How to have Extraordinary Relationships When the Drugs Don't Work - One Woman’s Descent into the Madness of Antidepressants | Katinka Blackford Newman (S4 - E5)
Katinka Blackford Newman is a London-based documentary filmmaker, author, journalist, and life coach.
She trained with the BBC and has worked on a variety of high-profile factual programmes for broadcasters such as BBC, Discovery, ITV and Channel 4.
In 2012, during a personal crisis connected to divorce and insomnia, she was prescribed an antidepressant which triggered a severe adverse reaction.
The experience nearly cost her life and sparked her deep involvement in exploring medication safety.
After a year of intensive treatment and recovery off all the drugs, she began investigating antidepressant side effects and advocating for greater awareness.
Katinka founded Antidepressant Risks, a platform aimed at giving voice to people affected by psychiatric drug harm, collecting stories, and promoting more informed consent in prescribing.
She is also a published author: her book The Pill That Steals Lives recounts her ordeal and research into the risks of psychiatric medications.
Her work has been featured in national media and was adapted into a BBC Panorama episode titled “A Prescription for Murder”.
Beyond her advocacy and writing, Katinka now also works as a mental fitness life coach, helping professionals manage overwhelm, develop resilience, and reclaim direction in mid-life transitions.
Throughout her career, Katinka remains committed to telling human stories with empathy, exposing hidden risks in medicine, and supporting people to find agency over their mental and physical health.
Key points of the episode:
PART 1
- How, because of her personal development, she kind of became the "poster girl" for a marriage split up. At first.
- How she started taking sleeping tablets to cope.
- How she was given a diagnosis of depression and prescribed anti-depressants....
- ...and how she had a rare toxic shock.
- ....and how her mind went into psychosis.
- How the medical professionals did not entertain the idea that it was the antidepressants that caused it.
- How it became so desperate she decided to take her life....
- ....and what stopped her.
- The eventual joyful resolution.
- How she then used her investigative journalist training to change the course of her career.
- How the drug companies have known for years about this.
- The unbelievable information she has found out since...
- How the book was turned into an episode of Panorama.
- How she was inundated by people who told her their similar stories.
- How she set up a charity called "Antidepressant Risks"
PART 2
- How she has this knowledge she can never forget and the responsibility she feels.
- How the transformation was immediate and extraordinary.
- How it was almost like a rebirth.
- How there was a lot going on in her personal sphere.
- How her children know more about drug side effects than most medics!
- How she has recognised empowering and disempowering beliefs, and catastrophisation in her thinking.
- How she is now able to consciously change her thought process, and how fear is no longer in it.
Has this podcast inspired you and would you like to learn more?
You can reach out to Lucy, love coach, relationship counsellor, couples counsellor extraordinaire and author of "How to have extraordinary relationships with absolutely everybody".....
On:http://www.lucycavendishlovecoach.com/