People using psychiatric medications can experience greater physical health problems
Linda Chamberlain knows eight people with mental illness who have recently died and she says that medications and nutritional issues are to blame. “Some of these medications are giving people diabetes,” she recently told the Toronto Star newspaper. Ten years ago Linda was taking seven medications to deal with her own mental illness, was overweight, and had developed diabetes. Linda made changes in her life and she now leads workshops on exercise and healthy living at a community health centre in Toronto.
Physicians and patients have long known that some commonly prescribed medications—called ‘atypical antipsychotics’—can cause obesity, metabolic disorders, and diabetes, and a 2009 Canadian study also quantified patients’ increased risks for coronary heart disease.
We speak with Linda Chamberlain.
