Suicide Prozac 27/11/1988 U.S.A. Extremely High Levels of Med Found During Autopsy
Suicide Prozac 1988-11-27 U.S.A. Extremely High Levels of Med Found During Autopsy
http://web.archive.org/web/20130202060238/http://ssristories.com/show.php?item=1028
Summary:
MS. LOVETT: Good morning. My name is Heidi Lovett
and I'm here this morning to present testimony on one single
instance of a suicide in which I believe Prozac played a
significant role. I'm referring to the suicide of my husband
of 28 years, James Donald Lovett. It is not easy for me to
talk about my husband's suicide, not simply because I miss him
but because I think that by focusing on the circumstances of
his death it is easy to lose sight or distort the healthy,
vibrant part of his character.
James was a good husband, a good father, a good
brother to his sister, and a proud grandfather. His children
and his grandchildren were very close to him. They enjoyed
being in his company and admired him in many ways. But this
hearing is not about the husband I knew, but the victim of
suicide that he became.
So I must confront in this public
testimony a question I face privately every day: Why did my
husband take his own life?
I realize that I will never know the complete answe
to this question, but I'm not completely ignorant about it,
either. I'm convinced that my husband?s suicide was a complete
product of two factors. Throughout his life he struggled with
episodes of acute and, I can assure you, exceedingly painful
depression. To ease the pain, my husband did what millions of
victims of depression do; he sought professional help.
It was this treatment regimen that became the other
factor in my husband?s suicide. I should like to note that I
considered my husband?s willingness to seek out psychiatric
treatment to be his and my greatest asset in the war against
his depression. Not everyone who suffers from depression can
summon the Courage it requires to acknowledge that there is a
problem and to pursue a course of treatment. Yet my husband
did.
Counseling was part of his treatment and in April of
1988 Prozac was the other primary component of his therapy.
His physician psychiatrist put him on 20 mg of Prozac twice a
day and that?s what he was taking up to the day of his death.
Like many victims of depression, my husband was no
stranger to occasional thoughts of suicide. However, he did
not hesitate to signal the fact of suicidal thoughts to me or
to his sister and others close to him. Aware of his
depression, we did not take these warnings lightly, but we did
take some comfort in the fact that he was at least warning or
signaling his problem and that he had never, in fact, even
attempted to commit suicide.
This is one reason why his suicide on the eve of
last Thanksgiving is so terribly vexing to me. Neither I, his
children, nor anyone to whom he was close had an indication
that James was suffering from suicidal tendencies. When my
daughter returned home from school to find his body on the
bathroom floor of our home, she thought for a few fleeting
moments that he might be playing a practical joke on her. The
grim truth that shocked us then shocks us still.
Partly because his suicide came so unexpectedly and
partly because we have heard from media sources about a
potential link between Prozac and suicide, I requested an
autopsy and toxicology on my husband. I was, to put it
frankly, extremely troubled and angered by the results. The
toxicology report showed that the blood Prozac quantization
was at a level of 4100 ng. The reference range listed is a
2C mere 91 to 302 ng. The blood norfluoxetine quantization was
3200 ng. The reference range is at 72 to 258 ng. I am
appending a copy of this toxicology report. I mentioned this
Prozac level to my husband?s psychiatrist. I did not
.anticipate his reaction. Upon hearing the level, he said,
God, how could it get that high?
I stated at the beginning that I did not understand
how Prozac works, but I assumed that my husband?s psychiatrist
would know. The absence of any sign of suicidal distress from
my husband was uncharacteristic and I believe that Prozac
played an important role in the ultimate act.
If there is a link between suicide and Prozac, and
I believe that there is, then please let us think about
warning those who take Prozac and tell them about the
possibility of suicide and let physicians who prescribe
Prozac monitor blood levels in their patients.
DR. CASEY: Could you please conclude in the next
few seconds, please? Thank you.
MS. LOVETT: If monitoring cannot be established,
then I think Prozac should be taken off the market, maybe on
a temporary basis, until it can be established that it can be
a safe drug. It is too late for my husband, for myself, for
my family: We do not have anything to gain
But maybe someone else's life can be saved.
by being here.
Thank you for
this opportunity to testify.
DR. CASEY: Thank you.