So Glaxo Smith Klein misrepresented adverse effects of paroxetine. This doesnt mean at all that the science behind SSRIs is "fraudulent". SSRIs are among the best researched psychopharmaceuticals. And it is true that benzos make anxiety worse, long term, but that doesnt mean that they arent a valuable medication to treat anxiety.

Prozac was always defective too. The German FDA refused to approve it, way back when.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14281643

The drug industry has a habit of coming out with a new "class" of drugs as soon as the patents for their old drugs expire. Or they patent a new combination for old over-the-counter chemicals. My father recently got prescribed something with a retail price of >$1000. He said he could buy the two OTC pills for about $15... this was something for his stomach + an nsaid, iirc.

The "German FDA" has certainly approved of fluoxetine (Prozac), which is simply sold under a different name there.

maybe they eventually approved it, but they passed on it in 1984:

  – Three years before Prozac received approval by the US 
  Food and Drug Administration in late 1987, the German BGA, 
  that country’s FDA equivalent, had such serious 
  reservations about Prozac’s safety that it refused to 
  approve the antidepressant based on Lilly’s studies 
  showing that previously nonsuicidal patients who took the 
  drug had a fivefold higher rate of suicides and suicide 
  attempts than those on older antidepressants, and a 
  threefold higher rate than those taking placebos. [1]

[1] http://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/media/boston_globe_prozac_revi...

Two more links from this site ("note-to-self"): https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/prozac-time-line/ https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/our-successes/advocacy-campai...

There's no "maybe" about it - Prozac is available in Germany, just under a different name.

>She took her last benzo (class of "anxiety" drug that makes anxiety worse over time)

Can you elaborate here please?

There are questions about long-term benzodiazepine use, and among the more reliable studied results is that their efficacy can decrease over time. Benzos are useful for acute care but depending on circumstances might not be a sound long-term treatment.

basically what tptacek said... Benzos' are sometimes useful for acute anxiety, but this is not how they're commonly used.

Benzos: A Dance With the Devil - https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/07/benzos-a-dance-with-the...

Benzodiazepine category - https://www.madinamerica.com/category/psychiatric-drugs/benz...

Wow, that's scary, the one about a grand mal seizure with Xanax in particular. I used to take that, but only for occasional acute anxiety, never on a regular basis. It seemed to help a lot, and unlike the SSRIs I've used, it didn't have any obvious side-effects at all. I never took it long enough to get any build-up though, just occasionally if I was having a really bad episode.