People Die from Constipation

Everyone, should know the truth about Clozapine, and all psychiatric drugs.  Drugs are approved by the FDA, and the FDA does not require medical professionals to report negative effects, adverse events, including fatalities, that people experience--not even from  the professional who prescribed the drug!  This is not acceptable.  The failure to require  adverse event reporting means  some of the most important information needed to assess the safety and effectiveness of FDA approved drugs in real world practice is purposely not being collected.

Two additional major failings of the FDA are the utter failure to regulate the marketing of prescription drugs so-called "truth in advertising" consumer protection laws are not applicable to prescription drugs--even those that are illegally marketed... Just "Ask your doctor if ___is right for you." 

People have died from chronic constipation caused by Clozapine, but as the following stories demonstrate, it also takes medical negligence. The adverse effect of chronic constipation is  well-documented in the professional literature; as is the cognitive damage Clozapine also causes which that can limit the patient's ability to articulate, or even know where the pain is coming from when they are in pain due to constipation. 

via Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network:
Sarah Crider was among 115 patients in the state's care who might have lived 

Alone in the darkness of a state mental hospital, Sarah Crider, 14, lay slowly dying.

She complained of stomach pain at 4:30 p.m. She vomited about 8:30. When the only physician on call at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta came at 9:20, Sarah had vomited again, but the doctor did not examine her, medical records suggest. She threw up around midnight and once more about 2 a.m., this time a bloody substance that resembled coffee grounds. But hospital workers did not enter Sarah's room again until 6:15 a.m. By then, it was too late.

A few hours later, two hospital employees drove to Cobb County to tell Joyce Dobson, Sarah's grandmother. Dobson adored Sarah for all her complexities: artistic but troubled, challenging but comic. Now she could think only of two nights earlier, when she had last visited Sarah and heard another patient's haunting scream.

I hope nobody killed her, Dobson blurted out.

In fact, what happened to Sarah was beyond anything Dobson could have imagined. here 

via: ISEPP

Florida plaintiff Deidra Sanbourne: Was her death caused by Clozapine-Induced Bowel Obstruction? Readers of the book Crazy deserve to know about the harm psychiatric drugs can cause.

an couple of excerpts:

Although The Miami Herald investigation does reveal many deaths that can be attributed to the neglect in Florida’s ALFs, Diedra Sanbourne’s death, as reported in the book Crazy, occurred from a bowel obstruction while being treated in  a psychiatric unit at Westchester General Hospital and not from neglect in a boarding home.

"A quick search on Medline revealed the medication Clozapine is used to treat severe cases of schizophrenia.  Clinical research suggests Clozapine has caused bowel  obstructions leading to death in schizophrenic patients."  read it here.