"I tried killing myself thirty times"

So says Vickie, a young nurse from Philadelphia who was first prescribed Paxil at the age of ten. Vickie recalls her life before she began taking psychiatric medication. "I had a pretty nice life. I grew up with money, I was never deprived of anything, my parents were very supportive of me. I had a great upbringing." But she had a tendency towards shyness, and her parents became concerned.

Series: Part 1: “I tried killing myself thirty times” Part 2: “Remarkable efficacy and safety” Part 3: “An effective drug treatment” Part 4: The Ghost Writer Part 5: It's shameful" "I was just shy," Vickie remembers. "I had friends but I liked to be home, and I liked to watch TV, and I liked to read, and I actually liked to be alone." Nevertheless, her mother took her to see a psychiatrist, and after a forty-five minute consultation, during which her mother did most of the talking, the psychiatrist diagnosed her with "social anxiety disorder" and prescribed Effexor. After six months, there didn't seem to be any improvement in her condition, so her mother brought her back to the same psychiatrist, who prescribed Paxil. The effects were devastating, Vickie recalls. "I really just wanted to die. I cried all the time. Almost daily I would sit in my room and cry." Once more her mother took Vickie to the psychiatrist, who doubled her prescribed dose of Paxil. Vickie found her condition worsening. "It was a downward spiral that I got into and couldn't get out of." She felt compelled to harm herself--starving herself, binging and vomiting, pulling her own hair out, cutting herself, and obsessively picking at the scabs. She also tried to dozens of times to end her own life. "I tried slitting my wrists, overdosing on Tylenol PM, I tried hanging myself, I tried drowning myself. I even considered jumping off a bridge at one point. It wasn't a cry for help. I just wanted to die." Next: Part 2: "Remarkable efficacy and safety"

Patrick D Hahn——Bio and Archives

Patrick D Hahn is the author of Prescription for Sorrow: Antidepressants, Suicide, and Violence (Samizdat Health Writer’s Cooperative) and Madness and Genetic Determinism: Is Mental Illness in Our Genes? (Palgrave MacMillan). Dr. Hahn is an Affiliate Professor of Biology at Loyola University Maryland.