIGHT SPACE

Sonya: my psychiatrist decided that electric shock would be the next step, so I did a series of eight sessions of that.

SLIGHT SPACE

The ECT was a horrible experience. I loved going to school and learning—I had to drop out of school. I really couldn’t do the things in life that I’d always done and wanted to do.

Jeri: For about 16 years, I was hospitalized every year for about three months. Finally in the last five years of my illness, I said, “No more. If you ever take me to the hospital again, I will kill myself.”

Melissa: When my mom would call him, sort of frantic, “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!” 

Cathy B: 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.”

Melissa: Gosh, I’ve got a list of like 20 different medications I was on by the time I was about 11. We just had bags and bags full of pills and pills, in massive doses that no child should have been prescribed.

Bob Binstock (father): It got to the point where they prescribed Haldol where I got really more concerned than ever.

Melissa: My mom and my sister basically found me in the game room sitting on the floor completely zoned-out. I just remember this 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 no one there to catch her .. when she falls, there will be no one there to catch her .. and Hold On to ..”

 

Cathy Binstock (mother): Melissa ended up in the emergency room. She had a very serious psychotic reaction.

 

Melissa: I was like, “Oh, this is it, I've completely gone crazy. This is insane. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what I'm doing anymore.”

 

Cathy Binstock: I called my pediatrician and he was there in ten minutes and he said to the nurse, “Get her off of that shit.” That’s what he said.

Melissa: It was a very very low point, and was often the case that I would contemplate suicide just because i didn’t know who i was anymore and all these side effects that i as experiencing were so scary.

Cathy: You don’t give a 9-year kid Haldol.

Anja Øyen Vister music carries out for 5-7 seconds…

 

Tilda: 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.

Andy Vickery (Attorney): If you’re thinking about taking a psychoactive drug, bear in mind that the pill you’re taking may look little, but it is designed to alter the chemistry of your brain in a way that’s specifically intended to affect your mood and your behavior; to affect the very chemical, serotonin, that affects judgment, and aggression. So you’re taking something that can turn you into a monster.

GARY GREENBERG (Author and Psychotherapist):These drugs have been sold as the equivalent of insulin for 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 drug could 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 morals and 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 Westside Middle School.

911 Operator: There’s been what?

Woman: a student shot at Westside Middle School

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….

Robert Whitaker (Journalist and Author): 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 psychiatric drugs can actually 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.

Terence Young (Member of Parliament, Canada): 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 antipsychotics 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 real correlation which no one is properly investigating.

Robert Whitaker: Why have we never had a good investigation—why? Because obviously, if we found there was an association—time and time again—that would be another thing that would really crimp this commercial activity. Which tells you there are powers-that-be who don’t want that question investigated.

fade to black under cacophony of news 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 mental health conditions that you think are working exceedingly well right now?

Gary Greenberg: Uh, well, I’m not sure if there are any. I mean, there’s nothing in the literature that would indicate that any kind of mental illness is responsive to any particular treatment with any kind of “strong signal.”

Tilda: As part of the research for his book called “The Book of Woe,” Gary Greenberg was imbedded with psychiatrists as they debated the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the DSM-5.

Greenberg: All along, it’s been clear that the DSM is essentially a work of fiction. It’s the way psychiatrists have of saying, “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 DSM.

Lisa Cosgrove, Ph.D (Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston; co-author, Psychiatry Under the Influence): 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 3^rd party reimbursement, one has to have a DSM diagnosis. So the DSM is extremely instrumental.

Gary Greenberg: …and so, when anyone from the outside questions it — or someone from the inside questions it too directly, the usual thing is to repudiate them.                            

Tilda: 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.

LISA COSGROVE: 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.

Wall St/Stock exchange/Pharma logos

And if you look at it in terms of the sheer amount of money, the antidepressant market and the antipsychotic market are the fourth and fifth leading therapy classes of drugs with annual sales of 20 billion and 14 billion respectively.

Sheldon Krimsky, Ph.D (Tufts University): 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. 

LISA COSGROVE: The problem is that they could leverage their prestigious position on the DSM into very lucrative consulting contracts and really influence prescribing habits.

NEED MORE AUDIO SPACE

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.

Tilda: Embedded with the new DSM-5 working committee, Gary Greenberg found himself caught in a firefight of words and passions over the future of psychiatry.

Greenberg: When the DSM is revised, there are fights, and in this case, 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.”

Jeffrey Lieberman, (fmr. Pres. of American Psychiatric Association): 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.

Greenberg: It was like being in the middle of a war…

Jeffrey Lieberman: But the APA kept our composure—rallied when attacked by our enemies, and occasionally by our friends, too, to make the DSM a resounding success.

Greenberg: and, uh, it didn’t work. They failed and they found it very difficult to 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, had written the last DSM.

begin music, “Kaval Siri”

Tilda: This political infighting left millions of consumers with psychiatric diagnoses in limbo. The DSM decision-makers may not considered that. . .but their actions over the last 30 years have reverberated . . . in sad and profound ways.

Kevin P. Miller: Pretend that I’m the Glaxo CEO. What would you like to say to me?

David Carmichael: [Long Pause-then Laughter-then sigh] - total=22 seconds

Tilda: For David Carmichael, there are good reasons why this is is not an easy question to answer.

Gillian Carmichael: My Dad and I have always been really close. Both my parents did everything for my brother and I. If there was 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. This thing was phenomenal. We had kids from all over the neighborhood come there to ride it because it was huge.

David Carmichael: 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. It was wonderful.

Gillian: 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. . .

David: 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 14^th that’s when Ian was born. I got a call at the organization I 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 the block and I had a lot of friends who just would continuously tell me that that we were a perfect family.

Tilda: The Carmichael’s perfect family began to unhinge shortly after David began taking Paxil.

David: 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 ever even looked at the issues around drugs—and side effects of drugs.

Gillian: Well, I noticed that there was a big difference before he was taking the 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 more quiet and not being himself and looking stressed out — and just looking different.

David: When I went to the doctor I was prescribed Paxil. 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 tremendous discomfort with being on that particular drug. It really made me wonder, “should I be on it?”

Tilda: Like so 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 no idea it could trigger delusions,

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. 

Paxil Ad— RE: SIDE FX

Gillian: When everything happened, I had just finished Grade 8 and 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.

begin “Kaval Siri”

David (with red eyes): Yes, parenting was a high priority of mine to be the best parent possible. And to have it end this way—it was pretty devastating.

Tilda: David Carmichael had been on 60mg of Paxil for two weeks when he and Ian set out for one of their favorite father-son activities: a BMX bike competition in London, Ontario.

“Kaval Siri” as b-roll of some awesome jump silhouetted by the sun - dissolves into bright sun - then WHITE with screams of joy trailing off..

Kim Crespi: What I’ve learned in this journey is that i no longer

END KAVAL SVIRI

take for granted—even one breath. Things get reduced to the minutes—and you know you have the strength for that minute.

video: Crespi girls singing, “it’s a whole new world…”

Kim: 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.

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.

Jessica Crespi: My dad was a very caring Father; very funny, too. He’d wake me up singing whatever group i was into at the time: it was Spice Girls when I was little…

Kim Crespi: 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 do the right thing.

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 have kids to raise, bills to pay.

Kim: We went to the psychiatrist in early 2006 and he said, “well, what about 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: Within days of ingesting Prozac, David Crespi became troubled.

 Jessica Crespi: Towards the end of just talking back and forth and he said, “Do you ever feel 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 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.

intercut police 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 the girls 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-fifteen minutes, I saw a police barricade, and I saw some of my very concerned neighbors coming towards me.

INSERT POLICE CAR WITH FLASHING LIGHTS - OR, TAKE THE SAME CLIP OF THEIR HOUSE - AND RUN IT IN REVERSE!

The police officer asked my name and i said my name  and he said “we’re going to need you in this house”

sfx: sound of phone dialing: and then “911, where’s your emergency?”

(911-Call)

911 Dispatch: Police Department

David Crespi: Yes. i just killed my two daughters.

911 Dispatch: You just what?

David Crespi: i just killed my two daughters.

 

Kim Crespi: I called my Dad in California and I made sure my stepmom was there, and i said, “Dad, I have to tell you something really hard. I’m in the back of a police car and i’ve been told that David killed Sam and Tess.”

David Crespi 911 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: Keep talking 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 Sam and Tess—as we all did—and she started wailing. And I could hear her on the speakerphone 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 the police car looking forward as the siren wails.

Tilda: The Crespi children were escorted from school by the Police and were told nothing until Kim arrived at the station.

Kim Crespi: They really thought that their dad had killed himself.

LEAVE TINY AUDIO SPACE-TOO TIGHT

Jessica Crespi: (teary-eyed) My Mom 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 is what actually happened.

Kim Crespi: 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. . .

David Crespi: I went to the doctor and i can remember 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 our daughters.

David Crespi: Who I am was chemically altered.

Jessica Crespi: My Dad in his right 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 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.

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

Kim Crespi: We were doing what the doctors told 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 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. .

Begin “Kaval Siri” again -

David Crespi: But I know for certain, I know what 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; cell door 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 to black

David Carmichael: On July 31^st, 2004, I had been on Paxil for three weeks. . .and I took Ian to a hotel room in London, Ontario.

B-roll-out-of-focus hotel barely evident

David: At 3:00 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 9:00 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.

Tilda: For 14 long days, David Carmichael was psychotic - and suffered drug withdrawals in his jail cell .. before awakening to the ultimate terror.

David Carmichael: 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.

Tilda: 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.

Peter Breggin, MD (Psychiatrist and Author): 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 metabolized, meaning they don’t get broken down. You might get the equivalent of a 10 mg dose of an SSRI, but in your blood it is 30 or 40 mg. And there are studies correlating the violence with the lack of the enzyme for these drugs.

David Carmichael: The public has no understanding of how Paxil or other SSRI could trigger a homicidal psychotic episode—and they may not care, but there is evidence 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 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.

 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.

Gillian Carmichael: 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.

Tilda: David credits Gillian as the reason he did not take his own life while in prison.

David: 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.

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 the prosecution, both agreed that he was psychotic at the time of the tragedy.

David: The public is not going to care about this (motioning to himself 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 and he was an amazing brother. And he was an amazing friend and amazing son. He just had so much life. [tears up] yeah.. sorry…

Kevin P. Miller: Pretend that I’m the Glaxo CEO. What would you like to say to me?

David Carmichael: [Long pause - 22 seconds]

David: If you’re 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 have 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.

fade to black…

under black—confusing mix of voices under black. Then—very, very slowly BEGIN revealing video—little-by-little—as if it were like a video of the sun 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 in front of Lindsay

Debra Douglas: That gun, I later learned, was loaded with hollow-point bullets and I shudder to think what could have happened…

Mike Donnelly: The only way to have peace and serenity again was to die

Robin Schott: Do all of you want to take this drug? 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 young adults, in light of the real risk of suicide and violence. But in America, the U.S. FDA remained unconvinced—and demanded more 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, but we thought getting as right an answer as possible was the right thing to do.

David Healy, MD: 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 Leeds 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.”

Tilda: For Mathy Downing—and thousands like her—the earth-shattering epiphanies came weeks too late.

Mathy: Ironically, it happens that the doctor 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 his daughters attended school with my daughters for eight years. . .

Tilda: For over 20 years, Thomas Laughren  was head of FDAs psychopharmacology division.

Mathy: 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 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 follow through and help me gain the information I needed, but he didn’t.

Tilda: 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.

Mathy: And when I spoke at the FDA hearings on September 13, I addressed him personally.

Tilda: After months of grieving—and too-few answers, Mathy Downing finally let loose.

Mathy: The blood of these children are on your hands. (gasps from crowd)

Peter Breggin, MD - I remember seeing Mathy Downing stand up at the hearing   and confront 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 SSRI controversy since well before the 1991 Prozac hearings.

KAREN BARTH MENZIES (Attorney and Patient Advocate): Some of the senior officials at FDA, some of the people we find as the original culprits—the problem at FDA, are 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. 

Tilda: 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.

DANIEL CASEY, MD (from 1991 Prozac Hearings): I do not find from the evidence today that there is credible evidence to support a conclusion that antidepressant medications cause the emergence or intensification of suicidality and/or other violent behaviors…

Tilda: 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.

Vickery deposition: You were the Chairman of that committee for several years, right?

Dr. Casey: Yes.

Vickery interview: The chairman of that committee who is moderating it in a public building in a public place was wearing a bullet proof vest

Vickery deposition: Dr. Casey, did you wear a bulletproof vest to that forum?

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

Vickery interview: ….because he thought one of the family members of the people being harmed by Prozac would shoot him.

Vickery deposition: You certainly did not believe it was the folks on the Eli Lilly side of the coin, did you?

Dr. Casey deposition: (smirks, then quickly changes expression) No

Vickery interview: No conflict of interest?

Vickery deposition: …and yet that would not effect your objectivity. Is that your testimony?

Casey: Yes.

Tilda:  Others, like Harvard University’s influential Dr. Joseph Biederman (Bead-err-Min) 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 antipsychotic Risperdal to millions of teens.

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 $1.6 million from drug makers for promoting antipsychotics as a mainline treatment for pediatric bipolar disorder. Even after withholding the depth of his financial conflicts-of-interest from Congressional investigators, Biederman was never penalized for his ethics violations.

 

 

fade to black. LEAVE 2-3 SECONDS

- Then title appears:

Netherworld

Kristina Gehrki: She had beautiful blue eyes. . .she was very smart, artistic-incredibly artistic. . .was very inquisitive. . .she seemed to root for the underdog, and would try to help people who were maybe less fortunate .. that quality of caring about others and caring about the world at large. It was with her until the night before she died.

Tilda: There’s no doubt that Natalie Gehrki was a creative spirit … an artist. Her mind wandered with thoughts of Bukowski and Oscar Wilde .. often with inspired optimism and an endearing childlike 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 the face as the vision shifts to drowning…with water violently whipping around her.

ACTRESS as Natalie: “The memories of everything I’ve ever done wrong since the beginning of my own moral recognition come flooding in all at once like high tide .. and the cold water wakes me from a dream. I suddenly realize I’ve forgotten how to swim, but the waves pay no mind and pull at my useless body. Reality burns just as bad as saltwater. First it’s in my eyes, then it’s in my mouth, trickling down into my lungs, filling me to capacity. Painful memories anchor me. . .and the sea is getting rougher and there is no more shore. Waves whip from every direction, and the ocean is merciless 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 something I’m not sure of?

Oh no, oh no…

 

Tilda: Born with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, Natalie was prescribed a strong drug called Methotrexate - a cancer drug - to combat it. On doctors’ advice, she began using antidepressants in the 5^th grade. The year was 2005, and Natalie was only 11—the same age as Candace Downing when she was diagnosed with ‘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 with me. And she said,

ACTRESS as Natalie: ”Mom, Sometimes I think about killing myself, 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 there mentioned 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 male staff member put a hospital wristband over my wrist. He prescribed me Risperdal, 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 to write down her feelings: I wish I could stop thinking about wanting to kill myself. . . I hate my mom, I hate my dad, I hate my brother, I hate my house, I hate my life. And I don’t know why.

(Harleigh06 @ 47 sec -which is take 3): I don’t trust modern medicine or psychiatrists at all. My textbook psychiatrist continued to tell me every time I cried and begged to be released: “If you really want to go, you have to listen and follow everything I say.”

Tilda: Throughout Natalie’s teen years, her online diary complained 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 wave my brother and I saw on TV once. The secrets are ready to crash over, ready to destroy. I will not let them.

Kristina: When you give a person a drug, and you don’t tell them about any of the side effects, and they get side fx. . .they are going to attribute them to themselves or their underlying condition.

(Harleigh13 @ 59 sec): “every day i’m breathing is a small miracle”

Kristina: She attributed all her side effects to herself.

(Harleigh14 @ 2:11 sec): “I wish I could figure out how I feel about who I really am.”

Tilda: In 2012, Natalie was switched to Zoloft—and by November, her doctor increased the dose from 100mg to 150mg — unbeknownst to the Gehrki’s.

(Harleigh14) at 59seconds: “Picturing myself in the future is an impossible concept for my mind to comprehend. It’s like trying to explain colors to someone born blind. I just can’t do it.”

Tilda: In February of 2013, without seeing her patient, the doctor increased Natalie’s dose—over the phone—from 150mg to 200mg—the maximum dose legally allowed. Four days later, on the afternoon of February 6^th, 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 chemical imbalance in her brain—and it was prescribed 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 chemical imbalance before she took the prescription. . .but she certainly had a chemical imbalance when she died. . .

(Harleigh09) at 1:51 seconds: The silence grows around me in petals, warm and burgundy, wrapping a thorny fence. . .Do I cry, scream out, beg?

Lennon song: How can we go forward into something we’re not sure of?

Kristina: This is a poisoning, this is not a “traditional suicide” — and we ought not call it such, because by using that very word we create a false reality. because it is not only disrespectful to the victim and their families, but to call it that also plays into the hands of the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors. Because by using 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. Bury my 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 she wanted life. She deserved to live. And she’s not here anymore.

close out with music. . .

fade to black

 

CG (on black) appears:

“One joy scatters a hundred griefs.”

-Chinese saying

 

Tilda: IN A REMOTE TOWN IN WESTERN CANADA, the Stephan (Steff-enn) 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: micronutrients - mainly minerals.

Joseph Stephan: 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 so you didn’t have to drink a whole cup; maybe just an ounce. And I don’t think it worked very good, and it smelled funny. I remember the smell and can still taste it in the back of my throat. (smirks) I think they burned it—I’m not sure. 

Tony Stephan: At first it didn’t work. It did not work.

Joseph Stephan: I just remember I was out camping and I had a little bottle of—I call it rust water— it was the color 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 that I didn’t really understand what we were doing.

Tony Stephan: We put him on a cocktail that contained vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and amino acids.

Autumn Stringham: 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 told him it was on his head—the next suicide in this family was going to be his fault.

Tony Stephan: 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.”

Joseph: It was like one day waking up and like a fog had completely lifted, and that was amazing. It was a very real turning point in my life.

Tilda: With Joseph on the mend, Tony Stephan then turned his attention to his daughter Autumn, who had been in and out of psych wards.

Autumn Stringham: 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 micronutrient stuff. At that time, it was this crazy concoction with liquids and powders, and pills and 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. Do not go off of this medication.” And I was on that five-drug cocktail at that time. So, I had absolutely no intention of doing what my dad had already started with my brother Joseph—no intention.

Tony Stephan: I won’t say that I forced her to do it because that doesn’t sound politically correct (smirks), but I constrained her to do it. 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.”

Autumn Stringham: 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, 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.

Bonnie Kaplan, Ph.D (Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary): Back in 1996, when I first met Autumn Stringam, it was the first day I also met her father Tony Stephan. She was sitting there in front of us, completely normal, very bright, very articulate, very charming young woman, doing very well on vitamins and minerals, but she had lived through this horrible, horrible period and could remember it so vividly. It was very impressive. You knew that you were hearing a true story, and I think that that has come through consistently with Autumn.

Autumn Stringham: I recognize that a huge percentage of people with bipolar commit suicide and it just as easily could have been me, and isn’t, because something really beautiful happened in my life. And I have to acknowledge that 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.

Dr. Bonnie Kaplan: 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.

Tilda: 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 skeptical—and thought the notion of utilising minerals for mental illness was simply preposterous.

Tony Stephan: 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.

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 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? Micronutrients to make those brain cells work.

Tilda: 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.

Kaplan (TV clip: 2001): Some people call this a ‘micronutrient 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% better. Quite a few of them were more than 75% better.

Autumn Stringham: 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.

Tilda: 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.

Dr. Kaplan: 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.

Tony: 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. Here, the Alberta government had provided $554,000 so that she could continue the work. Health Canada came in and swathed the trial. They destroyed it.

COMMON SENSE music bed

Tilda: Health Canada not only shut down Dr. Kaplan’s scientific investigation into micronutrients and mental health,

START WIDE ON STUDY—ZOOM INTO “THIS STUDY HAS BEEN TERMINATED”

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.

Tony: Why? We’re talking about vitamins and minerals here.

Robert Whitaker (Pulitzer Prize finalist): Well, what that tells you is that anything that cha llenges commercial interests, such as micronutrients might be a good thing to do, boy, there are powerful forces behind a commercial story—and they will come forth.

Tilda: 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.

Ian Stewart: Health Canada spent $2 million to prosecute Truehope for charges—had they been found guilty—would have amounted to a $375 fine. They lost— Health Canada lost, but all of those costs to defend ourselves were not recouped from Health Canada.

Tilda: Despite Pharma’s falsified science—and billion-dollar fines for fraudulent marketing

BLACK HEALTH CANADA LOGO W/ PINK FLAG

— 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.

Bonnie Kaplan: 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. 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 it more and we should see whether or not there’s treatment benefit from vitamins and minerals.”

Julia Rucklidge (TedX talk at 55sec): 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.

 

Tilda: After nearly two decades of wrangling with Health Canada—and three-quarters of a million dollars in court costs and legal fees for Truehope, researchers 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.

Rucklidge: I was very aware of how many people were incredibly skeptical 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, I think, a very important question for our community.

Bonnie Kaplan: I think there are two things about the Truehope formula that are really special. One is that it’s broad spectrum—not just vitamins but both vitamins and dietary minerals.

Another aspect 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 when other people say

CHANGE BACK TO CAM1

“Aha, I’m getting the same result.” So, it’s very important that the use of broad-spectrum formulas is being replicated in multiple countries, in New Zealand, in the United States, in Canada, with different formulations, in the UK, in Holland, in Australia, that is extremely important.

Fristad: What people get concerned about is if a company is trying to simply market their ware without enough science behind it; people become very skeptical, very quickly.

So what I would say in favor of Truehope, is that none of us who are investigating the product have any financial ties to the company whatsoever,

FRISTAD STUDY

and then they have absolutely no ties whatsoever in how we publish our findings. So they have no 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 so many 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 kinds of things that I’ve had to deal with from members of my 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 have ended my career.

Kaplan: Would I do it again? I don’t know if I would have the energy to deal with Health Canada again.

Mary Fristad: It is understandable that people would have questions, I would simply ask that people then be open-minded to the results as the science evolves.

Tilda: In reality, though, Truehope—and nutrition research in general—is in danger of becoming extinct. Despite being the most studied dietary supplement in the world, good scientists often fear the political consequences of studying nutrition’s effects on the brain.

Rucklidge: It makes perfect logic to me that we should investigate other options. If someone comes along and has some intriguing data that shows that symptoms can be controlled by another method that may not come along with so many risks, then I think it’s in our place as scientists to study it.

Kaplan: I happen to think that medications are very important— especially in acute crises. But, to me they’re the supplement. I believe that it would be more beneficial to a lot of people especially developing children, 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.

Tilda: For people who have become well utilising vitamins and minerals—after suffering from the fog of pharmaceuticals—they cannot conceive ever going back.

Nicole: I found out about Truehope after having my last child. It was the darkest hours of my life, days, months and it ended up being two years. I have a huge amount of gratitude that I need to send to 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, as mothers, as fathers, as brothers, as sisters, can just take a look at that…

Sonya: In the fall of 1996, we contacted Dr. Kolb and he told us about Tony Stephan and Truehope. We had been looking for some alternatives. We’d given everything the psychiatrist had suggested, we gave it all a try. Nothing was working. We felt there must be something else. I think here’s a product that worked for me. It helped me. There are no side effects. I’m a functioning part of society. I’m not on the floor in a ball crying all the time. I mean, that was my life before. I can contribute 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 about the placebo effect. I don’t think a placebo effect last 11 years, but if it does, bring it on. I’ll keep it. (laughs)

Autumn:  I don't want to be giving people false hope that everything about their mental illness is going to turn around, flip a switch, and tada – a magic pill. That’s not the case, but my goodness, just stopping the hallucinations, just that would’ve been enough to keep me on it the rest of my life because that was huge. It took me two more months to get off 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 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. I’m not dead. I’ve got four healthy kids and a great marriage. And that’s something I didn’t expect would ever happen with me.

 

EPILOGUE

TILDA: 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.

 

END w EARLIER MELISSA B-ROLL WALKING BY THE CAMERA IN SLO-MO;

 

Melissa: 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. 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 saved a lot of pain. A lot of pain.

 

Bob B: We’ve been thru a lot. 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 child that i was afraid would never get out of her bedroom is now doing what she’s doing. (chokes up) So, it’s a great thing that i have a kid who has the tenacity and 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.

 

Tilda: 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.

 

Linda Hurcombe: These are very primitive things, missing your children.  You miss their warmth and their smell and their lovely, lovely presence.

 

VOX: 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.

Shaun McCartney: 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. 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.

Tilda: 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.

 

-fin-

 

EPILOGUE-Slates

 

After 15 years of political infighting, MP Terence Young’s legislation, Bill C-17 passed unanimously in November 2014. Named Vanessa’s Law after Mr. Young’s daughter, the law gives the Health Minister the power to recall unsafe drugs, requires mandatory adverse reaction reporting throughout Canada, and provides an online public registry with all clinical trial data about pharmaceutical drugs. Bill C-17 also demands greater transparency from Health Canada — Canada’s version of the FDA.

 

Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic appeared on the New York Times bestseller’s list for the first time in April of 2015. Whitaker was honored by the Investigative Reporters and Editors Association with their 2010 Book Award for Best Investigative Journalism for Anatomy of an Epidemic.

 

Autumn Stephan Stringham’s story about her family’s battle with mental illness, A Promise of Hope was published by Harper-Collins Canada. Within months, it became a Canadian bestseller.

 

David Crespi is still in prison for the drug-induced deaths of his daughters. His wife Kim is committed to freeing him.