Like the repercussions from the senseless suicide of Thomas Kingston, husband of Lady Gabriella Kingston, second cousin to King Charles. As covered by Freedom, Kingston had no suicidal thoughts or attempts until he took psychotropic drugs. Then, on February 25, 2024, without warning, he shot himself in the head.
“I believe anyone taking pills such as these needs to be made more aware of the side effects to prevent any future deaths,” a heartbroken Lady Gabriella said. “If this could happen to Tom, this could happen to anyone.”
“Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact my office. Yours Sincerely, [redacted].”
The Gloucestershire Senior Coroner Katy Skerrett likewise pronounced the antidepressants Thomas Kingston had been taking—Zoloft and then Celexa—guilty.
But we do make people aware of the side effects, the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has now protested in response to a letter from the Senior Coroner raising concerns about suicide as a side effect of antidepressant drugs.
After extending his or her condolences to Mr. Kingston’s family, the chief executive (name redacted) of MHRA assured Ms. Skerrett that warnings have been in place for over 20 years concerning the suicide risk connected with SSRIs, the type of antidepressants in question, for patients under the age of 25.
Mr. Kingston was 45.
The chief executive wrote that, two years before Mr. Kingston’s suicide, the MHRA reached out to the Commission on Human Medicines on the need to gather experts in the field “to review how the risk of suicidal behaviors is communicated in the patient leaflets to establish if this can be improved or if it would be more helpful for patients to receive this information in different formats within the regulatory framework.”
That was in 2022. The first meeting of experts didn’t happen until two years later, too late for Lady Gabriella to “be made more aware of the side effects.”
But “round table meetings involving patient charities and families of those bereaved by suicide will be held in March 2025,” MHRA assured the coroner. Possibly Lady Gabriella could attend those, appeared to be the hint.
In the meantime, however, the chief executive is promising the coroner that “your report of Mr. Kingston’s adverse reaction to SSRI medicines has been added to the Yellow Card database (reference number ADR 34440796)” and “Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact my office. Yours Sincerely, [redacted].”
But another ghost had already come back to haunt the MHRA. This one from a generation ago.
On August 6, 2003, Kim Witczak picked up the phone and was informed by her father that her husband of 10 years, “Woody,” had been found dead, hanging from the rafter of their garage. Woody, 37, had been on Zoloft—the same antidepressant as Lady Gabriella’s husband—for five weeks. And, as in the recent tragedy, there was no warning that this would happen. No history of depression, no suicide note. The drug had been prescribed not for depression, but because Woody was having trouble sleeping in anticipation of his dream job as an electrical engineer at a start-up.
Ms. Witczak couldn’t account for her husband’s death until the coroner asked her if he had been on any drugs or medication.
Then she saw a headline in the newspaper saying that the UK’s MHRA had determined there was a link between antidepressants and suicides in young people.
For the next two decades, Witczak has been speaking, writing, talking to Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services and media around the world, warning of the lethal consequences of these dangerous drugs. Last year, she read with interest of the tragedy of Lady Gabriella, and of Senior Coroner Katy Skerrett’s findings of the connection between Thomas Kingston’s suicide and the antidepressants he was taking. Ms. Skerrett’s courage sparked Ms. Witczak to weigh in as well.
Now a consumer advocate on the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, Kim Witczak wrote a letter this January to the British Medical Journal, in which she pleaded for coroners to release information on the role of psychotropics in suicide and mass shooting cases. She had previously been stonewalled by coroners who refused to cooperate, alternatively brushing off the numerous deaths associated with antidepressants as “anecdotes,” or invoking the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, aka HIPAA, a law protecting patient privacy. Witczak’s point was that saving the lives of future and current patients should supersede the privacy concerns of deceased ones.
The urgency of Kim Witczak’s decades-long battle to expose the suicidal outcomes of antidepressants by the multibillion-dollar drug industry is more pressing now than ever. As you read this, about 13 percent of American adults take the kind of drugs that widowed Witczak, Lady Gabriella and countless others. In England, 85 million antidepressant prescriptions were issued in 2022–23, up from 58 million in 2015–16.
Some of those prescriptions were written for children as young as four.
The MHRA, which knew about the dangers of antidepressants as early as 2003, announced in May 2024 it would be initiating a review of safety warnings for 30 such antidepressants “as figures point to hundreds of deaths linked to suicide and self-harm among people prescribed these drugs,” according to The Independent.
It took 21 more death-drenched years before the MHRA finally got serious about the possibility that the murder weapon was the well-marketed, profit-friendly little pill in the plastic bottle marked “Zoloft” or “Prozac” or any other antidepressant that—like a killer unwittingly invited into the home in a horror movie—silently but efficiently does the job.
This February, when a podcaster asked her what was the first word that came to mind when she hears “Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Lexapro and Celexa,” Ms. Witczak answered with not one, but three words: “Corruption. Lies. Misled.”
We can think of a few words, too, Ms. Witczak.
Unfortunately, they’re not printable here.
