By Angela Mollard
Pictures: Gina Milicia.
After following a doctor’s advice, Hannah Mulcahy was thrown into a nightmare that almost ended in tragedy.
It’s a sweltering day in Melbourne, but Hannah Mulcahy is wearing long sleeves. Her friends are cooling off at the pool or the beach, but the thought of joining them and exposing her badly scarred arms is too painful for the teenager.
The thick, red, raised marks are the horrific results of 17-year-old Hannah taking antidepressants, prescribed by her GP for period pain and sleepless nights.
“I hate the scars. They’re a constant reminder of what happened to me,” she says.
As new statistics reveal that around 30,000 Aussie children aged 18 and under were prescribed antidepressants last year, Hannah’s story serves as a shocking example of what can go horribly wrong.
Hannah was 16 and suffering from severe period pains, headaches and sleeplessness when she went to see her GP in September 2007. After a 15-minute consultation the teenager was prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft, a contraceptive pill to regulate her hormones, and Valium to help her sleep. The doctor gave her some sample packs so she could start on them straight away, but they didn’t come with any patient information.
“The doctor never said, ‘I’m putting your daughter on antidepressants’. She just said they were approved as the safest drugs for kids,” says Hannah’s mum, Nicola.
The doctor told Hannah to take just half the dose at first, and then the full dose five days later. But she never got to the fifth day.
“After four days, everything exploded,” remembers Hannah. “I’d been feeling really agitated and irritable since taking the drugs, and suddenly I was kicking things for no reason. I was throwing books around the study.”
For more information about the Australian Consumer Patient Rights group, visit www.acpr.com.au
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