Sandoz and Accord marketed their products with no mention of depression or suicidal ideation
Nov. 18, 2025
Dear Friends:
G’day indeed!
In the latest leg of its seemingly unstoppable ‘round-the-world trajectory, PFS awareness has taken root in The Land Down Under.
On Friday, The Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) published the results of its nation’s first-ever probe into ever-easier access to finasteride via telehealth companies, and the havoc it’s wreaking on men’s well-being.
The investigative report by Tynan King, titled The Cost of Keeping Your Hair, broke on the network’s Background Briefing podcast as the first of a four-part “Before and After” series examining solutions to often-sensationalized health and aesthetic problems offered by digital vendors.
ABC also ran a 2,100-word companion print report by King, headlined Hair-loss Drug Finasteride Causing Psychological Side Effects in Some Men.
With this exposé, Australia joins the ranks of eight other nations whose regulatory agencies and/or media have this year published investigations into finasteride safety vis-à-vis the drug’s potential to cause neuropsychiatric side effects including depression and suicidality: Canada, US, UK, France, Spain, Israel, Italy and Russia.
Additionally, in May, the European Medicines Agency released the results of its five-month deep dive into the causal relationship between 5-ARIs and suicidality, writing that “Finasteride tablets can cause depressed mood, depression or suicidal thoughts.” In all, the agency turned up 313 cases of suicidal ideation probably or possibly stemming from finasteride use.
Fatalities surface during probe
To replicate the experience of a bloke looking to nip his incipient hair loss in the bud, King set out to score some finasteride from Pilot, one of Australia’s largest dispensers of the prescription medication, which last year boasted $24 million US in revenue.
“Have you seen their ads? They’re all over social media,” the reporter tells Background Briefing host Thomas Oriti.
“Finasteride is marketed as this wonder drug. It’ll give you a Hollywood hairline, it’ll make you popular with the ladies. And many potential users know that [it] can cause erectile dysfunction and low libido, which the telehealth companies are upfront about. But I’ve been told there are other possible side effects that haven’t been mentioned.”
After completing the platform’s online survey and uploading some headshots, King was called by a Pilot doctor, who recommended a combination finasteride-minoxidil product.
“I’m also offered the option of taking finasteride orally—in a capsule—or topically. The doctor says that topical is safer, but most people choose oral because it’s easier. So that’s what I go with,” he recounts.
“I’m told about low libido, breast swelling, mood changes, and erectile dysfunction which can persist after stopping the drug. And I’m told that these are very, very rare,” says King of the doctor’s side-effect disclosures for finasteride. Not a word, however, about depression or suicidal ideation.
Five days later, King’s Rx, Viatris 1—a generic finasteride tablet from Accord Healthcare, which is owned by Indian pharmaceutical giant Intas—arrived in the mail, complete with a QR code linking to the product leaflet. But again, no mention of depression or suicidal ideation.
“What people are warned about before they’re prescribed finasteride is important. In Australia, it’s really patchy. One of the reasons for that is, the different manufacturers of the drug give different warnings,” King tells Oriti.
“If you buy Propecia, which is the original finasteride that Merck invented, its product information will have a warning about depression and suicidal ideation. But if you buy the Viatris brand from Pilot, you don’t get that warning because it’s made by a different manufacturer, here in Australia.”
The same goes for Finasta, another generic finasteride product, this one from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Sandoz Group AG, Background Briefing found.
When King reached out to Pilot for comment on the mismatched warnings, the company told him that it does warn patients about the risks of serious mental-health side effects. But in King’s case, because he wrote in his application that he had no history of mental-health issues, the doctor didn’t bring it up.
So the reporter contacted Australian drug-regulatory authority the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for its take. Initially, the agency told him that labeling among all finasteride products should match, thus leaving no room for confusion. When King pointed out that that’s clearly not the case, the TGA fessed up to being in the process of investigating non-compliance issues surrounding generic finasteride.
“There’s some urgency here,” says King. “Because the TGA has already received three reports of suicide in Australia linked to finasteride.”
Where women glow and men suffer
“European men are being warned to stop taking finasteride right away and get in touch with their doctors if they start feeling depressed or suicidal,” Barbara Mintzes, Professor of Evidence-based Pharmaceutical Policy at The University of Sydney, tells ABC in its print report. “An Australian man taking the same medicine is getting no warning at all that this could be because of finasteride.”
Six such men stepped forward to share their finasteride experiences with Background Briefing. One of them is Andre Eid, 28, who was prescribed finasteride three years ago by Ashley & Martin, a hair-loss clinic based in Perth.
Although he took the drug for just three weeks, Andre developed a host of side effects including anxiety, gynecomastia, fatigue, numbness and muted libido. “When I reached the point of climax, I realized that there was no pleasure. It was very bland,” he tells King.
Today, some of his physical symptoms have disappeared. Not so, the neuropsychiatric ones.
Another finasteride patient, Angus (not his real name), 37, took the drug in 2021 on the advice of a friend. Within a few months, he was suffering from dozens of side effects across all three spectrums—physical, sexual and neuropsychiatric—including gastrointestinal distress, erectile dysfunction and brain fog.
In the months after he quit, many of those symptoms grew worse. His anhedonia was particularly pronounced.
“It was like living in color. Then all of a sudden someone turns the lights off and everything is black and white. It was that feeling of, like, even if someone told me I’d won the lottery,I wouldn’t really feel excited,” he tells King.
That in turn led Angus to consider taking his own life.
“I was Googling the most painless ways to do it,” he says.
Finasteride was originally developed by Merck & Co., Inc., and first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1993 as Proscar (5 mg, for enlarged prostate), and again in 1997, as Propecia (1 mg, for hair loss).
In June 2021, Merck spun off its Organon subsidiary as an independent public company (NYSE: OGN). Founded in the Netherlands in 1923, Organon bills itself as a “global health care company dedicated to making a world of difference for women, their families and the communities they care for.”
Among the Merck products Organon acquired in the deal were Proscar and Propecia. To report adverse events for either finasteride product, call the Organon Service Center at (844)674-3200, or email Service_Center@Organon.com.
Anyone living in the US who suffers from PFS should also report his or her symptoms to the US FDA. Anyone living outside the US who suffers from PFS should report his or her symptoms to the US FDA as well as to his or her local DRA, as directed on our Report Your Side Effects page.
If you or a loved one are suffering from PFS, and feeling depressed or unstable, please don’t hesitate to contact the PFS Foundation as soon as possible via our Patient Support hotline: social@pfsfoundation.org
Thank you.