Dr. Mercola October 29 2000 1,422 views
People who take antipsychotic drugs, even those who are young and otherwise healthy, face an increased risk for potentially fatal blood clots, researchers report, extending previous findings to encompass a wider range of medications for schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, dementia, autism, and other brain disorders.
Researchers looked at nearly 30,000 patients on antipsychotic drugs over the course of 7 years.
Patients younger than 60 who had no risk factors for blood clots, such as heart disease or diabetes.
They found that these patients were 7 times more likely to develop blood clots known as venous thromboembolisms than drug-free study participants.
Lead researcher Dr. Gwen L. Zornberg of Boston University School of Medicine in Lexington, Massachusetts, said in an interview with Reuters Health, that doctors have been noting for decades that antipsychotic drugs seem to trigger blood clots in some patients. "What's fascinating," she said, "is that this was very well-studied from the 1960s until 1984...then for some reason it just fell through the cracks."
Research on the link between the drugs and blood clots has been hindered by the fact that study patients have often had other risk factors for venous thromboembolism. To avoid this problem, Zornberg's team focused on patients younger than 60 who had no risk factors for blood clots, such as heart disease or diabetes.
Dr. Zornberg notes that these clots might be prevented by something as simple as exercise or some type of physical activity. She also notes that, despite accumulating evidence, blood clots are not listed as a potential side effect of antipsychotic drugs.
The Lancet October 7, 2000;356:1219-1223.
In 1993 I was mistakenly diagnosed with a "mild psychosis" by a team of doctors at a city university hospital. I was in good health, physically. My only complaint was that I often felt scattered, and edgy. I self-admitted and, after about four days of evaluation, it was decided that I had a huge intelligence that was making me appear normal to the outside world but was in fact masking my "psychosis." I was immediately started on the drug, Haldol and, two days later, I was released. In very little time, I felt worse than I have even felt in my life: My world became colorless, flattened, two dimensional. I was cut off from my feelings. I begged the head of psychiatry, my therapist's therapist, to take me off this drug. I knew it was cause for this disconnection. He insisted I give it time to work. I felt as though I was walking around dead, and I was the only one who noticed it. Finally, because this disconnection was worse to me than death itself, I tried to take my own life. At the last minute, I called a friend, and she called the ambulance. I was released two days later. I called my therapist and told her I was going off the drug, no matter what. She gave me directions on doing it slowly. I was placed on anti-depressants and, after another year, I finally felt normal. I lost a year and a half of my life due to this misdiagnoses. A few years ago, I read an article stating that if Haldol is given incorrectly it can actually cause clinical depression. In early 2007, I was rushed to the ER because I was unable to breathe. I had been experiencing pain for over a year but, because I did not have insurance at the time, my doctor did not run a battery of tests. She did send me for an x-ray and an ultrasound, but these found nothing. An ER doc guessed that I might have a pulmonary embolism. In fact, I had "many." I was told that, had I waited much longer, I probably would have died. I was put on 7mg of warfarin and told I'd probably be on it for life
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