Comment from Anonymous

I support this petition’s goal to bring attention to the harm SSRIs have caused women during and after pregnancy. At 23, I was prescribed birth control pills to minimize intense menstrual pain. However, suddenly, I felt a new feeling of high anxiety and fell into despair. Fatigue overwhelmed me with a profound edge of agitation that quickly intensified. My body eventually adjusted to the birth control pill, with an edge of anxiety that didn’t go away. At 34, with the birth of a daughter. The doctors never tested for estrogen-dominance or my copper levels, so when I started prenatal vitamins, they added copper, along with the copper that came into support my pregnancy, and I suffered postpartum depression. Five years later, with a second pregnancy, my anxiety progressed into OCD behaviors, gradually driving me into adrenal fatigue. This pregnancy was more difficult than the first, with lower abdominal pain and back pain that radiated down my legs. I told my OBGYN how much I was struggling emotionally. She said I may be clouded by depressive feelings, and gave me a prescription for Prozac. I questioned taking Prozac during my pregnancy, and she assured me of the safety while also giving me the name of a psychologist and a clinic if I chose to abort. Immediately, I imploded after starting Prozac. Delusional thoughts about something being wrong with my baby surfaced, and as it continued to distort and catastrophize my reality, I scheduled an abortion out of despair. Feel comatose with a heavy veil over my face, and extreme fatigue, I started reliving the abortion with flashbacks and night terrors. I sought out a psychiatrist, who said the Prozac was too high a dosage and changed my prescription. The trauma of the abortion caused PTSD, and for the next seven years, doctors prescribed different drugs with varying dosages, including Effexor, Klonopin, Wellbutrin, Xanax, Adderall, Zoloft, and Lexapro. The drugs were doing little to nothing for my depression and worsened my anxiety. I had a racing mind and panic attacks, while, at the same time, I felt drained and numbed with side effects of weight gain and brain fog, and eventually gave up the career I had worked so hard to cultivate. I stopped taking the drugs and chose to live with the feeling of fatigue and anxiety. But when menopause came along, and I started hormone replacement drugs, depression raised its ugly head with brain fog. Not wanting to go back on antidepressants, I found doctors who treat depression and anxiety naturally with targeted nutrients. They tested via blood and urine and discovered that I am estrogen-dominant. So the added estrogen from birth control pills is what threw me for a loop and why depression returned from hormone replacement drugs. But my hormone-related symptoms were because I have a dysfunction where my body doesn’t metabolize copper properly. Postpartum depression was a result of copper coming in to support my pregnancy on top of prenatal vitamins with copper, and when I became pregnant the second time, the copper from my first pregnancy was still there, and layered on top of it, causing a build-up. When the excess copper had nowhere to go, it overflowed into my brain, disrupting my neurotransmitters. I was lucky to be alive because when copper levels are dangerously high, women have been known to kill themselves and/or their babies. Once on prescribed targeted nutrients, avoiding high copper foods, and getting off the hormone replacement drugs, my depression and anxiety gradually disappeared. Although there is a known correlation between estrogen and copper, mainstream doctors don’t test copper or estrogen levels, so the doctor who prescribed birth control pills and the doctor who prescribed Prozac were unaware how those drugs interacted with my dysfunctional system, which was a recipe for disaster. There was nothing wrong with my brain. I had a simple biochemical imbalance that was misdiagnosed as mental illness. My life was harmfully impacted due to mainstream doctors prescribing SSRIs without testing. It is unconscionable how much SSRIs are overprescribed, and how many non-psychiatric trained doctors write prescriptions for these harmful drugs. Stricter regulations on SSRIs need to be enforced, and insurance coverage for alternative non-pharmaceutical treatments must be implemented. Many individuals only take these drugs because they are covered by insurance.