The Medical Paper

Panorama received nearly 1,400 e-mails from viewers after the first investigation into Seroxat was aired in October 2002.

Several hundred of them were from people who were experiencing similar problems with addiction to the popular anti-depressant, and who were suffering from head shocks when attempting to withdraw.

These e-mails were both positive and negative, with many of them from people who claim to have become addicted to the anti-depressant and many from people who said that Seroxat had helped them.

40 per cent of those who said it helped tham also said they experienced problems with the drug.

Panorama sent hundreds of people a detailed questionaire about their experiences on Seroxat and received 293 replies.

Profound

These in depth replies were then sent to Charles Medawar of the group Social Audit, and his co-author Dr Andrew Herxheimer who wrote an analytical report into the value of the e-mails.

This report has been published in the International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine.

It concluded that "their collective weight was profound" and that the value of a large amount of data coming in at once may be greater than continuing to examine a slow trickle of reports.

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Panorama/Seroxat medical report
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