FDA to Examine New Ways to Study ADD Drugs
By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 4, 7:35 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Reports of sudden deaths, strokes, heart attacks and hypertension in both children and adults taking drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are spurring new government study into the medications' safety.
Sales of drugs to treat ADHD have increased sharply in recent years, with use growing at a faster rate among adults than children, according to a recent study by Medco Health Solutions, a prescription benefit manager. Spending on ADHD drugs soared from $759 million in 2000 to $3.1 billion in 2004, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information and consulting firm.
The Food and Drug Administration said it had received reports of what it called "serious adverse events" — including deaths — in association with the therapeutic use of the drugs. The agency considers the reports "rare though serious," FDA spokeswoman Susan Bro said Wednesday.
The FDA's Canadian counterpart, Health Canada, yanked the ADHD drug Adderall XR from the market for six months last year in response to reports of 20 sudden deaths and 12 strokes in adults and children using the drug. A number of the cases involved children with structural heart defects.
Here is the link for the complete story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060105/ap_on_he_me/attention_deficit;_ylt=AqjMzYnVeYTVEgCTRWEMIeOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3czJjNGZoBHNlYwM3NTE
Friday, January 06, 2006
Thursday, January 05, 2006
TeenScreen's Pseudo-Scientific Basis
Doyle Mills is the leader of an unprecedented and expanding media campaign against psychiatry and has been on the front lines fighting TeenScreen since day one.
His e-mail address is at the bottom so you can make friends with him and give him a hand.
http://publish.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/830875.shtml
Independent Media Center
TeenScreen's Pseudo-Scientific Basis
Doyle Mills
Bush’s New “Freedom” Commission recommended the TeenScreen mental health screening program for giving “mental health” checkups to America’s children. This article exposes TeenScreen for what it truly is, an unscientific fraud designed to turn normal children into lifelong drug addicts and mental patients. TeenScreen’s scientific background is investigated, leading to the source of all psychiatric “mental illness”, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. With irrefutable evidence , quotes from experts in the field and even from psychiatrists themselves, this article brings truth into a subject clouded by deception and fraud.
David Shaffer of Columbia University’s psychiatry department led the development of the TeenScreen program, a controversial mental health screening tool. TeenScreen is controversial for a plethora of reasons, including matters of parental rights, the dangers of drugs used to treat symptoms of “mental illness” and suspicious connections of TeenScreen’s personnel with the various drug manufacturers that stand to make billions from TeenScreen’s success.
The controversy on each of these issues could fill a book. Yet, the most interesting thing about TeenScreen is its origin, the science (or lack of science) with which it was developed.
TeenScreen certainly wants the public to believe that the program is scientifically based. Their 2004 Annual Review contained no less than NINE instances of the word “science” in its four pages of text. TeenScreen hired Rabin Strategic partners, a New York PR firm, to attempt to make the subject palatable to the public and the schools so they could be sold on the program. Is this overuse of the term “science” just slick marketing from the PR firm or is there some real science to be found somewhere? And what is this science? Finding the answer requires considerable research, as TeenScreen’s website and publications are bereft of any actual reference to what this science might be.
The Search for TeenScreen’s Science
David Shaffer’s history yields the first clue, reprinted here from TeenScreen’s own website, “He (Shaffer) has been co-chair of the DSM-IV Child and Adolescent Disorders Work Group.” The DSM-IV is the latest and current version of the standard handbook of "mental illnesses" as determined by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The DSM lists “mental disorders”, assigning each one a number and defining each as a list of symptoms. For example - 296.2, Major Depressive Disorder Single Episode, 300.02, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and the very unscientific 300.9, Unspecified Mental Disorder (nonpsychotic).
The write-up of Dr. Shaffer’s history continues with this statement: “Other research interests have included the development of computerized diagnostic instruments (the NIMH DISC) and psychiatric classification.” NIMH is the National Institute of Mental Health and DISC is the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. The NIMH DISC is based on the diagnoses of mental disorders in the DSM, as documented by the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care (NASBHC), “The DISC is a highly structured, diagnostic instrument that assesses thirty-four of the most common psychiatric diagnoses of children and adolescents. Based on diagnostic criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, III-R (an earlier edition), and ICD-10 (the British equivalent of the DSM).
TeenScreen is based on the DISC and the DISC is based on the DSM. TeenScreen’s computer-based questionnaire is called the DPS (Diagnostic Predictive Scale). The DPS is derived directly from the DISC, as documented by NASBHC, “The DISC (Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children) Diagnostic Predictive Scales (DPS) are brief questionnaires that indicate the likelihood of a psychiatric diagnosis in young people aged 8 to 18. All DPS questions come directly from the extensively tested and researched DISC. Analysis was done to find out which questions best predicted a full diagnosis.”
Questionable Suicide Studies
In the development of TeenScreen, Shaffer and crew performed a “psychological autopsy” study of 120 teen suicides in the metropolitan New York area. A psychological autopsy is defined by McGraw-Hill’s Online Learning Center as “An analysis of a decedent's thoughts, feelings, and behavior, conducted through interviews with persons who knew him or her, to determine whether a death was an accident or suicide.“ This action is commonly used by insurance companies to determine whether to pay a claim but rarely, if ever, used in any scientific work. There is no physical autopsy involved, merely interviews with friends, co-workers and relatives consulting their memory and opinion.
Reportedly, with this study, they found that approximately 90% of youth who die by suicide suffer from a diagnosable and treatable mental illness at the time of their deaths (Shaffer et al., 1996). They conclude that they could have correctly identified and treated the suicide victims. Yet, this conclusion was drawn without any direct observation of an actual suicidal teen, any attempt at diagnosis, and no attempt at treatment. This seems an exaggeration at best, or wishful thinking, akin to a fireman showing up 20 minutes late and saying “I coulda saved those victims”.
This peculiar approach is very illogical until some basic information about the DSM and psychiatry in general is added. The DSM defines 374 mental “disorders”. Each is a list of symptoms and if a person is found to have more than half of the symptoms for a particular disorder he “has” it. This is the criteria used by Shaffer and his fellow researchers to determine that the victims were “diagnosable”. It means they were able to find enough acquaintances to “verify” their idea that the victim felt and acted according to certain items on a list.
Questioning the DSM
The so-called “scientific” basis for the TeenScreen Program’s evaluation of “mental health” is the DSM. The question though, is whether there is any scientific validity to the DSM’s diagnoses. Each of the 374 has been approved and certified as real by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). There should be science behind that. Certainly, there are studies aplenty on symptoms and how symptoms can be manipulated with drugs and other duress but there is no proof that even one “disorder” is anything other than a list of symptoms. They are voted in by committee, so that if a majority vote that a particular list of symptoms “is” a disorder, then it “is” and everyone who has a majority of those symptoms “has” that disorder.
The DSM-II listed homosexuality as an abnormal behavior under section "302. Sexual Deviations." It was the first deviation listed. After much political pressure, a committee of the APA met behind closed doors in 1973 and voted to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder in the new DSM-III. “Opponents of this effort were given 15 minutes to protest this change”, according to Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, in Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. Homosexuality was labeled as deviant behavior with no scientific basis, then removed in response to protest and political pressure. This is a polarizing issue amongst the public with strong opinion on both sides. Psychiatry has alienated both sides with their non-scientific methods.
Harvard Medical School’s Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., says that in psychiatry, “all of its diagnoses are merely syndromes [or disorders], clusters of symptoms presumed to be related, not diseases.” – from Prozac Backlash: Overcoming the Dangers of Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and other Antidepressants with Safe, Effective Alternatives
Even Columbia University acknowledges the unscientific nature of the DSM in their annual report of 2001, “Problems with the current DSM-IV categorical (present vs. absent) approach to the classification of personality disorders have long been recognized by clinicians and researchers.” Among the problems, they list “arbitrary distinction between normal personality, personality traits and personality disorder” and point out the interesting fact that the most commonly diagnosed personality disorder is 301.9, Personality Disorder not Otherwise Specified.
"The field of mental health is highly subjective, capricious, and dominated by whims, mythologies, and public relations. In many ways it is a pop culture with endless fads but with no real substance." – Dr. Walter Fisher, Assistant Superintendent, Elgin State Hospital, Power, Greed, and Stupidity in the Mental Health Racket
"Finally, why must the APA pretend to know more than it does? DSM IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document. ... It is the way to get paid." – Loren R. Mosher, M. D., Former Chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia, The National Institute of Mental Health, in his letter of resignation to the APA
While critics question its science, the DSM’s validity is endorsed by the APA, and the diagnosis numbers are generally accepted by insurance companies for billing purposes. Drug companies use DSM diagnoses to justify the need for their highly profitable psychotropic drugs, helping to build and maintain the multi-billion dollar psychotropic drug industry. "The way to sell drugs is to sell psychiatric illness." – Dr. Carl Elliot, University of Minnesota Bioethicist, as quoted in Drug Ads Hyping Anxiety Make Some Uneasy, Washington Post 2001
On a personal level, the psychiatrist or physician tells the patient that he or she has a disease, with a learned-sounding name. They hand that person a prescription for the specific drug that is supposed to treat that particular “mental illness”. No actual medical tests are performed, only the list of symptoms from the DSM is used. If one exhibits the list of symptoms, he is deemed to have the disease. If the psychiatrist reports to the insurance company, Medicare or Medicaid that the patient has the right symptoms, it will pay the bill. True to Dr. Elliot’s observation, this is certainly the successful way to sell drugs.
The DSM has shown to be a useful tool for those who derive their living from “treating” people who experience difficulties in life. Despite the controversy and questions, the DSM is broadly used to label and prescribe treatment, usually drugs, to millions of patients. The DSM diagnoses are also used by the research community as justification for millions in public and private research dollars.
One of the toughest question the DSM faces is the “science” or lack thereof that the APA uses to determine what is a disorder and what isn’t. Does even one of the 374 “disorders" or "mental illnesses" actually exist? Are they diseases of the brain or simply lists of symptoms with a number of potential causes?
Paul Genova, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, made the following astounding remarks in Psychiatric Times, April 2003, in an article entitled Dump the DSM: "The American Psychiatric Association's DSM diagnostic system has outlived its usefulness by about two decades. It should be abandoned, not revised. . . . it is time for the arbitrary, legalistic symptom checklists of the DSM to go. . .. The aggregate is an awkward, ponderous, off-putting beast that discredits and diminishes psychiatry and the insight of those who practice it." Consider the fact that your clinical practice is governed by a diagnostic system that:
• is a laughingstock for the other medical specialties;
• requires continual apologies to primary care doctors, medical students, residents, and the occasional lawyer or judge;
• most of our thoughtful colleagues privately rail against;
• insists upon rigid categories that often serve only to confuse and misinform patients and their clinical workers (sometimes abetted by televised drug advertising);
• is so intellectually incoherent as to raise eyebrows among the well-educated, critical thinkers in our own psychotherapy clientele;
• persuades the world at large that psychiatry no longer has anything of interest to say about the human condition.
The DSM diagnoses are compiled and voted in by committees at the APA convention. Voting is done by a show of hands on whether or not a new category should be created and what its symptoms should be. As psychiatrist and founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), Peter Breggin, stated in the book, Toxic Psychiatry, "Only in psychiatry is the existence of physical disease determined by APA presidential proclamations, by committee decisions, and even, by a vote of the members of APA...”
The first two editions of the DSM categorized mental illnesses according to the conventional psychiatric ideology of its time. Difficulties were split into psychoses and neuroses. Then, with the introduction of the DSM III in 1980, the new "medical model" (chemical imbalance theory) became the norm, while dozens more categories of “mental illness” were added. This was a revolution in the way the “mentally ill” were studied and treated, yet no evidence was provided for this new convention. The DSM-III stated, "For most of the DSM-III disorders . . . the etiology (the actual cause of a disease) is unknown. A variety of theories have been advanced, buttressed (supported) by evidence not always convincing to explain how these disorders come about."
That was twenty-five years ago. Surely the billions of dollars poured into psychiatric “research” in those years have resulted in final proof after all this time. No. Despite the decades and billions, not one single, objective scientific marker can be shown for even one so-called "mental illness." The disorders are ASSUMED to be genetic or related to a chemical imbalance in the brain yet not one scientific paper have clearly delineated a responsible gene and no one has even been able to identify what a normal chemical “balance” would be. From the New York Times, June 14, 2005, "Psychiatrists have been searching for more than a century for some biological marker for mental disease, to little avail." – Benedict Carey
In the future, we can look forward to even more pseudo-science from psychiatry. The lead psychiatrist in charge of formulating the new DSM V openly admits to the lack of "scientific research" done to back up DSM diagnoses, "A primary purpose of this group then, was to determine why progress has been so limited and to offer strategic insights that may lead to a more etiologically-based diagnostic system. The group ultimately concluded that given the current state of technological limitations, the field is years, and possibly decades, away from having a fully explicated etiology- and pathophysiology-based classification system for psychiatry." —Michael B. First, M.D. A Research Agenda for DSM-V: Summary of the DSM-V Preplanning White Papers, May 2002.
Psychiatric journals have reported studies into potential “disorders” that could be voted into the next iteration of the DSM. Arachibutyrophobia - the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, Post Election Selection Trauma - your candidate loses, and Automatonophobia - the fear of ventriloquists' dummies have been created and seriously studied. Paul McHugh, Professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, understands how comical his profession has become, “Pretty soon, we'll have a syndrome for short, fat Irish guys with a Boston accent, and I'll be mentally ill." – New York Times, June 7, 2005
The DSM has no scientific basis, therefore TeenScreen has no scientific basis. Psychiatrists themselves criticize its validity. This could all be an interesting discussion, scintillating parlor conversation, except for the simple, brutal, shocking fact that mental health screening programs like TeenScreen are busy right now infiltrating schools all over the USA in order to apply this pseudo-science to our children. This is not an academic discussion; this is a matter of life and death for America’s children. Do you want to trust your children to the very same group that cannot quite agree on their “science”, while boldly going forward with drugging millions of children with mind-altering, deadly drugs? If you are a parent, teacher, school administrator, elected official or anyone who cares about the future of this country, you need to find out if TeenScreen is operating in your local schools. Demand that TeenScreen is stopped and that children are allowed to grow up as the beautiful, normal children they are and not as lifelong drug addicts and mental patients.
Doyle Mills is an independent writer and researcher living in Clearwater, Florida. He may be contacted at dmills_pb@yahoo.com
For more information about TeenScreen, click on:
http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html
http://www.teenscreenfacts.com
http://www.teenscreentruth.com
His e-mail address is at the bottom so you can make friends with him and give him a hand.
http://publish.indymedia.org/en/2006/01/830875.shtml
Independent Media Center
TeenScreen's Pseudo-Scientific Basis
Doyle Mills
Bush’s New “Freedom” Commission recommended the TeenScreen mental health screening program for giving “mental health” checkups to America’s children. This article exposes TeenScreen for what it truly is, an unscientific fraud designed to turn normal children into lifelong drug addicts and mental patients. TeenScreen’s scientific background is investigated, leading to the source of all psychiatric “mental illness”, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. With irrefutable evidence , quotes from experts in the field and even from psychiatrists themselves, this article brings truth into a subject clouded by deception and fraud.
David Shaffer of Columbia University’s psychiatry department led the development of the TeenScreen program, a controversial mental health screening tool. TeenScreen is controversial for a plethora of reasons, including matters of parental rights, the dangers of drugs used to treat symptoms of “mental illness” and suspicious connections of TeenScreen’s personnel with the various drug manufacturers that stand to make billions from TeenScreen’s success.
The controversy on each of these issues could fill a book. Yet, the most interesting thing about TeenScreen is its origin, the science (or lack of science) with which it was developed.
TeenScreen certainly wants the public to believe that the program is scientifically based. Their 2004 Annual Review contained no less than NINE instances of the word “science” in its four pages of text. TeenScreen hired Rabin Strategic partners, a New York PR firm, to attempt to make the subject palatable to the public and the schools so they could be sold on the program. Is this overuse of the term “science” just slick marketing from the PR firm or is there some real science to be found somewhere? And what is this science? Finding the answer requires considerable research, as TeenScreen’s website and publications are bereft of any actual reference to what this science might be.
The Search for TeenScreen’s Science
David Shaffer’s history yields the first clue, reprinted here from TeenScreen’s own website, “He (Shaffer) has been co-chair of the DSM-IV Child and Adolescent Disorders Work Group.” The DSM-IV is the latest and current version of the standard handbook of "mental illnesses" as determined by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The DSM lists “mental disorders”, assigning each one a number and defining each as a list of symptoms. For example - 296.2, Major Depressive Disorder Single Episode, 300.02, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and the very unscientific 300.9, Unspecified Mental Disorder (nonpsychotic).
The write-up of Dr. Shaffer’s history continues with this statement: “Other research interests have included the development of computerized diagnostic instruments (the NIMH DISC) and psychiatric classification.” NIMH is the National Institute of Mental Health and DISC is the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. The NIMH DISC is based on the diagnoses of mental disorders in the DSM, as documented by the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care (NASBHC), “The DISC is a highly structured, diagnostic instrument that assesses thirty-four of the most common psychiatric diagnoses of children and adolescents. Based on diagnostic criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, III-R (an earlier edition), and ICD-10 (the British equivalent of the DSM).
TeenScreen is based on the DISC and the DISC is based on the DSM. TeenScreen’s computer-based questionnaire is called the DPS (Diagnostic Predictive Scale). The DPS is derived directly from the DISC, as documented by NASBHC, “The DISC (Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children) Diagnostic Predictive Scales (DPS) are brief questionnaires that indicate the likelihood of a psychiatric diagnosis in young people aged 8 to 18. All DPS questions come directly from the extensively tested and researched DISC. Analysis was done to find out which questions best predicted a full diagnosis.”
Questionable Suicide Studies
In the development of TeenScreen, Shaffer and crew performed a “psychological autopsy” study of 120 teen suicides in the metropolitan New York area. A psychological autopsy is defined by McGraw-Hill’s Online Learning Center as “An analysis of a decedent's thoughts, feelings, and behavior, conducted through interviews with persons who knew him or her, to determine whether a death was an accident or suicide.“ This action is commonly used by insurance companies to determine whether to pay a claim but rarely, if ever, used in any scientific work. There is no physical autopsy involved, merely interviews with friends, co-workers and relatives consulting their memory and opinion.
Reportedly, with this study, they found that approximately 90% of youth who die by suicide suffer from a diagnosable and treatable mental illness at the time of their deaths (Shaffer et al., 1996). They conclude that they could have correctly identified and treated the suicide victims. Yet, this conclusion was drawn without any direct observation of an actual suicidal teen, any attempt at diagnosis, and no attempt at treatment. This seems an exaggeration at best, or wishful thinking, akin to a fireman showing up 20 minutes late and saying “I coulda saved those victims”.
This peculiar approach is very illogical until some basic information about the DSM and psychiatry in general is added. The DSM defines 374 mental “disorders”. Each is a list of symptoms and if a person is found to have more than half of the symptoms for a particular disorder he “has” it. This is the criteria used by Shaffer and his fellow researchers to determine that the victims were “diagnosable”. It means they were able to find enough acquaintances to “verify” their idea that the victim felt and acted according to certain items on a list.
Questioning the DSM
The so-called “scientific” basis for the TeenScreen Program’s evaluation of “mental health” is the DSM. The question though, is whether there is any scientific validity to the DSM’s diagnoses. Each of the 374 has been approved and certified as real by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). There should be science behind that. Certainly, there are studies aplenty on symptoms and how symptoms can be manipulated with drugs and other duress but there is no proof that even one “disorder” is anything other than a list of symptoms. They are voted in by committee, so that if a majority vote that a particular list of symptoms “is” a disorder, then it “is” and everyone who has a majority of those symptoms “has” that disorder.
The DSM-II listed homosexuality as an abnormal behavior under section "302. Sexual Deviations." It was the first deviation listed. After much political pressure, a committee of the APA met behind closed doors in 1973 and voted to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder in the new DSM-III. “Opponents of this effort were given 15 minutes to protest this change”, according to Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, in Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. Homosexuality was labeled as deviant behavior with no scientific basis, then removed in response to protest and political pressure. This is a polarizing issue amongst the public with strong opinion on both sides. Psychiatry has alienated both sides with their non-scientific methods.
Harvard Medical School’s Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., says that in psychiatry, “all of its diagnoses are merely syndromes [or disorders], clusters of symptoms presumed to be related, not diseases.” – from Prozac Backlash: Overcoming the Dangers of Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and other Antidepressants with Safe, Effective Alternatives
Even Columbia University acknowledges the unscientific nature of the DSM in their annual report of 2001, “Problems with the current DSM-IV categorical (present vs. absent) approach to the classification of personality disorders have long been recognized by clinicians and researchers.” Among the problems, they list “arbitrary distinction between normal personality, personality traits and personality disorder” and point out the interesting fact that the most commonly diagnosed personality disorder is 301.9, Personality Disorder not Otherwise Specified.
"The field of mental health is highly subjective, capricious, and dominated by whims, mythologies, and public relations. In many ways it is a pop culture with endless fads but with no real substance." – Dr. Walter Fisher, Assistant Superintendent, Elgin State Hospital, Power, Greed, and Stupidity in the Mental Health Racket
"Finally, why must the APA pretend to know more than it does? DSM IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document. ... It is the way to get paid." – Loren R. Mosher, M. D., Former Chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia, The National Institute of Mental Health, in his letter of resignation to the APA
While critics question its science, the DSM’s validity is endorsed by the APA, and the diagnosis numbers are generally accepted by insurance companies for billing purposes. Drug companies use DSM diagnoses to justify the need for their highly profitable psychotropic drugs, helping to build and maintain the multi-billion dollar psychotropic drug industry. "The way to sell drugs is to sell psychiatric illness." – Dr. Carl Elliot, University of Minnesota Bioethicist, as quoted in Drug Ads Hyping Anxiety Make Some Uneasy, Washington Post 2001
On a personal level, the psychiatrist or physician tells the patient that he or she has a disease, with a learned-sounding name. They hand that person a prescription for the specific drug that is supposed to treat that particular “mental illness”. No actual medical tests are performed, only the list of symptoms from the DSM is used. If one exhibits the list of symptoms, he is deemed to have the disease. If the psychiatrist reports to the insurance company, Medicare or Medicaid that the patient has the right symptoms, it will pay the bill. True to Dr. Elliot’s observation, this is certainly the successful way to sell drugs.
The DSM has shown to be a useful tool for those who derive their living from “treating” people who experience difficulties in life. Despite the controversy and questions, the DSM is broadly used to label and prescribe treatment, usually drugs, to millions of patients. The DSM diagnoses are also used by the research community as justification for millions in public and private research dollars.
One of the toughest question the DSM faces is the “science” or lack thereof that the APA uses to determine what is a disorder and what isn’t. Does even one of the 374 “disorders" or "mental illnesses" actually exist? Are they diseases of the brain or simply lists of symptoms with a number of potential causes?
Paul Genova, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, made the following astounding remarks in Psychiatric Times, April 2003, in an article entitled Dump the DSM: "The American Psychiatric Association's DSM diagnostic system has outlived its usefulness by about two decades. It should be abandoned, not revised. . . . it is time for the arbitrary, legalistic symptom checklists of the DSM to go. . .. The aggregate is an awkward, ponderous, off-putting beast that discredits and diminishes psychiatry and the insight of those who practice it." Consider the fact that your clinical practice is governed by a diagnostic system that:
• is a laughingstock for the other medical specialties;
• requires continual apologies to primary care doctors, medical students, residents, and the occasional lawyer or judge;
• most of our thoughtful colleagues privately rail against;
• insists upon rigid categories that often serve only to confuse and misinform patients and their clinical workers (sometimes abetted by televised drug advertising);
• is so intellectually incoherent as to raise eyebrows among the well-educated, critical thinkers in our own psychotherapy clientele;
• persuades the world at large that psychiatry no longer has anything of interest to say about the human condition.
The DSM diagnoses are compiled and voted in by committees at the APA convention. Voting is done by a show of hands on whether or not a new category should be created and what its symptoms should be. As psychiatrist and founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), Peter Breggin, stated in the book, Toxic Psychiatry, "Only in psychiatry is the existence of physical disease determined by APA presidential proclamations, by committee decisions, and even, by a vote of the members of APA...”
The first two editions of the DSM categorized mental illnesses according to the conventional psychiatric ideology of its time. Difficulties were split into psychoses and neuroses. Then, with the introduction of the DSM III in 1980, the new "medical model" (chemical imbalance theory) became the norm, while dozens more categories of “mental illness” were added. This was a revolution in the way the “mentally ill” were studied and treated, yet no evidence was provided for this new convention. The DSM-III stated, "For most of the DSM-III disorders . . . the etiology (the actual cause of a disease) is unknown. A variety of theories have been advanced, buttressed (supported) by evidence not always convincing to explain how these disorders come about."
That was twenty-five years ago. Surely the billions of dollars poured into psychiatric “research” in those years have resulted in final proof after all this time. No. Despite the decades and billions, not one single, objective scientific marker can be shown for even one so-called "mental illness." The disorders are ASSUMED to be genetic or related to a chemical imbalance in the brain yet not one scientific paper have clearly delineated a responsible gene and no one has even been able to identify what a normal chemical “balance” would be. From the New York Times, June 14, 2005, "Psychiatrists have been searching for more than a century for some biological marker for mental disease, to little avail." – Benedict Carey
In the future, we can look forward to even more pseudo-science from psychiatry. The lead psychiatrist in charge of formulating the new DSM V openly admits to the lack of "scientific research" done to back up DSM diagnoses, "A primary purpose of this group then, was to determine why progress has been so limited and to offer strategic insights that may lead to a more etiologically-based diagnostic system. The group ultimately concluded that given the current state of technological limitations, the field is years, and possibly decades, away from having a fully explicated etiology- and pathophysiology-based classification system for psychiatry." —Michael B. First, M.D. A Research Agenda for DSM-V: Summary of the DSM-V Preplanning White Papers, May 2002.
Psychiatric journals have reported studies into potential “disorders” that could be voted into the next iteration of the DSM. Arachibutyrophobia - the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, Post Election Selection Trauma - your candidate loses, and Automatonophobia - the fear of ventriloquists' dummies have been created and seriously studied. Paul McHugh, Professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, understands how comical his profession has become, “Pretty soon, we'll have a syndrome for short, fat Irish guys with a Boston accent, and I'll be mentally ill." – New York Times, June 7, 2005
The DSM has no scientific basis, therefore TeenScreen has no scientific basis. Psychiatrists themselves criticize its validity. This could all be an interesting discussion, scintillating parlor conversation, except for the simple, brutal, shocking fact that mental health screening programs like TeenScreen are busy right now infiltrating schools all over the USA in order to apply this pseudo-science to our children. This is not an academic discussion; this is a matter of life and death for America’s children. Do you want to trust your children to the very same group that cannot quite agree on their “science”, while boldly going forward with drugging millions of children with mind-altering, deadly drugs? If you are a parent, teacher, school administrator, elected official or anyone who cares about the future of this country, you need to find out if TeenScreen is operating in your local schools. Demand that TeenScreen is stopped and that children are allowed to grow up as the beautiful, normal children they are and not as lifelong drug addicts and mental patients.
Doyle Mills is an independent writer and researcher living in Clearwater, Florida. He may be contacted at dmills_pb@yahoo.com
For more information about TeenScreen, click on:
http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html
http://www.teenscreenfacts.com
http://www.teenscreentruth.com
Monday, January 02, 2006
Tallahassee Paper Cites Drug Companies For Misleading Public
Tallahassee Democrat
Paper cites drug ads for improper diagnosis
By Tony Bridges
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
FSU graduate student Jeffrey Lacasse co-wrote a paper that says drug companies mislead the public about the causes and cures of depression.
Depression - it's a chemical imbalance in the brain, right? Not exactly. But there's a good reason you might think that.
You've seen too many TV commercials, according to Jeffrey Lacasse, a Florida State University graduate student.
He's co-written a paper - published in this month's issue of the Public Library of Science Medicine - arguing that drug-company advertisements have confused consumers by oversimplifying the causes of and ways to treat depression.
The paper's gotten plenty of media coverage, from WebMD.com to the Wall Street Journal, and reactions have been strong on both sides. But many in the medical community seem to support Lacasse's position.
"I really do agree with the spirit of it," said Dr. John Bailey, president of the Florida Psychiatric Society. "I'm concerned about some of the influence the ... marketing has and some of the expectations that it creates."
There are U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules about what drug makers can and cannot say in advertisements.
Among other things, they aren't allowed to make claims not supported by established scientific evidence. Or at least, not without admitting that the claims are unsupported.
What Lacasse and co-author Jonathan Leo say is this: Makers of antidepressants skirt, and sometimes cross, that line by telling consumers that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin and that their pills help boost levels of the brain chemical.
They offer Zoloft as one example, quoting a TV commercial that claims depression is a medical condition that may be due to a chemical imbalance, and that, "Zoloft works to correct this imbalance."
The problem is that depression isn't nearly that simple, according to the two.
And they have a point, said Dr. Wayne Goodman, a University of Florida psychiatrist and chairman of the FDA's psychopharmacologic advisory committee.
He told the New Scientist magazine that the idea of a chemical imbalance is a "useful metaphor" but not one he uses for his own patients.
"I can't get myself to say that," he told the magazine.
Pfizer, the maker of Zoloft, sees it differently. The company responded to Lacasse's paper with a written statement.
"There is considerable scientific literature supporting the widespread belief among scientists and physicians that an inadequate level of serotonin in the neuronal synapses of the brain is at least one of the causes of depression," it read, in part.
But no one's really sure .
Serotonin was identified as a possible culprit in 1965, but only as a theory with little research to back it up. Medical experts have conducted various studies over the years, but the results have been mixed and the findings questioned over flaws in methodology.
Other trials have tried, without success, to establish what the "healthy" level of serotonin should be.
Researchers in one experiment tried to cause depression by artificially depleting serotonin. Another group tried to cure depressed test subjects by triggering huge increases of serotonin. Both failed.
But what about the pills themselves? Do they work?
According to the authors, there's evidence those drugs - called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors - are no more effective than other types of medications. There's also evidence that they make people better .
"A lot of people feel that the medications are very helpful to them," Lacasse said. "And I would never argue with them on a personal level."
What's not clear is whether SSRIs work because the patient has a deficiency, or because the SSRI changes something else within the body.
"We haven't actually measured that directly," said Bailey, with the state psychiatric society.
And it really isn't the point, anyway, Lacasse said.
Say SSRIs do help with depression. That doesn't prove the problem was caused by a lack of serotonin.
Making that leap would be the same as arguing that because aspirin cures a headache, the headache was caused by an aspirin shortage, Lacasse said.
OK, so maybe he's right. Maybe depression isn't just a serotonin problem, and the TV commercials are technically incorrect.
If the pills help, why should consumers care?
The ads induce tunnel vision, according to Lacasse.
Bailey said he's seen it in his patients. They come in convinced that all they need to cure their depression is a pill - even when there are other, perhaps more suitable, alternatives, including talk therapy and plain old exercise.
"That's the problem with trying to educate the public in 30 seconds," Bailey said. "This really should be a process of education and informed consent between a doctor and a patient."
And that's what he wants, Lacasse said: Patients who learn how to beat depression from their doctors - not a TV commercial pushing a product.
Paper cites drug ads for improper diagnosis
By Tony Bridges
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
FSU graduate student Jeffrey Lacasse co-wrote a paper that says drug companies mislead the public about the causes and cures of depression.
Depression - it's a chemical imbalance in the brain, right? Not exactly. But there's a good reason you might think that.
You've seen too many TV commercials, according to Jeffrey Lacasse, a Florida State University graduate student.
He's co-written a paper - published in this month's issue of the Public Library of Science Medicine - arguing that drug-company advertisements have confused consumers by oversimplifying the causes of and ways to treat depression.
The paper's gotten plenty of media coverage, from WebMD.com to the Wall Street Journal, and reactions have been strong on both sides. But many in the medical community seem to support Lacasse's position.
"I really do agree with the spirit of it," said Dr. John Bailey, president of the Florida Psychiatric Society. "I'm concerned about some of the influence the ... marketing has and some of the expectations that it creates."
There are U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules about what drug makers can and cannot say in advertisements.
Among other things, they aren't allowed to make claims not supported by established scientific evidence. Or at least, not without admitting that the claims are unsupported.
What Lacasse and co-author Jonathan Leo say is this: Makers of antidepressants skirt, and sometimes cross, that line by telling consumers that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin and that their pills help boost levels of the brain chemical.
They offer Zoloft as one example, quoting a TV commercial that claims depression is a medical condition that may be due to a chemical imbalance, and that, "Zoloft works to correct this imbalance."
The problem is that depression isn't nearly that simple, according to the two.
And they have a point, said Dr. Wayne Goodman, a University of Florida psychiatrist and chairman of the FDA's psychopharmacologic advisory committee.
He told the New Scientist magazine that the idea of a chemical imbalance is a "useful metaphor" but not one he uses for his own patients.
"I can't get myself to say that," he told the magazine.
Pfizer, the maker of Zoloft, sees it differently. The company responded to Lacasse's paper with a written statement.
"There is considerable scientific literature supporting the widespread belief among scientists and physicians that an inadequate level of serotonin in the neuronal synapses of the brain is at least one of the causes of depression," it read, in part.
But no one's really sure .
Serotonin was identified as a possible culprit in 1965, but only as a theory with little research to back it up. Medical experts have conducted various studies over the years, but the results have been mixed and the findings questioned over flaws in methodology.
Other trials have tried, without success, to establish what the "healthy" level of serotonin should be.
Researchers in one experiment tried to cause depression by artificially depleting serotonin. Another group tried to cure depressed test subjects by triggering huge increases of serotonin. Both failed.
But what about the pills themselves? Do they work?
According to the authors, there's evidence those drugs - called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors - are no more effective than other types of medications. There's also evidence that they make people better .
"A lot of people feel that the medications are very helpful to them," Lacasse said. "And I would never argue with them on a personal level."
What's not clear is whether SSRIs work because the patient has a deficiency, or because the SSRI changes something else within the body.
"We haven't actually measured that directly," said Bailey, with the state psychiatric society.
And it really isn't the point, anyway, Lacasse said.
Say SSRIs do help with depression. That doesn't prove the problem was caused by a lack of serotonin.
Making that leap would be the same as arguing that because aspirin cures a headache, the headache was caused by an aspirin shortage, Lacasse said.
OK, so maybe he's right. Maybe depression isn't just a serotonin problem, and the TV commercials are technically incorrect.
If the pills help, why should consumers care?
The ads induce tunnel vision, according to Lacasse.
Bailey said he's seen it in his patients. They come in convinced that all they need to cure their depression is a pill - even when there are other, perhaps more suitable, alternatives, including talk therapy and plain old exercise.
"That's the problem with trying to educate the public in 30 seconds," Bailey said. "This really should be a process of education and informed consent between a doctor and a patient."
And that's what he wants, Lacasse said: Patients who learn how to beat depression from their doctors - not a TV commercial pushing a product.
L.A. Times On Psych Drugs
January 1, 2006
Los Angeles Times
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. 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-IV, 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 with 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).
Lest one think that such a view is the rant of a Scientologist, it is no such thing. Scientology offers polemic to lull the faithful into belief. Doctors and philosophers offer argument to provoke debate.
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.
Los Angeles Times
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. 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-IV, 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 with 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).
Lest one think that such a view is the rant of a Scientologist, it is no such thing. Scientology offers polemic to lull the faithful into belief. Doctors and philosophers offer argument to provoke debate.
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.
National Coalition of Organized Women Re Psych Drugs
Eileen Dannemann
Director, National Coalition of Organized Women
Submitted as Guest Editorial:
Thank you so much for the Savodnick article on Psychiatry's sick compulsion. (LA Times, Jan 1, 2006) My son David, now 21, who has been meditating since he was four; grew up on organic food, received no mandated childhood mercury vaccines, and was point guard of his high school basketball team and a most creative "out of the box thinker" decided to try recreational drugs at the University of Iowa 3 years ago. He had a bad reaction to LSD The Psychiatrists at the U of I Hospital totally disregarded the fact that he was coming off of a recreational trip and labeled him Bi Polar neatly coded by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) enabling him to be locked up and covered by Medicaid insuring that the Hospital would be paid.
The Hospital psychiatrist put David, then age 19, on Lithium, Haldol, Addivan and you name it. He gained enormous amount of weight and became zombie-like. They told him he would have to be on Lithium the rest of his life...that is...the rest of his life. This once brilliant athlete was now shuffling his feet having been condemned to a life of a lawn mower. The diagnosis was based on no tests...no genetic history...no nothing...just the "professional opinion" of a college educated, brainwashed American Psychiatric Association (APA) dweeble who blatantly disregarded the fact that David's symptoms were caused by LSD (one of the first SSRI drugs developed by Pfizer in the early day). Does the DSM have a code for LSD adverse effects? Would "detoxification" have been a more rational first line of treatment? Would Medicaid pay for a hospital stay for "detoxification"? I don't think so, but it sounds like a sorely needed common sense plan for the youth of America, today. s And...to add insult to injury:
One day as David was coming off the Haldol, he hung himself in my back yard. Twitching uncontrollably from a tree, I saved him in the nick of time, shouldering him back up on the ladder from whence he jumped. Today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued black box warnings for SSRIs: A little late for David or Diane Routhier, a well-educated, beautiful, happily married mother of two who killed herself with a gun after six days on Wellbutin. Or Sara Bostock whose daughter stabbed herself twice in the chest with a large chef's knife after taking Paxil for 2 weeks. (Sleeping in the next room, Sara simply heard a slight yelp and a thump when her daughter fell on the floor). Glenn McIntosh’s 6th grade daughter hung herself with her shoelaces in the school bathroom after being prescribed Paxil/Zoloft. Chris Pittman was 12 years old and on Zoloft when he killed both his grandparents and torched their house.
Yet, Psychiatrists still prescribe these drugs. David "believed" the white coated, diploma laden authorities and so did his father who would piss in the wind if an authority told him to do so. It took David a self discovery journey in and out of mental institutions and hospitals for over two years to realize he was not mentally ill but had become a victim of massive, covert, quasi-legitimate, series of clinical drug trials. The reality is that research hospital psychiatrists are "experimenting' on this generation with a vast array of sketchily FDA approved anti depressant/psychotic medications. University mental hospitals have become the second tier drug trial laboratory for the drug companies. The Bayh-Dole Act passed by Congress in the 80's gave Universities and their researchers full patent rights to drugs they might develop. Since then, universities and associated hospitals have become field laboratories for the drug industry. (See: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune75/articles/0,15114,1101810-2,00.html) Emory College, for example, recently received over $300 million dollars for a drug they developed.
Currently on the radar is TeenScreen, a suicide screening initiative created by Columbia University (emphasis on university). Teen Screen has begun to infiltrate our public schools, using our convenient "educational" network as a channel for the Drug industry. There is so much blind banter going on in the media about the TeenScreen program, but has anyone actually seen a Teen Screen survey? Have a peek. Judge for yourself whether this is science or academic junk. We have a research project currently reviewing a TeenScreen survey on our website www.ProgessiveConvergence.com. In our review, we noticed that there were many questions on the use of street drugs such as marijuana, LSD, amphetamines, etc, but no questions on the use of "prescription drugs". It seemed odd to us that since over eight million children are on psychiatric drugs and many of these drugs have black box warnings in particular for suicide that there were no questions on this survey pertaining to prescription drugs. Marijuana isn't known for causing suicidal ideation, but drugs given to ADD and ADHD kids are. It is quite telling by this blaring omission who is behind the congressionally funded, mandated mental screening of all America's children via public schools initiative. In addition, this initiative has been strategically designed so that it does not require active parental consent. And although Congressman Ron Paul (TX) has fought for parental consent, Congress has failed to support him.
And while we are at it: Why all this concern about mental illness in our public schools? Yes, it is true that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that 1 of every 6 children has a neurological disorder. Could the 20 years of injecting the generation (via the CDC’s mandated children’s vaccine program) with high levels of mercury (aka Thimerosal) in as many as 22 vaccines between the ages of 1 month and 2 years old have anything to do with the apparent rampant epidemic of mental illness, ADD, ADHD and Autism?
Doesn't it seem odd to anyone that we are advised by our government not to eat fish contaminated with mercury, yet we are asked to stand by while health professionals inject this deadly neurotoxin directly into our children’s bloodstreams? And does it not appear to be even odder… rather than facing this CDC atrocity square on, that Congress is facilitating the dumbing down of our children with anti-depressants, psychiatric, suicide/homicide drugs by funding programs like Teen Screen and the New Freedom Commission. Seems odd to me…the on going government program...shoot ‘em up with mercury, then dumb ‘em down with Zoloft
In conclusion, I wonder how we will all fare when the Dept. of Defense (DoD) calls a Bioterrorism emergency (based on reality or not) and the Human Health Services director, Mike Leavitt mandates the injection of every man, woman and child with untested vaccines. Last week’s passage of the Patriot Act amendments has insured non-liability for Drug companies. How convenient. We might expect either the avian flu pandemic or a bio terrorist attack any time soon now that Drug companies are held harmless for damages.
Eileen Dannemann
Director, National Coalition of Organized Women
www.ProgressiveConvergence.com
www.SlavetotheMetal.org
Director, National Coalition of Organized Women
Submitted as Guest Editorial:
Thank you so much for the Savodnick article on Psychiatry's sick compulsion. (LA Times, Jan 1, 2006) My son David, now 21, who has been meditating since he was four; grew up on organic food, received no mandated childhood mercury vaccines, and was point guard of his high school basketball team and a most creative "out of the box thinker" decided to try recreational drugs at the University of Iowa 3 years ago. He had a bad reaction to LSD The Psychiatrists at the U of I Hospital totally disregarded the fact that he was coming off of a recreational trip and labeled him Bi Polar neatly coded by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) enabling him to be locked up and covered by Medicaid insuring that the Hospital would be paid.
The Hospital psychiatrist put David, then age 19, on Lithium, Haldol, Addivan and you name it. He gained enormous amount of weight and became zombie-like. They told him he would have to be on Lithium the rest of his life...that is...the rest of his life. This once brilliant athlete was now shuffling his feet having been condemned to a life of a lawn mower. The diagnosis was based on no tests...no genetic history...no nothing...just the "professional opinion" of a college educated, brainwashed American Psychiatric Association (APA) dweeble who blatantly disregarded the fact that David's symptoms were caused by LSD (one of the first SSRI drugs developed by Pfizer in the early day). Does the DSM have a code for LSD adverse effects? Would "detoxification" have been a more rational first line of treatment? Would Medicaid pay for a hospital stay for "detoxification"? I don't think so, but it sounds like a sorely needed common sense plan for the youth of America, today. s And...to add insult to injury:
One day as David was coming off the Haldol, he hung himself in my back yard. Twitching uncontrollably from a tree, I saved him in the nick of time, shouldering him back up on the ladder from whence he jumped. Today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued black box warnings for SSRIs: A little late for David or Diane Routhier, a well-educated, beautiful, happily married mother of two who killed herself with a gun after six days on Wellbutin. Or Sara Bostock whose daughter stabbed herself twice in the chest with a large chef's knife after taking Paxil for 2 weeks. (Sleeping in the next room, Sara simply heard a slight yelp and a thump when her daughter fell on the floor). Glenn McIntosh’s 6th grade daughter hung herself with her shoelaces in the school bathroom after being prescribed Paxil/Zoloft. Chris Pittman was 12 years old and on Zoloft when he killed both his grandparents and torched their house.
Yet, Psychiatrists still prescribe these drugs. David "believed" the white coated, diploma laden authorities and so did his father who would piss in the wind if an authority told him to do so. It took David a self discovery journey in and out of mental institutions and hospitals for over two years to realize he was not mentally ill but had become a victim of massive, covert, quasi-legitimate, series of clinical drug trials. The reality is that research hospital psychiatrists are "experimenting' on this generation with a vast array of sketchily FDA approved anti depressant/psychotic medications. University mental hospitals have become the second tier drug trial laboratory for the drug companies. The Bayh-Dole Act passed by Congress in the 80's gave Universities and their researchers full patent rights to drugs they might develop. Since then, universities and associated hospitals have become field laboratories for the drug industry. (See: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune75/articles/0,15114,1101810-2,00.html) Emory College, for example, recently received over $300 million dollars for a drug they developed.
Currently on the radar is TeenScreen, a suicide screening initiative created by Columbia University (emphasis on university). Teen Screen has begun to infiltrate our public schools, using our convenient "educational" network as a channel for the Drug industry. There is so much blind banter going on in the media about the TeenScreen program, but has anyone actually seen a Teen Screen survey? Have a peek. Judge for yourself whether this is science or academic junk. We have a research project currently reviewing a TeenScreen survey on our website www.ProgessiveConvergence.com. In our review, we noticed that there were many questions on the use of street drugs such as marijuana, LSD, amphetamines, etc, but no questions on the use of "prescription drugs". It seemed odd to us that since over eight million children are on psychiatric drugs and many of these drugs have black box warnings in particular for suicide that there were no questions on this survey pertaining to prescription drugs. Marijuana isn't known for causing suicidal ideation, but drugs given to ADD and ADHD kids are. It is quite telling by this blaring omission who is behind the congressionally funded, mandated mental screening of all America's children via public schools initiative. In addition, this initiative has been strategically designed so that it does not require active parental consent. And although Congressman Ron Paul (TX) has fought for parental consent, Congress has failed to support him.
And while we are at it: Why all this concern about mental illness in our public schools? Yes, it is true that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that 1 of every 6 children has a neurological disorder. Could the 20 years of injecting the generation (via the CDC’s mandated children’s vaccine program) with high levels of mercury (aka Thimerosal) in as many as 22 vaccines between the ages of 1 month and 2 years old have anything to do with the apparent rampant epidemic of mental illness, ADD, ADHD and Autism?
Doesn't it seem odd to anyone that we are advised by our government not to eat fish contaminated with mercury, yet we are asked to stand by while health professionals inject this deadly neurotoxin directly into our children’s bloodstreams? And does it not appear to be even odder… rather than facing this CDC atrocity square on, that Congress is facilitating the dumbing down of our children with anti-depressants, psychiatric, suicide/homicide drugs by funding programs like Teen Screen and the New Freedom Commission. Seems odd to me…the on going government program...shoot ‘em up with mercury, then dumb ‘em down with Zoloft
In conclusion, I wonder how we will all fare when the Dept. of Defense (DoD) calls a Bioterrorism emergency (based on reality or not) and the Human Health Services director, Mike Leavitt mandates the injection of every man, woman and child with untested vaccines. Last week’s passage of the Patriot Act amendments has insured non-liability for Drug companies. How convenient. We might expect either the avian flu pandemic or a bio terrorist attack any time soon now that Drug companies are held harmless for damages.
Eileen Dannemann
Director, National Coalition of Organized Women
www.ProgressiveConvergence.com
www.SlavetotheMetal.org
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