74. Katinka Blackford Newman: The Pill That Steals Lives

Sep 28, 2021

Katinka Blackford Newman is an award-winning documentary film director, journalist, and author. While going through a divorce, Katinka took an antidepressant. Not unusual – except that things didn't turn out quite as she expected. She went into a four-day toxic psychosis with violent hallucinations, imagining she had killed her children, and in fact attacking herself with a knife.

Caught up in a real-life nightmare when doctors didn't realize she was suffering side effects of more pills, she went into a year-long decline. Soon she was wandering around in an old dressing gown, unable to care for herself, and dribbling. She nearly lost everything, but luck stepped in; treated at another hospital, she was taken off all the medication and made a miraculous recovery within weeks.

Since then, Katinka has researched the side effects of antidepressants and interviewed some of the world’s leading experts. Her best-selling book The Pill that Steals Lives has been featured on Radio 5 Live, BBC London, Good Morning Britain, the Victoria Derbyshire Show, and in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, and The British Journal of Psychiatry.

In 2017 her research was made into a BBC Panorama program A Prescription for Murder which investigated whether an antidepressant could be the cause of one of the worst mass killings of this century. She is also the co-founder of a not-for-profit organization called Antidepressant Risks.

Today we chat about... 

• How Katinka lost a year of her life after taking Lexapro
• Katinka lacerating her arm with a knife
• The different medications Katinka was put on to try and treat the adverse effects of Lexapro
• How antidepressants are no more effective than a placebo
• The role drug companies play in the chemical imbalance theory
• How Katinka lost the ability to love, feel, care for herself, and show up for her children
• What mental health looks like in the UK
• The importance of recognizing red flags to adverse effects to medications 
• What shocked Katinka most when doing her research
• How Katinka lost the will to live and her constant thought of “I want to kill myself”
• The realization Katinka had when she reflected on her father's suicide
• Why for-profit mental health services can be a dangerous situation

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