Prozac scandal 'besmirches' Canadian university | World dispatch | Guardian Unlimited

In 2007, Canada's largest and most prestigious university and has come under fire from two Nobel laureates and 25 other internationally respected scientists for withdrawing a job offer to a UK researcher after he questioned the safety of antidepressants like Prozac.

In a letter, the 27 scientists say the decision to send Dr David Healy packing violated the principles of academic freedom, 'besmirched' the name of the University of Toronto
and 'poisoned the reputation' of the centre for addiction and mental heath (CAMH), an affiliated teaching hospital.

Dr Healy, who works at the University of Wales, had been courted by the centre for more than a year to direct its mood and anxiety disorders program. But the job offer was hastily withdrawn last November after he gave a speech in which he said Prozac and similar antidepressants may trigger suicide or violent behaviour in some patients. He also said that Eli Lilly, the drug company who has sold the product to 40m people, has known about the problem for years.

Thus a mental health consumer in Ontario should really be careful lest her mental health may be compromised by the threat of loss of sponsorship by BigPharma at CAMH.

While BigPharma may deny they influence their government sponsees in the mental health and addiction industry, such government institutions such as CAMH and even BC's Mental Heath and Addiction services are sensitive about offending their major sponsors.

This may explain why government-run mental health clinics treat heroin addicts and clients whose behavior is acute and/or chronic enough to treat while advising people with mental health issues less severe to seek help from psychotherapists and/or psychiatrists on their own.

That the government funds mainly emergency care (first psychotic episode at the nearest hospital psychiatric ward, and at a community hospice thereafter) should remind the wary mental health consumer that his mental health issues are minor compared to the majority of the 10% of all Canadians in psychiatric care today.

This minimization of neurosis only contributes to the delusion of a few of the highly functional mental health consumers to falsely assume they are well, and to continue building the castles they will eventually dwell in when and if the stress of life finally precipitates a brief psychotic episode.

Hopefully, they continue to remain highly functional, because the lower functioning clients end up being treated just like methadone clients.