“After taking [antidepressants], my genitals felt completely numb and my emotions completely disappeared.… PSSD has ruined every aspect of my life.” —Mary Koback, shortly before taking her own life
And the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is accelerating that collapse. On January 9, the mental health industry watchdog issued a statement demanding a full and independent investigation into how the FDA continues to authorize antidepressants despite years of documented irreversible harm.
It has been known for decades that antidepressants are dangerous. Their many side effects include violence, psychosis, muscle rigidity, high fever, seizures, irregular heartbeat, organ failure and suicide.
But mounting evidence now points to another devastating consequence: Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD), severe sexual side effects suffered by too many after withdrawing from SSRIs, a class of antidepressants designed to change how the brain handles serotonin.
“From pre-birth to adulthood, millions are exposed to drugs capable of inducing emotional blunting, suicidality and potentially permanent sexual injury.”
The afflictions include complete loss of libido, genital anesthesia and erectile dysfunction—among other symptoms—and along with them, the inability to feel … anything.
The malady, which is described by one PSSD sufferer as “no joy no more, no happiness, all the good things are gone,” and by another as leaving them “totally dehumanized,” is incurable and often permanent.
Their experiences aren’t merely anecdotal.
A substantial body of research dating back to the early 1990s documents that SSRI antidepressants reduce genital sensation.
Further large-scale studies confirm that sexual dysfunction plagues up to two-thirds of antidepressant users, with a significant portion describing the aftermath as intolerable.
Given such red flags waving in the face of Big Psych and Big Pharma, you’d expect more studies, warnings or an FDA ban on antidepressants.
But instead there were “explanations” from the psychiatric establishment. The sexual dysfunction is mental, not physical, they assured us and—not to worry—the symptoms are temporary. They’ll disappear as soon as the patient stops taking the drug. (If they don’t, well, that’s on the patient, not the drug, they said.)
Such phony justifications serve only to indict those who advance them. As PSSD Network Board Member Daniel Demers told Freedom, “With a symptom like genital anesthesia, it makes no logical sense to attribute it to any known mental illness, yet psychiatrists around the world seem to employ the same patient-blaming defense mechanism when the alternative is admitting they played a role in ruining their patient’s life.”
Meanwhile, the FDA continues authorizing antidepressants as “safe” for consumption by a public that is largely uninformed of the risks—a case of opening up the sheep pen and laying down a welcome mat for any passing wolves.
CCHR International President Jan Eastgate says, “From pre-birth to adulthood, millions are exposed to drugs capable of inducing emotional blunting, suicidality and potentially permanent sexual injury without adequate warning … sanctioned by the FDA and driven by the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry.
“They must be held accountable.”
Why do these drugs remain on the market without the most stringent warnings? The answer, CCHR contends, is a lethal combination of misleading pharmaceutical marketing and a regulatory system that routinely rebrands drug-induced injury as “just-another-mental-illness-here’s-your-prescription-for-it.”
The consequences are staggering. Each year, more than 45 million Americans—including millions of minors—take FDA-approved antidepressants linked to permanent neurological and sexual damage. Meanwhile, Big Pharma and Big Psych rake in over $22 billion globally by hawking these drugs—drugs that former FDA medical officer Dr. Josef Witt-Doering warns can leave patients “essentially lobotomized,” with effects he describes as “chemical castration.”
CCHR condemns the fatal bait-and-switch—psychiatric help promised, psychiatric damage delivered—as an egregious human rights violation, demanding a ban on crippling psychiatric drugs and accountability to the fullest extent of the law.
