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[Guest guest]

http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/sexdevelopmentpsychopharm/

Beyond Meds 

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What happens to sexual development in adolescents who’ve grown up on psychiatric

drugs? (and how these drugs stop normal bonding in ALL people)

August 7, 2011 @ 7:44 am › giannakali

I’ve posted some variation of this post twice before. I felt moved to post it

again since I had a conversation with a journalist friend who is thinking about

this issue too. My last paragraph in this piece speculated about what

antidepressants do to pre-pubescent and adolescent kids. What happens when the

normal drive for sex and orgasm and romantic love is muted or altogether absent

because the kids are on SSRI or SNRI antidepressants (and/or other psych drugs)?

My friend talked with an adolescent counselor and she’s noticed that these kids

are strangely uninterested in romantic love and sometimes even appear to be

asexual. That is ALARMING and it’s right in line with what my speculative fears

suggested. I don’t have much more to say about the topic but would like to raise

the issue that more people may start to think about this very serious problem

that effects a far too large percentage of our young population.

The post as it was to begin with started out with Helen Fisher’s work which lays

a good foundation for the point about the kids:

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who has looked at how antidepressants effect

romantic love, falling in love and most importantly ongoing attachment. The

conclusion being that the love response and the human instinct for attachment

are profoundly messed up. Antidepressants don’t just create sexual dysfunction,

they wreak havoc with the whole emotional system that creates attachment to

other human beings. In my experience it is not only the antidepressants that do

this. As far as I can tell all psychiatric drugs do it. As is often the case

antidepressants are more commonly studied when the mainstream is being

considered. The fact is, however and unfortunately, that neuroleptics are going

mainstream. Historically, neuroleptics (antipsychotics) and the other psych meds

aren’t taken by as many “normal” people as the antidepressants do so they

haven’t been studied by this woman who is basically making a social commentary.

Someday perhaps such studies will extend to include all psychotropics, as there

are more and more people effected by all these classes of drugs.

Below is from an article in the LA times about Fisher’s work from a few years

ago:

Couples think about the other obsessively – on a roller coaster of euphoria when

together, longing when apart.

“It’s temporary insanity,” says Helen Fisher, an evolutionary anthropologist at

Rutgers University.

Now, from her studies of the brains of lovers in the throes of the initial

tumble, Fisher has developed a controversial theory. She and her collaborator,

psychiatrist J. Thomson of the University of Virginia, believe that

Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressants alter brain chemistry so as to

blunt the intense cutting edge of new love.

Fisher and Thomson, who describe their theory in a chapter in the book,

“Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience,” aren’t talking just about the notorious

ability of the drugs to damp sexual desire and performance, although that, they

believe, plays its part. They think the drugs also sap the craving for a mate –

perhaps even the brain’s very ability to fall in love.

And here is a video of her speaking on the same topic but emphasizing different

things which I think are more important:

This fact alone about psychiatric drugs is enough to undermine society. Don’t

think this doesn’t effect parent’s ability to love and bond with their children.

And then when you think about all the kids on these drugs who simply don’t

develop normally. Teenage hormones are part of growing up. What happens when you

skip that developmental stage? What happens if you never enter it at all due to

a lifetime of being on drugs? We are stopping the human experience from

happening.

The above paragraph was my speculation about the issue from three years ago. It

seems that I was right to be concerned. I find this issue extremely problematic

and disturbing and think it should become part of the dialogue about these

drugs. Pass it on, people. Let’s not harm young people coming of age in the

psychopharmaceutical age. Let’s halt the direction it’s been going in and start

learning to support these kids and everyone who takes these drugs in new ways.

My husband read this post and made this comment which I thought well worth

sharing:

Very good post and a profound issue. You used the phrase “undermine society” and

I would make that even stronger and say destroy society. If epidemiological

studies were done, I would expect there is a direct correlation between the

number of people living alone and the number on antidepressants (and other psych

meds). I suspect that America (perhaps more than other countries) has blinkers

on when it comes to acknowledging mass isolation as a problem because so much

value is attached to autonomy. It’s as though if everyone is doing there own

thing, then everyone is enjoying their freedom — except this is a freedom that

atomizes society. Instead of their being one society, there is now a universe of

societies-of-one, each separated by lifeless space.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT & T

[Guest guest]

http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/sexdevelopmentpsychopharm/

Beyond Meds 

Home | Pages | Archives | Search

What happens to sexual development in adolescents who’ve grown up on psychiatric

drugs? (and how these drugs stop normal bonding in ALL people)

August 7, 2011 @ 7:44 am › giannakali

I’ve posted some variation of this post twice before. I felt moved to post it

again since I had a conversation with a journalist friend who is thinking about

this issue too. My last paragraph in this piece speculated about what

antidepressants do to pre-pubescent and adolescent kids. What happens when the

normal drive for sex and orgasm and romantic love is muted or altogether absent

because the kids are on SSRI or SNRI antidepressants (and/or other psych drugs)?

My friend talked with an adolescent counselor and she’s noticed that these kids

are strangely uninterested in romantic love and sometimes even appear to be

asexual. That is ALARMING and it’s right in line with what my speculative fears

suggested. I don’t have much more to say about the topic but would like to raise

the issue that more people may start to think about this very serious problem

that effects a far too large percentage of our young population.

The post as it was to begin with started out with Helen Fisher’s work which lays

a good foundation for the point about the kids:

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who has looked at how antidepressants effect

romantic love, falling in love and most importantly ongoing attachment. The

conclusion being that the love response and the human instinct for attachment

are profoundly messed up. Antidepressants don’t just create sexual dysfunction,

they wreak havoc with the whole emotional system that creates attachment to

other human beings. In my experience it is not only the antidepressants that do

this. As far as I can tell all psychiatric drugs do it. As is often the case

antidepressants are more commonly studied when the mainstream is being

considered. The fact is, however and unfortunately, that neuroleptics are going

mainstream. Historically, neuroleptics (antipsychotics) and the other psych meds

aren’t taken by as many “normal” people as the antidepressants do so they

haven’t been studied by this woman who is basically making a social commentary.

Someday perhaps such studies will extend to include all psychotropics, as there

are more and more people effected by all these classes of drugs.

Below is from an article in the LA times about Fisher’s work from a few years

ago:

Couples think about the other obsessively – on a roller coaster of euphoria when

together, longing when apart.

“It’s temporary insanity,” says Helen Fisher, an evolutionary anthropologist at

Rutgers University.

Now, from her studies of the brains of lovers in the throes of the initial

tumble, Fisher has developed a controversial theory. She and her collaborator,

psychiatrist J. Thomson of the University of Virginia, believe that

Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressants alter brain chemistry so as to

blunt the intense cutting edge of new love.

Fisher and Thomson, who describe their theory in a chapter in the book,

“Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience,” aren’t talking just about the notorious

ability of the drugs to damp sexual desire and performance, although that, they

believe, plays its part. They think the drugs also sap the craving for a mate –

perhaps even the brain’s very ability to fall in love.

And here is a video of her speaking on the same topic but emphasizing different

things which I think are more important:

This fact alone about psychiatric drugs is enough to undermine society. Don’t

think this doesn’t effect parent’s ability to love and bond with their children.

And then when you think about all the kids on these drugs who simply don’t

develop normally. Teenage hormones are part of growing up. What happens when you

skip that developmental stage? What happens if you never enter it at all due to

a lifetime of being on drugs? We are stopping the human experience from

happening.

The above paragraph was my speculation about the issue from three years ago. It

seems that I was right to be concerned. I find this issue extremely problematic

and disturbing and think it should become part of the dialogue about these

drugs. Pass it on, people. Let’s not harm young people coming of age in the

psychopharmaceutical age. Let’s halt the direction it’s been going in and start

learning to support these kids and everyone who takes these drugs in new ways.

My husband read this post and made this comment which I thought well worth

sharing:

Very good post and a profound issue. You used the phrase “undermine society” and

I would make that even stronger and say destroy society. If epidemiological

studies were done, I would expect there is a direct correlation between the

number of people living alone and the number on antidepressants (and other psych

meds). I suspect that America (perhaps more than other countries) has blinkers

on when it comes to acknowledging mass isolation as a problem because so much

value is attached to autonomy. It’s as though if everyone is doing there own

thing, then everyone is enjoying their freedom — except this is a freedom that

atomizes society. Instead of their being one society, there is now a universe of

societies-of-one, each separated by lifeless space.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT & T

[Guest guest]

http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/sexdevelopmentpsychopharm/

Beyond Meds 

Home | Pages | Archives | Search

What happens to sexual development in adolescents who’ve grown up on psychiatric

drugs? (and how these drugs stop normal bonding in ALL people)

August 7, 2011 @ 7:44 am › giannakali

I’ve posted some variation of this post twice before. I felt moved to post it

again since I had a conversation with a journalist friend who is thinking about

this issue too. My last paragraph in this piece speculated about what

antidepressants do to pre-pubescent and adolescent kids. What happens when the

normal drive for sex and orgasm and romantic love is muted or altogether absent

because the kids are on SSRI or SNRI antidepressants (and/or other psych drugs)?

My friend talked with an adolescent counselor and she’s noticed that these kids

are strangely uninterested in romantic love and sometimes even appear to be

asexual. That is ALARMING and it’s right in line with what my speculative fears

suggested. I don’t have much more to say about the topic but would like to raise

the issue that more people may start to think about this very serious problem

that effects a far too large percentage of our young population.

The post as it was to begin with started out with Helen Fisher’s work which lays

a good foundation for the point about the kids:

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who has looked at how antidepressants effect

romantic love, falling in love and most importantly ongoing attachment. The

conclusion being that the love response and the human instinct for attachment

are profoundly messed up. Antidepressants don’t just create sexual dysfunction,

they wreak havoc with the whole emotional system that creates attachment to

other human beings. In my experience it is not only the antidepressants that do

this. As far as I can tell all psychiatric drugs do it. As is often the case

antidepressants are more commonly studied when the mainstream is being

considered. The fact is, however and unfortunately, that neuroleptics are going

mainstream. Historically, neuroleptics (antipsychotics) and the other psych meds

aren’t taken by as many “normal” people as the antidepressants do so they

haven’t been studied by this woman who is basically making a social commentary.

Someday perhaps such studies will extend to include all psychotropics, as there

are more and more people effected by all these classes of drugs.

Below is from an article in the LA times about Fisher’s work from a few years

ago:

Couples think about the other obsessively – on a roller coaster of euphoria when

together, longing when apart.

“It’s temporary insanity,” says Helen Fisher, an evolutionary anthropologist at

Rutgers University.

Now, from her studies of the brains of lovers in the throes of the initial

tumble, Fisher has developed a controversial theory. She and her collaborator,

psychiatrist J. Thomson of the University of Virginia, believe that

Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressants alter brain chemistry so as to

blunt the intense cutting edge of new love.

Fisher and Thomson, who describe their theory in a chapter in the book,

“Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience,” aren’t talking just about the notorious

ability of the drugs to damp sexual desire and performance, although that, they

believe, plays its part. They think the drugs also sap the craving for a mate –

perhaps even the brain’s very ability to fall in love.

And here is a video of her speaking on the same topic but emphasizing different

things which I think are more important:

This fact alone about psychiatric drugs is enough to undermine society. Don’t

think this doesn’t effect parent’s ability to love and bond with their children.

And then when you think about all the kids on these drugs who simply don’t

develop normally. Teenage hormones are part of growing up. What happens when you

skip that developmental stage? What happens if you never enter it at all due to

a lifetime of being on drugs? We are stopping the human experience from

happening.

The above paragraph was my speculation about the issue from three years ago. It

seems that I was right to be concerned. I find this issue extremely problematic

and disturbing and think it should become part of the dialogue about these

drugs. Pass it on, people. Let’s not harm young people coming of age in the

psychopharmaceutical age. Let’s halt the direction it’s been going in and start

learning to support these kids and everyone who takes these drugs in new ways.

My husband read this post and made this comment which I thought well worth

sharing:

Very good post and a profound issue. You used the phrase “undermine society” and

I would make that even stronger and say destroy society. If epidemiological

studies were done, I would expect there is a direct correlation between the

number of people living alone and the number on antidepressants (and other psych

meds). I suspect that America (perhaps more than other countries) has blinkers

on when it comes to acknowledging mass isolation as a problem because so much

value is attached to autonomy. It’s as though if everyone is doing there own

thing, then everyone is enjoying their freedom — except this is a freedom that

atomizes society. Instead of their being one society, there is now a universe of

societies-of-one, each separated by lifeless space.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT & T

[Guest guest]

http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/sexdevelopmentpsychopharm/

Beyond Meds 

Home | Pages | Archives | Search

What happens to sexual development in adolescents who’ve grown up on psychiatric

drugs? (and how these drugs stop normal bonding in ALL people)

August 7, 2011 @ 7:44 am › giannakali

I’ve posted some variation of this post twice before. I felt moved to post it

again since I had a conversation with a journalist friend who is thinking about

this issue too. My last paragraph in this piece speculated about what

antidepressants do to pre-pubescent and adolescent kids. What happens when the

normal drive for sex and orgasm and romantic love is muted or altogether absent

because the kids are on SSRI or SNRI antidepressants (and/or other psych drugs)?

My friend talked with an adolescent counselor and she’s noticed that these kids

are strangely uninterested in romantic love and sometimes even appear to be

asexual. That is ALARMING and it’s right in line with what my speculative fears

suggested. I don’t have much more to say about the topic but would like to raise

the issue that more people may start to think about this very serious problem

that effects a far too large percentage of our young population.

The post as it was to begin with started out with Helen Fisher’s work which lays

a good foundation for the point about the kids:

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who has looked at how antidepressants effect

romantic love, falling in love and most importantly ongoing attachment. The

conclusion being that the love response and the human instinct for attachment

are profoundly messed up. Antidepressants don’t just create sexual dysfunction,

they wreak havoc with the whole emotional system that creates attachment to

other human beings. In my experience it is not only the antidepressants that do

this. As far as I can tell all psychiatric drugs do it. As is often the case

antidepressants are more commonly studied when the mainstream is being

considered. The fact is, however and unfortunately, that neuroleptics are going

mainstream. Historically, neuroleptics (antipsychotics) and the other psych meds

aren’t taken by as many “normal” people as the antidepressants do so they

haven’t been studied by this woman who is basically making a social commentary.

Someday perhaps such studies will extend to include all psychotropics, as there

are more and more people effected by all these classes of drugs.

Below is from an article in the LA times about Fisher’s work from a few years

ago:

Couples think about the other obsessively – on a roller coaster of euphoria when

together, longing when apart.

“It’s temporary insanity,” says Helen Fisher, an evolutionary anthropologist at

Rutgers University.

Now, from her studies of the brains of lovers in the throes of the initial

tumble, Fisher has developed a controversial theory. She and her collaborator,

psychiatrist J. Thomson of the University of Virginia, believe that

Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressants alter brain chemistry so as to

blunt the intense cutting edge of new love.

Fisher and Thomson, who describe their theory in a chapter in the book,

“Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience,” aren’t talking just about the notorious

ability of the drugs to damp sexual desire and performance, although that, they

believe, plays its part. They think the drugs also sap the craving for a mate –

perhaps even the brain’s very ability to fall in love.

And here is a video of her speaking on the same topic but emphasizing different

things which I think are more important:

This fact alone about psychiatric drugs is enough to undermine society. Don’t

think this doesn’t effect parent’s ability to love and bond with their children.

And then when you think about all the kids on these drugs who simply don’t

develop normally. Teenage hormones are part of growing up. What happens when you

skip that developmental stage? What happens if you never enter it at all due to

a lifetime of being on drugs? We are stopping the human experience from

happening.

The above paragraph was my speculation about the issue from three years ago. It

seems that I was right to be concerned. I find this issue extremely problematic

and disturbing and think it should become part of the dialogue about these

drugs. Pass it on, people. Let’s not harm young people coming of age in the

psychopharmaceutical age. Let’s halt the direction it’s been going in and start

learning to support these kids and everyone who takes these drugs in new ways.

My husband read this post and made this comment which I thought well worth

sharing:

Very good post and a profound issue. You used the phrase “undermine society” and

I would make that even stronger and say destroy society. If epidemiological

studies were done, I would expect there is a direct correlation between the

number of people living alone and the number on antidepressants (and other psych

meds). I suspect that America (perhaps more than other countries) has blinkers

on when it comes to acknowledging mass isolation as a problem because so much

value is attached to autonomy. It’s as though if everyone is doing there own

thing, then everyone is enjoying their freedom — except this is a freedom that

atomizes society. Instead of their being one society, there is now a universe of

societies-of-one, each separated by lifeless space.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT & T