Psychiatric News

Psychiatrist Weirdo Exposed

2006-06-01T10:38:00.000+10:00

Psychiatrist Dr. Jose Valladares of the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, USA has been arrested for sending pictures, of his penis amongst other things, to a girl whom he knew to be only 14 years old. He also solicited sex from her.

Valladares has been the subject of a two month predator investigation. The ‘14 year old girl’ turned out to be a Tequesta Police Department detective.

Psych Drugs Supposed to Treat Depression in Fact Lead to Suicides

2006-05-31T12:32:00.000+10:00

GlaxoSmithKline and the U.S. FDA have sent a letter to doctors warning that the antidepressant Paxil could increase the risk of suicidal behavior in young adults.

During clinical trials testing the drug, there were 11 suicide attempts made by participants taking Paxil, compared to only one suicide attempt among those taking a placebo. The 18-30 age group was at the highest risk, accounting for eight of the 11 Paxil-related incidents.

Most antidepressants currently have labels warning patients of the risk of suicidal behavior. The FDA has stressed that patients taking Paxil should be carefully monitored.

New York Times May 12, 2006

Psychiatrist Pays Hush Money

2006-05-30T12:20:00.000+10:00

Psychiatrist John Owen Honey from Footscray in Victoria, Australia is being investigated by the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria for sexually taking advantage of one of his femal patients, and then buying her silence with $100,000. Apparently the price for a gross abuse of trust is a bit higher.

The hearing is continuing today.

Psychiatrist to Celebrities Suspended?

2006-05-29T06:42:00.000+10:00

The following is an extract from an email I have just received. Does anyone out there have any more information on this?

"Another interesting case coming up at the General Medical Council is that of Massimo Ricci, psychiatrist to celebrities. I have no idea what he is supposed to have done but it must be pretty serious because they have suspended his registration pending a hearing. Someone told me that it has been hushed up by the media."

Top Psych On The Run

2006-05-28T15:45:00.000+10:00

Psychiatrist Tonmoy Sharma, senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London UK has been busted for fraud and for lying about his credentials.

He is accused of attempting to get data in a drug trial changed as well as of obtaining a free supply of the psych drug Clozaril for a study which he subsequently then sold for tens of thousands of pounds. He also claimed to be a professor which was untrue.

At one time Sharma was offered the Chair of psychiatry at University College London. The institute of Psychiatry in an attempt to hush the matter up conducted its own enquiry which exonerated Sharma of any wrongdoing.

This exoneration was ignored by the government health watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency who have proceeded with charges. Sharma has fled the UK for India.

Psych Goes Down for Drugs and Fraud

2006-05-26T13:44:00.000+10:00

Former Beach psychiatrist gets 3½-year term in drug, fraud case
By AMY JETER, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 25, 2006

NORFOLK — A former Virginia Beach psychiatrist was sentenced Wednesday to 3½ years in federal prison for unlawfully distributing prescription narcotics and improperly billing Medicaid.

Jeremy A. Stowell, 64, had pleaded guilty to illegally prescribing OxyContin, methadone and vicoprofen and to charging Medicaid, including for some patient visits that never occurred.

District Judge Raymond A. Jackson ordered Stowell to pay a $20,000 fine and $32,929 restitution to the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services. The judge also barred Stowell from employment in any medical profession.

“The court would probably consider you a blue-chip drug dealer,” Jackson said. “No sound physician would do what you did.”

In April 2004, Stowell distributed 10 tablets of vicoprofen to a person “not having legitimate medical need,” according to court papers, and in January 2005, the physician prescribed 60 OxyContin tablets and 150 methadone tablets for a patient who was purportedly out of state rather than at an appointment. That patient was an undercover officer.

In the health care fraud charge, Stowell billed Medicaid for an appointment that a patient already had paid for, appointments the patient did not attend and appointments in which the patient sent someone else on their behalf. In those cases, too, the patient was an undercover officer.

Stowell also charged Medicaid after he was barred from participating in federal health care programs after a mail fraud conviction in 1994.

Stowell, who acquired a Virginia medical license in 1970, surrendered it last summer at the behest of the state Board of Medicine.

According to reports from the board, Stowell had prescribed drugs to patients with histories of narcotics abuse without properly monitoring them and to patients who he knew were sharing the drugs with others. In some cases, he didn’t document the reason the drugs were needed, according to the report.

On Wednesday, a licensed clinical social worker testified about Stowell’s compassion and his work helping adolescents. “It will be a tragic loss to the community to not have him in practice,” Susan Avery testified.

After the hearing, Stowell’s attorney, Franklin A. Swartz, said his client was relieved. “He wants to get his sentence over with and get on with his life.”

I'm right about anti-depressants, says Cruise

2006-05-24T21:02:00.000+10:00

Indo-Asian News Service

London,, May 22, 2006

Tom Cruise is refusing to back down from his stand against psychiatry and anti-depressants, saying they harm people.

According to Contactmusic, Cruise, who is a devout Scientologist, wants to make people aware of the harm they are in for even though he knows that his opinions are unpopular.

He says: "I know this is controversial. And people don't have to listen to me. But they should find out about this for themselves. I really do care about people, and I care about the way their lives are being harmed by these drugs."

"I am not saying that women, men and children don't come up against problems in life. But drugs aren't the solution. There's this huge industry, this machine, pushing us to hurry up and put our kids on drugs. Well, you know what I say to that machine? I say screw you.

"Controversy doesn't bother me because I know what I am saying is right."

You're a good man Mr Cruise. My wife and children loves your movies also.

Psychiatric Fraud

2006-05-18T11:09:00.000+10:00

Former Charlotte psychiatrist Warren H. Williams was sentenced this week to a year and a day in federal prison after pleading guilty to health-care fraud and illegal distribution of a controlled substance without a medical purpose.

State-Sponsored Child Abuse

2006-05-17T12:56:00.000+10:00

The following was sent to me by a friend. It was put out by Casey Research. There is an email address for them at the bottom. One of the problems of convincing people who are still skeptical about how widespread psychiatric abuse is is that, being decent and honest people themselves, they cannot imagine that people of pure evil exist in the world. Not all people who are pure evil are psychiatrists, but the fake profession of psychiatry sure has more than its fair share of these spiritual goons.
______________
State-Sponsored Child Abuse

Of course you have heard of the Nazi Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele, who became infamous for conducting grueling medical experiments on concentration camp inmates during WWII. Some of his victims were children. He tested unsafe drugs on them, injected them with lethal germs, removed their organs and limbs and performed sex change operations on them. His primary interest were identical twins.

Thank goodness something like that could never happen here. Or could it?

While the U.S. mainstream media eagerly report on every new case of child molestation, abuse, kidnapping, or murder, they’re strangely silent about the many historical and not-so-historical cases of child abuse for scientific purposes, condoned and/or sponsored by modern, “civilized” governments.

Take the Canadian “Duplessis Orphans,” for starters. In the 1940s and ‘50s, between 1,500 and 20,000 (some say up to 50,000) children living in Catholic orphanages in Quebec were subject to severe abuse. Practically overnight and without good reason, perfectly healthy children were declared mentally ill or retarded and entire orphanages were converted into psychiatric wards.

The reason, as reported in the Gazette in 2002: “Between 1945 and 1960, the federal government paid out 70 cents a day per orphan to orphanages. Psychiatric hospitals received a subsidy of $2.25 per day, per patient.”

Hervé Bertrand, one of the victims, remembers how a doctor visited his third-grade class and asked him what the word “compare” meant. “I didn't know,” remembers Bertrand. “We hadn't studied it yet. That's how it was decided that I was retarded.” A lifelong sentence for most of the kids involved.

Surviving victims allege that some of the children underwent painful experiments, electroshock treatments, even lobotomies. Most were pulled from their schools and forced into farm labor or hospital maintenance and brutally beaten for non-compliance. Many were physically and sexually abused by the Catholic priests, nuns and administrators. Some died of their injuries.

The Duplessis scandal was revealed when a 1961 commission on Quebec’s psychiatric hospitals found that more than 30% of the 22,000 patients didn’t belong there, most of the falsely diagnosed being illegitimate children. (Not all of the children were actual orphans; many were born out of wedlock.) The survivors named themselves Duplessis Orphans after the iron-fisted Quebec Premier under whose reign their plight occurred. [For detailed CBC footage on the topic, click here.]

Around the same time, something happened in the Middle East that the Israel Insider magazine calls “the ugliest secret of Israel’s Labor Party founders.” Others call it the “Sephardi Holocaust.”

In 1951, allegedly with the assistance of the U.S. Army, about 100,000 Sephardi children—Sephardim are Jewish-Arab immigrants—were used as guinea pigs in a mass radiation experiment. To avoid suspicion by the parents, the mostly Moroccan children were taken on “school trips” where they received a radiation treatment, purportedly for ringworm infection.

“Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head,” states the Israel Insider. “For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. . . equivalent to billions of dollars today.”

Could it all have been a misunderstanding? Could it be that the “medical establishment thought ringworm was a grave danger to public health,” as the review of the award-winning movie “Ringworm Children” suggests? We doubt it. In the 1950s in Israel, the permitted maximum x-ray dose was 0.5 rad. The Sephardi children received 350 rad, directly to their heads. No lead aprons were given to them. And eyewitnesses suspiciously noted that in preparation for the so-called “school trips,” all the Ashkenazi (Jews of European descent) were sorted out while “the dark children were put on the bus.”

The Ringworm experiment left its marks on the victims. Approximately 6,000 children died soon after treatment; the rest developed severe conditions such as various cancers, epilepsy, psychosis, etc. Today the survivors are broken people, and many of their children and grandchildren are stricken with genetic diseases and malignant tumors.

“The Ringworm Children” won a prize for Best Documentary at the 2005 Haifa International Film Festival. To buy a copy of the movie on DVD, click here.

Well, maybe the Israelis are capable of something like that, but our own government? Impossible.

But is it really? In fact, a host of questionable experiments have taken place in the United States… and probably still do.

In 1946 and ’47, eighteen terminally ill patients—one of them a four-year-old boy—were injected with plutonium to see how the radioactive material would spread through the body. In some cases, the chemical was injected into the limbs, which were then amputated post mortem. The experiments were conducted by the University of California at San Francisco, the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago and Oak Ridge Laboratory.

In a long-term experiment by the University of Cincinnati that was finally stopped in 1971, “88 poor, uneducated and mostly African-American patients with incurable cancers were exposed to heavy doses of full-body irradiation—a procedure that was largely abandoned as therapy by the 1960s,” states an article from a March 1996 issue of Research/Penn State magazine. Some of the subjects died only hours after treatment.

Then there’s the testing in the ‘40s and ‘50s at the Fernald School in Waltham, MA. Sponsored by MIT and Quaker Oats, mentally retarded students were told that they were now “members of a science club” and fed cereal that contained radioactive calcium and iron. The goal was to trace mineral absorption from cereal in the body. The results were supposed to be used in an advertising campaign, giving Quaker Oats an edge over their competitor Cream of Wheat. Neither the students nor the parents knew about the radioactive content; parents were only told that the boys would receive a diet high in nutrients.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, a team of researchers purposely infected mentally retarded 3- to 11-year-olds with hepatitis to be able to study the virus. “The early test subjects were fed extracts of the feces of an infected patient,” states constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead in a 2005 article on his websitewww.rutherford.org, while “later subjects were injected with the virus.”

The head of the team, Dr. Saul Krugman, later became the chairman of pediatrics at New York University and won the Lasker Prize (the American equivalent of the Nobel Prize).

Also in the 1960s, the D.C. Children’s Center in Laurel, MD, administered the diet pill NeoBazine, “which contains thyroxin, a drug that causes tremors, nervousness, insomnia, and tachycardia” to mentally handicapped children. “The FDA later found that this drug was not safe for use.”

From 1989 to 1991, Kaiser Permanente of Southern CA in conjunction with the CDC treated poor black and Latino children in Los Angeles with experimental measles vaccines. “The same vaccination was given to infants in Mexico, Haiti and Africa by the World Health Organization,” says Whitehead. “It was discontinued after a large number of those tested died.”

And those are “just” the incidents involving children, and those during or after WWII. We didn’t even get to the horrifying experiments performed on adults, like the testicular transplant trials performed on prisoners at St. Quentin’s from 1919-22, in which scientists inserted the testicles of executed inmates and goats into the abdomens and scrotums of living prisoners.

Aside from mentally retarded children, prisoners have always been a preferred type of guinea pig for American medical researchers. In 1966, Professor Emeritus of Dermatology Albert Kligman, who applied highly toxic dioxin directly to the skin of U.S. prisoners, said to a reporter: “All I saw before me were acres of skin… It was an anthropoid colony… which wasn’t going anywhere… I was like a farmer seeing fertile field for the first time.”

Or, to speak with another American scientist, quoted by the British Medical Journal: “Criminals in our penitentiaries are fine experimental material—and much cheaper than chimpanzees.”

We also didn’t have room to talk about the thousands of U.S. soldiers that were unknowingly subjected to experiments with mustard gas and other chemical agents—by the very government they served. Not to mention the about 240 experiments between 1944 and 1961 in which, according to a 1993 Guardianarticle, “radiation was deliberately released into the atmosphere . . . in New Mexico, Utah, Washington state, and perhaps elsewhere.”

Those are another story for another day.

We would like to hear your comments, however. Write to us atfeedback@caseyresearch.com.

Psychiatry Said To Be Culpable For Woman’s Suicide

2006-05-13T16:36:00.000+10:00

12th May 2006
Psychiatry Said To Be Culpable For Woman’s Suicide
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a psychiatric watchdog group established by the Church of Scientology, has asked a Victoria, British Columbia coroners inquest to take Ellie Boisvert’s dying words to heart and put the psychiatrist responsible for her care and treatment at the forefront of the investigation. The group has also asked that justice actions be taken against the psychiatrist.

According information brought out at the inquest conducted by Regional Coroner Rose Stanton, Ellie Boisvert, 56, left the Eric Martin Pavilion, the psychiatric ward of the Royal Jubilee Hospital, on July 29, 2005, on a four to six-hour pass.

According to the Times Colonist, Ms.Boisvert didn’t return from her pass and was found dead on Aug. 17, 2005, in Layritz Park. Near her body was a note, which police investigation revealed was Boisvert’s own handwriting. Ms. Boisvert said in the note she didn’t want to spend one more moment in the “EMP.” Nor did she want to continue living as a psychiatric patient growing steadily worse. “It’s not life.”

Another fault in the psychiatric industry, according to a study by Lisa Cosgrove, a psychologist from the University of Massachusetts and Sheldon Krimsky, a Tuft University professor, is psychiatry’s billing bible itself , the Diagonstic and Satistical Manual of Mental Disorgers (DSM). The study documents how pharmaceutical companies who manufacture drugs for “mental disorders” funded psychiatrists who defined the disorders for the manual. One hundred percent of the “experts” on DSM-IV panels overseeing so-called “mood disorders” (which includes “depression”) and “schizophrenia/psychotic disorders” were financially involved with drug companies. These are the largest categories of psychiatric drugs in the world: 2004 sales of $20.3 billion for antidepressants and $14.4 billion for antipsychotic drugs alone.

Dr. Cosgrove also raised crucial points about the lack of science behind the DSM, stating, “No blood tests exist for the disorders in the DSM. It relies on judgments from practitioners who rely on the manual.”

Victoria psychologist, Dr. Tana Dineen, the author of Manufacturing Victims that debunks the DSM, says that unlike medical diagnoses, DSM disorders are “voted” into existence by APA members. They can also be removed if they are too much trouble. In 1973, the APA voted—5,584 to 3,810—to cease calling homosexuality a mental disorder after gay activists picketed an APA conference. The DSM wields enormous power for a document that is so fickly determined and is, as Dr. Cosgrove says a “political process.”

Brian Beaumont, President of the Vancouver chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights said, “Never have incidents of psychiatric injustice been more evident than in the mental health field where laws have empowered psychiatrists to seize people and, without trial, not only deprive them of their liberty, drug or electric shock them or, in the case of Ellie Boisvert, drive them to suicide”.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.

company: Citizens Commission on Human Rights
contact person: Brian Beaumont
e-mail: humanrights@lightspeed.ca
phone: 604-689-4417
site: http://www.cchr.org

TeenScreen and Psychiatry - Pseudo-Science or Scam?

2006-05-11T18:14:00.000+10:00

By: John Carey

Enron, WorldCom, TeenScreen. What do these groups have in common? They all have run huge scams on the public in their pursuit of power and the almighty dollar.

TeenScreen is based on the flawed pseudo-science of psychiatry. The controversial screening program asks young people invasive questions about their lives and their feelings, then compares the answers to lists of symptoms from psychiatry's bible of "mental disorders", the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM IV).

The DSM has been thoroughly discredited, even by psychiatrists and other professionals. In an article entitled DSM: Diagnosing for Money and Power, Ofer Zur, Ph.D., and Nola Nordmarken, MFT, state that "The DSM is more a political document than a scientific one. Decisions regarding inclusion or exclusion of disorders are made by majority vote rather than by indisputable scientific data."

Recent media has exposed corruption in those psychiatric researchers who created the DSM IV. USA Today reported in April '06, "A majority of the medical experts who created the "bible" for diagnosing mental illness have undisclosed financial links to drugmakers". http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-04-19-conflicts-experts_x.htm

Psychiatry claims to have a science, but what do their leaders say? Rex Cowdry, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health in 1995 said, "We do not know the causes (of psychiatric disorders). We don't have methods of curing these illnesses yet." Norman Sartorius, president of the World Psychiatric Association, said in 1994, "The timewhen psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the future, the mentally ill will have to learn to live with their illness."

If you go to a medical doctor with a broken arm, you would have pain in your arm and you might be irritable. A medical doctor uses these symptoms and an x-ray to confirm the problem, and after six weeks in a cast you are cured - at least until the next time you try out your child's skateboard.

The psychiatric approach is to VOTE on diseases. Stealing legitimacy from the medical community, they group symptoms and give them ominous and frightening names. From 1952-94, the DSM grew from 112 disorders/diseases to 374 by VOTING! After gay activist picketing in 1973, psychiatrists voted to remove the mental "disorder" known as homosexuality from DSM. Since there was no science in adding it, it was easy to remove.

Some of the other "scientific" diseases being foisted onto the public are "Caffeine-Related Disorder", "Mathematics Disorder" and "Sibling Rivalry Disorder." When I was mean to my brother, my mom punished me - she didn't know of today's "scientific method" - giving me a daily dose of Prozac.

We have all seen the fraudulent advertisements about chemical imbalances in the brain causing "mental illness". Drug companies are able to fool many people and gain business by falsely associating themselves with true medical science. There are chemical imbalances (known, provable, indisputable) in medicine. An example of a real chemical imbalance is Diabetes - a lab test shows too much sugar in the person's system. This imbalance is corrected by giving insulin, the exact hormone that is missing. This is science.

What about psychiatry's version? There is NO blood test. There is no Ritalin, Paxil or Prozac flowing through a normal child's brain. The entire THEORY of chemical imbalance is based on the subjective symptoms in DSM, and psychiatrists prescribe mind-altering drugs to MASK the symptoms. This is equivalent to a medical doctor never setting your broken arm, but giving you life-long doses of morphine to hide the pain.

Those who speak up and tell the truth, like Tom Cruise, are attacked because they reject the idea that chemical "imbalances" in the brain cause mental illness, and are quick to point out that no tests have ever proven that theory. George Orwell wrote, "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act". That line was written as part of an entertaining work of fiction, yet psychiatry has brought Mr. Orwell's chilling vision of the future into today's reality.

John Breeding, Ph.D., psychologist and author of The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses says, "Even the most ardent Ritalin/ADHD enthusiasts find absolutely no positive long term outcomes on anything in their research reviews.. The widespread drugging of these children is a fraud..."

Worldwide production of Ritalin went from 2.8 tons in 1990 to 15.3 tons in 1997. Are our children SIX TIMES more troubled? In Britain, the stimulant prescription rate for children increased 9200% between 1992 and 2000. Are their children now 9200% smarter and happier? No, but psychiatrists and drug companies are richer. This is what TeenScreen wants, more children under psychiatric treatment for subjective, unscientific "mental illnesses".

In today's world of merged companies and billion-dollar earnings, the psychiatrists have merged with the drug-companies. TeenScreen has a symbiotic relationship with both. With Madison Avenue marketing that sells the public a one-pill solution to everything that ails them, the psychiatrists are pulling off a scam that makes the former leaders of Enron seem like choirboys by comparison. Future generations might forgive them if they were selling cell-phones, broadband or the latest fashion, but not when they are falsely drugging millions of our school children with dangerous mind-altering drugs.

-###-

May 10, 2006 John Carey has degrees in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science from Texas A&M, and has worked for a major oil company for over 20 years. As a humanitarian endeavor, he has researched extensively on the psychiatric drugging of children.

Child Has Life Destroyed by Psychiatric Drugs

2006-05-06T12:59:00.000+10:00

From USA Today
Drug therapy caused some scary side effects
Updated 5/2/2006 8:49 AM ET
By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY

Erin Evans is one parent who wishes she had never heard of anti-psychotics.

As a military couple, she and her husband, Joe, moved around frequently. Their son, Rex, 13, was babied a lot. His mother now feels that he was not ready for school when he reached kindergarten age.

He had trouble focusing in the classroom and was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder at age 6. He started on an ADHD medicine and began hallucinating about worms and bugs in his food.

Soon he was also on Prozac for anxiety, but the nervousness and paranoia persisted.

At age 8, Rex was given Risperdal by a Tennessee child psychiatrist in private practice who consulted for the military. He said the boy probably had obsessive-compulsive disorder, too, Evans says.

"(He) didn't tell us it had never been approved for children or warn us about any side effects," she says.

For the first few weeks, Risperdal helped a little; Rex became less anxious and hyper. "But then it wore right off, so the doctor kept increasing the dose," she says.

After one month on Risperdal, Rex started having tremors; within a few months, his hands shook so severely that he could barely write at school, "and I'd have to guide the cup of milk to his mouth in the morning," Evans says.

But the psychiatrist said the tremors weren't so bad, Evans says, and urged the family to continue the drug.

The psychiatrist didn't pressure them, she says, "but I'm from the generation where, when a doctor says something, you believe it."

Then, about a year after Rex started Risperdal, the Evanses found out that he might have schizoaffective disorder, a psychotic illness that children rarely get. A doctor's report said Rex probably would need to be institutionalized.

That year, when Rex was 9, the family moved to Colorado Springs. The parents started to learn more about Risperdal and, for the first time, they realized that Rex's symptoms could be side effects, so they started to wean him off the drug. In a few weeks they noticed his jaw was scrunching up and his facial expressions were becoming distorted. By then, Evans says, she had read up on tardive dyskinesia (TD), a neurological disorder that can be caused by anti-psychotics.

Rex became less anxious, but the TD worsened. "He had a horrible, ugly look on his face all the time," Evans says. Friends no longer came to play. Rex went from winning an award for best reader in the third grade to claiming he couldn't remember how to spell his own name in fourth grade.

Then in fifth grade, Rex slowly began to improve. A medical exam showed spasms in his thorax, perhaps linked to the upper body spasms, restricting the flow of oxygen to his brain.

He began oxygen therapy, and he quickly became more responsive to others and did better at school, Evans says. He also had behavioral therapies. At the end of elementary school, Rex had episodes only a few times a week.

But junior high has brought more stress and bullying, and the episodes have become more frequent. "His movement-disorder specialist said he expected Rex to have this for the rest of his life," Evans says.

Now she is bitter. "I trusted the doctors, I trusted the FDA ... and I feel betrayed by both," she says.

The Food and Drug Administration "does not regulate the practice of medicine," says Thomas Laughren, head of the division of psychiatry products. He adds that he's concerned about the use of such drugs in kids without systematic safety data.

Nobody knows how many children on atypicals get TD, says Ramy Mahmoud of Janssen LP, maker of Risperdal, but it's rare in adults. "Our drug isn't indicated for children," he says. "It's a strong drug. It has risks and benefits. Doctors and patients together have to weigh the benefits, at the start and on a continuing basis, along with the harm and suffering."

Criminal Psychiatrist Awarded Fellowship at UC

2006-05-05T12:43:00.000+10:00

The University of Cincinnati has given a fellowship to a psychiatrist who criminally defrauded insurance companies in Arkansas of $US130,000.

Psychiatrist James Dilday is now working in the department of psychiatry and at University Hospital.

Andrew Filak, an associate UC dean and associate chief of staff for the hospital, said with regard to Dilday's background: "we felt it would not be a problem....".

Probably not, as long as he is working with other psychiatrists he should feel quite at home.

Another Pervert Psychiatrist Busted

2006-05-03T19:21:00.000+10:00

From: Axcess News May 1, 2006
Saudi Psychiatrist Sexually Preys Upon Toddler in California
By Jim Kouri

(AXcess News) New York - A 37-year-old Saudi psychiatrist made his initial appearance in federal court in Sacramento, California, on Friday to face charges that he traveled to Vallejo, California, on Thursday to sexually molest a two-and-a-half-year-old girl after exchanging numerous emails with an undercover agent posing as the toddler's father.

Nabil Al Rowais, who entered the United States on a nonimmigrant visa issued in Canada, was arrested Thursday night by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as with the California Bureau of Investigation at a motel in Vallejo, California.

Rowais is charged with traveling in foreign commerce with the intent to have sex with a minor, a charge that carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum penalty of up to 30 years. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd ordered Al Rowais held without bond pending his next court appearance May 12.

According to the affidavit filed in the case, an undercover agent posing as the father of a toddler daughter exchanged numerous emails with Al Rowais in which the suspect expressed a desire to travel to California to sexually molest the child. When the suspect, who claims to be a practicing psychiatrist, arrived at the Vallejo motel for the agreed upon meeting yesterday evening, he was taken into custody. The case is being prosecuted by the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California.

The initial lead in this case came about as a result of an ICE investigation known as Operation Babynet, a probe targeting an El Dorado Hills man who ultimately pleaded guilty to molesting his infant daughter and distributing the images over the Internet.

After receiving the lead, ICE agents teamed with the California Bureau of Investigation, the Sacramento Sheriff's Department, and the Sacramento Police Department to investigate the allegations. The agencies are members of the Safe Streets Task Force, an ongoing initiative partnering federal, state, and local agencies to target violent street gangs and child sex predators.

"Whether a sexual predator is on the Internet exploiting our virtual borders or is an alien who has preyed on children, ICE is using all of its law enforcement authorities to identify them and bring them to justice," said Rick Eaton, assistant special agent in charge of the ICE office of investigations in Sacramento. "We are working with our law enforcement partners to do everything possible to prevent the exploitation of children both here and abroad."

Al Rowais' arrest is part of Operation Predator, an ongoing ICE enforcement initiative to identify, investigate, arrest and, in the case of foreign nationals, deport child sex predators. Since the initiative began almost two years ago, ICE agents have arrested more than 7,800 individuals nationwide, including almost 2,000 here in California.

Antidepressants Increase Stillbirth Risks

2006-04-29T14:56:00.000+10:00

Antidepressants Increase Stillbirth Risks

A Canadian study of almost 5,000 mothers found that those who used selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) as antidepressants were more likely to give birth to stillborn, premature, and low birth weight babies. SSRIs, which include Prozac, work by increasing levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin.

Women on SSRIs were twice as likely to have a stillbirth, and almost twice as likely to have a premature or low birth weight baby. The babies born to women using SSRIs also had a greater likelihood of experiencing seizures.

This bears out previous studies, which have shown a similar risk of birth defects. One study showed that use of the drugs during the first three months of pregnancy caused a 40 percent increased risk of birth defects such as cleft palate. Another found that babies whose mothers used SSRIs were at risk of being born with withdrawal symptoms.
BBC News April 7, 2006

The Litany of Psychiatrist Perversions Continues

2006-04-28T10:15:00.000+10:00

Doctor 'groped his patients'
Amanda Crook
A PSYCHIATRIST has been accused of indecently touching two mentally ill patients in his care.

Dr Kayode Falodun is alleged to have kissed, cuddled and groped a 22-year-old woman with a history of sexual abuse and self-harming when he was employed at Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport.

A General Medical Council hearing was also told he had inappropriately touched a 44-year-old woman with borderline personality disorder, who was sexually abused as a child and suffered suicidal feelings.

Both women had been sectioned under the mental health act and were in-patients on the wards where Falodun was a staff grade psychiatrist from October 2003 to June 2004.

The 49-year-old from Church Lane, Moston, admits giving one of the patients his mobile phone number and taking her to his office, where he had covered the windows with paper, for a consultation on February 16, 2004. She alleges while there he touched her inappropriately.

However he denies all these allegations, saying he has not acted inappropriately, unprofessionally or indecently. He also denies acting dishonestly by failing to mention on his CV or during his interview for the job that he had been dismissed from three previous jobs in Rochdale, Bro Morgannwg and Hertfordshire.

Jane Sullivan, counsel for the GMC, described how Falodun built up a rapport with patient A by trying to make her laugh during ward rounds, and how initially she considered him to be a "nice doctor".

The panel heard that Patient A rang Falodun's mobile because she was upset after an argument with her mother and he took her to the office he shared with a colleague, rather than speaking to her on the ward or on one of the nearby consultation rooms.

She says he made her a cup to tea and they chatted before he held her hands in his and rested them on his knee.

She alleges he sat her on his knee and moved her up and down saying: "if you were fat I would not be able to do that" in reference to the fact she had complained of feeling fat and unattractive.

He is said to have cuddled her, kissed her on the mouth and moved his hands all over her.

Ms Sullivan said: "At best he crossed the boundaries of what was appropriate in the doctor patient relationship and at worst his behaviour was indecent."

Patient B reported that Falodun touched her breasts.

The hearing was told that Falodun approached her in the hospital's family room after he had been banned from hospital premises.

He was excluded from duties on February 17, 2004, after Patient A complained about his behaviour to the acting ward sister.

The panel was not told why Falodun had been dismissed from two previous permanent jobs and one as a locum doctor.

Head of Child Psychiatry Under Molestation Investigation

2006-04-27T18:08:00.000+10:00

‘Distinguished psychiatrist William Ayres who served for four years as the president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has had his patient files seized by San Mateo, California police.
Police are investigating Ayres after he settled out of court on a molestation charge by a former patient. At least four other adult males have approached police with complaints of molestastion whilst they were child patients of Ayres.
Police Captain Callagy confirmed that an investigation was under way.

Deputy Chairman of Association of European Psychiatrists Guilty of Rape

2006-04-26T17:16:00.000+10:00

French police are seeking the extradition of psychiatrist Jean Hoareau from Russia. Hoareau, deputy chairman of the Association of European Psychiatrists and head of the European Center for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy is currently under house arrest.
He was found guilty in France last May of rape and gross misconduct.

Couldn't Have Said it Better Myself

2006-04-25T10:58:00.000+10:00

Was just sent this. It is a psych based 'therapy' site.
http://www.therapistfinder.com

Psychiatrist... "Threat to Public Safety"

2006-04-23T13:52:00.000+10:00

Psychiatrist Howard Mitchell has had his license suspended by the Arizonal Medical Board. He was found guilty of over prescribing controlled substances and was described by the board as representing an imminent threat to public safety.

DSM Again Exposed as Bogus

2006-04-22T13:45:00.000+10:00

The Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM) which is the bible of psychiatrists contains all the 'diseases' and 'treatments' in the field of psychiatry. It is the sole reference point for all practising bio-psychiatrists.

Lisa Cosgrove is a clinical psychologist at the U of Massachusetts in Boston. She has just completed an analysis which shows that every psychiatric expert involved in the writing of the DSM section on mood disorders such as depression, and psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia are or were paid stooges of the drug companies.

"I don't think the public is aware of how egregious the financial ties are in the field of psychiatry," said Lisa Cosgrove, a clinical psychologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, who is publishing her analysis Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

"It shouldn't be assumed there is a true conflict of interest," said John Kane who worked on the last edition of DSM. He said his panel's conclusions were driven only by science. Right John.

Sex Beast Psychiatrist is Out of Jail

2006-04-20T15:38:00.000+10:00

From the U.K. Sunday Mail
16 April 2006
SEX BEAST DOCTOR IS BACK OUT
EXCLUSIVE Judges slash attacker's sentence
By Charles Lavery
A SEX attacker psychiatrist has been freed by the appeal court after serving just seven months for an assault on a teenage girl.

Judges reduced Darren Holdsworth's sentence from three years to 13 months.

Because he had already served seven months in prison - more than half his sentence - he is now a free man.

Holdsworth faces a disciplinary hearing before the General Medical Council. But he could avoid being struck off because the offence was not related to his work.

Holdsworth persuaded the young woman to live with him then virtually starved her so she looked more child-like.

During one humiliating attack he thrashed her with a wire coat-hanger and committed a degrading sex act.

Holdsworth was jailed in November 2002 by Lord McEwan at the High Court in Edinburgh for three years, with a two-year supervision order to follow.

But just seven months later, Holdsworth was freed pending an appeal against his sentence.

He then committed a sickening attack on a mum-of-one in a Glasgow bar. He was convicted but not jailed.

Holdsworth's appeal over the first offence was heard by Lords Osborne, Macfadyen and Marnoch. They have not yet released reasons for their decision.

Detectives found disturbing and violent pornography in Holdsworth's flat.

A police insider said: "The material was so sick that he was put down as a potential offender in the highest risk category."

When he was freed on bail pending his appeal, his victim said: "If I'd known he would receive such a paltry sentence I would never have put myself through the ordeal of the justice system."

Comparison of drugs often favors firm funding study

2006-04-16T13:54:00.000+10:00

Comparison of drugs often favors firm funding study
(from ContraCostaTimes.com... click heading to see whole story)
Some suggest research should be publicly funded to better guide clinical decisions, the billions of dollars spent on treatment
By Shankar Vedantam
WASHINGTON POST
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. recently funded five studies that compared its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa with Risperdal, a competing drug made by Janssen. All five showed Zyprexa was superior in treating schizophrenia.

But when Janssen sponsored its own studies comparing the two drugs, Risperdal came out ahead in three out of four.

In fact, when psychiatrist John Davis analyzed every publicly available trial funded by the pharmaceutical industry pitting five new antipsychotic drugs against one another, nine in 10 showed that the best drug was the one made by the company funding the study.

"On the basis of these contrasting findings in head-to-head trials, it appears that whichever company sponsors the trial produces the better antipsychotic drug," Davis and others wrote in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Another Tom Cruise Interview

2006-04-14T14:12:00.000+10:00

The actor Tom Cruise has, according to a report I have just read in the Hindustani Times (!), again given an interview on the subject of psychiatry. It is in a magazine called 'GQ' and apparently again rails against this rotten to the core profession.

The magazine is due out on April 25th 2006. As a blogger on the subject of psychiatric crimes I am very aware of how much Mr Cruise has raised awareness of this issue in the public mind... and the media who had up to that point had mostly steadfastly ignored the atrocious human rights violations of this "pseudo science". The number of exposures of psychiatric crimes and human rights violations in the mainstream media boomed from almost none to being a daily occurrence.

Mr Cruise truly does understand that the greatest crime of all is to remain silent.

For once in my life I shall read a magazine other than the UK Spectator... providing that 'GQ' is sold in Australia that is.

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see."
Ayn Rand

Prove-’em-mad, a deeper racket!

2006-04-10T13:05:00.000+10:00

Prove-’em-mad, a deeper racket!
Gaurav Saigal
April 9

PSYCHIATRISTS PLAYING foul to mint money and help customers get legal hold over property by proving the owner insane, is just a tip of the iceberg.
There could be many angles to the crazy story, which smells of a deeper nexus than what Wasiha-Amrina case throws up.

This is evident from the fact that the State Mental Health Authority (SMHA), powered to investigate cases of misdeeds by psychiatrists (like the recent Wasiha and Amrina’s case) reports no complaints after 2004!

Sample this. In the recent case of fallacy by a psychiatrist mother and daughter duo Wasiha Khan and Amrina Fatima Khan were victimised. Dr Ashutosh of the Noor Manzil Psychiatry Hospital has been arrested while his senior Dr Hemant Naidu was reported absconding. But, what would make the case strong against offenders is yet to begin. The investigations into the line of treatment given to ladies.

Investigations could only begin when the case would officially be handed over to SMHA by the police.

“There is a hairline difference between a normal person and a mentally ill one and anybody can take advantage in connivance of the doctor to settle scores. Investigation in such offences is dependent and even SMHA’s role comes after a police initiative,” said the honorary secretary of SMHA Dr SC Tiwari.

Perhaps this was evident fact that persuaded the trap for mother and daughter duo Wasiha Khan and Amrina Fatima Khan by their own relative Sahiba. They were forcibly given sedative and admitted to Noor Manzil Psychiatry Hospital as a referral case, the third option for admitting any patient of mental illness.

As per the Mental Health Act 1987, a person may be admitted to a mental hospital or clinic voluntarily or by the order of the court. The third option is that the family members or the relatives ask the doctor to do so if they feel the person is mentally sick and is dangerous. City’s physiatrists when contacted told on anonymity that such cases are rare but they take advantage of the hairline difference in the mental status. However, checking such acts is a difficult task.
“Nothing can be said about Wasiha’s case without proper investigation,” said Dr Tiwari, who heads the Geriatric Mental Health Department at King George’s Medical University.

Dr Harjit Singh of the Department of Psychiatry at KGMU said there was a protocol for psychiatrists to follow before visiting a patient’s house and bringing him to the hospital.

“More so the patient has to be kept under observation for two weeks and then a certificate is issued about his mental health,” he said.
The last case that came to SMHA for investigation in the year 2004 was about general functioning at the Noor Manzil Hospital only.

Convicted French psychiatrist asks Russia for political asylum

2006-04-08T12:30:00.000+10:00

Convicted French psychiatrist asks Russia for political asylum
21:33 | 07/ 04/ 2006

MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) - A senior European psychiatrist arrested in Moscow by the Interpol on sexual abuse charges has asked for political asylum in Russia, his attorney said Friday.

In May 2005, a French court sentenced Dr. Jean Andres Hoareau, a specialist in forensic psychiatry and sexual disorders and deputy chairman of the Association of European Psychiatrists, to 15 years in jail for raping a client while she was under hypnosis. The verdict was passed in Hoareau's absence.

"My client has been detained by the international department of Interpol, which acted on the decision of French justice," Igor Trunov said, adding that Hoareau was being kept in a detention center for foreigners.

Trunov said the detention of his client in Moscow was a "political decision."

He said Hoareau, also the founder of the European Center for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Moscow, had been living in the Russian capital for 15 years. He also said his client was married with three children.

"We are going to appeal the detention decision, most likely with the Moscow City Court," Trunov said.

Anti-Depressants Causing Stillbirth

2006-04-07T21:08:00.000+10:00

A study just published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology says that SSRI anti-depressant drugs double the risk of stillborn births and cause an increase in premature and low birth weight babies.

Kentucky Psychiatrist Sentenced for Over Billing Fraud

2006-04-05T16:47:00.000+10:00

Kentucky Psychiatrist Sentenced for Over Billing Fraud
April 3, 2006

Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo announced that Dr. Arthur Daus, a psychiatrist who had been practicing in the Louisville area, has been sentenced in Jefferson Circuit Court for illegally over billing Medicaid and Medicare for multiple office visits even though patients made only single visits.

Daus, 71, received a sentence of one year, probated for a period of two years on the felony count of Devising or Engaging in a Scheme to Defraud the Kentucky Medicaid program, and 12 months probated for two years on the misdemeanor count of Theft by Deception for improperly obtaining funds from the federal Medicare program.

The case was handled by the Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud & Abuse Control Division and the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation in cooperation with Special Agent Linda Carrithers with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Special Agent Mark Bartley with Health and Human Services.

Psychiatric Scandal

2006-04-01T14:38:00.000+11:00

The following is a follow up from the previous Blog. It was published in the UK... click the heading for the link.
Ministers set date for health scandals report
Simon McGee
Political Editor
MINISTERS will publish their formal response to inquiries into a series of medical scandals in the spring.
As well as the independent public inquiry into the serial killings by GP Harold Shipman there have been the cases of North Yorkshire psychiatrists William Kerr and Michael Haslam, who sexually assaulted patients, and disgraced Yorkshire gynaecologist Richard Neale.
The Department of Health has promised a "comprehensive programme of action" to "take forward" the hundreds of recommendations which arose from these inquiries and the investigation into Kent GP Clifford Ayling, another sex abuser.
In a letter to Richmond MP William Hague, Health Minister Jane Kennedy said: "We have made good progress in developing our thinking on the key proposals."
She added that the Government's response would be published after Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson had given his views and its implications considered with interested parties.
The revelation of the timing of the long-awaited response came as victims of Kerr and Haslam, representatives of campaign group Witness and MPs gathered in the Commons to underline their demand that the Department of Health take up the recommendations of the inquiries in full.
The Kerr Haslam inquiry, which reported last July, found that between 1965 and 1989 almost 50 different patients had raised concerns about the doctors' behaviour.
The 1,000-page report, commissioned by the Government, proposed 74 safeguards including better training for doctors and nurses on handling complaints of sexual assault and the availability of independent advocacy to all patients.
Last night Kathy Haq, spokeswoman for victims of the two doctors, said: "These recommendations have to be put in place.
"The inquiry itself was part of the healing process for many of us and of course all these things happened a long time ago, but the point is that patients are still being abused today.
"It may no longer be as widespread, but as far as we're concerned just one abuser is one too many."
Harrogate MP Phil Willis added: "So far nothing has happened with regard to Kerr and Haslam, Neale and Shipman.
"We need to see some new legislation and changes in procedures happen soon."
Graham Maloney, spokes-man for a group of Richard Neale's former patients, said it was time the recommendations made by the inquiry teams were put in place to make hospitals safer.
"It's good to talk but better to act and it's about time the Government did," he said.
01 February 2006

Psychiatric Pervert Dies

2006-03-31T14:53:00.000+11:00

Psychiatrist pervert Dr William Kerr from North Yorkshire died this week.

Over a twenty year period Kerr indecently assaulted at least sixteen women. Eventually his name was removed from the medical register and put on the sex offender register where he joined the ranks of many other psychiatrists. The numbers of psychiatrists on the sex offenders register is expected to grow considerably over the coming years as they are hunted down one by one. Those victims who were prepared to come forward were awarded £300,000 in compensation between them in 2003.

Search warrant issued for prominent psychiatrist

2006-03-28T15:31:00.000+11:00

Search warrant issued for prominent psychiatrist
Kate Williamson, The Examiner
Mar 27, 2006 9:00 AM

SAN MATEO, Calif. - San Mateo police have served a search warrant on the home and office of a prominent child psychiatrist who settled a lawsuit alleging molestation last summer, police confirmed Sunday.

Police served the warrant March 17 on the property of William Ayres, a former president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry who was lauded by San Mateo County Supervisors in 2002 for his lifelong work with children.

San Mateo police Capt. Mike Callagy confirmed that the warrant was served, but would not say what the police were investigating.
Ayres declined to comment and referred questions to his attorney, who could not be reached at press time.

Ayres settled a lawsuit in July 2005 with a 40-year-old man who said Ayres molested him in the late 1970s when he was one of his patients, according to news reports. Ayres said he was innocent of the allegations.

Psychiatrist Pleads Guilty On Medicaid Fraud

2006-03-24T12:35:00.000+11:00

Psychiatrist Pleads Guilty On Medicaid Fraud
posted March 23, 2006

A psychiatrist with offices in Chattanooga, Cleveland and Athens on Thursday morning pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud.

Dr. Gulshan Sultan had been indicted on 19 counts of fraud.

She appeared before Federal Judge Curtis Collier in Chattanooga.

Dr. Sultan faces sentencing on July 7 at 2 p.m. She faces up to five years in prison, prosecutor Cynthia Davidson said.

Officials said on a number of occasions, Dr. Sultan would enter a bill code for a 20-45 minute visit, when those visits were actually five to 10 minutes in length.

TBI investigators with the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit said the overbilling occurred between May and September 2003.

Her Chattanooga office was on Cherokee Boulevard and in Cleveland on Clingan Ridge Drive NW.

Psychiatrist Admits Professional Misconduct

2006-03-23T11:57:00.000+11:00

Psychiatrist Admits Professional Misconduct
1:21 PM, 22 Mar 2006
Print this story
A psychiatrist who failed to manage a patient's care has pleaded guilty to a charge of professional misconduct.

The doctor, who has interim name suppression, appeared before the Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal this morning

The charge was laid after the doctor failed to adequately manage the care of an elderly patient between 2000 and 2001.

The woman, who was schizophrenic, spent six weeks in hospital after her medication was changed.

The hearing heard the doctor's standard of care fell well short of that expected of a practitioner in his position.

His note-taking was not up to scratch, which put the patient at risk.

Lawyers for the doctor say the region where he was working at the time was short-staffed.

He is still practicing full-time.

© NewsRoom 2006

FDA Must Act

2006-03-21T19:43:00.001+11:00

March 19, 2006

Legal ADHD Speed - Becoming Drug Of Choice For Americans

FDA Must Act
by Evelyn Pringle

http://www.opednews.com

A study published online in the February 2006, Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, that examined data from a 2002 survey of about 67,000 households, estimates that more than 7 million Americans have misused stimulant drugs meant to treat ADHD, and “substantial numbers of teenagers and young adults appear to show signs of addiction, according to a comprehensive national analysis tracking such abuse.”

The statistics are alarming because people are using the drugs recreationally or to boost academic and professional performance. The scientists who published the study concluded that about 1.6 million teenagers and young adults had misused these stimulants during a 12-month period and that 75,000 showed signs of addiction.

Last month, the FDA's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee held 2 days of hearings, and after listening to all the testimony and reviewing the data presented, recommended that all ADHD drugs carry a black box warning on increased cardiovascular risks.

This month, the Pediatric Advisory Committee is meeting on March 22, 2006, and will focus on neuropsychiatric adverse event reports and trial data on ADHD medications. The committee will also receive an update on efforts to better understand cardiovascular adverse events possibly related to ADHD medications, according to the FDA web site.

During the hearings last month, the Alliance for Human Research Protection, asked the FDA to issue (1) a public advisory; (2) a "dear doctor" letter to every doctor in America to apprise them of the essentially lethal side effects that are being tracked; and (3) to solicit the reporting of any and all adverse events of which they are aware.

Allen Jones, speaking as a representative of the Alliance, told the panel the FDA should instruct the pharmaceutical industry to advise the FDA of all adverse events that have been reported concerning ADHD drugs immediately, and also it should demand that all clinical trials in possession of the drug companies be turned over to the FDA so that independent researchers can review them for adverse events.

"We don't have the luxury of time to wait for the future trials," he pointed out. "Children are dying," he said.

Ellen Liversridge, having lost her son to side effects of the drug Zyprexa before they were made known in a black box warnings, appeared to speak on behalf of all parents who have lost their children due to adverse reactions to prescription drugs.

“I grieve particularly today for the 51 dead of ADHD drugs that were announced yesterday by the FDA,” she told the panel.

“I guess my up-front message, front and center,” she continued, “is that you know that ADHD drugs can cause serious side effects and death, including sudden death, hypertension, myocardial infarction, stroke, and possibly bipolar disorder.

“This being the case,” she said, “I urge you to recommend that these drugs have an appropriate black box warning placed on the label starting immediately.”

Sandra Lucas, appeared at the hearing to speak on behalf of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a psychiatric watchdog group, and told the panel, “we do know that the side effects of the stimulants are not only present, they are extremely serious and sometimes lethal.”

“So,“ she asked the committee, “while the FDA ponders the problem of studying the issue and conducting the studies that may have inherent flaws, what real, immediate protections are to be put in place for parents and children?”

During the hearing, Drug Safety panel member, Dr Art Levin, told the committee, “I think we have to recognize that when a drug is approved and marketed the public assumes a level of comfort in the safety of that drug unless they are told otherwise.”

“And, for us to sit around and talk about this,” he continued, “to have three advisory committee meetings discussing the signals and not to make, at the very least, a very strong warning to people that there is uncertainty here about the safety of these drugs and that they need to be aware of that pending clarification I just think is inappropriate, unethical behavior.”

Committee member, Dr Steve Nissan advised, “we have to elevate the level of concern and if it slows the growth of this, that is probably appropriate because I think most observers would argue that ten percent of ten year-olds do not have this disease and what has happened is that this is out-of-control use of drugs that have profound cardiovascular effects and, as a cardiologist, I can tell you that,” he said.

Panel member, Dr Curt Furberg, recommended that ADHD drugs also come with a patient guide “so that when parents are filling prescriptions for their kids they get a written document laying out the state of knowledge, or lack of the state of knowledge and the potential risks so they are reminded each time that there is a potential risk and we are trying to find solutions to it,” he advised.

Since last month’s recommendation for a black box warning on cardiovascular events, FDA reviewers announced a recommendation for stronger warnings on all ADHD drugs due to reports of numerous adverse events like mania and psychosis in clinical trials, including modafinil.

On March 14, 2006, an FDA review was posted to the agency's web site in advance of next week's meeting. The FDA said stronger warnings are needed on the risk of psychosis, a mental disorder characterized by the inability to distinguish real and imaginary events.

"The most important finding of this review is that signs of psychosis or mania, particularly hallucinations, can occur in patients with no identifiable risk factors, at usual doses of any of the drugs used to treat ADHD," according to a memo dated March 3 from two members of the agency's ADHD psychiatric review team.

The review said current labeling neither addresses those concerns nor does it "clearly state the importance of stopping drug therapy in any patient who develops hallucinations or other signs or symptoms of psychosis or mania during drug treatment of ADHD."

From January 2000, through June 30, 2005, the review found nearly 1,000 reports of psychosis or mania possibly linked to the drugs, including Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin and Strattera. The reports were pulled from the FDA's database and from the drug makers themselves after the FDA had requested additional information from the drug companies.

The FDA found a "substantial portion of the psychosis-related cases were reported to occur in children 10 years or less," an age group which according to the FDA, does not typically suffer from psychosis.

"The predominance in young children of hallucinations, both visual and tactile, involving insects, snakes and worms is striking and deserves further evaluation," the FDA noted.

Last fall, on September 29, 2005, the FDA issued a public health advisory to alert physicians of reports of suicidal thinking in children and adolescents associated with Strattera, and directed Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Strattera, to develop a Medication Guide for patients and caregivers.

Although Strattera is marketed as a "nonstimulant" medication, according to pediatrician, Dr DuBose Ravenel, MD, FAAP, of Cornerstone Pediatrics, “it is in fact a stimulant every bit as much as the traditional stimulants, as evidenced by even a cursory consideration of its pharmacological action, and evidenced by the fact that it is classified as such by the World Health Organization.”

Dr Fred Baughman, ADHD expert and well-known author, will testify before the committee next week on behalf of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology.

“We know these drugs are poisons,” Dr Bughman warns, “and we know they are highly addictive, dangerous and sometimes deadly.”

He points to the senseless death of children on ADHD drugs. “Matthew Smith is dead today not because of ADHD,” he says, “but, as carefully delineated by the medical examiner, his chronic Ritalin/methylphenidate exposure.”

“Nor is there any other plausible explanation for the death of Stephanie Hall, 11 years old of Canton, OH,” he advises. “No physical predisposing factor other than Ritalin was present,” he notes, “leading up to her death, in bed, by cardiac arrhythmia.”

“The main question the FDA needs to answer concerns ADHD,” Dr Baughman says, “the "disorder" these addictive, dangerous, sometimes deadly drugs are used to treat.”

“The shocking fact of the matter is that it is not a disorder/disease at all,” he explains, “children said to have it are entirely normal meaning they bear no objective, demonstrable, diagnosable, abnormality, meaning there is no justification for prescribing these or any other drugs for so-called ADHD--a wholly fictitious, wholly subjective entity.”

According to Dr David Stein, Ph D, Professor of Psychology at Longwood University, “the risks of psychiatric drugs in the bodies of children and teenagers is well documented and needs no further elaboration.”

He wants the advisory committee to address two issues: (1) the validity of ADD/ADHD as diseases; and (2) effective alternative behavioral treatments that reduce reliance on drugs.

Dr Stein’s behavioral/cognitive treatment methods have won awards from the American Psychological Association (One of top ten research projects at the 1998), the International Center for Psychiatry and Psychology (2005), and the Ritalin Litigation Conference (2001).

“It is my hope,” he says, “that the committee will consider that within the decision tree, the physician's choice to use drugs can be lowered in favor of, at the very least, recommending properly designed behavioral parent training.”

“The risks of legal liability and the risks of medical damage to children,” Dr Stein advises, “can be reduced with the augmentation and further development of proper behavioral treatments.”

According to court certified expert and author of many books on ADHD, Dr Peter Breggin, all stimulants commonly cause “a continuum of stimulation, including agitation and irritability, anger, hostility, disinhibition, hypomania and mania.”

The stimulant or activation syndrome, he advises, was originally observed decades ago with stimulant drugs such as amphetamines, Adderall, and Dexedrine, and methylphenidates such as Ritalin and Concerta.

It also occurs, he notes, with dexmethylphenidate such as Focalin, and selegilines like Sparlon and Provigil, as well as the atomoxetine, Strattera.

In a review of the summary data for the FDA Spontaneous Reporting System through March 1997, Dr Breggin counted the following: Psychosis, 43; hallucinations, 44; and psychotic depression, 11. His review also counted more than 50 reports in the combined category of overdose, overdose intentional, and suicide attempt.

“In regard to both amphetamines and methylphenidate,” he explains, “there are a surprising number of animal and human studies showing persistent biochemical changes and atrophy after several weeks or more exposure.”

“While the changes in children are sometimes mistakenly attributed to ADHD or OCD, they are a known effect of stimulants on the animal brain,” he advises. “A known toxic drug effect is a far more likely culprit than a highly speculative "biochemical imbalance" in these children,” he adds.

Dr Breggin will also testify at the advisory committee hearing on behalf of the International Center for Psychiatry and Psychology, and will recommend that labels for stimulant drugs include the following neuropsychiatric warnings:

(1) A warning concerning depressive/OCD ADRs that includes depression, apathy, lethargy, listlessness, tiredness, sadness, crying, withdrawal, and social isolation as well as worrying, ruminating, over-focusing, and other obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

(2) A warning concerning stimulation or activation ADRs that includes insomnia, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, violence, impulsivity, disinhibition, hypomania, and mania.

(3) Strengthened warning concerning psychosis, paranoid ideation and hallucinations.

(4) Strengthened warning about rebound, dependence and abuse, especially for methylphenidate products (all current methylphenidate labels especially inadequate).

(5) A specific warning that the combination of depressive, obsessive-compulsive and stimulant ADRs poses a serious risk of dyscontrol or disinhibition with suicidal and/or violent behavior.

(6) A warning in the labels for amphetamine and methylphenidate products about persistent brain dysfunction and atrophy.

Information released by the FDA last month showed that between 1999 and 2003, seventy-eight million prescriptions were written for ADHD drugs in children ages 1 to 18, and more than 14 million prescriptions were written for adults.

During last month’s hearings, Safety Drug committee member, Dr Steve Nissen, said he is certain the public is not aware of the risks. "If the current warnings were adequate we wouldn't have 2.5 million children and 1.5 million adults taking these drugs.”

Evelyn Pringle
evelyn.pringle@sbcglobal.net

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government)

Psychiatrist Goes Down For Sexual Assault

2006-03-20T18:02:00.000+11:00

Friday, March 17, 2006
Dr. Rafael Mercado Combalecer, 64, member of the American Pedophiliac Association.. whoops, American Psychiatric Association, has been jailed for six months for sexual assault. The victim had already been molested as a child by another psychiatrist.

The victim was also the unwilling recipient of several sexually graphic letters from Combalecer.

The Psychiatrist, who had his medical license suspended by the state last month, was employed by the department of mental health.

Fourteenth Circuit Judge James M. Graves Jr. also ordered Combalecer to spend 18 months on probation, register as a sex offender and pay $420 in fines and costs, plus $10 per month probation oversight fees.

Psychiatrist Receives a Taste of His Own Medicine

2006-03-18T23:54:00.000+11:00

Famous California psychiatrist Louis Gottschalk has been ordered by a court to cease sending money to a Nigerican scam artist.

The psychiatrist, who works (still?) at the University of California medical centre that bears his name, had wired over $3,000,000 to the scammer over a ten year period utterly convinced that he would eventually receive a vast sum of money for his efforts.

True to his profession he was unable to separate reality from fantasy.

Psychiatric Delusions

2006-03-17T23:37:00.000+11:00

A quote from Psychiatrist Seymour Rosenblatt in 1981 talking about the drug taking evolution that was taking place and predicting its future.

"Consider some of the possibilities currently being promoted by serious scientists: In the next twenty years, it has been conjectured, we will be able to control people's feelings and emotions. Madness will go the way of smallpox, and mental institutions will become as rare as monasteries. Everyone will be able to get a night's sleep. Senility will be arrested by a pill or injection. Our memories will be extended beyond their present capacities, and both drug addiction and alcoholism will become things of the past.

Sex offenders will be controlled by medication. Our system of penology will be in the purview of chemistry. Steel bars will be replaced by pharmacological agents, leaving criminals to roam free but restricted from harming people.

We will have jamais vu [never seen] drugs that create feelings of novelty and déjà vu [already seen] drugs to breed familiarity. Both boredom and anxiety will be alleviated, and our sex lives will be enhanced and intensified.

Blood cells will be harnessed to become the psychiatrist's allies. They will become like beasts of burden, hauling drugs throughout our bodies. There will be no side-effects, no nausea, no liver damage.

Finally we shall emerge into a drug-free society in which genetic engineering precludes mental illness. The substances produced by our biochemists will exactly match those endowed to us by nature."

Psychiatrist Pervert in Ireland

2006-03-16T19:22:00.000+11:00

The Sunday Times March 12, 2006
Banned doctor working in Dublin
Kate Butler and Dearbhail McDonald

A DISGRACED psychiatrist banned from working in Britain is now operating a part-time private practice from a Dublin hotel.
John Harding Price, 74, was struck off the medical register in Britain five years ago after three female patients made allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Unable to practise in Britain, he moved to Ireland and worked as a locum doctor in psychiatric hospitals in Clonmel and Kilkenny.

The doctor has been investigated by the Irish Medical Council, the regulatory body for doctors, following a complaint by an Irish patient. A teenager from the southeast — an anorexia sufferer who was sexually abused as a child — complained that she had been abused by the British doctor. The council held that Harding Price was fit to practise, allowing him to continue to treat patients in Ireland.

Last week The Sunday Times tracked him down to Dublin’s Portobello hotel where he was making arrangements to meet patients. “I come over when I’m asked to see somebody,” said Harding Price, who claimed he is being given referrals by Irish doctors. “I’m old enough now that I’m not going to sell up home and travel around setting up camp. My wife and I find Ireland civilised and pleasant.”

Harding Price’s arrangements have alarmed mental health campaigners. “People are appalled that he’s allowed come here having been struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC),” said John McGuinness, a Kilkenny TD. “Some families are quite disturbed that he’s back in Ireland. He is still in contact with them in a way that’s unacceptable to them — he’s quite sinister and mischievous in that way.”

The Irish Medical Council has been criticised for allowing Harding Price to practise in Ireland, but it says its hands are tied. Three years ago the Supreme Court ruled that doctors struck off in another country are free to practise in Ireland unless the council holds its own inquiry. The court ruled that the absence of oral testimony from complainants deprives a doctor of a fair hearing.

The GMC is allowed to use fitness-to-practise judgments in other countries to prevent a doctor from practising in Britain. The Irish Medical Council found Harding Price guilty of misconduct last year, but only for a breach of confidentiality.

Fathead Theory

2006-03-15T23:19:00.000+11:00

Psychiatrists, obsessed with trying to prove that the mind is in fact the merely the bodily organ known as the brain, have now come up with the theory that brain fat can be the cause of risky behaviour.

Antidepressants Still Being Used to Chemically Cosh Children in the U.K.

2006-03-14T19:38:00.000+11:00

In 2003 the U.K. governments medicine watchdog investigated the use of antidepressants on children. The result was that they restricted the use of the drugs because they caused mood swings and increased the risk of suicide.

Three years later a survey by the medical magazine ‘Pulse’ found that four out of five GPs claim that they are not meeting the guidelines from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, which recommends advice on diet and exercise and counselling as a first line of treatment for mild to moderate depression. More than half - 58 per cent - are instead still handing out antidepressants.

Although the Royal College of GPs has signed up to guidance from the MHRA and Nice, the guidance is not legally binding. GPs are still free to use their discretion when prescribing and the survey reveals that many are doing so.

Latest official figures show that almost 7,000 prescriptions for Seroxat and 10,000 for other SSRIs were issued to under-18s in 2004-5. An increasing number of children are on Prozac.

Business More Important Than Health at the FDA

2006-03-12T06:57:00.000+11:00

Despite a unanimous recommendation by FDA scientific staff not to approve an implanted device used to treat depression.

Dr. Daniel G. Schultz, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the agency, kept its application moving up the ladder and eventually decided to approve it.

No Effect On Depression

The device in question is a surgically implanted vagus nerve stimulator produced by Cyberonics Inc. In its one and only clinical trial, it had no apparent effect on depression. This caused FDA scientists to repeatedly recommend rejecting it.

"Safe and Effective"?

Susan Bro, an FDA spokeswoman, claimed that the device had been approved because of the seriousness of persistent depression. Cyberonics argues that the device is the only "safe and effective" option for chronic, treatment-resistant depression.

The vagus nerve stimulator is surgically implanted in the upper chest, and stimulates a nerve leading to the brain. Side effects can include:

Voice alteration
Shortness of breath
Neck pain
Difficulty swallowing
Heart problems
Vocal cord paralysis
Death
Reviewers Bewildered

Internal correspondence within the FDA show that reviewers were bewildered by Dr. Schultz's continuing support for the device after the complete failure of its clinical trial.

Houston Chronicle February 18, 2006

Spartanburg Herald-Journal February 17, 2006

The drugs don't work

2006-03-09T18:01:00.000+11:00

NAOMI CANTON
08 March 2006 10:19

A man who has suffered from depression for more than 20 years today hit out at the mental health system, saying that it does not treat patients like him properly and relies too heavily on prescribing drugs.

Jeremy Crisp, 48, of St Benedict's Street, Norwich, said he felt that there were too many prescription drugs being given to mentally ill patients and not enough time spent listening to their problems.

His views echo those of Norwich's Director of Public Health Dr Peter Brambleby who last month called for GPs to get patients off anti-depressants and seek other ways of treating the illness. An Evening News investigation revealed nearly £34 million had been spent on prescribing anti-depressants in Norfolk since 2000.

Mr Crisp said in January 1991 he was admitted to the Yare Clinic with manic depression. He was put on the neuroleptic tranquilisier Modecate. He left in March and in May tried to jump off the Malthouse car park on the former Nestle site in Norwich. He survived with multiple fractures after being taken to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

He said that the Modecate “directly contributed” to his deciding there was no alternative but to end his own life.

Mr Crisp, who is unemployed, has suffered from manic depression since the age of 24, which he says started as a result of smoking cannabis. He has been in and out of Hellesdon Hospital ever since and was last an inpatient there in 2003. But he said the tradition of psychiatrists examining the patient with detachment did not work.

“The profession of psychiatry is at fault. There is a mistaken view that it is about distancing and not getting involved. It's not about talking to patients or finding out why they are suffering. “

Ruth Taylor, who manages Mind Body Soul in Ber Street, said: “Psychiatry is just a plaster over the wound. It does not deal with the underlying problem.”

Antidepressants linked to childhood suicide

2006-03-08T19:35:00.000+11:00

Antidepressants linked to childhood suicide
Tuesday, 07 Mar 2006 05:09

Antidepressant use raises the likelihood of suicidal thoughts in children, according to a new article.

Scientists from the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today published a detailed account of the conclusions they reached on use of antidepressants in children in 2004.

The article, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry journal, is the first detailed public discussion of the findings. The FDA is the body that regulates medicines in the United States.

Director of the agency's division of psychiatry products, Thomas Laughren, analysed the data of 24 clinical trials involving antidepressants and children.

He concluded that antidepressants are linked to a "modest" increase in the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour in children.

The 24 studies included 4,582 paediatric patients taking one of nine antidepressant medications for depression, anxiety or other psychiatric disorder.

Coercive Psychiatry Must Stop-Libertarianz

2006-03-06T18:24:00.000+11:00

Coercive Psychiatry Must Stop, Says Libz
Monday, 6 March 2006, 12:47 pm
Press Release: Libertarianz Party
PRESS RELEASE
Libertarianz
Health Deregulation
Coercive Psychiatry Must Stop, Says Libz

Libertarianz spokesman Dr Richard McGrath says compulsory psychiatric treatment using drugs, electric shock and incarceration is a barbaric violation of human rights that should be stopped forthwith. Reacting to comments attributed to the Mental Health Commission, he said that people previously labelled as mentally ill have the same rights and responsibilities as everybody else.

“Compulsory psychiatric treatment has been used for decades to remove difficult individuals from society, when often these people have not in fact harmed anyone else,” said Dr McGrath. “Historically these people have been forcibly administered drugs, given shock treatment and locked away in psychiatric gulags.”

Dr McGrath says there is no situation which justifies the state using force to medically treat people whose behaviour merely disturbs others. “The Mental Health Act should be repealed, so that treatment for emotional and behavioural problems becomes a matter of voluntary choice.”

Libertarianz would fully privatize the health system, including the practice of psychiatry, and remove the insanity defence from criminal trials. People with behavioural issues would be expected to compensate others for acts of violence and property damage and would be handled through the justice system.

Dr McGrath added that the medical model of mental illness is still controversial and largely unproven.
ENDS

Psychiatrist Scammed

2006-03-03T20:55:00.000+11:00

Like most people I suspect I had wondered for years what sort of person could be so gullible, greedy and dumb as to part with money to the Nigerian email scammers. Now I know.

The son of renowned psychiatrist Dr. Louis Gottschalk from the Uni. of California has filed a lawsuit asking the judge to remove his father as administrator of the family's fortune as he has lost up to $US3 million over ten years in a Nigerian internet scam.

Personal Testimony of Psychiatric Victim

2006-03-02T16:22:00.000+11:00

Hello everyone, my name is Sue Clark and I am from Ottawa, Ontario and I would have liked to have been at the Inquiry into Psychiatry, the Historic Public Hearings in Toronto but due to health problems I was unable to attend.

I was tortured by psychiatry for l8 years of my life from 1972 to 1990. I was hospitalized 20 times, and in 5 different hospitals. I was given 7 different psychiatric labels/diagnoses, and given heavy doses of all the major tranquilizers and all various forms of antidepressants, and given 5 electroshock treatments and given behaviour modification.

Since 1990, I have been off psychiatric drugs/medications and I have had no hospital admissions to a psychiatric ward. I have had no relapses since that time.

I am now an antipsychiatry activist who is fighting to end electroshock therapy all over the world. I was hired for two years in the 1990s by the Royal Ottawa Hospital in their consumer as expert program and I was hired because of my antipsychiatry beliefs. Marion Crow was my boss. I have advocated for my peers in hospitals, at court, and at social services. I am writing a book this year about my experiences with the mental health system. I am the Chair of the Mindfreedom Committee to End Electroshock.

I was a psychiatric inmate at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, the Monfort Hospital, the Queensway Hospital, the Ottawa General Hospital, all hospitals in Ottawa, and also I was at Brockville Psychiatric Hospital in Ontario.

At the age of l7 years old, I ran away from my upper middle class home in Ottawa. My father was the director of a translation section in an Ottawa federal department and had a high paying salary and my mother was a housewife. I wanted for nothing material wise, I had the best of food, clothes, yearly vacations, and lived in a big house that Paul Anka used to live in at 87 Clearview Ave in Ottawa. I was not given any love nor any respect by my parents who violated my physical and psychological boundaries continually during my childhood. I was a very frightened and nervous child in my home. I had no one to run to for help or so I thought. My childhood experiences continue to haunt me to this day.

My mother and father tortured my brother Chris and I - physically and emotionally. I was tortured by my parents for l7 years of my life. My Uncle Lyman sexually abused me at the age of 4 years old. My father was a wife beater and so was his father. My father's brother Gerry molested his two daughters for years. My father would yell at me and call me names and kick me and grab me and punch me.

My mother would strangle me, throw me down a flight of stairs, beat me on the arms and legs, throw things at me, jump on me when I was sleeping and twist my arms and legs, throw me into doors and walls, slap me across the face, call me names and yell and scream at me. My mother beat all the animals we had. She put my cousin Marcel's head in a toilet bowl for soiling his pants, and beat my cousin Robin for returning home with an umbrella she gave Robin to use but it got broken at school.

I grew up in a home where on the outside everything looked perfect but on the inside it was chaotic and it was a very violent and unsafe environment to live in.

My brother and I hid the abuse we suffered at home from most family members and friends and from school. My mother threatened us should we ever tell anyone of the abuse happening at home. My father and mother did not use alcohol nor drugs but their behaviour was out of control. Some family members knew of the abuse that was happening to my brother and I but kept silent and turned a blind eye to the abuse. In the 1970s, child abuse was a taboo subject and rarely spoken about. These days child abuse is covered in the media and it is not a taboo subject anymore.

At the age of l7 years old with no money in my pocket and not knowing about any community resources, I ran away from home in February of 1972. I called a high school friend and she let me stay at her home with her brother while her parents were away in Florida. After about a month while staying at my friend's house in Ottawa, her parents called to say they were coming home from Florida and they did not know I was staying at their house. My friend told me I had to go. I was homeless and had no one to turn to. I was all alone with no one to help me.

I was a wounded soul looking for help to ease my emotional pain of having been abused for l7 years by my parents.

The school psychologist at my high school called me into the office. She asked me why I was missing so much school and I told her about the abuse at home. She suggested I go to the Royal Ottawa Hospital on Carling Ave and someone could talk to me and I could get some help. So I agreed, not knowing what the Royal Ottawa Hospital was all about.

I walked into the psychiatric industry for l8 years as I made my first step into the Royal Ottawa Hospital in March of 1972. A psychiatrist and a nurse were waiting to speak to me in the Emergency section of the hospital. I told them the whole history of my family and the abuse I suffered at home. They suggested since my nerves were bad I should stay for a few days at the hospital and they would help me. I had no money, and no one to turn to. I did not know about welfare, legal aid, food banks or emergency shelters and never asked as I did not know about these services, and whether they existed at all in 1972 in Ottawa.

I was admitted to the Whitney 4 ward of the Royal Ottawa Hospital. I was 125 pounds at the time of my admission to the hospital. Right away I was given heavy doses of tranquilizers whereby I had no co-ordination as I walked down the hallway and had to cling onto the walls to walk, my vision was blurry from the psychiatric medication and I had a dry mouth and I slept for 20 hours a day. I got up to eat meals and to talk to my visitors. Often they had to wake me up as I was sleeping.

While in the hospital, I signed papers that I was told "don't worry about what you are signing". My vision was blurry and I did not know what type of papers I was signing - probably drug study forms.

I gained 30 pounds in the three months I was there. I developed an eating disorder on the ward that continues to this day as when the snacks came by I would grab the cakes and cookies and used food to make me feel better because I was locked up and could not get out. I used food as a coping tool. I am seeing a therapist these days to deal with my overeating disorder.

I left after three months and went to live (with) my abusers, my parents as I had no where to go. Living with my family got me depressed so I was admitted to the Royal Ottawa again. This happened three times and until February of the next year whereby I was threatened with "going to Brockville Psychiatric Hospital" if you do not get better.

On the Whitney Ward, I was on a locked ward and could not understand why I was being locked up, what did I do to deserve being locked up? I had bad nerves from having been abused severely for l7 years by my parents. I had to line up for my medications like a herd of sheep. I got angry and I told the staff what I thought. I was vocal, and loud. I was protesting the way I was being treated. I was treated like a child, talked down to, not believed, had my freedom stripped away from me.

I would bang on my locker in my hospital bedroom whereby four orderlies would come down the hallway and I would run away for dear life and they would corner me and then drag me to my bedroom, and flip me onto my stomach onto my bed. A nurse with a long needle was standing there waiting to inject me with sedatives to knock me out for quiet a while. This was called a "chemical restraint". I was not a compliant patient, I was a shit disturber on the ward. I told the staff what I thought of them and it was not nice language. I got many "chemical restraints" at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. Shortly after trying to hang myself in my room at the Royal Ottawa
Hospital in March of 1973 on the Whitney 4 ward. I was transferred by ambulance to Ward H of the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital in Ontario, 60 miles from Ottawa. This huge complex was near a main highway.

On Ward H another locked ward, I was again given heavy doses of psychiatric medications, had my dignity and freedom stripped away from me. Where were my human rights? I was never told about a patient rights advisor, or legal aid. The Royal Ottawa Hospital never told me about my rights either.

After being at Brockville Psychiatric Hospital for three months, Dr. Louis Sipos told me he was going to give me electroshock therapy. I asked Dr. Sipos what that was. He told me they would put electricity through my brain. I was frightened as he told me that and I answered Dr. Louis "hey, if you put electricity through my brain, it will fry my brain like an egg and scramble it". Dr. Louis said electroshock therapy was safe, and I protested with him and said I did not want electroshock. He told me he was going to give me ECT and that was that.

So on the morning of my electroshock therapy, apparently a peer of my ward told me many years later as I forgot this part in my memory, as the staff tried to bring me down the hallway to the electroshock room, I yelled and screamed as loud as I could, I bit the staff and kicked them as I did not want to go to the ECT room. I yelled for someone to help me and not let me go into the ECT room, but no one came to my rescue, no one helped me.

Eventually the staff forced me into the ECT room. This I do remember, however. The room had white walls and next to the bed there was steel box with wires coming out of it. I was told to lay on my back while a nurse gave me a needle in my arm. I was looking around the room and wanted out, I wanted to escape. I yelled to the staff I did not want ECT. No one listened to me. I was frightened as I looked around the room and at the staff. It was a traumatizing experience for me that still haunts me to this day. A rubber band was wrapped around my
forehead and a rubber mallet put between my teeth. Then the psychiatrist turned on the shock machine and zapped me with electricity through my brain.

I woke up afterwards after being given the ECT against my will. I was put into a wheelchair and did not know who I was, where I was and what I was doing in a hospital. That lasted for about a day. Eventually I remembered where I was and who I was. I was angry that I was tortured by the electroshock and by the doctor and staff and no one came to my aid.

On my 5th electroshock, my heart stopped and I was revived. I received no more electroshocks after that. About 2 months later I was released from the hospital and sent back to Ottawa and a social worker drove me to a group home in Ottawa for women who just got out of psychiatric hospitals which was located near Sussex Ave.

Since the time I had electroshock which was 33 years ago, I have problems with permanent memory loss, problems with concentrating and learning anything new. This has impeded my life significantly. I have a difficult time to remember anything from hour to hour let alone from day to day. I forget to mark things down in my date book and I have forgotten appointments, meetings, trips, conferences, and the list goes on. People come to me to this day and say "do you remember me" and I don't know who they are. I can't remember some of my neighbours names who I see on a daily basis. Sometimes I can't even remember my friends' names.

I can't remember from day to day, week to week, month to month or from year to year so my brother and my boyfriend often recall the memories from my past for me. They tell me what happened during that time and as the years have gone by.

You can't get a job if you can't remember anything, you can't go to school to get a good education if you can't remember anything. You have to be able to remember to do everything in life. Marking things down doesn't help me much as I forget where I wrote the things down I have to remember.

Electroshock therapy, ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, electrotherapy, and all the names that are used to describe it must be banned, it must be stopped.

ECT is brutal, unethical, torture, and it is a crime against humanity. l4,000 ECTs are given to people in Ontario yearly. 70% of ECT is given to women and out of that percentage more than half of electroshock is routinely given to elderly women, a form of elder abuse.

100,000 Americans get ECT yearly in the USA. Since ECT was introduced in the USA in 1940, it is estimated that 6 million Americans have had ECT, and it is estimated that 1 to 2 million people a year get ECT yearly worldwide.

ECT is unethical because there is no proper informed consent for ECT. ECT always causes brain damage Dr. Peter R. Breggin a psychiatrist from New York State states that. He has written several books one of which is called "Electroshock: Its Brain Disabling Effects. Dr. Breggin states that contemporary ECT has more electricity than before when it is given and it is more damaging.

ECT is a big money making machine. In the USA, ECT is a 3 billion dollar a year industry. In 2000, a Columbia University study found that ECT is so ineffective at ridding patients of their depression that nearly all of those who received it, relapsed within six months of having had the treatment.

Electroshock involves the searing of the brain with more volts of electricity than you will find in your house. Between 180 to 460 volts of electricity sends a current pulsing through the brain creating a grand mal seizure which is identical to an epileptic fit. The administering psychiatrist usually looks for the curling up or the twitching of the toes to determine if the shock has "worked". Without this sign, multiple shocks have been given until the desired effect is achieved. Today MMECT also known as multiple monitored ECT can induce up to 8
seizures in one treatment.

Slovenia is the world's first shock free zone in the world.

There have been numerous scientific studies done during the past 50 to 60 years that have proven the brain disabling effects of ECT. Yet, ECT is making a big comeback and why is that. ECT is quick and ECT brings in big dollars.

I deem ECT as torture.

I am the Chair of the Mindfreedom Committee to End Electroshock which is part of Mindfreedom International which is comprised of over 100 sponsor groups and well as individuals as members who are all fighting psychiatric oppression.

On July 28, 2001 the Board of Directors of Mindfreedom International wrote the "Resolution Against Electroshock - A Crime Against Humanity" which states:

1. Electroshock always causes brain damage.

2. Electroshock always causes permanent memory loss.

3. Electroshock always causes learning disabilities and other
intellectual impairments.

4. Electroshock often causes fear or terror in patients

5. Even by conventional psychiatric standards, electroshock has an
extremely high relapse rate - over 70% within one year

6. Electroshock does not significantly relieve depression or prevent
suicide. In fact several research studies indicate that electroshock
can aggravate or trigger depression and suicide attempts: the Nobel
Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway killed himself shortly after
undergoing a second series of electroshocks.

7. Psychiatrists frequently violate the ethical-legal principle of
informed consent when prescribing/ordering electroshock. Subjects are
not informed or are misinformed about the procedure's harmful effects,
nor are they informed about non-injurious, non-medical approaches such
as counselling (including peer counselling, self help groups, and life
style changes)

8. Electroshock discriminates against highly vulnerable people. Its
chief targets are women and the elderly. Children are also being
subjected to electroshock in growing numbers. In the United States and
Canada, 70% of electroshock is administered to women and upwards of
half of those undergoing electroshock are 60 years of age and older.

9. Electroshock machines have never been independently inspected or
approved for their medical safety. Since 1978, the Food and Drug
Administration of the United States government has officially placed
shock machines in its most dangerous medical device category "class
III" hazardous and unsafe.

10. Electroshock has caused many deaths. Such deaths are routinely
minimized or underreported in the medical psychiatric literature.
Rarely are psychiatrists or electroshock facilities requested to report
electroshock caused deaths or any information concerning the use of
electroshock to governmental regulatory bodies.

I want the Ontario Ministry of Health to put a moratorium on the use of electroshock therapy in Ontario and have a public inquiry into the use of electroshock therapy.

I want all other provincial ministries of health to do the same in Canada.

Remember Jean-Yves Barrette, one of my friend's brother who went into a coma after having had his 5th electroshock. He was 42 years old and had a wife and a teenage son. Jean Yves never recovered from his coma and died 7 years later in an Ottawa long term care facility. I visited Jean Yves while he was in a coma. It was a frightening sight to see a man who was in his prime of life and to see him curled up in his bed in a coma. Jean Yves suffered greatly and it was caused by ECT. That could have been me and it could have been you or someone you know.

Electroshock is barbaric, cruel and torture. It traumatizes me to this day thinking of when I was in the ECT room and with all the nurses and the psychiatrist dressed in white with white walls surrounding them and I was laying on a stretcher with white sheets next to a little steel box full of wires and electricity ready to be used on me.

Electroshock must be stopped today and no one should have to go through what I did. This is my personal true story of what happened to me in my family, and in psychiatric hospitals.

I speak out in the name of social justice for you all listening today to help me and others to end the torture of electroshock worldwide.

We all need to work together and make Canada the number 2 country in the world to be a shock free zone. Slovenia is the world's first shock free zone in the world today. We need to organize, write to our members of parliament, and our provincial members of parliament and tell them electroshock is torture and put a moratorium on electroshock today.

Please write letters to your newspapers, and tell your family and friends my story. This story will be posted on my website at:
www.geocities.com/sueclark2001ca or you can email me at:
sueclark2003@yahoo.com and I will send you my story.

I would like to thank all the psychiatric survivors who like me continue to speak out about the atrocities of electroshock and the psychiatric survivor groups in Canada and the USA and all over the world who work so hard everyday to pass out the message to the world - electroshock is barbaric and brutal and it must be stopped. Please remember those who had ECT and died. We must not forget them.

I would also like to thank Don Weitz who is one of my mentors and who has given me support and guidance for over 20 years now and for his work for over 30 years exposing electroshock therapy. I would also like to thank Bonnie Burstow for her work in speaking out against electroshock too.

Thank you for listening to my electroshock personal story today.

The truth shall prevail.

Sue Clark, Chair
Mindfreedom Committee To End Electroshock
Telephone: (613) 721-l833
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Websites: www.geocities.com/sueclark2001ca/
http://ectworldcampaign.tripod.com

"Electroshock is a crime against humanity"

A Survivor of ECT Tells Her Story

2006-02-27T14:05:00.000+11:00

(Click the article heading for the source)
My biggest thanks and appreciation to Don Weitz and the members of CAPA. Thank-you for having this event and thanks for inviting me to speak. The impact of these types of forums is far reaching and although the result is mostly - unknown - I am alive today because of hearing survival testimonies and the truth about psychiatry.

Psychiatric treatment has taken a tremendous toll on my life. I would very much like to put the entire experience of being locked up and drugged and shocked behind me and move forward with my life, but it's been 14 years, and so far I haven't been able to. ECT destroyed brain cells filled with memory. During my first ECT seizure my kneecap dislocated. The needle which held the muscle relaxant drug "slipped" out of my arm. The kneecap was surgically removed. One of my heart valves was permanently damaged and a recent head CT scan revealed irregularities.

After 14 months of being locked inside the psychiatric unit, I returned home to a family I had no memory of. I didn't know how to be a mother to my young sons or a wife for my husband. I had to learn my name, how to speak, do up buttons, brush my teeth and so on. I didn't even recognize my own parents, sisters and brothers. My social work career and law aspirations vanished.

The intent of ECT is to kill brain cells. Just the bad cells which are causing the illness, they say.

Electricity going through the head which is largely composed of fluid destroys everything in its path. Electricity hasn't changed throughout the ages - so when you hear that ECT is new, improved and safe - it's an obvious lie. When you hear that they don't know exactly how ECT works, it's a lie. But when you hear that it is effective - well, it's true. It is very effective in causing closed head injury/memory loss which inevitably alters lives..

People always want to know what was wrong with you that you needed psychiatric treatment. "Were you depressed?", "Were you having problems in your life?", "Was there mental illness in your family?"

The truth of the matter is that I wasn't depressed, didn't have unusual problems in my life, and there wasn't any mental illness in my family.

I consulted a family doctor for a throat infection expecting anti-biotics. Through the fever and pain, two tears fell down my face and as a result, I was prescribed a "new drug" Prozac instead of anti-biotics. Of course I was assured that it would be more effective.

10 days of not eating or sleeping led to the diagnosis of clinical bi-polar depression.

During the next 14 months of incarceration in a psychiatric unit, I acquired every disease listed in the DSM and was treated with drugs and ECT.

Would it matter if I HAD been out of my head crazy or had a difficult life problem to deal with? I think not! Psychiatric treatment involving incarceration, drugs and ECT constitutes abuse. Is it better to abuse people who have problems or people who don't have problems? The devastating result will be the same.

I spoke recently to a person who had read my book and was horrified
about my experience. He said that that kind of thing would never happen where he lives - Ontario.

It's likely that if I hadn't personally encountered psychiatric treatment, I would have believed the exact same thing: forced psychiatric treatment perpetrated on healthy strong people is a horrible thing that used to happen or just the stuff of horror movies, and that if it does in fact happen - it happens somewhere else.

Even if through magic I could put the ordeal "in the past" I wouldn't. I have learned some ugly things but I have also been blessed to know exceptional people doing exceptional things in order to put ECT and other horrendous abuses away for good.

I wish I could have learned the truth about psychiatric treatment in a less harmful way. For those of you who haven't learned the truth through first hand experience, I urge you to listen well today. And to those of you who have learned the truth through personal experience and have survived, I beg of you to keep telling your story. This is what saves lives and leads to laws that protect Canadians from psychiatric treatment.

Thank-you again for allowing me to share a few words from my heart.

Feel free to contact me if you Ever need a safe person to talk to, or a safe place to be.

Wendy Funk (ECT survivor)
21 Iron Horse Drive
Whitehorse, Yukon
Y1A 6V2
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Psych Busted

2006-02-25T15:10:00.000+11:00

Psychiatrist Dr. Joe Broderson from Lexington, Kentucky prescribed large quantities of MS Contin, a morphine drug, to his co-workers. He was busted by the Drug Enforcement and Professional Practices Branch.

So does he go to jail for dealing? Does he go down for malpractise? Does he go down for medical fraud? Well not exactly. He was asked to give up his licence. That's it.

The Root of Evil

2006-02-22T20:10:00.000+11:00

Psychiatry is that root.

A Chronicle of Death by Psychiatric Drugs

2006-02-16T19:50:00.000+11:00

FDA Forgot A Few ADHD Drug Related Deaths and Injuries
February 15, 2006. By Evelyn Pringle

The numbers cited by the FDA for possible attention deficit drug-related deaths and injuries represent a gross understatement of statistics. The truth is that these drugs are responsible for and endless stream of deaths and injuries all over the country.

According to the latest investigation by the FDA, in the four year period between 1999 and 2003, there were twenty-five deaths in persons using ADHD drugs, 19 of which were children. Officials also acknowledged that more than 50 cases of cardiovascular problems had been reported, including stoke, heart attack, hypertension, palpitations and arrhythmia. There are many more documented adverse events caused by these drugs and the FDA knows it.

For instance, on November 20, 1986, after being on Ritalin since the third grade, fourteen-year-old Rod Mathews lured a classmate, Shawn Ouillette, into a wooded area near his home in Canton, Massachusetts, under the pretense of a plan to build a snow fort, and beat him to death with a baseball bat.

Although he had no prior history of violence, Rod beat Shawn until he died and just left the body in the woods. Rod took 2 friends to see the body, and threatened them with the same fate if they told anyone about the murder.

Shaun’s parents reported him missing but his body was not found until about 3 weeks later, when one of Rod's friends tipped off police.

A month before the murder, Rod wrote about some of his bizarre thoughts and actions and said:

“My problem is I like to do crazy things. I’ve been lighting fires all over the place. Lately, I’ve been wanting to kill people I hate, and I’ve been wanting to light houses on fire. What should I do?”

This 14-year-old child was tried as an adult, found guilty of second-degree murder, and went on to become the youngest inmate in the Massachusetts state prison system.

By all accounts, Shaun was a wonderful son and his mother, Jeanne Quinn, missed him terribly. Jeanne told friends that when Rod killed her son he killed her too.

So, the question remains, why isn't Shaun's name listed under Ritalin-related deaths?

There is also no mention of the prescription drug-deaths of 3 members of the McCra family from Rochester, Massachusetts.

On October 9, 1993, 15-year-old Gerard McCra, Jr shot and killed his mother, Merle, 36, his father, Gerald, 35, and his 11-year-old sister, Melanie, after taking Ritalin for nine years since he was six-years-old.

According to court documents and testimony at trial, Gerald told authorities that he was upset because his parents threatened to kick him out of the house.

On the day of the crime, Gerald said his father and sister were about to leave in the family car, and he asked them to wait so that he could go with them.

Gerald went back in the house, broke into his grandfather's room, got a loaded gun and shot his mother in the back of the head and then returned to the waiting car, and shot his father and sister in the back of the head as well.

Next Gerald drove the car to an area behind the house and dragged his mother's body into his sister's room and locked the door.

He attempted to clean up the bloody areas of the house, and then showered and called a female friend and told her to come over to visit. The two spent the night together in Gerald's room.

The next day, he drove the car up to the house, loaded his mother's body in it, and drove car away and left it sit. Later that day, police found the parked car with the 3 dead bodies abandoned along a dirt road.

After police found the bodies, Gerald admitted to the killings. He was convicted of 3 counts of first degree murder on October 23, 1995, and each carried a mandatory life sentence.

The FDA made no mention of the ADHD drug related death of little Sherrice Iverson at the hearings. On May 25, 1997, an 18-year-old high school senior, Jeremy Strohmeyer, raped and murdered 7-year-old Sherrice, in a Nevada casino. Jeremy had been diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Dexedrine just days before the crime.

The former high school honor student from Long Beach, California, sexually assaulted and then strangled Sherrice in a stall in the women's bathroom at Primm Valley Casino on the Nevada-California border. Security cameras picked up Jeremy leaving the bathroom.

When police arrived at Jeremy's home and were waiting for a search warrant, his mother gave them an empty Dexedrine bottle and a suicide note her son had left that said:

"I am so sorry, I just pray that this is enough to finish me off. Please Lord let me die. I'm sorry, mom, I'm sorry dad, heather, all my friends and family. Forgive me for I have sinned. I'm sorry. Please give these things (unidentified objects) to Agnes Lee. Tell her I will always love her."

Heather is Jeremy's sister and Agnes Lee is a former girlfriend. Jeremy had taken 37 Dexedrine pills. Police took him to the hospital where his stomach was pumped and according to police reports, Jeremy gave the officers a complete confession.

Moments before his trial was set to begin on September 8, 1998, Jeremy pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. The plea agreement would send him to prison for life with no chance of parole. Had he gone to trial, he could have gotten the death penalty.

The Ritalin-related deaths of three young Kentucky girls, Nicole Hadley, Jessica James, and Kayce Steger are not listed in the FDA report.

On December 1, 1997, 14-year-old Michael Carneal, was on Ritalin, when he started firing a gun during a prayer meeting at a high school in West Paducah, Kentucky, killing Jessica, 17, Kayce, 15, and 14-year-old Nicole, and wounding five other students, including one who is paralyzed.

That morning, Michael rode to school with his sister Kelly. He wrapped the guns in a blanket and passed the bundle off as a school project. A couple of days before the rampage, Michael had stole the guns from a friend's garage.

Michael's sister Kelly witnessed the shootings and told police that had she not seen Michael's face, she would not have recognized him as her brother.

According to his friends, at the time of the shooting, Michael suffered from severe paranoia and unreasonable fears and believed that his friends and family were plotting against him. Among his fears were people hiding in the air vents in his home which caused Michael to cover the vents in the bathroom with towels every time he took a shower.

He feared that people were beneath the floorboards waiting to cut off his feet with a chainsaw and slept with knives under his mattress in case he needed to fight off a burglar.

At the FDA hearings, nobody mentioned the Ritalin-related injuries to Shelley Schaberg, 17, Melissa “Missy” Jenkins, 15, Kelly Hard, 16, Craig Keene, 15, and Hollan Holm, 14, who were all wounded by Michael at the school that day.

Michael pleaded guilty to the charges by reason of mental illness and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 25 years. Lucky for Michael, Kentucky law prohibits giving the death penalty to anyone under the age of 16.

The March 10, 1998, Ritalin-related deaths of Gerald and Cynthia Franklin of Huntsville, Alabama, are not noted in the FDA report, and neither are the Ritalin-related injuries to their 3 children, Sara, Timothy and Christopher Franklin

The Franklin's 17-year-old first-born son, Jeffrey was on the prescribed drugs of Ritalin, Prozac, and Klonopin, an anti-convulsant, when he killed his parents as they came home from work and then attempted to murder his 12-year-old sister and two brothers aged 9 and 6. Jeffrey's 11-year-old sister Stacey, was not at home at the time of the attacks.

A doctor maintained that that Jeff had ADHD, accompanied by depression and prescribed the drug cocktail to supposedly treat his condition.

A neighbor called the police after he found one of the children wandering around outside in a daze, all bloody and crying.

Gerald and Cynthia, were dead when the police arrived and the wounded siblings were taken to the Huntsville Hospital. "The children all had very serious head and face injuries from what looked like an ax and some sort of large, blunt force object," hospital spokeswoman Terri Bryson told police.

Police reports noted that all five victims had massive head wounds, slashes to their necks and faces, and blood-soaked clothes and that Jeff was shirtless and covered with blood when arrested.

Police said Jeff bludgeoned his family members with a bloody, hatchet found in the home that had a blade on one side and a hammer on the other.

According to legal documents, Jeff told police that he had snorted crushed Ritalin pills and had not slept for days. Police investigator Chester McCutcheon told the judge in the case that Jeff had described an out-of-body experience and hallucinations in which he believed that horns were growing from his head.

Police reports said that prior to his arrest, Jeff lead police on a high-speed car chase and that he spat, cursed and made obscene gestures when police and news crews caught up with him after he crashed into a fence, in a residential neighborhoods in southeast Huntsville.

In the early stages of court proceedings, the press reported that a quiet, docile Jeffrey Franklin seemed like a different youth than the teen arrested on March 10, 1998. Police interviews with classmates and neighbors turned up no leads as to what may have triggered the murders.

In 1999, Jeff was found mentally incompetent to stand trial but a couple years later, following treatment, it was determined that he was able to stand trial. The defense entered a plea of not guilty by reason of mental defect. Three days before the trial was set to begin, Jeff pleaded guilty to killing his parents and attempting to murder three siblings.

This young man who obviously experienced a severe adverse reaction after being placed on a daily cocktail of 3 dangerous drugs, was sentenced to 5 life terms in prison. His name should be included in the list of people having adverse effects.

The names of Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson should also be listed in FDA records under ADHD drug-related adverse effects.

On March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, 11-year-old Andrew Golden and 14-year-old Mitchell Johnson shot and killed one teacher, four students, and wounded 10 others people. According to published reports, the boys were on Ritalin.

Andrew Golden and Mitchell staged a false fire alarm and then began shooting students and teachers as they exited the building. An Arkansas judge found the 2 children guilty of 5 counts of capital murder and 10 counts of battery. The boys received the maximum sentence possible under Arkansas juvenile laws: placement in a juvenile facility until they turn 18, possibly until they turn 21, if a facility is built for 18-21 year olds.

Young Kip Kinkel's name should be listed on the front page of FDA reports on adverse drug reactions.

On May 20, 1998, Kip was only 14-years-old on the night that he murdered both of his parents. When he got up the next morning, he went to Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon and shot and killed two students and wounded 22 more people.

After being diagnosed with dyslexia, Kip had been was placed on Ritalin and was later prescribed Prozac as well.

On the day he killed his parents, Kip was arrested at school and charged with possession of a firearm in a public building and receiving a stolen weapon. According to Detective Al Warthen who interviewed him, Kip was very upset and worried about what his parents were going to think while waiting for his father Bill to come to the station and get him.

According to Kip's confession, at about 3 that afternoon, his father was sitting at the kitchen counter drinking coffee when Kip took a 22 rifle from his room, got ammunition from his father's room, and shot his father once in the back of his head.

After that, Kip told police detectives, "I didn't know what to do so I dragged him into the bathroom and then put a white sheet over him."

After killing his father, Kip said that he waited for his mother to come home. According to his taped confession, when she drove in the garage at about 6:30 pm, he told her that he loved her, and then shot her twice in the back of the head, three times in the face and one time through the heart. He then dragged her body across the garage floor and covered her with a sheet.

After killing his parents, Kip apparently wrote a note that police found on the coffee table in the family living room that said:

"I have just killed my parents! I don't know what is happening. I love my mom and dad so much. I just got two felonies on my record. My parents can't take that! It would destroy them. The embarrassment would be too much for them. They couldn't live with themselves. I'm so sorry. I am a horrible son. I wish I had been aborted. I destroy everything I touch. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I didn't deserve them. They were wonderful people. It's not their fault or the fault of any person, organization, or television show. My head just doesn't work right. God damn these VOICES inside my head. I want to die. I want to be gone. But I have to kill people. I don't know why. I am so sorry! Why did God do this to me. I have never been happy. I wish I was happy. I wish I made my mother proud. I am nothing! I tried so hard to find happiness. But you know me I hate everything. I have no other choice. What have I become? I am so sorry "

The next morning, Kip filled his backpack with ammunition and carried 3 guns. He taped a hunting knife to his leg, wore a long trenchcoat to conceal the weapons, and drove his mother's car to school.

Security cameras showed him walking down the hall towards the school cafeteria when he shot Ben Walker and Ryan Atteberry, before entering the cafeteria and firing off what remained of the 50 round clip of a 22 caliber semiautomatic and one round from a handgun. By the time five classmates wrestled Kip to floor, 2 students were dead and 25 others were injured.

Theresa Miltonberger, was the most severely injured student to survive and spent 65 days in the hospital. She has bullet fragments permanently lodged in her brain causing cognitive and memory impairment.

Kip pled guilty to four counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder even though he had no idea of what caused him to commit the crimes.

On November 2, 1999, after a 6-day hearing that included testimony by psychiatrists, a statement by Kip's sister's asking for leniency, and statements by victims, this 14-year-old children who was placed on a daily cocktail of dangerous drugs through no fault of his own, was sentenced to 111 years in prison, without the possibility of parole.

In requesting leniency, Kip's sister, Kristin explained to the judge how she had tried to prepare Kip for when he would have to listen to statements from victims and told him to "just tune out ... to a safe place in his memory, and not listen to the victims when they talk, because they are angry and going to say things they really don't mean."

Kristin relayed how Kip stopped her and said, "No, I owe it to them to listen."

The name of every student harmed at the school that day, should appear in the FDA report under drug-related adverse events.

The Adderall-related death of an infant in Grand Forks, North Dakota was not listed in the report either. On January 30, 1999, Ron Ehlis killed his 5-week-old daughter Tyra, ten days after his doctor wrote him a prescription for Adderall.

As a child, Ron was put on Ritalin and when he went to see a psychiatrist at age 26, because he was having a hard time with his college studies, without conducting any type of tests, the doctor prescribed Adderall.

After a few days, he did as the doctor instructed and doubled the dose, and Ron's nightmare began.

He described delusions, hallucinations, and out-of-body experiences, including talking with God and his dead grandfather after he upped the dose. Believing to be acting under God’s orders, Ron shot his ﬁve-week-old daughter and then shot himself in the stomach. The baby did not survive.

Ron was charged with murder, but the charges were dismissed after several doctors testiﬁed that he suffered from an amphetamine-induced psychotic disorder, caused by teh Adderall and did not have the necessary criminal responsibility. Angie Moreno, the baby's mother, testiﬁed that Ron did not act like himself from the ﬁrst day he took the Adderall.

The name Tyra Ehlis should definitely be listed under Adderall-related death.

Shawn Cooper was 15-years-old and on Ritalin, on April 16, 1999, when he took a 12-gauge shotgun to his high school in Notus, Idaho, and held the entire school hostage for about 20 minutes. Shawn fired two shotgun rounds, wounding one student, and narrowly missing other classmates and teachers. Prior to that fateful day, Shawn was best noticed in his position of outfielder on the school baseball team.

There was nothing mentioned at the FDA hearings about Shawn Cooper's Ritalin-related adverse event.

Thomas Solomon's name is nowhere to be found either.

In 1999, Thomas Solomon Jr, or TJ to his friends, was a 15-year-old sophomore on Ritalin when he brought a rifle to Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia on May 20, and shot six students. The event happened one month to the day after the Columbine school massacre.

His classmates said TJ had a dazed expression on his face as he began firing the gun. He was known to be a good shot, but did not seem to be aiming at people. If he was trying to imitate the Columbine shooters, TJ was apparently a bad actor.

The press noted that he had access to his stepfather's high-caliber guns but brought a low-powered rifle to the school.

The shooting ended quickly and TJ backed out the door and dropped the rifle. He then kneeled on ground, pulled a 357 magnum out of his bookbag, and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth.

The assistant principal, Cecil Brinkley reportedly calmed TJ, by saying: "It's going to be all right, put it down."

TJ removed the gun from his mouth and collapsed in Mr Brinkley's arms sobbing and said: "Oh, my God, I'm so scared."

TJ's classmates expressed total disbelief over his behavior. "He'd be the last person I'd think would do something like this," classmate Ryan Rosa told Time Magazine. "He was normal. Just like me," Ryan said.

At the time, the press described TJ as a quiet, teen who was literally a Boy Scout, who attended church regularly and played baseball on a county league.

School Superintendent, Donald Peccia, told reporters that school records contained no warning signs. "The disciplinary record would not indicate he had been any significant trouble," Peccia said. "We had no reason to suspect this student at all."

In addition to the injured that were shot, there were 2 other very lucky students that day. When the shooting began, one girl held a book to her chest and later discovered that a bullet had penetrated the book to page 162. Another girl found bullet fragments in her bookbag the next day but the spiral binding of a notebook had stopped the bullet.

This never-before violent, Ritalin-drugged child, was sentenced to 40 years in a Georgia State Prison, where at 17, he attempted suicide by swallowing antidepressants.

The name of every student injured by TJ at the school that day should be listed in FDA records under adverse drug events.

The death of young Jessica Curry in Spokane, Washington is also not mentioned in the FDA report.

In late September 1999, Jessica was a happy, 8-year-old third grader as she sat on her mother, Sharon's lap in the passenger seat of her mother's Mustang convertible, discussing what she wanted to wear for Halloween.

After she told her mother that she wanted a princess costume, Sharon who was on Adderall at the time, stabbed Jessica 5 times and then stabbed herself. A short time later a policeman found Sharon and Jessica still sitting in car in the driveway, all covered in blood. The mother lived, but Jessica did not.

When the officer asked Sharon what happened, she asked him for a cigarette.

Sharon was found not guilty of all charges, by reason of insanity brought on by the Adderall. Doctors for the state and the defense agreed that she was insane when she killed Jessica and that her mental state was so acute that she could not distinguish between right and wrong.

Sharon sued her doctor alleging he prescribed an excessive dose of Adderall and caused her to kill her daughter. The lawsuit was settled out of court, but neither side would reveal the details.

The death of three-year-old toddler, Nathaniel Branson, is also not mentioned in the FDA report.

On March 18, 2000, Nat's mother Dawn was driving in Scottsdale, Arizona with her son in the car when she suffered a psychotic episode while on Adderall.

According to court documents, Dawn heard a voice saying: "Let go of the steering wheel and gas. God will drive the car don't you trust him?"

She did as the voice said, and a car accident followed which resulted in her son's death and serious injuries to Dawn. Prior to being prescribed Adderall, she had never been psychotic and since she quit taking the drug, there have been no further psychotic episodes.

The FDA did not include the Adderall-related death of Errol Beumel, Sr in the report.

On the evening of April 25, 2003, Errol Beumel Sr and his wife, Janet, went to their son, Errol Jr's home near Lafayette, Indiana, to check on Jr because the father and son had argued the night before.

According to court testimony, Errol Jr was on Adderall when he met his father at the door with a gun and began shooting, while Errol Sr fled, and eventually collapsed in a ditch across the road.

The son then reloaded the gun, got a flashlight and went and shot his father several more times as he lay bleeding in the ditch, while his mother watched in horror.

At the criminal trial, Dr John Pless, a forensic pathologist from Indiana University, testified that Beumel Sr was shot 10 times. Dr Pless testified that seven of the most severe injuries were to the chest and abdomen and that one bullet entered his skull.

Errol's Jr's sister, Carly, testified that she believed her brother's addiction to Adderall caused him to develop a mental illness in the 6 months leading up to the murder. "I watched him growing up by my side in a good home and a good family, and he was a good boy," she said. "It was complete chaos in our lives for six months before this event."

At the trial, two court-appointed psychiatrists testified that Errol Jr was insane and unable to appreciate right from wrong at the time of the murder. Dr Stephen Berger identified the problem as drug-induced psychosis brought on by Adderall.

Errol Jr testified at the trial and said that spirits convinced him that his father was the devil and that he needed to be killed.

The jury took less than two hours to reject the insanity defense and find him guilty of murder and the judge imposed the maximum 70-year prison sentence allowed.

A formal statement issued by Errol Jr's mother and two sisters said: "On behalf of Janet, Erica and Carly Beumel, we were surprised and deeply saddened that Errol did not receive guilty but mentally ill so that he could have the medical care he needs. It is clear to us that this is necessary, and in the face of this tragedy, we still love him."

At the February 10, 2006 hearing, the FDA advisory panel recommended black box warning labels for ADHD drugs and said that a medication guide should be provided to parents and patients when the drugs are prescribed.

In light of the tragedies above, and the rapidly spreading addiction to these drugs all across America, any warning by public health officials in 2006 is too little too late.

Only 1% to 10% of Serious Drug Reactions Reported to FDA

2006-02-13T19:23:00.000+11:00

Experts estimate that only 1% to 10% of serious drug reactions are reported to the FDA, so the deaths and serious adverse effects are undoubtedly much higher.

(I-Newswire) - On Thursday, February 9, 2006, an advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) urged the most serious FDA warning, the “black box”, be placed on all drugs prescribed to treat the so-called psychiatric disorder Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ( ADHD ). The recommendation followed evidence that these drugs are linked to deaths and cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes.

The FDA’s database documents 25 deaths and 54 cases of serious cardiovascular problems in children and adults treated with ADHD drugs.

These cases included heart attack, stroke ( sudden loss of brain function ), hypertension ( high blood pressure ), palpitations ( rapid, strong heart beats ) and arrhythmia ( irregular heart beats ).

Experts estimate that only 1% to 10% of serious drug reactions are reported to the FDA, so the deaths and serious adverse effects are undoubtedly much higher.

There are six million U.S. children who have been prescribed ADHD drugs including Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta. Government figures show that about 10% of all 10-year-old boys in the U.S. are on these drugs. Prescriptions of ADHD drugs for adults has increased 90% in the last three years.

Brian Beaumont, President of the Vancouver chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights stated, “Adderall, methylphenidates ( sold as Ritalin ), Concerta, Methylin and Metadate are all drugs prescribed for a condition know as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder but the fact is; there is nothing in any medical or scientific literature that confirms the existence of ( ADHD ). It was invented by a handful of psychiatrists by a show of hands at an American Psychiatric Association meeting in the 80’s. Since that time psychiatry has turned it’s invention into a multi-billion dollar industry. Thus, psychiatrists are labeling and drugging a non-existent malady which are indictable offences, fraud and child abuse.”

The advisory committee’s recommendation for the “black box” warning took FDA officials by surprise. The committee’s original purpose was only to recommend ways to study the effects of ADHD drugs. However, after reviewing the deadly effects of the drugs, the committee urged immediate action.

Peter Gross, chairman of the advisory committee, stated the reason for the recommended warnings were, "No. 1, because of the seriousness of the side effects – the sudden deaths. No. 2, there is a sense maybe the diagnosis of ADHD is being applied where it shouldn't be applied."

Advisory committee member Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist, explained the urgency, "This is out-of-control use of drugs that have profound cardiovascular consequences. We have got a potential public health crisis. I think patients and families need to be made aware of these concerns."

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. Scientologists’ stand on psychiatry comes from a deep concern about the brutality that is the hallmark of this practice.

Yet Another Psychiatrist Busted for Fraud

2006-02-11T13:29:00.000+11:00

Psychiatrist Roman Ostrovsky of Harwick Court in the Mount Washington area of Baltimore county has been charged with seven counts of felony Medicaid fraud, and one count of felony theft from the Medicaid program.

The attorney general’s office announced that Ostrovsky is accused of defrauding the state and federally funded health program of more than $300,000 from 2002 through to 2004.

The fraud charges carry a sentence of up to five years in jail and a $100,000 fine, in addition to repayment of up to three times the amount stolen. The felony theft charge is punishable by up to 15 years in jail and a $25,000 fine

Psychiatrist Speaks Out Against Psychiatry

2006-02-10T19:30:00.000+11:00

From: Los Angeles Times, 1st January 2006
Psychiatry's Sick Compulsion:
Turning Weaknesses into Diseases
by Irwin Savodnik,
Irwin Savodnik is a psychiatrist and philosopher who teaches at UCLA.

IT'S JAN. 1. Past time to get your inoculation against seasonal affective disorder, or SAD - at least according to the American Psychiatric Assn (APA). As Americans rush to return Christmas junk, bumping into each other in Macy's and Best Buy, the Psychiatric Association ponders its latest iteration of feeling bad for the holidays. And what is the Association selling? Mental illness. With its panoply of major depression, dysthymic disorder, bipolar disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, the Association is waving its Calvinist flag to remind everyone that amid all the celebration, all the festivities, all the exuberance, many people will "come down with" or "contract" or "develop" some variation of depressive illness.

The Association specializes in turning ordinary human frailty into disease. In the last year, ads have been appearing in psychiatric journals about possible treatments for shyness, a "syndrome" not yet officially recognized as a disease. You can bet it will be in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-V, published by the Association. As it turns out, the Association has been inventing mental illnesses for the last 50 years or so. The original diagnostic manual appeared in 1952 and contained 107 diagnoses and 132 pages, by my count. The second edition burst forth in 1968 with 180 diagnoses and 119 pages. In 1980, the association produced a 494-page tome with 226 conditions. Then, in 1994, the manual exploded to 886 pages and 365 conditions, representing a 340% increase in the number of diseases over 42 years.

Nowhere in the rest of medicine has such a proliferation of categories occurred. The reason for this difference between psychiatry and other medical specialties has more to do with ideology than science. A brief peek at both areas makes this point clear. All medicine rests on the premise that disease is a manifestation of diseased tissue. Hepatitis comes down to an inflamed liver, while lung tissue infiltrated with pneumococcus causes pneumonia. Every medical student learns this principle. Where, though, is the diseased tissue in psychopathological conditions?

Unlike the rest of medicine, psychiatry diagnoses behavior that society doesn't like. Yesterday it was homosexuality. Tomorrow it will be homophobia. Someone who declares himself the messiah, who insists that fluorescent lights talk to him or declares that she's the Virgin Mary, is an example of such behavior. Such people are deemed - labeled, really - sick by psychiatrists, and often they are taken off to hospitals against their will. The "diagnosis" of such "pathological behavior" is based on social, political or aesthetic values.

This is confusing. Behavior cannot be pathological (or healthy, for that matter). It can simply comport with, or not comport with, our nonmedical expectations of how people should behave. Analogously, brains that produce weird or obnoxious behaviors are not diseased. They are brains that produce atypical behaviors (which could include such eccentricities as dyed hair or multiple piercings or tattoos that nobody in their right mind could find attractive).

It's a natural step from using social and political standards to create a psychiatric diagnosis to using them to influence public policy. Historically, that influence has appeared most dramatically in the insanity defense. Remember Dan White, the man who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978? Or John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in 1981? Or Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon? White, whose psychiatrist came up with the "Twinkie defense" - the high sugar content of White's favorite junk food may have fueled his murderous impulses - was convicted and paroled after serving five years, only to commit suicide a year later.

The erosion of personal responsibility is, arguably, the most pernicious effect of the expansive role psychiatry has come to play in American life. It has successfully replaced huge chunks of individual accountability with diagnoses, clinical histories and what turn out to be pseudoscientific explanations for deviant behavior.

Pathology has replaced morality
Treatment has supplanted punishment. Imprisonment is now hospitalization. From the moral self-castigation we find in the writings of John Adams, we have been drawn to Woody Allen-style neuroses. Were the psychiatric association to scrutinize itself more deeply and reconsider its expansionist diagnostic programs, it would, hopefully, make a positive contribution to our culture by not turning the good and bad into the healthy and the sick.

The last thing the United States needs is more self-indulgent, pseudo-insightful, overly self-conscious babble about people who can't help themselves. Better, as Voltaire would put it, to cultivate our gardens and be accountable for who and what we are.

More Psychiatrists Caught Ripping off the System

2006-02-09T17:40:00.000+11:00

Psychiatrists Joseph Sutera and Eric Ressner, both 51, were arrested on Monday and taken before a federal judge in Fort Pierce, Florida.

They are charged with almost $10 million worth of insurance fraud. Federal prosecutors who charged the pair claimed they operated out of a Palm Beach Gardens pharmacy.

Sutera laundered money from the fraudulent prescription claims and spent it on luxury goods, including four Palm Beach County residences, commercial property, a $16,000 Rolex watch, a $55,000 Steinway piano and more than $90,000 in electronics, prosecutors said.

Federal prosecutors claim that Sutera provided Ressner with "cash payments delivered in envelopes on a regular basis".

The Real Axis of Evil

2006-02-06T15:35:00.000+11:00

Government, Big Pharma and Psychiatry

Why does psychiatry exist? What is its function? Who are the mentally ill whom psychiatrists are supposed to cure? With the ever-expanding reach of psychiatry into all aspects of society these are valid questions that deserve answers.

The term ‘mental illness’ implies a pathological condition, some sort of organic origins. The implication is completely wrong and has no foundation in any fact(1). The term ‘mental illness’ is a subterfuge, at best a misnomer. The very acceptance of the term gives de facto recognition to attempts to medically address the situation. The reality is that the term is used to express a disapproval of someone’s mental state; a disapproval of the way they are.

The question ‘who is mentally ill’ really poses the question what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, what is correct conduct and what is incorrect conduct. At its core it is a simple matter of society's perceptions of right and wrong. Psychiatry is not really concerned with so-called illnesses of the mind; it is concerned with morality. There is no such thing as the ‘mentally ill’(2). Those so classified are not ill. What they are is different. Psychiatry basically defines mental health in terms of behaviours and thoughts that conform to cultural norms. (This of course begs the question of what happens when the cultural norms are insane such as in the Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Mao’s China, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Hitler’s Germany?)

Why and which people are placed into the category of “mentally ill” varies from age to age, from culture to culture and even from psychiatrist to psychiatrist. Until 1973 homosexuality was officially classified by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental illness and was subject to electroshock and/or lobotomy.

Homosexuals were not all suddenly cured of their mental illness in 1973. What happened was that their different behaviour was no longer disapproved of by sufficient numbers of people to qualify it as a mental illness. A change in society’s mores led to a greater acceptance of homosexual behaviour, and it was simply crossed off the list of mental illnesses. In some cultures though homosexuality is still widely disapproved of and thus is still considered a ‘mental illness’.

Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), known as the Father of American Psychiatry, believed that an over-enthusiastic passion for freedom held by some of the settlers of America was a mental illness... in other words he disapproved of it. He labelled this behaviour ‘Anarchia’(3). Mind you, he also believed that being a Negro - having a black skin - was a hereditary disease (honestly... I’m not making it up).

In the last few decades the term ‘mental illness’ has been expanded beyond the point of that which is not acceptable by the majority to include that which is deemed less than optimum. Thus we have new entries into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-the official psychiatric reference book) such as ‘Mathematics Disorder’ and ‘Male Orgasmic Disorder’(4).

We have reached the stage now where even the adverse medical reactions to the prescribed toxic, psychiatric drugs are called mental illnesses. Psychiatrists prescribe cocaine category stimulants (to young children as well as adults) for made up mental illnesses, and then announce a whole new category of ‘mental illnesses’ to describe the subsequent addiction; namely, ‘Substance-Induced Mood Disorder’, ‘Substance-Induced Sleep Disorder’, ‘Substance-Induced Anxiety Disorder’, ‘Substance-Induced Sexual Dysfunction etc.

Two of the dozens of harmful, physiological effects of antipsychotic drugs are Tardive Dyskinesia - which produces involuntary movements of the tongue, lips, face, trunk and extremities; and Tardive Dystonia which produces sustained muscle contractions resulting in twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures. Both are now pronounced as mental illnesses under the heading of ‘Medically-Induced Movement Disorder’. First psychiatrists medically treat a made up mental illness, then they pronounce the horrible physiological side effects of their treatment as another ‘mental illness’. It really does raise the question as to who it is that is really mad here?

The list of offences grows ever larger. In 1952 the first edition of the DSM listed 112 mental disorders. By 1980 that number had doubled to 224. By 1994 the number had increased again to 374 mental disorders.

Are these new ‘mental illnesses’ scientifically based on any standard medical procedure or test? Not at all, in a ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’ scenario, they are brought into being by a show of hands at a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party of psychiatrists. No blood test, no scan, no aetiology, no science of any sort whatsoever. Just opinions.

Many people accept without question that the ‘mentally ill’ are predisposed toward violence. It is probably the primary reason that the public tolerates the psychiatric powers of arbitrary and enforced detention and treatment. But is it true?

Not according to studies which continue to show that people labelled ‘mentally ill’ are no more violent than the general population. It is also evident that those violent acts that are committed are likely to be highly publicised by the media. Such violence tends to be sensationalised to the point where the fact that it is but an insignificant amount of the overall violence in our society is overlooked(5).

The injustice created by this media stigmatisation is further compounded by the criminal justice system. More and more the defence of those who commit criminal acts of violence relies on the testimony of a psychiatrist who solemnly pronounces that the perpetrator of the crime is suffering from a mental illness that caused the action.

This process, which is wide open to abuse, swells the ranks of the ‘mentally ill’ with criminals who are predisposed toward violence. The result is that those whose only crime is behaviour that is seen to be at odds with that which society views as normal become swept up in the same perceptions that categorise the violent criminal.

Not many governments could admit to arbitrarily locking up someone simply for being different. There has to be a justification for the total abrogation of all Human Rights for these people. That justification is treatment... the pretence that these people, whose only crime is being different, or judged less than optimum, are being treated for an illness, mental illness. It is both a mockery of real illness and a mockery of real treatment... and also of course a mockery of human rights.

Psychiatry has readily admitted that they have no cure for mental illness(6). How can they cure something that doesn’t exist? They are also well aware that their treatments are damaging. In the years prior to 1973 not one single homosexual psychiatrist turned themselves in for an ECT or lobotomy cure.

What psychiatry is able to do very effectively is modify the victims. If neurotoxic, psychotropic drugs don’t do the job then they can always use electroshock. Either one or the other of these ‘treatments’, or both in combination, is almost certain to inflict enough neurological damage to subdue the victim.

The ideal situation for psychiatry and governments is that the patient becomes ‘normal’... or to put it more truthfully, ceases to bother ‘normal’ people (7). Psychiatrists are the tools used in the attempt to achieve the unobtainable and undesirable goal of conformity.

Psychiatry is a social institution tasked by governments with the removal and warehousing of those who frighten or cause unease to society at large. They are removed as an expression of society’s disapproval... so that they will not cause the majority to feel uncomfortable. A psychiatrist is no more related to medicine or healing than was a camp guard at Auschwitz.

Psychiatrists are an independent branch of the State police. Their task, for which they are equipped with extra judicial powers, is to implement and enforce moral cleansings. Their current weapons of choice are psychotropic drugs and electroshock machines.

As stated by the Foucalt Tribunal: “Functioning as an arm of the state and with state powers, psychiatry has created a category of subhuman from whom every protection and right is withdrawn.”(8)

Which brings us to the final member of the Axis of Evil... Big Pharma. ‘Follow the money’ is the mantra of the age, and it does not let us down here. Who stands to profit from all this? The rise in the number of the ‘mentally ill’ parallels the rise in profits of the pharmaceutical companies. The manufacturers of the neurotoxic drugs that are used to chemically shackle the ‘mentally ill’ make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in profit out of their vile trade.

1955 was the start of the era of psychiatric, mind-altering drugs. Prior to that date the number of people classified as ‘mentally ill’ was one in 300. By 1987, after 32 years of psychiatric drugging, the number had reached one in every 75 people. In 1987 the 2nd generation of psychotropic drugs such as Prozac went into circulation. The result? By 1994, after only seven further years, the number of ‘mentally ill’ had risen to one in 50. And now, without so much as a blush, psychiatry informs us that 20% to 25% of the population will become ‘mentally ill’... one in four or five people.

Is this appalling deterioration in the mental health figures due to the psychotropic drug regime of 20th century psychiatry not only demonstrably failing to cure those they have branded as ‘mentally ill’, but also apparently seriously exacerbating the situation? Or is it simply a result of the re-branding of criminality, and human foibles and emotions and unusual behaviour into mythical mental diseases? It would appear to be a macabre combination of both.

To quote the bioethicist Carl Elliot: "The way to sell drugs is to sell psychiatric illness.".

For governments it has all got badly out of control. At first they only wanted to get rid of troublesome people who disturbed their perceptions of good order (government control). To achieve that they sanctioned and financed a system that has caused an epidemic of psychotropic drug use leading to our streets being full of some very troubled people. Mentally ill they are not, but brain damaged they are. Governments of the world in collusion with Big Pharma and psychiatrists have turned a minor problem of some troublesome nonconformists into a pandemic drug problem with its accompaniment of brain damage, violence and criminality. Their attempts at social engineering have brought disaster, and worse for them; the problem has finally become so obvious as to cause the public and media to start scrutinising their actions.

Thus have our governments unwittingly allowed society to be brought almost to its knees. They set out to achieve their ideal society of mindless robots, but what governments try to engineer is rarely what is achieved. What they wanted was bad enough, what they have achieved is a catastrophe. Those with hidden agendas have used them.

The goal of governments is a subdued and docile population led by wise and benevolent masters (themselves). The goal of Big Pharma is unlimited profits from a world on drugs. What the goal of psychiatry is God only knows.

© Philip Barton 30/12/05 All rights reserved

1 In 1992 a panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment concluded: "Many questions remain about the biology of mental disorders. In fact, research has yet to identify specific biological causes for any of these disorders. ... Mental disorders are classified on the basis of symptoms because there are as yet no biological markers or laboratory tests for them" (The Biology of Mental Disorders, U.S. Gov't Printing Office, 1992, pp. 13-14, 46-47).

2 ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’ Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry Thomas S. Szasz (1960) First published in American Psychologist, 15, 113-118.
(There are many other books covering the same topic.)

“When we don't understand the real reasons (for different behaviour), we create myths to provide an explanation. In prior centuries people used myths of evil spirit or demon possession to explain unacceptable thinking or behavior. Today most of us instead believe in the myth of mental illness. Believing in mythological entities such as evil spirits or mental illnesses gives an illusion of understanding, and believing a myth is more comfortable than acknowledging ignorance. Lawrence Stevens J.D.

3 "The excess of the passion for liberty, inflamed by the successful issue of the war [of independence], produced, in many people, opinions and conduct, which could not be removed by reason nor restrained by government... The extensive influence which these opinions had upon the understandings, passions, and morals of many of the citizens of the United States, constituted a form of insanity, which I shall take the liberty of distinguishing by the name of anarchia." -- Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), Father of American Psychiatry.

4 See the full list at:
http://www.psychnet-uk.com/dsm_iv/_misc/complete_tables.htm#)

5 R Gelles, "Violence in the Family: A Review of the Research", Family Violence, Second Edition, Sage, 1987.
Henry J. Steadman, Edward P. Mulvey, et.al, "Violence by People Discharged From Acute Psychiatric Inpatient Facilities and by Others in the Same Neighborhoods", Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 55: 393- 401, 1998.

6 “The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the future the mentally ill have to learn to live with their illness.” A 1994 quote by Psychiatrist Norman Sartorius, President of the World Psychiatric Association (1996-1999)

"It is generally unrecognized that psychiatrists are the only medical specialists who treat disorders that, by definition, have no definitively known causes or cures.” from ‘The New Psychiatry’ by Professor of psychiatry Jerrold S. Maxmen, M.D., Columbia University.

7 “Most if not all psychiatric drugs are neurotoxic, producing a greater or lesser degree of generalized neurological disability. So they do stop disliked behavior and may mentally disable a person enough he can no longer feel angry or unhappy or "depressed". But calling this a "cure" is absurd. Extrapolating from this that the drug must have cured an underlying biological abnormality that was causing the disliked emotions or behavior is equally absurd.” Lawrence Stevens J.D.

8 “Foucalt Tribunal Indicts Psychiatry” (http://www.oikos.org/ectcomments2.htm):

Psychiatrist Tries to Sodomize Boy

2006-02-02T17:42:00.000+11:00

Kerala, India
Forensic Lab psychiatrist booked for sexual harassment
Chandigarh: The city police has registered a case against Dr Paul Ramesh, a senior psychiatrist at the Central Forensic Lab here, on the charges of attempt to sodomise and sexually harass a boy during the lie detection test in a murder case.
Dr Ramesh was booked under sections 377, 292, 511 IPC following the FIR lodged against him by city-resident Vikas Pawar.
According to the FIR, Dr Ramesh had allegedly shown a porn film to Vikas Pawar and tried to sodomise him during the lie detection trial, a police spokesman told UNI here today.
He also stated in the FIR that he was forced by the psychiatrist to agree that he had a hand in the murder while he was being shown the pornography and also asked to take off his clothes.
Pawar was called to the lab for the lie detection test in the case of a murder of one Naresh of village Nadha near here.
The investigations were on, police added.

Psychiatric Therapy

2006-02-01T11:37:00.000+11:00

Psych pressured patient to invest in high-tech company during “therapy” sessions

(I-Newswire) - Dr. Michael Dietrick surrendered his license to practice psychiatry after the California Medical Board’s investigation found him guilty of two counts of Gross Negligence and one count of Negligence.
Among the many crimes Dietrick was found guilty of, it was discovered that during therapy sessions, Dietrick pressured his victim into investing over $150,000 in a company that the psychiatrist worked for as a consultant. Dubbed the “Matrix Director”, Dietrick helped write the business plan for the company that he was coercing his patient to invest in.
When the victim complained to the CA Medical Board, Dietrick sent a threatening email pressuring for a withdrawal of the suit. In the email, Dietrick threatened to have the victim arrested and that the victim’s family would be, “drawn into it” and “a lot of bad things will become public”.
The victim, Steve Peter, said, “The therapy…it had me going sideways. The [12} step AA program helped me resolve the problems.”
One of the charges Dietrick was found guilty of was Grossly Negligence. Dietrick prescribed an addictive benzodiazapine drug ( Loazepam ) to the victim who was a recovering substance and alcohol abuser. The Medical Board stated in its report that, “addiction prone individuals should be under careful surveillance when receiving Lorazepam. The report shows Dietrick failed to keep any patient notes or charts during the 2 years of their involvement.
Dr. Karl Hoffower, President of the S.F. Bay Area Chapters of CCHR said, “Our investigation of Psychiatrists finds they routinely commit fraud and abuse. That Dietrick misused his position of authority should not be surprising. Dietrick bilked Mr. Peters of $24,000 and prescribed dangerous drugs. This is just another example of what the pseudo-science called psychiatry is about: money and drugs”

Psychiatry-Where Did it All Go Wrong?

2006-01-29T20:34:00.000+11:00

Where Did it All Go Wrong?

Biological psychiatrists are scurrying for cover as the spotlight of the mainstream media has finally becomes focused on their activities.

Whilst many psychiatrists were well aware that aggressive, brain orientated treatments were not in the best interests of patients, they yet failed to do anything and failed to say anything... in public anyway. Why was this?

A part of it undoubtedly was the fear shared by all professionals who cast their gaze beyond the bounds of accepted dogma... the fear of the ridicule of their colleagues. The courage to stand by ones principles and to do what is right, irrespective of the personal consequence, is not easily summonsed.

But it was not just the ridicule they feared. Courageous men like Dr Thomas Szasz (Professor Emeritus Psychiatry-Syracuse, New York) the first insider to blow the whistle on the bio-psychiatry dogma in 1961, were professionally vilified. The erudite and dignified Dr Szasz was slandered by a few from within his profession with the despicable claim that he was in need of psychiatric help. Another psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin suffered a similar reward for his honesty. They were not alone. Character assassination is a hard blow to bear, especially when you have neither the money nor the time nor a medium with which to defend yourself. It takes a lot of courage and conviction to walk that road.

The financial imperative was also strong. Being a pusher for the pharmaceutical companies has not been an underpaid job. Along with the cash bonuses and overseas junkets Big Pharma also bought the psychiatric industry desperately needed credibility. They paid to promote the profession of psychiatry with lavish medical endowments and in other more subtle ways. This investment was done in the clear knowledge that any credibility they could purchase for psychiatry would quickly translate into greater penetration of the market for their highly profitable psychotropic drugs.

And then there was the issue of complicity. I recently met with a psychiatrist in Ireland who is fully aware of the insidious nature of the modern psychiatric obsession with the brain. In conversation it came out that he is the only psychiatrist in Ireland who has not performed ECT. To actually press the button that courses up to 400 volts of electricity through a patient’s brain is a mandated part of psychiatric training in Ireland. It is reminiscent of the entry conditions to some of the US street gangs of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. Full membership was only considered after the applicant had killed someone... it was rather hard to back out after that. The Irish psychiatrist declined to join the bio-psychiatric gang and flew to London to sit his exam.

That Irish psychiatrist is now seeking the support of his local colleagues in a movement to ban ECT. Most won’t support him. How can they? If they do it is an open admission that what they have done is wrong and harmful. Apart from the personal moral implications, it leaves them wide open to litigation. They simply cannot afford to introspect on the subject. They are guilty, they know they are guilty, and they are more interested in hoping that no one finds out about it. Help expose it? Not likely.

Ultimately of course though, the reason why bio-psychiatrists continued to practice and defend their various assaults upon the brain was the simple fact that they had nothing else to offer. If they acknowledged that their cutting, drugging and shocking did not work, then what options did that leave them? They might as well have hung up their ice-picks.

Where did it all go wrong? What was the pivotal point that caused psychiatry to degenerate into the ignominy of a downward spiral of public distrust and uproar, coupled with the growing media perception of not just utter failure, but of a cynical disregard for the plight of those so desperately in need of help?

In 1879 psychologist Professor Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig University in Germany declared that there was no soul and that man was simply a higher level animal which could be controlled using “science”*. Psychiatrists became worshippers at the god of materialism, the dogma that proclaimed that all could be reduced to matter and that everything was subject to physical laws. They abandoned their primary purpose, the healing of the mind and soul, and began instead to focus on the body.

The whole concept of the mind and consciousness and individuality was dismissed. It was postulated that the mind was just the brain, and the brain was just another organ like the liver or kidneys which could be controlled and modified by medical procedures. It degenerated to the point where little maps of the brain were published showing areas where certain types of thoughts were supposed to form. Psycho-babble left brain/right brain theories were picked up by the media of the day and popularised.

Mood swings and difficulties in life were pronounced simply a chemical imbalance in the brain. The carbon/oxygen machine nature of the body was deemed the all and everything. For the psychologically troubled it was truly the dawn of the second dark ages. Their thoughts and worries and day to day problems were of no consequence; their very consciousness was dismissed as a chemical soup.

In a conventional medical situation a doctor is not concerned with why someone has a broken leg. They just medically treat the leg. The bio-psychiatry model assured the same treatment for mentally troubled patients. Why a patient was upset or sad was no longer the issue. Psychiatrists just treated the brain. From this a world-wide, pharmaceutical/psychiatric trillion dollar a year industry sprang up with a range of treatments... all notably less successful than a cup of tea and a chat.

Pharmaceutical companies compounded the situation by not only wildly over-promoting the efficacy of their chemical ‘cures’, and under presenting their dark, side effects, but by re-branding common emotions and problems into ‘disorders’. First they created and marketed a new disorder then they marketed a new ‘drug to ‘cure’ the disorder**. They deliberately and knowingly caused people who were well, to suddenly accept a reclassification as ill... and mentally ill at that. Great for selling drugs and expanding market share and profits, but not great for the self-esteem or health of the target market.

The very definition of the word ‘psychiatry’ provides the best clue as to where it all went wrong. Both parts of the word derive from the Greek. ‘Psyche’ means of the soul, and ‘ietreia’ means to cure or to heal. The downfall of psychiatry was not just based on an ignorant and arrogant abuse of power, nor to society’s shame was it much based on the horrific tales of the victims and their outraged families. It was based more on the fact that for over 100 years psychiatry relentlessly pursued a course of mental healing which related to neither the mind nor healing, and which utterly negated the spiritual nature of humanity. Psychiatry failed because it simply did not work and could never have worked, and worse, by its bombardment of the brain with electroshock and lobotomies and psychotropic drugs it seriously exacerbated the problem. Brain damage and mental wellness do not easily coexist. The huge rise in the numbers of people classified as mentally ill since the introduction of bio-psychiatry attests to this.

The noose is tightening around the throat of the bio-psychiatrists. The direction of their whole field of mental healing in the last one hundred years has led slowly yet inexorably to a self-destruction of the profession. If it could have been saved, it could only have been saved from within, but the complicity of its practitioners coupled with the lack of any real answers ensured that they did nothing but seek to stop such endeavours. Only a very few had the courage to hold the high ground of principled honesty.

Over the last few weeks I have been emailing my contacts all over the world seeking psychiatrists to speak at a conference. The answer from one and all is that they do know some psychiatrists who are disquieted by the prevailing orthodoxy and a few who are outraged by it, but less than a handful world-wide who are prepared to speak out.

Ultimately psychiatry will be seen to have failed because it could not even diagnose and cure itself.

Philip Barton
© 26/12/05 Philip Barton All rights reserved

“The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” Aristotle

* Franz G. Alexander, M.D. and Sheldon T. Selesnick, M.D. ‘The History of Psychiatry’ (NY: Harper and Row, 1966) p.163

** Ray Moynihan & Alan Cassels- ‘Selling Sickness’ (Allen & Unwin)

Psychiatrist on Sexual Offender Registry

2006-01-22T16:06:00.000+11:00

(I-Newswire) - A psychiatrist, who was found guilty of three counts of indecent or sexual assault involving female patients over several years, has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for his crimes. ( Court case # 31377 )
In a jury trial on July 23, 2005, Dr. Larry Anderson admitted to having sexual intercourse with the three women, often in his office after staff had left for the day. Two of the relationships lasted a number of months and involved several sexual encounters.

Besides his jail term, Anderson must serve two years probation, be included on the sexual offender registry, and he will not be allowed to be reinstated into the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons.
According to other evidence given during the July trial, Dr. Anderson once put sexual instructions onto what a female patient thought was a prescription for anti-depressant drugs. Instead of a renewal of a prescription for her continued depression, Anderson handed her something completely unexpected. ( The prescription read: Take one erection and put it in an appropriate space. Do what is needed to obtain satisfaction. )

Brian Beaumont, spokesperson for the British Columbia chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights ( CCHR ), a psychiatric watchdog group said, “We are pleased to see that Anderson received some jail time. Psychiatric sexual assault is a very common occurrence over the world, but all too often the perpetrator is only slapped on the wrist by being given a fine or suspension from practice for these criminal activities”.

Studies show that between 6% and 13% of psychiatrists and psychologists sexually abuse their patients and, according to one American Journal of Psychiatry study, 80% of psychiatrists reporting sexual contact did so with an average of six patients.
More than 20 psychiatrists have lost their license to practice or have been criminally charged worldwide for sexual related incidents in just the past 6 months making it a case of almost one psychiatrist sexually or indecently assaulting a female patient every week. And those are the known cases.

According to another 2001 study, "Sex Between Therapists and Clients," by Kenneth Pope, a former head of the ethics committee for the American Psychological Association, 1 out of 20 clients who had been sexually abused by their therapist was a minor, the average age being 7 for girls and 12 for boys. The youngest child was 3.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established by the Church of Scientology to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. If you know anyone, including a child, who has been abused or harmed by a psychiatrist, please call The Citizens Commission on Human Rights at 1 800 670 2247. Complete confidentiality is assured.

Sexual Assault by Psychiatrist

2006-01-16T16:13:00.000+11:00

(I-Newswire) - A psychiatrist, who was found guilty of three counts of indecent or sexual assault involving female patients over several years, will be in court in Penticton British Columbia on January 20 to be sentenced for his crimes. ( Court case # 31377 )
Larry Anderson was found guilty of the assaults involving the female patients by a jury trial on July 23, 2005.
According to evidence given during the trial, Dr. Anderson once put sexual instructions onto what a female patient thought was a prescription for anti-depressant drugs. Instead of a renewal of a prescription for her continued depression, Anderson handed her something completely unexpected. ( The prescription read: Take one erection and put it in an appropriate space. Do what is needed to obtain satisfaction. )
Brian Beaumont, spokesperson for the British Columbia chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights ( CCHR ), a psychiatric watchdog group said, “Psychiatric sexual assault is a very common occurrence over the world, but all too often the perpetrator is only slapped on the wrist by being given a fine or suspension from practice for these criminal activities.
Studies show that between 6% and 13% of psychiatrists and psychologists sexually abuse their patients and, according to one American Journal of Psychiatry study, 80% of psychiatrists reporting sexual contact did so with an average of six patients.
More than 20 psychiatrists have lost their license to practice or have been criminally charged worldwide for sexual related incidents in just the past 6 months making it a case of almost one psychiatrist sexually or indecently assaulting a female patient every week. And those are the known cases.
According to another 2001 study, "Sex Between Therapists and Clients," by Kenneth Pope, a former head of the ethics committee for the American Psychological Association, 1 out of 20 clients who had been sexually abused by their therapist was a minor, the average age being 7 for girls and 12 for boys. The youngest child was 3.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established by the Church of Scientology to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.
If you know anyone, including a child, who has been abused or harmed by a psychiatrist, please call The Citizens Commission on Human Rights at 1 800 670 2247. Complete confidentiality is assured.

Psychiatric Incompetence

2006-01-14T18:01:00.000+11:00

"In a Florida study, 100 consecutively admitted patients to a psychiatric hospital who had been given a psychiatric diagnosis were given a complete medical examination. Doctors concluded that nearly half of the patients’ psychiatric problems were secondary manifestations of an undiagnosed medical problem.

According to Gold, nearly all of these patients would have ended up warehoused in state run mental health facilities, which costs the patients their health with tax dollars paying for the negligence. Some patients die confined in mental hospitals as their real illness, cancer for example, goes untreated.

In the Florida study, psychiatrists missed diagnosing physical illness in 80% of the cases. Gold said he was "embarrassed" at how bad psychiatrists were at "doctoring" and that one third of psychiatrists admit feeling incompetent to give a patient a complete physical examination."

Mark Gold, The Good News About Depression, 1986, p.22-24

The Patronage of the Queen of England?

2006-01-11T15:12:00.000+11:00

The hallucanogenic drug LSD (lysergic acid dethylamide) came out of the labs of the drug company Sandoz in 1952. It was taken to the UK and distributed by psychiatrists of the day as the new ‘wonder drug’. It was a ‘wonder drug’ along the lines of previous ‘wonder drugs’ like opium, heroin and methadone. In other words it was a disaster.

By the mid-sixties it had made its way onto the streets where it led to misery, delusions and suicide for many, many people. I was there at the time. I know that to be a statement of truth.

Psychiatrist Ben Sessa, who still extolls the virtues of LSD, has been invited by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK to give a presentation on the drug in March of this year. Get ready for a push to explain the errors of the past and how it would be different this time. The utter failure of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant drugs to cure anything coupled with the observable fact that they cause psychosis and suicide will lead to other desperate solutions such as this. Anything to maintain the myth that psychs have some solutions if only they were given more time. How come the Queen of England gives patronage to these bums?

Mahatma Gandi

2006-01-10T17:17:00.000+11:00

You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
– Mahatma Gandhi

Psychiatric Misdiagnoses

2006-01-10T17:15:00.000+11:00

"A comprehensive study in the American Review of Medicine by Dr. Erwin Koranyi estimates misdiagnosis of easily detectable physical illness and labeling them as mental illness occurs half the time! Koryani's study of 2090 psychiatric patients showed that 43% of them had an undiagnosed underlying major illness. Dr. Koryani explains that once a patient is labeled a psychiatric case, physical complaints are assumed to be "psychosomatic" and are routinely ignored." - Dr. Timothy O'Shea

Mental Hospitals

2006-01-08T00:04:00.000+11:00

Neurologist Sir Francis Walshe described mental hospitals as "living museums of undiscovered bodily disease . . . undiagnosed."

Psychiatry-The Museum of Death

2006-01-02T00:49:00.000+11:00

I have been asked to do some work for The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) in my home town. I have agreed. CCHR was set up by Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry Dr. Thomas Szasz and The Church of Scientology back in 1969 (or thereabouts).

I saw a DVD on NYE about the new Museum of Death exhibition opened by CCHR in Los Angeles. It features graphic photographs and film (many never before published or shown) of psychiatry in action.

International, Federal, State and local politicians attended and were gob-smacked by what they had witnessed... and said so to the cameras. Some were visibly upset about what had been happening to the victims of psychiatry unbeknownst to them.

One dignitary (can’t remember who) made the point that people sometimes asked why the Church of Scientology were so concerned about psychiatry. His response to this was that it was the wrong question, and that why more people weren’t concerned was the real question. Are you concerned?

If you want to help then ring your local branch of CCHR. I have been around this anti-psychiatric scene for a while, and CCHR is the ONLY organisation that has gets results. Many of the organisations (and there are dozens) are well meaning and try, but lack the expertise or the commitment to get the job done. Psychiatrists are well funded. CCHR is committed and in my opinion is the most worthwhile group around in the area of Human Rights. If you’re thinking about it and need some convincing still, then go and see the exhibition in LA... Psychiatry-The Museum of Death. That will convince you big time. We might even get to meet Tom Cruise!

Refuting the Witch Doctors of Psychiatry

2005-12-29T17:51:00.000+11:00

It is sometimes argued that psychiatric drugs "curing" (stopping) the thinking, emotions, or behavior that is called mental illness proves the existence of biological causes of mental illness.

This argument is easily refuted: Suppose someone was playing the piano and you didn't like him doing that. Suppose you forced or persuaded him to take a drug that disabled him so severely that he couldn't play the piano anymore. Would this prove his piano playing was caused by a biological abnormality that was cured by the drug? As senseless as this argument is, it is often made.

Most if not all psychiatric drugs are neurotoxic, producing a greater or lesser degree of generalized neurological disability. So they do stop disliked behavior and may mentally disable a person enough he can no longer feel angry or unhappy or "depressed". But calling this a "cure" is absurd.

Extrapolating from this that the drug must have cured an underlying biological abnormality that was causing the disliked emotions or behavior is equally absurd.
Lawrence Stevens, J.D.

Happy Christmas

2005-12-22T13:12:00.000+11:00

And now, yet once more, the Christmas season is upon us. We congregate in our homes with our families around us and contemplate the good fortune of our lives. We send and receive best wishes to and from our many friends around the world, and generally we are at peace with the world. Three of my sons and my one daughter are at home this year. My children range from 39 down to 7 (my daughter is the youngest). Truly it is a good time as I love my family more than words could express... thus, Happy Christmas.

But do spare a thought and resolve to do something about the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, around the world who are not so fortunate. Those who are forcibly incarcerated in the prisons for the ‘mentally ill’ mockingly called “health facilities”. Those who are daily drugged and electroshocked into submission. The terror and totally unnecessary misery of their lives caused entirely by the Nazi dogma known as bio-psychiatry will not be much improved by a slice of turkey on their plate. Christmas is not a time of peace and good will for all people.

Please resolve to write a letter or two to your local politician and your local paper, or even start your own Blog. Become educated about the subject, about precisely what bio-psychiatry is and what it inflicts upon its victims. We live in an age of mass information. Take advantage of it. You can do something about this. We all of us can do something about anything that we wish to. It does take some effort, yet that effort is as much for our own good as it is for the incarcerated.

It is only individual people who can change things. Are you just a chemical soup without any individuality or consciousness as bio-psychiatry proclaims? ... or are you an individual?

Happy Christmas and have a great New Year
Philip

Head in the Sand

2005-12-20T07:06:00.000+11:00

The following anonymous, pompous and snide response to a post demonstrates an unwillingness to see. Such blindness usually demonstrates complicity. 'Anonymous' can no longer believe what he sees, he must see what he believes.
________
Anonymous said...
Dear Phillip,
Understanding mental health and mental health research takes a lot of time, training and effort. Whenever you place anything in the public sphere whether it is a blog or a newspaper article ,it takes on a life of its own. This cal;ls for responsibility in publishing whatever it is that you do publish. I have seen your profile and you seem to be a mature man. Kindly spend some time and effort in understanding the research and research methodologies and educating yourself on this field. I will look forward to a more informed posting which is fuelled as much by knowledge as passion.
_______

Mental Illness and Violence

2005-12-18T10:09:00.000+11:00

Mental Illness and Violence

Many people accept without question that the mentally ill are predisposed toward violence. It is probably the primary reason that the public tolerate the psychiatric powers of arbitrary and enforced detention and treatment. But is it true?

Not according to studies which continue to show that people with mental illness are no more violent than the general population.* It is also evident that those violent acts which are committed by the mentally ill are likely to be highly publicized by the media. Violence by the mentally ill tends to be sensationalized to the point where the fact that it is but an insignificant amount of the overall violence in our society is overlooked. **

The injustice created by this unintentional media stigmatization is further compounded by the criminal justice system. More and more the defense of those who commit criminal acts of violence relies on the testimony of a psychiatrist who solemnly pronounces that the perpetrator of the crime is suffering from a mental illness which caused the action.

This process which is wide open to abuse swells the ranks of the mentally ill with criminals who are predisposed toward violence with the result that the genuinely mentally ill tend to become swept up in the same perceptions that categorize the violent criminal.

The boundary encompassing the area of supposed mental ills has increased beyond all credibility. It now ranges from violent criminals, to people who are bereaved or suffering the periodic stresses of life, to people who experience a natural disaster, down to children who fidget in class. All are deemed by modern psychiatry to be mentally ill.

1955 was the start of the era of psychiatric drugs. Prior to that date the number of mentally ill was one in 300 people. By 1987, after 32 years of psychiatric drugging, the number of mentally ill had reached one in every 75 people. In 1987 the 2nd generation of psychotropic drugs such as Prozac went into circulation. The result? By 1994, after only seven further years, the number of mentally ill had risen to one in 50. And now, without so much as a blush, psychiatry informs us that 20% - 25% of the population will become mentally ill... one in four or five people.

Is this appalling deterioration in the mental health figures due to the psychotropic drug regime of 20th century psychiatry not only demonstrably failing to cure the mentally ill, but also apparently seriously exacerbating the situation? Or is it simply a result of the re-branding of criminality and human foibles and emotions into mental diseases? It would appear to be a macabre combination of both.

In 1952 the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-the official psychiatric reference book) listed 112 mental disorders. By 1980 that number had increased to 224 mental disorders. By 1994 the number had swelled to 374 mental disorders.

Are these new mental illnesses scientifically based on any standard medical procedure or test? Not at all, in a ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’ scenario, they are brought into being by a show of hands at a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party convention of psychiatrists. No blood test, no scan, no etiology, no science of any sort whatsoever. Just opinions.

To quote the bioethicist Carl Elliot: "The way to sell drugs is to sell psychiatric illness.".

No, the genuinely mentally ill are not predisposed toward violence to a greater degree than the rest of society, but they are predisposed to being taken advantage of by the unscrupulous manufacturers and pushers of highly profitable and dangerous psychotropic drugs. They are also predisposed to having their very real individual needs utterly ignored by a mental health system that has expanded beyond the bounds of sanity, and way beyond the bounds of good care.

Philip Barton 11/11/05

* R Gelles, "Violence in the Family: A Review of the Research", Family Violence, Second Edition, Sage, 1987.

** Henry J. Steadman, Edward P. Mulvey, et.al, "Violence by People Discharged From Acute Psychiatric Inpatient Facilities and by Others in the Same Neighborhoods", Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 55: 393-401, 1998.

The Mainstream Media is Waking Up

2005-12-17T21:15:00.000+11:00

http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/tangled-up-in-blues/2005/11/26/ 1132966001051.html

Printed in the Age Newspaper, Melbourne, Australia
November 27, 2005

Tangled up in blues

The dominant treatment for mental illness focuses more on brain chemistry than on human behaviour or personal distress. Peter Ellingsen wonders what we are covering up with drugs.

Stand outside any psychiatric ward and you will find the markers of madness. They lie in no particular order, and convey no message, except a kind of covering up. Fag ends for forgetting. Maybe the drugs dispensed inside spur nicotine craving or maybe cigarettes are the only solace when society turns away. Whatever, butts are the carpet the mentally ill stand upon. They build up in unlovely piles with a smell that suggests despair.

It is not the same with physical illness. Pleurisy and kidney infections can be confronting, but they usually pass. And even when you are bedridden, life is more than a disassociated smokescreen. Cancer can kill you, but it does not impel you to kill yourself, as happens with severe mental illness. Rating these things is problematic, but according to those who sift through suffering, schizophrenia is twice as bad as being blind.

Which is saying something. My greatest fear as a child was going blind, not because of the usual warning parents issue to young boys, but because I had a lazy eye, had to wear a pink eye-patch, and worried that the darkness on one side of my face would never go. It did, but that does not happen with a lot of mental illness. More often than not, it hangs on, even - or especially - when your eyes are open. "Darkness visible" the writer William Styron called it, and it can draw a curtain over the most serene day and sanguine prospects.

This much is clear, if not conceded by governments who, as the recent Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report - Not for Service - demonstrates, under-fund mental health and treat the mentally ill with disdain. What is less clear is what we mean when we talk of mental illness, and how it is that the one in five Australians said to suffer from it remain opaque. If mental
illness is akin to a treatable physical illness, is it not just a matter of finding a specific treatment? Beyondblue boss Jeff Kennett insists depression is a disease, just like diabetes, and can be treated, simply by visiting a GP
who will invariably dispense antidepressants.

But is mental illness - depression being the most visible - just a chemical imbalance in the brain, remedied, like a virus, by another chemical? Drug companies claim as much, yet they have failed to come up with an "insulin" to treat depression, let alone a specific chemical for the more severe psychotic conditions, such as schizophrenia. Instead, last year we had 12 million prescriptions (up from five million in 1990), for antidepressants, drugs that can have side-effects so bad some are driven to suicide. The most popular, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors such as Prozac, are supposed to banish depression by boosting serotonin, a brain chemical associated with feeling better. In fact, there is nothing selective about them, nor is there any evidence that any drug acts specifically to reduce depression.

While they can lessen some symptoms, antidepressants don't tackle the underlying issue. Nor is the dominant mental health model interested in finding out what is behind the distress. This has come about because the biological explanation that now rules mental health is obsessed with brain chemistry, not human behaviour.

Being abandoned, poor, or, as fourth century poet Menander realised, gutted just because life means loss, is sidelined, which is a curious state of affairs. If something goes wrong in the body we find out what it is and try, usually successfully, to address it. But something goes wrong in the mind and we cover it up with drugs that are unspecific to the ailment. The brain-blame camp argue that they treat mental disease, not unhappiness - "clinical" depression, not blue moods - but these are all
arbitrary definitions depending on culture, not science.

As Douglas Coupland, inventor of generation X, notes, the spin on Prozac is not that it faces your frailties; rather it "creates a parallel brain". This fantasy notion lies in place of an interest in aetiology (the study of the causes of disease) and has arisen only since psychiatry ditched psychoanalysis, and the idea, however woolly, of a model of the mind linked to the emotions - what Freud thought of as the unconscious. Now mind means brain. Mental health is brain sleuthing; yet no researcher has come up with the cerebral substratum of human passions and discontent.

And they won't. Even though the 1963 book Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry argues that progress in understanding mental illness is "inevitable and irrevocable from psychology to neurology, from mind to brain", the biological bias is quaking. Experts, notably Auckland University's Dr John Read, and Manchester University psychology professor Richard Bentall, are pointing to the emperor's state of undress. Read thinks schizophrenia is caused by child abuse while Bentall, in his prize-winning book, Madness Explained, shows that, not only are psychiatry's categories illusory, its approach has more in common with astrology than science.

Bentall's case centres on a claim that the basis of psychiatry, forged by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin in the late 19th century, but still influential, is fatally flawed. Kraepelin, born in 1856, the same year as Freud, set up three sorts of madness: dementia praecox (schizophrenia), manic depression (bipolar) and paranoia. The big two, bipolar and schizophrenia, are supposed to be discreet disorders, but as Bentall demonstrates, the boundary can be so blurred that what one psychiatrist calls schizophrenia another calls bipolar. "We have been labouring under serious misunderstandings about the nature of madness for more than a century," he says.

Bentall provides lots of examples, but the one I like best is not in his book, but in The New York Times. In an article comparing Disney's cute Donald Duck with Warner Bros' irascible Daffy Duck, a psychiatrist says of Daffy, "he started as a simple manic-depressive but evolved over the years into a fully-fledged paranoid schizophrenic". Diagnosing cartoon ducks is not easy, but you would think there could be more reliability in the definitions. Bentall, however, says there is little reliability, mainly because modern psychiatry baulks at the idea that the symptoms we suffer have anything to do with the people we are. This is a madness of its own.

In its frantic attempt to become "scientific", psychiatry has not only thrown out what one writer calls the "junk pile of unexamined assumptions descended from Freud", but Plato's advice that an unexamined life is not worth living. We no longer have to search our mind, motivation or memory: it is all down to nerve endings.

So, now when we are mentally distressed, we either get a script from a GP who invariably knows little of mental illness, or, if we are a threat to ourselves or someone else, we get, as the Austin Hospital's professor of psychiatry, Anne Buist, says, patched up and pushed out. It is an appalling result that has come about not because the organic explanation for mental illness is scientifically rigorous, but because it is able to give the impression of success in random trials. This, though, is a sleight of hand. It is not just that placebos rate as high as drugs for depression, or, as University of NSW psychiatry
professor Gordon Parker points out, that "the barons of the new order of psychiatry" have joined the drug firms to "promote depression as a medical disorder". We have broken the historic link between cause and effect in the mental dilemmas we endure.

This was not the case in the days before psychiatry saw mental illness as a heart attack in the brain. Then, as thinkers as far back as Ovid knew, human beings had reasons other than their neurotransmitters to be distressed. I have read some learned papers on minds running off the rails, but none have corralled the black dog as eloquently as the writer Andrew Solomon. Depression, he says in his book Noonday Demon, is the flaw in love. Echoing Ovid, the Roman poet who advised "welcome this pain for you will learn from it", Solomon believes that to be creatures who love we must be able to despair at what we lose. "Depression is the mechanism of that despair," he writes. "It degrades one's self and ultimately eclipses the capacity to give or receive affection. It is the aloneness within us made manifest . . ."

This does not sound very scientific, but then neither does the biological explanation when you unpack it. And for those who protest that poetry has no role in recognising scientific truth, consider Nobel laureate James Watson's account of the biggest discovery of our time. Watson says that when Rosalind Franklin stood before the final model of the DNA molecule, she "accepted the fact that the structure was too pretty not be true".

There is nothing pretty about mental illness, though it may have more to do with poetry, or at least, language, than we realise. It is language - not lab tests - that designate mental distress and, by some accounts, alleviate it. This is partly because there is no medical measure for most mental illness. (Nearly all the one million Australians said to suffer depression are diagnosed by questionnaire.) And it is partly because words have the power to heal. Long before Freud implied the unconscious is structured like a language, and therefore can be deciphered, Shakespeare gave us a picture of the human personality that is deeper and more complex than the biological account pretends. As British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips explains, Polonius, Hamlet's sidekick, sees sanity and madness as two ways of "being pregnant with words". More recently, Czech president and poet Vaclav Havel argued that we become mentally ill when we say what we do not believe.

This is the core of the talking cure, psychotherapies which are rated as effective for depression as drugs, but which, for cultural reasons, are on the outer. If you suppose culture has no impact on madness, think again. Up to 1974, homosexuality was a mental disorder. It was re-thought, not because of science, but because gays lobbied the American Psychiatric Association for change in their clinical bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Until the Soviet Union crumbled, signs of schizophrenia included dissatisfaction with the system, "conflicts with parental and other authorities" and "philosophical concerns". As Bentall puts it: "The boundaries of madness are culturally
determined."

The arbiters in all this are the panel of psychiatrists who forge scientific truth by horse-trading over what the DSM will brand a mental illness, and the drug companies who pay for most mental health trials. Yet the DSM is just one particular culture's attempt to make sense of behavioural breakdown. Developing nations deal with mental illness differently, and, as the latest research shows, get better results. Even though it has a more prosaic approach, the developing world has less schizophrenia than the Western world, possibly because sufferers are more likely to recover. Revealing how hollow the claim of universal patterns of psychosis is, Professor John McGrath of the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research says: "If you get schizophrenia in a place like
India you tend to have a type of illness that recovers." McGrath has just done the most comprehensive
schizophrenia prevalence study ever undertaken.

Gordon Parker points out that depression is not, as the DSM says, a simple disease. Rather it is a spectrum of conditions. But because psychiatry wanted to boost its standing by creating the illusion of medical certainty, it listed depression as a single disorder. This produced structured criteria that looked rigorous, but tossed the baby out with the bathwater by ignoring any consideration of cause. Such pseudo-categorisation also happened with other mental disorders. The result was a manufactured market of misery.

In the 1950s, when the first antidepressant, imipramine, was discovered, makers Ciba-Geigy did not want to produce it because they felt there were not enough depressed people in the world to return a profit. Then, the condition was thought to affect about 1 in 1000 people; now it is something like one in five. Which makes you wonder: how can an organic "disease" suddenly explode? Could it be that depression is a symptom not a disease?

Nineteenth century neuroscientist George Gray certainly thought so. Depression, he said, was a gradual "unlearning of optimism". Earlier thinkers said it was "soul loss", while a giant of Western thought, Spinoza, explained it as a retreat from desire. Interestingly, Freud's French interpreter, Jacques Lacan, believed the real anti-depressive is desire, not drugs. He explained how capitalism forecloses desire by filling up the space of longing with gadgets which claim, like Coke or Prozac, to "be it", yet never are. But acknowledging, let alone, tolerating the truth of our incompleteness is confronting and, as Nick Cave says, gets a bad rap in a culture of shiny, happy McPeople.

Bentall, who like Solomon and Cave, has his bouts with the blues, examines the brain-blame theories - notably the hypothesis that schizophrenia is associated with an excess of dopamine - and finds them wanting.

Pointing out that many psychiatrists have argued for a crude form of biological reductionism, he ticks off the array of brain chemical alibis and concludes they have either been ambiguous, or unable to be replicated.

Which is not to say mental illness does not exist or is not devastating. Disorders of the mind are a painful fact - one that can kill. But in trying to kill off the stigma of madness, we have murdered the meaning of the mind, and created a certainty about mental disorders that does not exist. The result is an Alice in Wonderland take on treatment. As Dr Robert King from Queensland University's department of psychiatry says, the best predictor of outcome for depression is not the scientific status of the method, or even whether the patient is taking a drug orpsychotherapy. The best predictor is the "therapeutic alliance" that is the belief in the healer.

King dubs this the Dodo Effect after a story in the fairytale where the Dodo bird tells Alice after a race that all contestants have won and all must have a prize. So, as all treatments have equivalent impact, all must get recognition. Some clinicians, of course, don't just focus on chemicals, and do look to the importance of the body, mind and society in mental illness. But they are being pressed by the mainstream which, as Bentall says, still embraces the Kraepelinian paradigm. It is "almost unchallenged within mental health professions" and that means psychiatric services are misguided and need new ideas even more than new resources, he says.

Maybe we should blame Rene Descartes, the "I think therefore I am" guy, whose theory of dualism held that mind and brain were different kinds of substances. That led to the idea that the brain could be separate and within an individual's conscious control. Freud, who was pilloried for pointing out that the unconscious meant the ego was not master in its own house, disagreed. And so does research which shows biology inextricably linked to biography. The brain is "plastic", susceptible to re-shaping by environment well into childhood, leading researchers say. This means nurture is hard-wired into the brain as much as genetics, making upbringing and attitude critical.

But, as long as psychiatry tries to pretend there is a strict dividing line between madness and sanity, those suffering mental disorders will be seen as somehow falling short of the "normalcy" we imagine we possess. The most disturbed among them will continue to fill their mouths with smoke, rather than speak about sadness.

ECT Under Fire From Psychiatrists

2005-12-12T16:29:00.000+11:00

It's no good, I can't stay away. I have just returned from a five week trip around the world. During this trip I stopped over in Europe where I met with a psychiatrist who is organising a push from within the ranks of psychiatry itself to have ECT completely banned. 2006 will be a big year in the world wide drive to bring psychiatry not only back under the constraints of the legal system, but back into the ranks of those who pay heed to common decency. More news in the months to come

Psychiatry-Goodbye

2005-10-04T10:58:00.000+10:00

This Blog was established in February of 2005 due to my frustration at the paucity of information on the criminal acts perpetrated by some within the psychiatric establishment against the mentally ill. What was, and is still happening in some places, are crimes against humanity which will one day be answered for.

Things have changed. The mainstream media have decided to write about what is happening and what has happened. Back in February I had to scour the world for articles that dared to expose the abuse of the mentally ill by psychiatrists. Now I am inundated with stories from all over the world and from readers of the psychiatricnews Blog. In my own mind the change came with Tom Cruise having the courage to stand up on prime time US television and tell it how it was. The fact that many psychiatrists and neurologists came out of the woodwork and supported what he said was a revelation to the media.

From having to work really hard to establish one article a day I suddenly had enough material from the mainstream press, never mind the alternative and internet press, to fill a web-site, let alone a Blog. Even the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the world’s premier children’s rights body, came out against the false labelling and psychiatric drugging of children this week.

I am a busy man with two businesses, a family and many charitable causes to support. I do not believe that the reason I established the Blog is still valid. Psychiatry stands exposed today for all to see as a wretched, brain-obsessed, self-interested group who for a hundred years have terribly abused and violated the Human Rights of the mentally ill. There were and are of course many honourable and courageous exceptions who fought and still fight the injustices from within psychiatry itself.

Psychiatry can no longer hide behind the veil of media indifference. Their crimes are now in the light for all who care to see. The public who still don't get it were never going to read my Blog anyway. The cruel and inhumane deeds of psychiatry could never stand the light of public exposure. Thus it is the beginning of the end for psychiatry as it has been. And so this is my last entry.
Thank you
Philip Barton 4/10/05

The Zoloft Defence

2005-10-02T19:49:00.000+10:00

COLUMBIA - The S.C. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of 16-year-old Christopher Pittman, who mounted a Zoloft defense before he was convicted of the shotgun slayings of his grandparents.

Pittman was convicted last February of the murders of Joe Pittman, 66, and Joy Pittman, 62, in their Chester County home in November 2001. The youth, who was 12 at the time of the slayings, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The Supreme Court said the case "involves an issue of significant public interest or a legal principle of major importance." Its order did not specify what issue or legal principle merited its review.

Pittman's lawyers, after the trial, had asked the trial judge to reduce his sentence to time served and probation until Pittman is 21.

Defense lawyers cited the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ban on the death penalty for minors in arguing 30 years is "unconstitutionally excessive."

Circuit Court Judge Danny Pieper, who presided at the trial, denied the appeal. "This court is not convinced that standards of decency have evolved to such an extent that would no longer permit juveniles to be sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment," he wrote.

The defense argued during the trial that Pittman was involuntarily intoxicated by the antidepressant Zoloft and didn't know right from wrong at the time of the slayings.

Since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal, the matter bypasses the S.C. Court of Appeals.

Professor James Flanagan of the University of South Carolina Law School said the Supreme Court doesn't often bypass the appeals court.

But he said it's not unusual when an unsettled issue of law is at stake. Flanagan said the rule is one that the Supreme Court uses "to bring before itself those cases that it is ultimately going to end up hearing anyway."

_____________

According to the Nebraska lawsuit, Johnson was prescribed the drug on July 29, 2003, less than three weeks before he committed suicide
Bonnie Johnson, who remained close with her ex-husband years after they divorced and who is a nurse, said she was familiar with the antidepressant and was concerned Russell had started taking it.
“He didn’t even get through the samples (and start taking the actual prescription) when he committed suicide,” she said.
When he was prescribed the drug, Bonnie said she was in Wyoming looking into placement options for Travis, their oldest son, who is autistic. She and Russell talked daily on the phone.
“I was anxious to get back because I wanted him off the drug,” she said.
Just hours before he killed himself, Johnson called a friend and asked him to fix one of his vehicles, said Gordon Johnson, Russell’s father. He left no note and Gordon said he can’t understand why his son took his own life. He had no money problems, his cancer surgery was successful and he had no enemies, his father said. His family said he’d been cancer-free for four months.
“There’s no reason in the world for him to do this,” Gordon Johnson said.
Bowde Johnson, who graduated from Chadron State College after his father’s death because he’d made a promise to his dad, doesn’t know what will happen with the lawsuit.
But he does know how devastating his father’s death has been to his whole family.
“On a good day you think about it 100 times,” he said. “On a bad day, you think about it 1,000 times.”
Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.

Psychiatric Obsession With the Brain

2005-10-01T06:26:00.000+10:00

One of the most ridiculous psychiatric claims of all times has just surfaced. A University of Southern California team studied 49 people and claimed ‘those known to be liars’ had up to 26% more prefrontal white matter and less prefrontal gray matter than normal people (those who never lie presumably!).

I read this in some media outlets who actually ran with this nonsense. Somebody needs to point out the difference between a brain and a mind to these pre-neanderthals.

Psychiatry-A Wretched History

2005-09-30T17:39:00.000+10:00

http://www.psychosurgery.org
Orphaned by Susan Ewell
My grandmother was a victim of a lobotomy. It probably took place sometime in 1940's in New Jersey. My grandmother suffered from depression and I guess this was their answer to heal her. Well, needless to say it didn't.

My grandfather died shortly after, which left his two daughters to fend for themselves. When my grandfather died, my mom and aunt lost everything. Not only did they lose their mom and dad, but they lost their house and everything in it. They were lucky to keep the clothes on their backs. If it wasn't for the kind neighbors that lived next door, they wouldn't have anything from their parents. The neighbors hid some pictures, a little bit of jewelry, and some dishes (not enough for the state to be suspicious, but enough for them to remember their parents).

One daughter was put into an orphanage (she was still a teenager and too young to take care of herself) and the other daughter (my mom) was turned out on the street to fend for herself (she was too old). Neither my grandfather's or grandmother's family would take them in and care for them. It was my uncle from Chicago that finally drove down to New Jersey and saved them. He took my aunt and my mom back up to Chicago and gave them a place to live and made sure they went to college. Nowadays, my uncle would have been arrested for kidnapping. You see, he took my aunt out of the orphanage without approval, but back then they probably didn't care as much - as it was one less mouth to feed for them.
After my grandmother had the lobotomy, she spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital (she died when she was in her late 80's - can you imagine spending 50 years in a mental hospital?). I think my mother and aunt visited her once, but never went back. For one, she didn't know who they were, which was heartbreaking for them. For the other reason, if the state knew that she had children that could help pay her medical bills, they would expect them to help out leaving them not much of a life themselves.

Nowadays, this doctor would have been sued for what he did. My mother and aunt also suffered through depression problems (apparently it is hereditary). My mom suffered through electric shock, which is inhuman if you ask me (it took a lot out of her and it never did her any good whatsoever), and through countless different medications. My mom eventually died at 65 due to complications from an angiogram which was the hospital's fault but my dad went through enough and didn't want to pursue suing the hospital (I honored his wishes).

My aunt probably died about the same age as my mom, but she died of a massive heart attack at home (no one saw it coming). She also had depression problems and went through countless different medications (not sure if she went through electric shock). My mom was diagnosed with manic depression and my aunt had panic attacks (I'm not sure what else she had).
There were many years that my aunt and my mom suffered through depression problems that the medication they were on could not help them. Their doctor's kept on trying different combinations until they found something that would work and it would work for awhile, then they would start having problems again.

So far, my brother and I have not had any problems with depression - perhaps we have too much of our father in his - I don't know - perhaps they had problems with depression because of what they had to go through when they were younger - I don't know. I do know that my grandmother's lobotomy robbed me of knowing my grandmother - my mother only told me bits and pieces of her childhood, perhaps it was too painful for her - I don't know - I do know, there seems to be a part missing that I should know or have experienced that the lobotomy stole from me - knowing my grandmother, knowing about my mother's childhood and robbing me of my mother at times.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my story.

Children with 'ADHD'... What Can You Do?

2005-09-29T12:28:00.000+10:00

From: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/news/050928a.asp
Stop Medicating Your ADHD Child
By Gailon Totheroh
CBN News Science and Medical Reporter

CBN.com – (CBN News) Today, there are millions of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD -- kids who are hyperactive, or unable to concentrate.
Most of the treatment has focused on giving kids stimulant drugs like Ritalin. But there are concerns about the long-term side-effects of those drugs.
And there is also a growing movement to get away from drugs. Brain researcher Russell Blaylock says ADHD drugs can lead to brain diseases later in life.
He says, "The big question (is), are we producing a lot of children that, when they become 40 and 50 years old, they're going to end up with Parkinson's disease?"
Blaylock recommends nutrition as a better alternative to treating ADHD.
Physician Don Colbert agrees. He has written a booklet on overcoming Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and hyperactivity naturally.
Another key, these two doctors say, is to let an abundance of fruits and vegetables crowd out the junk food from a kid’s diet.
Blaylock says it is a difficult initial task to gather the good foods and supplements and avoid all the bad foods, but it is well worth it for the long term -- for the whole family.
And, he says that every child, as well as adults, whether ADHD or not, should avoid a range of food additives that are toxic to the brain. The technical name for these toxins is excitotoxins - the title of one of Blaylock's books.
Excitotoxins cause nerve cells to be hyper, damaged, or they may even kill brain cells. Although often called MSG or glutamate, dozens of food additives have these toxins.
And those additives have stealth names that hide their toxicity, such as aspartame, flavoring, hydrolyzed protein, broth, and soy protein isolate.
In practice, that means avoiding the majority of grocery items such as box mixes, prepared soups, flavored chips, and canned tuna.
But healthy choices, such as canned tuna that has only tuna and water, or another that has the ingredients tuna, olive oil, and salt.
"ADHD kids, in particular, when they're exposed to monosodium glutamate or one of the excitotoxins in food, it really throws them out of kilter -- they become excessively hyperactive," Blaylock explained.
A related no-no for the ADHD brain is sugar. Sugar, strangely enough, can actually bring on abnormally low sugar levels in the blood. And that increases glutamate release in the brain, yet another excitotoxic cause of hyperactivity.
Kids would do better to eat fresh fruit like apples – they are sweet, but they carry many nutrients, especially in the skins.
But you should be cautious of buying just any apples. Organic apples may be best because regular apples are often high in brain-harming pesticides.
Plus, Blaylock warns, it is best to avoid fruit in juice form because it can cause low blood sugar, and thus increase excitotoxins in the brain.
On the positive side, multivitamins with minerals are important for normal brain function. Kids' varieties should include iron, which is essential for brain growth and development.
And indeed, there are other brain-boosting minerals as well -- zinc and magnesium -- whether from multivitamins, individual supplements or food.
"Magnesium is really important in brain function,” Colbert said. “Again, magnesium comes mainly from seeds and nuts. About 75 percent of the population is low in magnesium intake."
But there are minerals that interfere with normal brain function, and parents need to consider avoiding these toxins:
- Tap water often has aluminum added by water treatment facilities
- Many vaccines contain both aluminum and mercury
- Dental fillings known as amalgams contain mercury.
Again, on the positive side, probably the most basic brain supplement of all, one that kids (and adults) should be taking—are fish oils that feed the brain like no other substance. Fish oils contain omega-3 fats.
Recognizing the importance of those fats, supplement makers are producing more and more options designed for kids. Fruit flavors like lemon and strawberry make omega-3’s easier to consume.
The most crucial omega-3 fat is called DHA. Some products concentrate the DHA to make the fish oil even more powerful for kids' brains.
"People who consume more EPA, but particularly DHA, have a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, macular degeneration -- these nerve disorders where they need that fat to make the nerves work," said nutrition analyst Bill Sardi.
For helping prevent ADHD in the first place, Blaylock says pregnant and nursing women should take omega-3s and avoid excitotoxins.
Blaylock said, "The brain undergoes rapid growth in the last trimester of pregnancy, all the way to age two. That's where 80 percent of all brain growth occurs. If they're exposed to these products, it severely interferes with the formation of these brain pathways."
Omega-3 oils are critical during this period, because the DHA provides the raw ingredients of the brain, and it blocks excitotoxins.
So what overall strategy should parents use? Blaylock says a cold turkey approach to junk foods is best, otherwise, you continue to stimulate kids' appetites for addictive tastes.
But Colbert suggests that parents use a gradual approach, at least for a portion of their strategies.
"It's taking these children and going through the withdrawals -- the sugar withdrawals, the caffeine withdrawals, the video game withdrawals -- it's really tough,” Colbert admitted. “So that's why they have to get a plan, they have to do it maybe as a group. Many of these parents will have to get together and start weaning them off it slowly, so they don't crash them."
And a gradual weaning from medication can be accompanied by introducing dietary changes -- dietary changes that mean better brain health for the entire family.

Merck (pronounced Muck) in the Dock

2005-09-29T03:16:00.000+10:00

Medical statistics expert Richard Kronmal testified last week on behalf of postal worker Frederick Humeston, 60, of Boise, Idaho who survived a 2001 Vioxx induced heart attack.

"They had evidence that they were potentially killing people and they let that go on for another two years, to 2003 ... To me, that was scientific misconduct," Kronmal told the jury last Thursday.

Merck are well aware that this is a tip of the iceberg trial with lawyers holding their breath all over the world. If Merck lose the Vioxx case they will be buried under an avalanche of litigation for their antidepressants. When that happens it opens the floodgates of litigation on the whole of Big Pharma and on the psychiatrists who unconscionably fronted for them.

Psychiatry-World Watch

2005-09-28T12:30:00.000+10:00

Psychiatry in Action in Turkey

A human rights report just released shows that Turkey’s psychiatric hospitals are just as riddled with horrific abuses as those in the rest of the world.

The report found that electroshock is used as a form of punishment on children as young as 9, as well as adults.

The report quotes a 28-year-old electroshock patient at the Bakirkoy Psychiatric Hospital as saying, "I felt like dying."

"If we use anesthesia the ECT won't be as effective because they won't feel punished," the report quotes the ECT center's director as saying. (at least you have to give the Turkish psychs credit for honesty)

The report describes patients being dragged to electroshock therapy in straitjackets and forcibly held down by staff during the procedure. Others, it said, are told they are simply going to be X-rayed.

For Every Pill Another Ill

2005-09-27T20:49:00.000+10:00

For Every Pill, They Invent Another Ill
by Mary Wakefield

It had never occurred to me, before last week, that big pharmaceutical companies might actually be evil. I knew they could be a bit iffy - bribing doctors, failing to mention horrible side-effects, fudging the science - but I always imagined them to be fundamentally well-intentioned.

On Monday I read a new book, Selling Sickness, by an American journalist called Ray Moynihan, and am determined never to be so naive again. Drug companies, it turns out, are not on our side at all. They're misanthropic on an epic, Bond-villain scale. Instead of looking for ways to defeat illnesses, they spend their time trying to create them. Instead of selling cures to the relatively small pool of sick people, they find it more profitable to convince healthy folk that they are unwell. It's creepy and, in a sick way, it's also rather brilliant.

Here's a textbook example of how the disease-mongering works, courtesy of GlaxoSmith Kline. A few years ago, GSK needed to file a new application for one of its anti-depressants, Paxil, in order to extend the patent. What to do? Easy - invent an ailment for it to cure.

They found a brief mention of a little-known nervous condition - Social Anxiety Disorder - in a psychiatric journal somewhere, and hired a PR firm to turn it into a star. The symptoms of SAD - feeling nervous, sweaty, shy at parties - don't amount to much more than the symptoms of being alive, but it was marketed with a serious ad campaign and a catch-phrase: "Imagine being allergic to people."

The PR company rounded up patients, experts, a celebrity sufferer and then presented the SAD story to the press. A new disease? With a famous name? How could an editor could turn it down. The New York Times ran a long, serious feature and American Vogue followed suit.

Instantly, of course, thousands of people decided that they suffered from SAD. Doctors prescribed Paxil, GSK thrived and the PR company won an award for "Best PR Programme of the year".

All week I've been rootling around on the internet, finding out about disease-mongering, and from what I can gather it's a growing, multi-billion-dollar business across America and Europe. Drug companies invent and publicise new "lifestyle disorders" every day, and the public obligingly develop the symptoms and pop the pills.

As all hypochondriacs and pharmaceutical companies know, you only have to read a list of unpleasant symptoms to begin to suffer from them. It's the reverse placebo effect. Once a big drug company has wheedled a disease into the papers, they've as good as sold the cure.
The Sunday Telegraph, 11th September 2005
Mary Wakefield is assistant editor of The Spectator

Chemical Warfare on Humans

2005-09-26T15:01:00.000+10:00

For one of the best interviews on psychiatric drugs that I have ever read go to:
http://campaignfortruth.com/Eclub/260905/CTM-%20psychiatricdrugs.htm
It is an interview with Robert Whitaker (author of Mad in America) in which he points out the obvious truth that it is the very psychiatric drugs that are supposed to be curing 'mental illness' that are actually causing mental illness in epidemic proportions.

Terrible Catastrophe?

2005-09-26T12:55:00.000+10:00

From: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-eberstadt25sep25,0,3602544.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
A prescribed threat
* Among the harshest critics of the child wonder-drug regimen? Think rock icons.
By Mary Eberstadt, MARY EBERSTADT is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of "Home-Alone America," newly released in paperback by Penguin/Sentinel.
WHEN TOM CRUISE and his fellow Scientologists took a hammering earlier this year for their public opposition to psychiatric drugs, neither they nor their critics could have anticipated the releases in July and August of two weighty reports offering evidence that at least some psychiatric prescription-writing has run amok.
If these two reports by Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, or CASA, have it right, more kids than ever have their fingers — and sometimes their noses — in somebody else's psychiatric prescription pill bottle.
ADVERTISEMENT
The July report ("Under the Counter: The Diversion and Abuse of Controlled Prescription Drugs in the U.S.") estimates that while self-reported use of prescription drugs by people of all ages nearly doubled between 1992 and 2003, abuse by teenagers during those years tripled.
Similar increases appear in the August report, "National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse X: Teens and Parents." Between April 2004 and June 2005, for example, "the percentage of teens who know a friend or classmate who has abused prescription drugs jumped 86%."
In his introduction to the July report, CASA Chairman and President Joseph A. Califano Jr. zeroes in on the problem: "Particularly alarming is the 212% increase from 1992 to 2003 in the number of 12- to 17-year-olds abusing controlled prescription drugs, and the number of teens trying these drugs for the first time."
Nor does Califano sugarcoat the question of just how close to home the problem hits: "The explosion in the prescription of addictive opioids, depressants and stimulants has, for many children, made the medicine cabinet a greater temptation and threat than the illegal street drug dealer, as some parents have become unwitting and passive pushers."
At a time when many doctors, teachers and parents swear by the beneficial effects of prescription stimulants for minors, words as unsparing as Califano's are likely to be dismissed as alarmist.
But these reports are not the only evidence of the harm done by these drugs to at least some kids. If we look at what kids say, sing and report about psychiatric medications, we learn that among the harshest critics of the child wonder-drug regimen are some of its intended beneficiaries and graduates.
Consider two music icons. The late grunge-rock guru Kurt Cobain appears in retrospect as a kind of anti-poster boy for child stimulants. Prescribed Ritalin from the age of 7, Cobain believed that the drug led to his later abuse of related substances. (He committed suicide by shotgun in 1994.)
Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, put the connection this way to biographer Charles R. Cross: "Kurt's own opinion, as he later told her, was that the drug was significant. Courtney, who also was prescribed Ritalin as a child, said: 'When you're a kid and you get this drug that makes you feel that [euphoric] feeling, where else are you going to turn when you're an adult?' "
Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. bad-boy rap superstar Eminem, is another prominent self-perceived child victim of the label-and-medicate momentum. In an article in Rolling Stone magazine, Howard Stern said that Eminem told him that his mother "misdiagnosed him with attention deficit disorder. 'My mother said I was a hyper kid, and I wasn't,' he said. 'She put me on Ritalin.' " One telling Eminem hit called "Cleaning Out My Closet" includes the lyric, "My whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't."
It seems almost too perverse to be true: Cobain's and Eminem's fans might get a stronger anti-stimulant message from their icons' examples than from their own parents, teachers and doctors.
Criticism of the child-drug phenomenon also comes from writers who self-identify as members of "the Ritalin generation." One is Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of the books "Prozac Nation" and "More, Now, Again." The latter detailed her harrowing descent into Ritalin addiction after a well-meaning doctor prescribed the drug to help her "focus" on writing.
Advocates of psychiatric medication for children often argue, and passionately, that these drugs alleviate the suffering of many children and families. But if that positive experience is to be a legitimate test, so too should the negative feelings and experiences of others be acknowledged.
"These [stimulants] are very safe medications," a child psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School told a reporter in the wake of the July CASA report. "They have been used for 70 years, and we haven't had terrible catastrophes."
Yet it doesn't take a Scientologist to wonder whether "terrible catastrophe" is the most accurate measurement.

Drugs Causing Brain Abnormalities?

2005-09-24T11:56:00.000+10:00

“It is well established that the drugs used to treat a mental disorder, for example, may induce long-lasting biochemical and even structural changes [including in the brain], which in the past were claimed to be the cause of the disorder, but may actually be an effect of the treatment.” Further, “it is now difficult to find mental patients who have not had a history of drug treatment, and as a result many of the brain abnormalities found in these patients are probably iatrogenic [doctor/treatment caused], that is, produced by the treatment rather than being the cause of the disorder.”
Dr. Elliott Valenstein, Ph.D.
From: http://www.cchr.org/lied/liars/STOTLAND.htm

Psychiatry-Gothic Horror Story

2005-09-23T10:59:00.000+10:00

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/09/19/for_psychiatry_a_cautionary_tale/
For psychiatry, a cautionary tale
By Paul Roazen, Globe Correspondent | September 19, 2005

Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine
By Andrew Scull
Yale, 352 pp., $30

Andrew Scull, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego who specializes in the history of psychiatry, has unearthed a Gothic horror story of abuse in the early 1900s. ''Madhouse" is a shocking tale about how a doctor at the Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey had for years surgically removed the teeth, colons, stomachs, spleens, tonsils, sinuses, gall bladders, and reproductive organs of patients in a misguided effort to treat mental illness.
Dr. Henry Cotton had trained at Johns Hopkins University under the famed Adolf Meyer, a Swiss-born psychiatrist who became arguably the most influential single psychiatric leader in 20th-century America. Meyer was humanely trying to get away from concentrating on classification and diagnosis and the 19th century's beliefs in heredity and so-called degeneration. Instead, he tried to understand how people respond to the stress they encounter.
In his program of promoting therapeutic improvement, rather than just custodial care, Meyer was open-minded about what his students proposed to undertake. Cotton started his operations in 1917 on the hypothesis that madness could be caused by local infections. Teeth, even when X-rays showed no problems, were only the beginning of the bodily culprits to be removed. If patients were unwilling to undergo these surgical procedures, such obstruction was viewed as a reflection of their diminished mental capacities.
Scull has constructed an engrossing narrative about how Cotton's theories and practices were welcomed in certain medical circles (in Great Britain, for example) at the same time that criticisms began to mount, especially among local denizens of New Jersey.
By mid-1925, when a state legislative committee began to investigate the charge that patients were being abused under Cotton, the doctor himself was too unbalanced to be able to defend himself adequately.
Cotton had claimed to achieve an astronomical ''cure" rate of 85 percent. In reality, the mortality rates resulting from the operations were extraordinarily high, and nobody could confirm his alleged rates of success.
Meyer appointed a young psychiatrist, Phyllis Greenacre, to explore what had happened at Trenton. Although her conscientious findings were distinctly unfavorable to Cotton, Meyer curiously chose to sit on her report initially.
The Trenton State Hospital remained a house of horrors right up until Cotton's death in 1933, after which Meyer somehow wrote an appreciative obituary. Cotton's public standing was such that H.L. Mencken had accepted an essay by Cotton for The American Mercury. Doctors covered for one another throughout the surgical mayhem, and teeth went on being pulled for psychiatric purposes at Trenton State Hospital until 1960.
The misguided penchant toward lobotomies, which were undertaken at Mass. Mental Health Center here in Boston right through the late 1950s, is a much better-known medical scandal than this episode. As Scull's skillful telling suggests, popular treatments in mental illness can be flawed, and we should be on guard about the danger that drugs with serious side effects will get overused.

Psychs Hard at Work in Chinese Prison Camps

2005-09-22T13:31:00.000+10:00

Shock Treatment for "Obstructionist Personality"
From: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2005/09/20/afx2233184.html
AFX News Limited
At least 100 property activists arrested in Shanghai, rights group says
09.20.2005, 07:07 AM

SHANGHAI (AFX) - Police have arrested at least 100 people involved in protests against official land grabs in Shanghai, a rights group said.

The action signals a significant toughening by authorities following a barrage of streets protests in Shanghai largely related to forced evictions due to urban renewal, Human Rights in China said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Petitioners were rounded up on the street, on buses and some in the middle of the night and most of the detainees remain in custody, the report said.

It said the crackdown was organised by the Shanghai Petitions and Letters office, which is in charge of receiving citizens' complaints, and the Jing An district Public Security Bureau, or police.

Detainees who refused to cooperate were beaten, the report said. One person, named as Zhang Fenfen, was told he would be sent to a mental hospital.

It said Zhang had previously been forced to undergo psychiatric treatment by the judiciary for having an 'obstructionist personality.'

Among others arrested was Mao Hengfeng, who was recently released from a labor camp where she said she underwent forced electric shock therapy.

Shock Treatment for "Obstructionist Personality"

2005-09-21T13:09:00.002+10:00

From: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2005/09/20/afx2233184.html
AFX News Limited
At least 100 property activists arrested in Shanghai, rights group says
09.20.2005, 07:07 AM

SHANGHAI (AFX) - Police have arrested at least 100 people involved in protests against official land grabs in Shanghai, a rights group said.

The action signals a significant toughening by authorities following a barrage of streets protests in Shanghai largely related to forced evictions due to urban renewal, Human Rights in China said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Petitioners were rounded up on the street, on buses and some in the middle of the night and most of the detainees remain in custody, the report said.

It said the crackdown was organised by the Shanghai Petitions and Letters office, which is in charge of receiving citizens' complaints, and the Jing An district Public Security Bureau, or police.

Detainees who refused to cooperate were beaten, the report said. One person, named as Zhang Fenfen, was told he would be sent to a mental hospital.

It said Zhang had previously been forced to undergo psychiatric treatment by the judiciary for having an 'obstructionist personality.'

Among others arrested was Mao Hengfeng, who was recently released from a labor camp where she said she underwent forced electric shock therapy.

Shock Treatment for "Obstructionist Personality"

2005-09-21T13:09:00.001+10:00

AFX News Limited
At least 100 property activists arrested in Shanghai, rights group says
09.20.2005, 07:07 AM

SHANGHAI (AFX) - Police have arrested at least 100 people involved in protests against official land grabs in Shanghai, a rights group said.

The action signals a significant toughening by authorities following a barrage of streets protests in Shanghai largely related to forced evictions due to urban renewal, Human Rights in China said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Petitioners were rounded up on the street, on buses and some in the middle of the night and most of the detainees remain in custody, the report said.

It said the crackdown was organised by the Shanghai Petitions and Letters office, which is in charge of receiving citizens' complaints, and the Jing An district Public Security Bureau, or police.

Detainees who refused to cooperate were beaten, the report said. One person, named as Zhang Fenfen, was told he would be sent to a mental hospital.

It said Zhang had previously been forced to undergo psychiatric treatment by the judiciary for having an 'obstructionist personality.'

Among others arrested was Mao Hengfeng, who was recently released from a labor camp where she said she underwent forced electric shock therapy.

Shock Treatment for "Obstructionist Personality"

2005-09-21T13:09:00.000+10:00

Ritalin Use-a Scandal

2005-09-21T07:49:00.000+10:00

There are currrently no medical tests for ADHD, and children are diagnosed based on their behaviour - including displays of inattention, fidgeting and restlessness, which are all perfectly normal behaviour in children.

Sami Timimi, a consultant child expert and adolescent psychiatrist based in Lincolnshire, described the soaring use of Ritalin as "a scandal" and insisted that the drug should be used only as a last resort.
"It is ludicrous that the normal spectrum of behaviour that all kids will demonstrate at some time in their childhood is now interpreted as a disorder which requires medication,"

"Various methods of behaviour management therapy and a change in diet are often all a child needs but adults are increasingly turning over the role of parenting to professionals who feel more "doctory" if they can make a diagnosis and prescribe medication."

Prof Peter Hill, an ADHD specialist and honorary consultant in child psychiatry at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, believes that the concept of ADHD has become popular, "partly because it offers an alternative explanation for antisocial behaviour, other than bad parenting".

Blog Feedback

2005-09-20T05:13:00.000+10:00

Just received the following from a reader of the psychiatric news Blog:
"My friend started experiencing panic attacks a few months ago, and for quite some time has had high levels of anxiety because of some family problems. He lives with his dad who is a raging alcoholic that screams all the time, so this gets pretty stressful for him. For the last few weeks, he’s had a lot of trouble being able to sleep, sometimes not at all. His mom gives him some Lorazepam (like xanax) and that works wonders for him. So he makes an appointment with his dad’s doctor, and MD, and he goes to his appointment. The doctor barely listens to him and writes him a prescription for Zoloft. My friend expresses concern about the side effects of SSRIs, and the doctor said “Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine.”

"My friend wasn’t so naïve as to just start popping Zoloft for his problems, so he sought a second opinion from his mom’s doctor. She half-listened to him as well and wrote him a prescription for Paxil. He’s getting pretty desperate at this point because he hasn’t been sleeping at all, so he tries one of the Paxils.

"And he doesn’t sleep very well, though he manages to fall asleep a little bit. And during the night, he has nightmares, which he says he never has. The next day he lost his cellphone, but couldn’t find it anywhere. He’s had that same phone for probably 3 years now. He then got very very uncharacteristically angry once he couldn’t find the phone. After all this, he decided SSRIs weren’t for him and he stopped taking them. It’s possible that those things were all unrelated, but my friend doesn’t think so!"

Your friend is one of the lucky ones who put two and two together. The solution of course is for your friend to remove himself from the source of his upsets and stress. Move. There is always an alternative.

Psychiatrist Sexual Misconduct

2005-09-19T17:55:00.000+10:00

NSW, Australia
Psychiatrist Winifred Childs was struck off by a medical tribunal for sexual misconduct in 1990. Her name was suppressed. Now it is not.

Psychiatrist Struck Off Had Name Suppressed

2005-09-18T05:54:00.000+10:00

NSW, Australia
Psychiatrist Tony Aguado was struck of by a medical tribunal on February 27th 2002. He was found guilty of having sex with a disturbed patient over a period of seven months. He also prescribed himself drugs under a false name. His name was suppressed. Now it is not.

Children are Being Drugged Into Submission

2005-09-17T05:20:00.000+10:00

Dr Sami Timimi, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist based in Lincolnshire, UK, said: "The idea that there is such a thing as a test for ADHD is nonsense. There is no such thing."

Jill Harris, a child psychologist at Birmingham's Children's Hospital in the UK, said: "There is evidence that if you change the learning environment then children will do better. But we are talking about a perfect world and not the over-stretched education system we have. So what we do is medicate."

Psychiatrist "lacking in credibility"

2005-09-16T17:13:00.000+10:00

New Zealand
Psychiatrist John Angus Marks has been found guilty of professional misconduct after one of his patients committed suicide. The Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal found that Marks had not been conscientious in the performance of his duties. It also found Dr Marks' evidence during the hearing to be "inconsistent, opportunistic and lacking in credibility".

Ritalin Abuse

2005-09-15T12:10:00.000+10:00

From: http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.html?id=8119
by Jim Kouri, CPP
2.3 Million Children Abuse Ritalin, Other Stimulants
September 07, 2005 04:37 PM EST

A new report from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University shows that prescription drug abuse among teens tripled from 1992 to 2003. The survey indicated that one in 10 teenagers (10 percent), or 2.3 million young people, has tried prescription stimulants Ritalin and/or Adderall without a doctor's order.

Additionally, each year the Monitoring the Future study measures the extent of drug use among adolescents and young adults nationwide. The 2004 results on annual use indicate that 2.5 percent of 8th-graders abused methylphenidate (Ritalin), as did 3.4 percent of 10th-graders and 5.1 percent of 12th-graders.

In 1987, members of the American Psychiatric Association voted ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to be a mental disorder for inclusion in its Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Because stimulant medicines such as methylphenidate do have potential for abuse, the US Drug Enforcement Administration has placed stringent, Schedule II controls on their manufacture, distribution, and prescription.

In 1995, in response to a petition by Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD) and the American Academy of Neurology to lower the regulatory controls on methylphenidate, the DEA conducted an extensive review of the use, abuse liability, actual abuse, diversion, and trafficking of methylphenidate. The CHADD petition attempted to characterize methylphenidate as a mild stimulant with little abuse potential, however this is not what the review found and the petitioners subsequently withdrew their request.

A number of questionable practices have contributed to the diversion and abuse of stimulant medication including improper diagnosis, lack of adequate information to youth, parents, and schools regarding the abuse potential of these drugs and lax handling of medication.

The DEA findings concluded that long-term studies looking at the effects of using these drugs are very limited; the medical use of stimulants in the treatment of active children continues to escalate; the expansive use of these drugs for childhood behavioral characteristics in the United States differs significantly from medical practices in the rest of the world and that poison control data, emergency room data and high school surveys all indicate that the abuse of methylphenidate has increased significantly since 1990.

The consequences of stimulant abuse can be extremely dangerous. Taking high doses of a stimulant can result in an irregular heartbeat, dangerously high body temperatures, and/or the potential for cardiovascular failure or seizures. Taking high doses of some stimulants repeatedly over a short period of time can lead to hostility or feelings of paranoia in some individuals.

Luke Catton, a supervisor for the well-known rehabilitation center Narconon Arrowhead, says, "Those of us working in the rehabilitation and prevention field have enough people to help already. We don't need new addicts being created because of a subjective diagnosis that calls for giving kids addictive drugs."

Catton also points out that many of the symptoms of a child who's prescribed these harmful drugs align closely with signs of kids who are considered gifted and that the line between the two is too ambiguous.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. He writes for many police and crime magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer, Campus Law Enforcement Journal, and others, and he's a columnist for TheConservativeVoice.Com. He's appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com, Booksamillion.com, and can be ordered at local bookstores. Kouri holds a bachelor of science in criminal justice and master of arts in public administration and he's a board certified protection professional.

Death Roll for Zoloft Continues

2005-09-14T13:10:00.000+10:00

Russell Johnson of Nebraska survived cancer surgery two years ago, but he didn’t survive his subsequent prescription for Zoloft.

To the initial bewilderment of his family he shot himself dead. The bewilderment was replaced by anger when they belatedly learnt about the known side effects of Zoloft.

With the help of a Lincoln Attorney’s office Russell Johnson’s son, Bowde Johnson, filed a lawsuit in Lancaster County District Court against Pfizer Inc., manufacturer of Zoloft.

Are the Experts Crazy?

2005-09-14T13:09:00.000+10:00

From: http://campaignfortruth.com/Eclub/310805/CTM%20-%20Are%20We%20All%20Going%20Mad.htm

Are We all Going Mad, or Are the Experts Crazy?
by Stuart A. Kirk

PSYCHIATRIC researchers recently estimated that half of the American population has had or will have a mental disorder at some time in their life. A generation ago, by contrast, only a small percentage of the American population was considered mentally ill. Are we all going mad?

Freud started this. He made us suspicious that any behavior was potentially rife with psychopathology. As a neurologist, he used the medical language of pathology to suggest that the demands of civilization on our fragile human nature were such as to make all of us somewhat neurotic.

The current psychiatric bible published by the American Psychiatric Assn., "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," or the DSM, continues this tradition of making us all crazy.

Because there are no biological tests, markers or known causes for most mental illnesses, who is counted as ill depends almost entirely on frequently changing checklists of behaviors that the DSM considers as symptoms of mental disorder. In the recent research, lay interviewers asked a sample of people to respond to lengthy questionnaires based on the DSM lists. Computer programs then counted the responses to determine if those interviewed had ever had the required number of behaviors for any mental disorder at some time in their life.

We keep getting higher estimates of mental disorders in part because the APA keeps adding new disorders and more behaviors to the manual.

Since 1979, for example, some of the new disorders and categories that have been added include panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, social phobia, borderline personality disorder, gender identity disorder, tobacco dependence disorder, eating disorders, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, identity disorder, acute stress disorder, sleep disorders, nightmare disorder, rumination disorder, inhibited sexual desire disorders, premature ejaculation disorder, male erectile disorder and female sexual arousal disorder. If you don't see yourself on that list, don't fret, more are in the works for the next edition of the DSM.

Because so little is known about the causes of most mental disorders, just about any behavior can look like a symptom. Here is a selection from hundreds of behaviors listed in the DSM, behaviors that signify one disorder or another: restlessness, irritability, sleeping too much or too little, eating too much or too little, difficulty concentrating, fear of social situations, feeling morose, indecisiveness, impulsivity, self-dramatization, being inappropriately sexually seductive or provocative, requiring excessive admiration, having a sense of entitlement, lacking empathy, fear of being criticized in public, feeling personally inept, fear of rejection or disapproval, difficulty expressing disagreement, being excessively devoted to work and productivity, and being preoccupied with details, rules and lists.

For children, signs of disorder occur when they are deceitful, break rules, can't sit still or wait in lines, have trouble with math, don't pay attention to details, don't listen, don't like to do homework or lose their school assignments or pencils, or speak out of turn.

Granted, one momentary feeling or behavior will not qualify you as having a DSM mental disorder; it requires clusters of them, usually for several weeks, accompanied by some level of discomfort. Nevertheless, as Freud suggested, the signs of potential pathology are everywhere.

The vast broadening of the definition of mental disorders has its skeptics, myself included, who are suspicious of the motivations of the APA and the drug companies that may view the expanding sweep of mental disorders like a lumber company lusting after a redwood forest. But unlike the environment, with its leagues of watchdogs, the medicalization of human foibles has few challengers. That's too bad: The misdiagnosis of mental illness often leaves a lasting trail in medical records open to schools, employers, insurance companies and courts.

Does it advance psychiatry to view an increasing expanse of human troubles as the expression of psychopathology rather than as part of the texture and diversity of life? Psychiatry once focused on the prevention and treatment of serious behavioral problems, of which there are plenty. But based on the metastasizing DSM, the psychiatric association appears to be caught up in a contemporary narcissistic quest for individual perfection.

The grand American experiment once was an attempt to structure our social and political institutions to create a more civil and just society. Perhaps, frustrated that we still contend with gross inequality, stinging poverty and rampant political and corporate corruption, we now embrace the perfectibility of individuals, not social institutions.

The public is being asked to swallow the view that all manner of human troubles - from anxiety, interpersonal squabbles to misbehavior of many kinds - be viewed not as inevitable parts of the human comedy, but as psychopathology to be treated, usually with drugs, as expugnable illnesses. The implicit ideal - the healthy, normal and truly happy camper - will, properly medicated, harbor no serious worries or animosities, no sadness over losses or failures, no disappointments with children or spouses, no doubts about themselves or conflicts with others, and certainly no strange ideas or behaviors. Their moods will be perfectly controlled in all circumstances, and bad hair days will be things of the past.

Is it inevitable that the rest of us, the recalcitrant, flawed resisters to the movement for individual perfection, will show up in future counts of the mentally disordered? Count me in.
LA Times 14th August 2005

STUART A. KIRK is a professor of social welfare at UCLA. He is the co-author of "The Selling of DSM" and "Making Us Crazy." His most recent book is "Mental Disorders in the Social Environment: Critical."

FDA in the Spotlight

2005-09-13T09:12:00.000+10:00

From: The Daily Aztec, San Diego State University
http://www.thedailyaztec.com/media/paper741/news/2005/09/12/Opinion/Drug-Prescriptions.Lethal.To.Americans-981085.shtml
Drug prescriptions lethal to Americans
By Ari Whitten, Contributing Columnist
Published: Monday, September 12, 2005

Media Credit: KRT Campus
Vioxx is responsible for thousands of deaths since its approval.There's a new killer in America: it isn't the result of an unhealthy diet or lifestyle, nor is it an obscure new disease. Yet, it ranks within the top-five causes of death in America each year, along with cancer, heart disease and stroke.
Adverse reaction to prescription drugs is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, according to the American Medical Association. This doesn't include deaths and injuries that result from drug abuse or prescribing errors, and the AMA notes that "reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medications kill far more people annually than all illegal drug use combined."
The question is: Why are so many Americans dying from drugs that are intended to help them? After all, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is "responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs," according to its mission statement. However, recent occurrences force me to question just how devoted to protecting the public health the FDA really is.
Consider the case of Vioxx, an anti-inflammatory drug usually prescribed to arthritis patients and recently re-approved by the FDA. Vioxx is responsible for more than 55,000 deaths and 160,000 heart attacks since its approval by the FDA in May 1999, according to Dr. David Graham, an associate director of the FDA's Office of Drug Safety. In September 2004, its manufacturer, Merck, voluntarily pulled Vioxx from the market because research data showed patients taking the drug faced twice the risk of heart attack compared to those taking placebo. Incredibly, an FDA advisory panel recently voted to allow Vioxx to return to the market with full FDA safety approval.
In November 2004, before Congress, Graham - who had warned about the heart risks of Vioxx - called the FDA's actions "a profound regulatory failure," according to Reuters. Several government watchdog groups now claim the FDA is attempting to censor and intimidate Graham. With its decision to deem one of the most lethal drugs to ever hit the U.S. market as safe for consumers, the FDA has made its safety approval policy entirely meaningless.
Among the many other dangerous drugs the FDA has knowingly allowed to remain on the market is Rezulin, which lowers blood sugar in Type II (adult onset) diabetics. Rezulin has been directly linked to a number of serious, life-threatening side effects, including severe injury to the heart and liver and death. Warner-Lambert, the manufacturer of the drug, has been blamed in dozens of deaths from liver failure and thousands of other cases of liver damage reported from 1997 to 2000. In December 1997, Rezulin was removed from the British market but despite its obvious dangers, the FDA allowed the drug to remain on the U.S. market for more than two years.
Tragically, the FDA's failures to ensure the health of the American public go far beyond its inability to ensure drug safety, but also extend to efficacy.
According to the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, "the majority of antidepressant trials conducted by drug companies have found that sugar pills, or placebos, produce results similar to or better than antidepressant drugs."
To make matters worse, recent research has demonstrated that people who take SSRI antidepressants - the popular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac and Zoloft - are more likely to attempt suicide, compared to users of placebo or other therapeutic interventions, according to the British Medical Journal. Sadly, depression afflicts roughly 19 million Americans and it's these dangerous, marginally effective drugs, which the FDA willfully allows to remain on the market, that remain the treatment of choice.
Clearly, the FDA is more interested in protecting the interests of the pharmaceutical industry than protecting American consumers. According to Graham, the reason for this conflict of interest is the FDA "views industry as its client, and the client is someone whose interest you represent."
Unfortunately, the industry is more concerned with profit than with health. Until the FDA realizes that our interests are not adequately represented by the industry, Americans will continue to pay for it with their lives.
-Ari Whitten is a kinesiology senior.

The Constant Gardener

2005-09-12T18:53:00.000+10:00

Hollywood Shakes Up Politics & Big Pharma: Constant Gardener Gaines Grassroots Support
Posted by DrBettyMartini on Friday September 9, 2005 at 6:27 pm MST
National Coalition of Organized Women

From Laboring Women to Labor Unions, we move as one

www.progressiveconvervgence.com

For Immediate Release September 10, 2005 phone: 917 804-0786 Contact: Eileen Dannemann, director ncowmail@aol.com

PRESS RELEASE

Hollywood Shakes Up Politics & Big Pharma

The Constant Gardener Gains Grassroots Support

Eileen Dannemann, the director of the National Coalition of Organized Women, announced today that NCOW is administrating an initiative to fire up the grassroots networks to promote the new blockbuster hit movie, The Constant Gardener. Grassroots lobbyists are hitting the streets and the members of Congress with flyers and materials urging everyone to run out ASAP to see the movie about Big Pharma and Tessa, the little engine that could.

Alluding to AIDS is very subtly handled in the movie

Tessa, (Rachel Weisz) a grassroots activist in Africa, married, ever so romantically, to diplomat husband played by Ralph Fiennes finds out that GKS (or whatever the acronym was in the movie) is testing unapproved, dangerous drugs on the African population and hiding the adverse reactions, burying the unfortunate victims. “It is interesting, how the movie starts off early on alluding to AIDS, says Ms. Dannemann.. “Most people might miss the subtle reference that is why I point it out,” she comments.

In 2004 Congress passed Project Bioshield giving unfettered authority to the Dept. of Defense to mandate the vaccination of military and civilians

Last year the Congress passed Project Bioshield, giving the Dept. of Defense (DOD) and the Dept. of Human Health Services (HHS) unfettered authority to declare a national emergency, whether real or “potentially” real. The authorization gives the Secretaries of these agencies broad authority to mandate use of untested, unlicensed and unproven biodefense vaccines on both military and civilian personnel. Based on the “potential” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction the DOD used that authority, declared a potential emergency (which is still in effect), and forced the untested ANTHRAX vaccine (Gulf War Syndrome) on the military population. (www.milvax.org)

Project Bioshield II, currently on the Senate calendar, is an audacious protectionist legislation for Big Pharma at an incomprehensible scope.

Senators Hatch (Utah), Lieberman (Conn.) and Brownback (Kansas) have constructed a voluminous, comprehensive 157 page bill (S.975) that gives big Pharma congressional protection and privileges such as special patent and liability protection, anti-trust and visa exemption and special tax incentives, etc. “Who can read it…or better yet…who wrote it”? asks, Ms Dannemann. “It is obvious that these three Senators get a lot of help from Big Pharma”, comments Ms. Dannemann.

The Tessa Pledge will vote out of office any Representatives who back Big Pharma against the people.

The Grassroots effort establishes the TESSA PLEDGE, named after the lead character in the movie that, with the complicity of the diplomatic core, was ruthlessly killed by Big Pharma. The Tessa Pledge goes like this, “I will do everything I can to remove from office any Representative who sponsors this bill or any other bill that uses taxpayer money to fund and protect Big Pharma”.

Testing unapproved drugs is happening right here in the United States

Ms. Dannemann warns that Big Pharma is testing drugs on our children and elderly right here in the United States with experimental AIDS cocktails to foster children. (www.ahrp.org) And GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), for example, introduced Fluarix, a flu vaccine -- an investigational new drug (IND) that has not been licensed in the United States. HHS has bought 1.2 million doses with taxpayer dollars. “Many of the elderly and parents are seeking Thimerosal (Mercury)-free flu shots. I would beware of being enlisted as an experimental subject for Fluarix as an alternative”, warns the director of NCOW.

An entire generation has been damaged by the Childhood Vaccine program

For the past twenty years the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mandated the injection of the nation’s children with high levels of mercury in the early childhood routine immunization program. “An entire generation of our children received 22 of these vaccines by the time they were two years old. The result is that nearly 20% of the children entering school today have Autism, ADD, ADHD, hyperactivity, depression, inability to cope, and are being prescribed psychiatric drugs like Ritalin, Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Zyprexia, Wellbutin, Adderall, etc.”, cites Ms. Dannemann (www.ProgressiveConvergence.com). And now we find out that the kids such as those involved in the Columbine killings, Chris Pittman at the age of 12 (who shot his Grandparents and burned down the house) and a vast number of suicide victims were on these medications. “8 million children are on psychiatric drugs, today”, She cites, (www.drugawareness.org)

Teen Screen and the New Freedom Commission is a marketing tool by the drug interests using our public schools as a marketing medium.

In the last session, the Congress approved the presidential executive order to fund a program that would screen all America’s children for mental illness. This year the New Freedom Commission will survey, diagnose, label, report and force school aged children into the arms of health professionals who routinely prescribe these dangerous medications. “Teen Screen must be stopped”, demanded Ms. Dannemann. “Most of the symptoms of these children are mercury poisoning. Rather than pointing the finger at the real problem (the 20 years of injecting our children directly in the arms 22 times with mercury), the government agency administrators mask their complicity and, instead, dumb down our children by facilitating the use of more drugs for the industry to profit from. Our youths go kill somebody or hang themselves on a hook in the laundry closet (www.ProgressiveConvergence.com)…And we wonder why? Who is being held responsible, Ms. Dannemann asks. “The New Freedom Commission, Teen Screen program is a marketing tool by drug interests initiated by President Bush (and unsuccessfully by his father before him). This program has been sanctioned by Congress. It has unfettered use our public schools as a marketing medium. “It must be stopped by parents before it gets a foot hold” insists, Ms.Dannemann.

Visit www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html

________________
“It is well established that the drugs used to treat a mental disorder, for example, may induce long-lasting biochemical and even structural changes [including in the brain], which in the past were claimed to be the cause of the disorder, but may actually be an effect of the treatment.” Further, “it is now difficult to find mental patients who have not had a history of drug treatment, and as a result many of the brain abnormalities found in these patients are probably iatrogenic [doctor/treatment caused], that is, produced by the treatment rather than being the cause of the disorder.”
Dr. Elliott Valenstein, Ph.D.
From: http://www.cchr.org/lied/liars/STOTLAND.htm

TeenScreen Exposed

2005-09-11T14:02:00.000+10:00

http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html
The real story behind ‘TeenScreen’ has been comprehensively covered at the above website. Check it out and send it on to others. This is a great presentation of the facts and I will not try to select out bits and pieces for the Blog. I would advise that it be read by parents and students alike, and by anybody else interested in the insidious inroads that Big Pharma and the psychiatrists are making into the sanity of our children and our society.
http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html