Great reporting. Here's my usual stock response to this--

I wonder why Hollander doesn't mention the following on his little Prozac-press junket:

1)SSRIs, along with the majority of psychoactive drugs, increase permeability of the blood-brain barrier, aka, "cerebrovascular permeability" (for those who want the insy-poo professional code in order to google the phenomenon). I was told that this could theoretically allow circulating mercury, other heavy metals and large bodied viruses to invade the brain-- i.e., everything that our kids already have enough of, thanks. This is why Prozac, other SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs have been investigated as co-therapies with chemotherapy for brain tumors: the psych drugs allow more chemotherapy drugs to enter the brain which otherwise would be filtered out by the cerebrovascular barrier.

For mercury/metal toxic kids, the thinking seems to be that mercury gets sequestered throughout the body as well as entering the brain. Some gets sequestered in organs and other tissues and can sometimes break free, circulate and migrate to more harmful zones. Opening up the BBB would seem to be an invitation in this case.

2) Prozac, like other SSRIs and all psychoactive drugs, kill brain cells, particularly rapidly dividing cells-- which can be found in abundance in the developing brain. This is so true that SSRIs-- aside from being investigaged as compliments to chemotherapy-- have been investigated as direct chemotherapy agents themselves: the drugs theoretically kill rapidly dividing cancer cells. Too bad the drugs are apparently even more efficient at killing healthy brain cells.

3) As many as 7 to 10% of children taking SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs will experience mania, which is a precurser to "akathesia". According to psychiatric literature, akathesia is an inner sense of torture and restlessness which can itself lead to violent or suicidal psychosis, sometimes permanent. A formerly mildly depressed, overacheiving fourteen year old girl in a Lilly Prozac trial became permanently, violently psychotic after two weeks of exposure and had to be institutionalized. This information, along with thousands of other cases, have not been included in most literature on the drugs through the same kinds of number-massaging that the vaccine/autism community has become so familiar with. Not all cases of drug-induced akathesia are so gradual: Eric Harris had been on Luvox for some time before he began mounting the attack against Columbine. He was reportedly a very nice kid prior to drug "therapy". These stories are repeated by the hundreds in the U.S. alone ( http://www.ssristories.com ).

There are many word games issued by drug company science claiming that the high suicide rates and rates of violent incidents on these drugs are only reflections of the underlying disorders of those taking them. The problem with this is that the stats for self-harm and violence are equivalent for drug-exposed individuals with no previous histories of depression or abnormal thinking or behavior, such as those who were prescribed the drugs for migraines or insomnia.

4)Brain cell death is often experienced by individuals as "euphoria". In other words, just because it feels good doesn't mean it's doing good. The euphoria experienced by some people in early stages of taking some of these drugs is not the "therapeutic effects" of the drugs but often the sensation of a withering brain. The same mechanism is true for LSD, which was also once believed to be "therapeutic" (and was also first destributed by Eli Lilly).

5) Other than temporary emotional painkilling, there are no proven therapeutic effects of the drugs. The serotonin theory, like the dopamine theory of schizophrenia, is junk science. Of the hundreds of brain chemicals which are scarcely understood, serotonin was chosen as significant because a drug which impacted it made an Eli Lilly lab technician high one day.

Jeffrey LaCasse and Jonathan Leo did a marvelous research project which attempted to trace medical journal and general press claims that antidepressants "repaired imbalanced brain chemicals" to any legitimate source, any even compelling research. What they found instead was a house of cards: claims built upon claims built upon, in the end, drug company literature. They forced several "drug experts" and journalists to admit that when they spouted the catch phrase "corrects brain chemical imbalance" in regards to SSRIs, there was no actual published material to back this up. Press on the study:
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/12/chemical-imbalance-scientifically.html
Actual study:
http://tinyurl.com/2g4kzy

6)Prozac is known to cause dependency and can have an amphetamine-like effect on the brain, including increased tolerance. SSRIs in general, like other psychotropes, are addictive. For a relevant if indirect example, Kurt Cobain credited his Ritalin exposure in childhood with setting him up for a lifetime of addictive tendencies. His story is statistically founded, since substance abuse patterns for children exposed to psychiatric drugs are far higher than average-- even when "treatment" with these drugs was not for depression or "mental disability" (ie, for migraines or insomnia).

7) SSRIs, like Ritalin, are part of the very profitable chain of the practice of "polypharmacy". It goes like this: the child takes Ritalin or Prozac or something else. Some months later, the child's behavior begins to disintegrate, worsening symptoms appear, possibly mania, irritability, aggression or deepening depression, sleeplessness, refusal to eat-- any number of things. The prescribing doctor announces that the initial drug has ever-so-helpfully uncovered further "underlying disorders" which, of course, require more drugs! This is how some children in foster care end up on eighteen psychotropes by their teen years. It happens to regular kids all the time and in many ways represents a portion of the skyrocketing rates of cognitive disabilities among children aside from vaccine and industrial toxicity (see Sharna Olfman's "Bipolar Children").

8) Prozac, like other SSRIs and other classes of psychoactive drugs can cause previously unseen behavior such as self-injuries (cutting or trichotillomania, etc.) in perfectly NT kids. The drugs can cause emotional flattening, reduction of compassion, robotic behavior, obsessive thinking and OCDs-- so just imagine what they can do to vaccine-injured children who already may struggle with the above behaviors.

9) Prozac, like many psychotropes, not only causes some external behaviors in common with autism but effects the brain in similar ways to mercury and other vaccine and environmental toxins. Almost all-- possibly all- psych drugs cause or worsen mitochondrial dysfunction. That would be the same mito dysfunction linked to Hannah Poling's autism. There are many, many more overlaps. Prozac and other drugs are, for children with autism, a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle in terms of brain damaging effects. It's not an exaggeration to say that SSRIs and certain other psychotropes represent "pathways" to some symptoms of autism and some can outright cause it (Depakote).

With all due respect to the parent who must put an aggressive child on psych meds as a last resort....
It is the epitome of evil to cause a disorder then profit from it, as Pharmaceuticals have done with unchecked vaccines and regressive Autism.
Advertising SSRIs with the word "low dose" as they have done with the word "trace" in vaccines. And minimizing a laundry list of potential side effects. Targeting marketing to schools and frustrated parents of ASD kids.
This should be marked shameless and inhumane!

All physicians know that as a child grows, the same medicine needs to titrate up in order to be effective.
So where does that leave a 4 year old when he is 18 or 54 for the matter?
The fact is, psyche meds like anti-psychotics and SSRIs only serve to quell symptoms.
Some of them reflecting the rabid GI maladies that plague our children.
How horrible to mask over *treatable* GI disorders like burning reflux or Clostrida bacteria with a psyche med THAT DOES NOT HEAL.
Totally callous and totally cruel.

The typical path on SSRIs is low dose and then a cocktail of meds to focus, sleep and manage moods, all very difficult to disengage from.
But a watershed of profit for drug makers.

Our children have created a cottage industry for pharmaceutical drugs and professionals who profit off them.
Enough is enough.
Before I would lay my ASD child on the alter of "Prozac for life" or a drug cocktail to cope, I would ask this question:
Is there some other way?

Signed, a mother who has managed meltdowns and mood swings for years with 5HTP,Oxytocin and SAMe - only to see them disappear as my child recovers from Mercury poisoning.

Serotonin and Nutrient Availability
http://www.enzymestuff.com/serotonin.htm to read about 5HTP, natural and effective for Serotonin re-uptake.
SSRI medications, 5-HTP, and tryptophan work similarly on serotonin - to increase it. But the SSRIs increase it by 'forcing' the serotonin your body produces to stay in the nerve synapse longer, so your body sees more serotonin in the nerves than was originally produced. 5-HTP and tryptophan help your body produce more serotonin to begin with. The nerves then see and work with this higher amount.

2 months ago my son had a serious breakdown. He's been on Risperodal for about 6 months, but it seemed he had grown tolerant of it, so we took him off the meds. We were going to attempt to get him back on the GFCF diet (more on that later) and see how he did. Well, he didn't tolerate it too well. He started the self harming behavior and we had to check him into the psych ward at Cook's Children's Hospital in Fort Worth. We went with their recommendation to slowly ween him off his meds before doing the GFCF (which, now that I look back, was a very good idea, and they seemed quite open to the diet). We got him home and then went to a local quack for a follow up. He suggested that we put my son on Prozac. I was appalled, to say the least. No, let's not find a way to cure these kids, lets turn them into zombies and not worry about it! That way, pHARMa can still make lotsa money off of us.

We are getting ready now to take him completely off the meds, and during the summer, he's going strictly GFCF. I might come on here and beseech all of you for pointers on how to maintain both mine and my wife's sanity.