One Mother, Three Children with Birth Defects

Washington, DCIt is certainly sensational and beyond the normal scope of pharmaceutical intervention. However, the plight of a young mother and the affect various drugs and SSRI antidepressants had on her children only serves to galvanize public opinion with regard to SSRI birth defects and birth defects in general.

Her name is Teresa Cooper. She was a resident of a care facility known as Kendall House, in Gravesend, Kent. It was a home for wayward girls run by the Church of England and according to an investigative program broadcast on Radio 4 the folks who ran Kendall House used a range of drugs to keep the girls in line.

In Cooper's case, files from the former Kendall House reveal that the girl was given medication at least 1,248 times over a period of 32 months. Medications included antidepressants and tranquilizers, together with up to 10 times the recommended dose of Valium.

Other residents were said to have been administered similarly high doses of medication.

Sadly, ten of the girls who stayed at Kendall House went on to have children with birth defects.

Teresa Cooper, who left the home at 16 in 1984, went on to have three children—and all three were born with birth defects. Her eldest son was born with respiratory problems, a second son is blind and has learning disabilities and Cooper's daughter was born with a cleft palate and short lower jaw.

While most would agree this is an extreme case, it does illustrate the potential for birth defects in association with the use of medication.

It's a bit of a Catch 22 for doctors who have patients suffering from depression. A woman already depressed and about to enter a pregnancy, could experience a worsening of her depression throughout the course of carrying her child. Many doctors urge their depressed patients to avoid becoming pregnant until the depression is successfully treated.

Should that treatment include drug therapy such as Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac or Zoloft there is a risk of depression returning if the drugs are stopped. So do you leave the patient on antidepressants during a pregnancy and risk injury to the fetus? Or do you stop the drugs and risk the mother, in an actively depressed state, doing harm to both herself and her unborn child?

Doctors maintain each case should be treated individually. With a severely depressed patient, stopping the drug could result in a greater risk to the mother and hence her unborn child, than the potential risk to the child by continuing the drug.

However, beyond that is the overall drug dependency of Americans at the behest of pharmaceutical companies bent on driving up profits and market share by convincing perfectly normal people that they need drugs to get through the day.

Critics of the "Melanie Blocker Stokes Mom's Opportunity to Access Health, Education, Research and Support for Postpartum Depression Act of 2009"—the so-called 'Mother's Act—claim that profit and access is the true motivation behind the proposed legislation. Postpartum depression and psychosis is an ongoing worry that drug companies—and those legislators who have large pharmaceutical companies in their jurisdictions—feel they can resolve, together with substantial profit.

Critics counter that the dramatic increase in the use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants is putting babies at needless risk. Links to SSRI drugs and birth defects in children have already been established.

The story of Teresa Cooper and her three stricken children is admittedly an extreme case given the toxic soup of drugs the young woman was given at the now closed home for girls in England.

However, the story underscores the risk for SSRI birth defects from SSRI antidepressants, and the path America appears to be taking with regard to increasing the availability of drugs and drug therapy geared to expectant mothers. Birth defects are not only tragic; they can affect a family for a lifetime—not to mention a lifetime of limitations and hardship for the stricken child as he progresses through his life. Hardship that might have been avoided, had his mother not been prescribed an SSRI drug. Are drugs an aid, or a scourge? It's a fine line that a qualified SSRI birth defect attorney can help you identify. It's an important call to make, given the profits enjoyed by the pharmaceutical giants. If an SSRI drug has compromised your child's life, you should seek damages.