Have you or a loved one used Abilify and/or Abilify Maintena? If so, it’s important to know that a class action lawsuit was just started on behalf of all Canadians who used these medications.
Abilify is a medication use to treat disorders like Schizophrenia, Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar I Disorder; it’s known as an antipsychotic drug. It was approved for use back in 2009, and it’s since become one of the most popular drugs of its type. In 2010, only about 3,000 prescriptions were written for it in Canada. By just 2013, that had skyrocketed to over one million.
The issue is that both Abilify and Abilify Maintena are known as dopamine agonists. Scientific studies have found that they can make compulsive behaviours far more likely. Examples of these behaviours include:
— Compulsive gambling
— Compulsive spending
— Binge eating
— Compulsive sexual activity
When these things were noted, a safety review was carried out in Europe by the European Medicines Agency. As such, the drug had to be relabelled to warn users of the dangers and risks. This happened in October of 2012. In Canada, though, warnings were not put into place until November of 2015. This means that people could have been using it for a long time, and suffering very negative effects — which could, in some cases, ruin their lives — without knowing what was happening.
Since the class action lawsuit has now been started, it’s important for all people who have used the drug before the current warning labels were updated to know what rights they may have to compensation.
Source: Rochon Genova, “Class Action Launched On Behalf Of Canadian Users Of Abilify And Abilify Maintena,” accessed June 17, 2016
