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

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.

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.

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

But You Can't Fool Everyone All Of The Time

In the middle 1800s, the great showman P.T. Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute." But a much greater man understood the phenomenon better. Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

The marker is being pulled in on psychiatry. The jig is up. Despite their remarkably long stint as an Emperor With No Clothes, the truth is starting to show up -- in print, in the courts, in the legislatures, and in the views of the people.

Take for instance the sharp reduction in the use of psychiatric drugs for children. Only a few years ago the growth in the use of Ritalin and other heavy mind-altering drugs for children was growing so fast it was becoming a way of life. Simultaneously, school test scores were plummeting, juvenile crime was burgeoning, and most chilling of all, teen suicide and homicide was going through the roof.

In an article in USA Today, Marilyn Elias reports the phenomenon. This change follows the turnaround in the FDA's attitude regarding psychiatric drugs. After years of kowtowing to the psychiatric drug industry, the FDA came under sharp criticism when the make-up of the approval board was shown to be made up mainly of psychiatrists and people who were on the payroll of major drug companies. The cleanup resulted in a black box warning on antidepressants, their most severe safety warning short of removing the drug from the market, in late 2004. The result of this and other widespread publication of poor test results on these drugs, has resulted in a 25% drop in their use.

The warning is based on suicidal reactions of some users of the drugs. It should now be expanded to specify the homicidal tendencies that are also created. Or better yet, they should be taken off the market altogether.

How To Degrade and Destroy A Successful Man

Jeff Reardon is one of the top relief pitchers in baseball history. He ranks sixth all-time in "saves" -- the most important statistic for relief pitchers. He played in Boston, Montreal, and Minnesota. Today he's 50 years old. And he's in jail for armed robbery.

Reardon had a 20-year-old son who died of a drug overdose in February 2004, which has been "very difficult for him and his family," according to the news, and he has been on medication for depression.

And so what should be a shocking "man bites dog" story degrades into another run-of-the-mill account of yet another person, once able and valuable, turned into a threat to society by psychiatric drugs. So what's new?

Seratonin and Depression - A Scathing Report

Big Pharma is busy making psychiatric drugs like Prozac, Luvox, Zoloft and others, marking them up for huge profits, and sitting up nights trying to think of new ways to market them to the public. That's not a criticism. That's just good old Yankee free enterprise.

Here's the criticism: The drugs they are making and selling don't work. Worse, they cause psychosis rather than solving it. Watch your news. The school shooters, the moms that kill their kids then apathetically call the police to report themselves, the teens that commit suicide, the unexplainable rages that occur in public -- the bulk of these things are committed by people who have been "helped" by psychiatry and have been given psychiatric drugs.

The industry spins this of course. This crime proves the guy (or gal) was crazy! We just didn't get to him early enough or give him enough drugs! But the startling fact is that these people already got the handling for their supposed insanity before they committed the crime. They go completely crazy and start killing themselves and others after thay get the drugs, not before. Maybe they're "off" the drugs and are trying to withdraw when they go nuts, so the psych says, "See... the drugs were working." But they still weren't committing the crazy crimes until after they were given the drug.

We're not arguing that they were all "just fine" when the psychs got hold of them -- although that may be true in more cases than we'd care to admit, especially with kids who are being routed to the school nurse for doping because they are too "active". But most people seek help when they are somewhat upset. The problem that's occurring here is that someone who is upset, and who, without care, may or may not have continued to be upset for some period of time, went completely crazy after they were "treated" for being upset. That's the problem.

Here's an incredible essay on the subject from the Public Library of Science. It is damning. Read it.

Who Benefits From Newly Defined "Mental Illnesses"?

One of the little-known scandals of the psychiatric industry is the way in which a new "mental illness" is "discovered".

Psychiatry has a publication called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The current version is called "DSM IV". This book is a list of all the "mental illnesses" treated by psychiatrists, along with the symptoms of each.

How do things get in the book? Are you sitting down?

By a show of hands at a meeting of psychiatrists from around the country.

By a show of hands. They vote. Someone talks about it, and then they vote.

Is it any wonder that we keep finding out about more and more "mental illnesse"? Remember when it was ADD? Then it became ADHD? And "bi-polar" and so on.

What happens when they redefine mental illness -- an activity in which they engage on a regular basis? Read about it in The Seattle Times. All you have to do is keep defining more and more behavior as "mental illness" and you have a virtually never-ending source of prospects for psychiatric help and psychiatric drugs.

Sexual Abuse of Females in Psych Wards Reportedly 100%

In the Jack Nicholson classic film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, evil Nurse Ratched and here minions treated psychiatric inmates like dirt. At the time the film was released, the story was thought by some to be an extreme, almost cartoonish indictment of mental institutions. In the years after, we discovered it was not a cartoon at all, but a deadpan description of a sick and corrupt system.

"But it was overly dramatic," one might say, "Jack Nicholson dies in the end."

The sad truth is that between 1950 and 1985 more people died in mental institutions in this country that died in all of America's wars, from the Revolutionary War through the War in Iraq.

But there is an element of the abuse in psychiatric wards that wasn't addressed in Cuckoo's Nest -- sexual abuse.

How wide spread is sexual abuse? In a shocking UK study of 16 psychiatric institutions that was newly released, every female patient in a mixed-sex ward reported sexual abuse. This is according to a study's findings published in this month's British Journal of Psychiatry. The psychotics are in control of the institutions.

Vioxx -- It Keeps Getting Worse

The Vioxx scandal keeps escalating. What does this have to do with a blog about killer psychiatric drugs? Vioxx is (or was, before they finally took it off the market) a painkiller. But the Vioxx case strikes a very familiar chord regarding the drug companies and their cavalier dismissal of public safety.

This isn't some kind of debatable thing. This is Robber Baron behavior being practiced by Big Pharma. A standout big corporate crime in the early 1900s was when mine workers went on strike in a mining town in Colorado. Rockefeller, who owned the mine, prevailed upon the governor to send in the National Guard, at Rockefeller's expense, to put the strike down. The military opened fire on the miners and their families and burned their tent city to the ground, killing 20 people, more than half of whom were women and children, as young as 2 months old.

This was outrageous at the time and had a strong effect on the public. But it's kid stuff compared to what is happening now with the "science" of psychiatry and its benefactor, Big Pharma. Between 1950 and 1985, more people died in mental institutions that have died in all of America's wars, from George Washington to George Bush. While the news faithfully reports the number of American soldiers who die each day during a period of war, the victims of psychiatry and Big Pharma are ignored.

Back to Vioxx.

We've long known that Big Pharma does tests of their drugs, but that they pick and choose among these tests to report the results to the FDA and the public. Believe it or not, this is "legal". A bad test where people die is swept under the rug, and a test with good results is finally submitted as proof that the drug is safe.

But in the case of Vioxx, there is a new and even more damning twist. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, data regarding the cardiac side effects of the drug were withheld from test results that were submitted! In other words, they didn't even keep trying till they got a "good" test. Instead they deleted the bad data from a bad test and called it good!

There is a lot of evidence that this sort of thing has occurred with Prozac and other psychiatric drugs of the Prozac genre, described as SSRIs. These drugs cause suicidal and homicidal behavior, but manipulated testing procedures covered this up. Now we're reaping the results. The young people that walk into their school and start shooting, the mothers who kill their children, the men who walk into their workplace and take out their bosses and co-workers are almost always victims of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs.

The illogical result is that people become suicidal and homicidal after they get their psychiatric care, not before. If psychiatric care and drugs actually helped people, why would so many who have done no harm become killers after extended treatment with drugs and techniques that are supposed to improve their sanity?

The world is starting to take notice. This writer's prediction: Within a very few years, people will be indicted for manslaughter based on their participation in covering up the murderous side effects of these drugs.

In the meantime, the Vioxx scandal is leading the way. It's not even an SSRI drug. But it's still Big Pharma -- Merck & Co. in this case -- and the leopard doesn't change his spots. The testing on Vioxx was manipulated and people died. Merck is in trouble. We can't say we're sorry. The case will be fascinating to watch.

NY Times Sees Big Pharma Image Declining

According to an article in the NY Times by Alex Berenson, the drug industry's image problems are beginning to hurt pharmaceutical companies where it matters most - at the bottom line.

A year after Merck's withdrawal of its arthritis medicine Vioxx led to an industrywide credibility crisis, the Food and Drug Administration is blocking new medicines that might previously have passed muster. Doctors are writing fewer prescriptions for antidepressants and other drugs whose safety has been challenged, like hormone replacement therapies for women in menopause.

Meanwhile, insurers and some states are taking advantage of the backlash against the industry to try shifting patients to older, generic drugs, arguing that they work as well as newer and more expensive branded medicines. Overall, prescriptions continue to rise slightly, but an increasing share of prescriptions are going to generic drugs. Also, consumers seem to be less responsive to aggressive drug marketing.

"A lot of the demand that the industry has created over the years has been through promotion, and for that promotion to be effective, there has to be trust," said Richard Evans, an analyst covering drug stocks at Sanford C. Bernstein and Company. "That trust has been lost."

In the background, new competitors are forcing the old-line drug giants to struggle to keep pace. Biotechnology companies like Genentech are taking the lead in finding new treatments for cancer, a promising and lucrative field.

Executives of the major drug companies say they expect public scrutiny in the wake of problems with Vioxx and other drugs. But they say they are concerned that consumer mistrust has led to unrealistic expectations about drug safety and risks, stunting the development of new medicines.

"I think there is an overall unreasonable expectation right now that there is such a thing as a risk-free drug," said Sidney Taurel, chief executive of Eli Lilly & Company.

The major drug makers remain highly profitable. But at some, including Pfizer and Merck, the largest and third-largest American companies in terms of revenue, sales are stagnant and profits are falling, leading to layoffs and - for the first time in years - cuts in research budgets.

In the third quarter, United States sales of prescription drugs fell 3 percent at Bristol-Myers Squibb, 4.5 percent at Johnson & Johnson, and 15 percent at Pfizer. Merck said its overall revenues fell 2 percent despite favorable foreign exchange trends.

The companies are reticent concerning details of layoffs, but both Pfizer and Merck have said they are cutting workers. Even Eli Lilly, where United States sales rose about 5 percent in the third quarter, said it has cut about 1,600 employees - almost 4 percent of its work force - so far this year.

No one expects a quick end to the crunch, because several top-selling drugs will lose American patent protection by early 2007. They include Norvasc, a blood pressure medicine from Pfizer, and Zocor and Pravachol, cholesterol drugs from Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Together, those three drugs have almost $10 billion in annual United States sales.

The drug industry, which is dominated by companies based in this country, is hardly in a full-blown crisis, and layoffs are occurring mainly on the margins of its work force. Pfizer alone will make about $8 billion in profit this year, on sales of about $51 billion, and invest more than $7 billion in research and development - although the company's research spending fell 6 percent in the third quarter of 2005 compared with the same period in 2004, and Pfizer expects it to stay flat or decline in the coming years. Overall, the industry spends more than $30 billion annually on research and development.

But for the companies, and for patients who are counting on industry research to produce new treatments for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes, these are trying times. Wall Street has also taken notice of the industry's woes. Shares of Pfizer are near their lowest levels since 1997, closing Friday at $22.43, and a broad index of drug stocks has fallen 25 percent in five years. In contrast, shares of biotechnology companies are soaring.

Without new drugs to promote as patents expire, and with the bar set so high by the blockbusters of the last decade, the old-line companies have depended on stopgap measures to protect sales, like reformulating existing drugs so they can be taken once a week instead of once daily. At the same time, they have used consumer advertising to drive patient demand. But those strategies appear to be losing their effectiveness, as consumers become more skeptical and insurers rebel against high prices for drugs that are not therapeutic breakthroughs.

For example, in June Pfizer began selling Zmax, an antibiotic that contains the same active medicine as Zithromax, which was introduced in 1992 and lost its patent protection last week. Pfizer calls Zmax a major advance because it is designed to be taken in a single dose, while Zithromax must be taken for up to five days. Both drugs cost about $52 for a course of treatment, according to Pfizer.

However, clinical trials show that the convenience of Zmax comes with a side effect: it causes diarrhea in 12 percent of patients, compared with 5 percent for Zithromax.

"Is the public more cynical? Yes," said Dr. John LaMattina, Pfizer's president of global research. "There's a perception that we don't bring much to the party."

Mothers Who Kill

As civilized people we have fundamental agreements that define the type of world in which we live and the type of people who we are. One of the, if not the most, fundamental agreements has to do with the state of Motherhood. Motherhood is an institution sacred to those of all faiths, or no faith. Mothers would rather face harm themselves than let anything happen to their child. So, anything that would contribute to a mother harming their own child must indeed be evil - the stuff of nightmares, found in science fiction and horror movies.

Well, such a thing does exist - and not just in fiction. It has infiltrated real life and the lives of many people around us. It is the most horrible thing that we could confront, and confront it we must. To avert future tragedies, we must know: what could turn a loving mother into a murderer? What could possibly induce a mother to kill her own child?

Statistical analyses, medical studies and studies of individual cases have shown that psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric practices create insanity and cause violence. People who have become violent, usually for the first time, after psychiatric treatment are reported in the newspapers with alarming frequency. Each of those cases was in psychiatric hands before committing his or her crime of violence. Each was a psychiatric failure. And each was victimized by destructive psychiatric practices capable of pushing persons toward violence.

A 1988 study documented the tendency of a major tranquilizer to increase hostile and violent behavior. According to the study, many persons who had no prior history of violence, “were significantly more violent while on [this drug.]” And a March 2004 FDA Public Health Advisory warned, “Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia [severe restlessness], hypomania [abnormal excitement, mild mania] and mania [psychosis characterized by exalted feelings, delusions of grandeur and overproduction of ideas], have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants…both psychiatric and non-psychiatric.”

These are only two studies of many linking psychiatric drugs to new aggressive behaviors in those taking them.

A New Zealand report stated that withdrawal from psychoactive drugs can cause new physical symptoms. Antidepressants, according to the report, can create “agitation, severe depression, hallucinations, aggressiveness, hypomania [abnormal excitement] and akathisia [severe restlessness].”

Using bogus labels with no medical or scientific diagnoses to back them up, psychiatrists are turning emotionally stressed mothers, who turn to them for help, into monsters who murder their own children.

October 2005: Relatives described Lashaun Harris as a devoted and loving mother whose life began spiraling out of control when she was labeled with a “mental illness” two years previously. A 23-year-old overwhelmed single mother, she sought help after the birth of her third child. She fell into the wrong hands, and they turned her into a killer.

Harris was labeled as “schizophrenic,” hospitalized and put on the same anti-psychotic drug that was the subject of the 1988 study linking it to increased hostile and violent behavior. Recently, she had stopped taking the drug - without medical supervision, and despite warnings that abrupt withdrawal can create new symptoms. Soon after, Harris stripped her three children naked, hoisted them over a safety rail and plunged them into San Francisco Bay's chilly waters.

November 2004: Dena Schlosser cut off the arms of her 11-month-old daughter, killing her. Schlosser had seen a psychiatrist and was hospitalized for “post-partum depression.”

October 2003: Rebekah Amaya, a 32-year-old Colorado woman, drowned her two kids in the bathtub. She had previously received mental health treatment.

May 2001: Texas mother Andrea Yates methodically drowned all five of her children in the family bathtub. Mrs. Yates had several suicide attempts, psychiatric treatments and was on antidepressants and antipsychotics. CCHR Texas obtained independent medical assessments of Mrs. Yates’ medical records. Science consultant Edward G. Ezrailson, Ph.D. reported that the cocktail of drugs prescribed to Mrs. Yates caused involuntary intoxication. The “overdose” of one antidepressant and “sudden high doses” of another “worsened her behavior,” Ezrailson said. This “led to murder.”

November 1997: Christina Riggs, a nurse, smothered her two children in their beds. Before suffocating her older child, she injected him with potassium chloride, the chemical used in death penalty executions. She had been prescribed an antidepressant after her marriage broke up.

October 1994: Susan Smith, a South Carolina mother, drowned her two children by driving her car into a lake. She had undergone family counseling and had been hospitalized in 1988 after her second suicide attempt.

No violation of human rights is greater than that which causes a mother kill her own child. No family should have to live through the horrors and traumas experienced by the Harris, Schlosser, Amaya, Yates, Riggs or Smith families.

From as early as 1990, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) asked the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for the inherent dangers in psychiatric drugs to be made evident to doctors, patients and patient families. CCHR worked exhaustively to make this data known. Finally the FDA issued the first “black box” warning for a psychiatric drug in October 2004.

This was followed by another 16 warnings and alerts from the FDA and other medical and regulatory agencies around the world. The recent CCHR White Paper, Report on the Escalating International Warnings on Psychiatric Drugs, documents each of these warnings, as well as providing recommendations for non-psychiatric treatments for those with emotional distress.

It is vital that CCHR increase their actions in making known the brutal and terrifying practices that are psychiatry and today’s “mental health care” system now, before they turn more mothers into killers. We are the only group in existence that can accomplish this. Contribute now and help the final stages of the museum renovation and reconstruction. The museum is the core of our message that psychiatry is the industry of death, and that we will not allow any more innocent people to become gruesome statistics of their failures to “help.” We are willing to do whatever it takes, but we need your donations to make this possible. Help get us back into our headquarters and the museum open and spreading the word that psychiatry kills.

You CAN make the difference. Defend and help save families from psychiatric drugs and despair. We need you to play a vital role in making known the dangers of these psychiatric “treatments.” We appreciate any donation you can contribute to this action. But, please, donate generously - otherwise, we will be paying the cost with our children. We must act now if we are to succeed. And we can succeed.

It is imperative that we reach as many parents, groups, allies, policy makers and media as possible in order to bring about further safeguards and action by the voting body necessary for getting such psychiatric treatment outlawed.

Psychiatry: Tool of Fascist States

The release of political prisoner Wang Wanxing after 13 years in a Chinese psychiatric institution exposes another example of psychiatry's long tradition of using governments for its totalitarian purposes. Wanxing was picked up on the eve of the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown for displaying a banner critical of the Communist Party and, having committed no criminal offense was sent to a psychiatric facility called an ankang where he was electroshocked and drugged. He watched other inmates die in the ankang.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights says the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and psychiatrists in general falsely claim that the atrocities committed against political prisoners are the result of governments abusing psychiatry. However, psychiatry is a willing accomplice, and has been since they designed and operated the Nazi death camps and before.. They create death camps such as the gulags in Russia and psychiatric slave labor camps in South Africa and get paid for assaulting and killing patients. The WPA has an appalling track record of failing to address and discipline its members' ethics. It has ignored and stonewalled reports of psychiatric abuse until such time as external pressure makes it imperative, for its own reputation, to make claims that it has been abused.

Russian historian, Professor Anatoli Prokopenko, was commissioned by President Yeltsin to investigate the plight of Soviet political dissidents. According to Prokopenko:

"When I chronicled a purely historical analysis of the sources of Soviet punitive psychiatry I initially believed that psychiatry was a science. I thought that it was the totalitarian Bolshevist regime that exploited them in its own political interest.

"However, I realized that no matter what regime may be established, it was the psychiatric community that sought to be above the law, intimidating leaders of the states with fictitious statistics on the legions of the mentally ill and the need to control them. The Serbsky Psychiatric Research Institute, psychiatric gulags and the KGB were the basis of punitive psychiatry in the USSR. To this day, Soviet leaders of psychiatry have refused to publicly declare their responsibility in damaging the mental health and liberty of millions of citizens."

China's psychiatric abuse is not limited to political prisoners. Lobotomies and similar brain operations are reportedly performed on inmates each year. Because there is no science to psychiatry, practitioners have invented "diagnoses" such as "delusions of reform" and "political maniacs" to justify incarceration of the members pf the religious group, the Falun Gong and inmates have been punished with "intravenous injections that made their tongues bulge out of their mouths and by extremely painful acupuncture that applied an electric current to the sole of the foot."

Disconnect Between Ads and Scientific Literature

In the Old West the wagon selling Snake Oil as a cure for everything went from town to town, then got out before people realized it was a swindle.

Today the big drug companies are much more sophisticated. But as Abraham Lincoln once said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." And some of the people are catching on.

"Serotonin and Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Lieterature" is the name of a new essay by Jeffrey R. Lacasse and Jonathan Leo.

Their attack on the drug industry is brutal: "In the United States, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants are advertised directly to consumers. These highly successful direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns have largely revolved around the claim that SSRIs correct a chemical imbalance caused by a lack of serotonin. For instance, sertraline (Zoloft) was the sixth best-selling medication in the US in 2004, with over $3 billion in sales likely due, at least in part, to the widely disseminated advertising campaign starring Zoloft's miserably depressed ovoid creature. Research has demonstrated that class-wide SSRI advertising has expanded the size of the antidepressant market, and SSRIs are now among the best-selling drugs in medical practice," the report says, pointing up the fact that the antidepressant market is largely created, not preexisting.

The essay goes on to say that given the multifactorial nature of depression and anxiety, and the ambiguities inherent in psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, some have questioned whether the mass provision of SSRIs is the result of an over-medicalized society. These sentiments were voiced by Lord Warner, United Kingdom Health Minister, at a recent hearing: “…I have some concerns that sometimes we do, as a society, wish to put labels on things which are just part and parcel of the human condition."

Subsequently, British regulators have forbidden the use of SSRIs on patients under 18 years of age.

The essay says that sentiments such as Lord Warner's, about over-medicalization, are exactly what some pharmaceutical companies have sought to overcome with their advertising campaigns. For example, Pfizer's television advertisement for the antidepressant sertraline (Zoloft) stated that depression is a serious medical condition that may be due to a chemical imbalance, and that “Zoloft works to correct this imbalance”. Other SSRI advertising campaigns have also claimed that depression is linked with an imbalance of serotonin, and that SSRIs can correct this imbalance.

The shocking truth is that no one has ever discovered a way to measure such an imbalance or even to prove that it exists. It has never been anything more than a theory. And that's not because they haven't tried to prove it exists. There have been dozens of experiments and tests. Even the attempt to induce depression by artificially reducing the amount of serotonin didn't produce any significant results, and huge increases in serotonin were ineffective at relieving depression. Despite this, the industry still sells their snake oil on the basis that it "controls" the serotonin levels in the brain, thereby inducing sanity.

In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence. Far from being a radical line of thought, doubts about the serotonin hypothesis are well acknowledged by many researchers, including frank statements from prominent psychiatrists, according to the essay.

Consumer advertising for SSRI drugs started in 1998. Since then the specious theory of "chemical imbalance in the brain" as a source of mental illness has been widely promulgated, with cute bouncing animated figures and convincing scenarios with people suffering from symptoms said to be curable with SSRIs. But this very advertising may be the thing that backfires for Big Pharma. Eventually people see through the lies. Abe Lincoln had it right; sooner or later people are going to want to run snake oil salesman out of town on a rail.

Psych-Drug Crazed Mom Murders 3 Children In San Francisco

What is more dangerous around the house for children; a loaded gun or a mother on psychiatric drugs? We’d love to see the statistics on that one. And we’re not advocating keeping loaded guns around the house – unless it is to protect us against mothers on psychiatric drugs.

The world was shocked when it happened in Texas – a mother drowned her four children, one at a time, in the bathtub. Then another Texas mom chopped her children up with a meat axe. Just when we were starting to think our children were safe if they weren’t in Texas, the phenomenon began to replicate elsewhere; the soccer mom who took six psych drugs per day lost it when a ball hit her car near a school, so she charged over the curb in her SUV and ran the boys down – drive over them again and again, then got out of the car and calmly smoked a cigarette as others called for help. And now there’s La-shuan Ternice Harris of Oakland, California, who calmly told her family she was taking her children to the bay and feeding them to the sharks – then did exactly that, stripping them and throwing them in the water off a pier. One of the bodies has washed up, but the other two are still missing.

Ms. Harris had been on psychiatric drugs, and when she came off, she became so crazy the family tried to get the children taken away from her, but not quickly enough. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it was the psychiatric drugs that were keeping Ms. Harris “sane”. It is a well-known fact that these drugs are viciously addictive – despite the fact that the drug companies that produce them cover this up – and people are their most dangerous when they are trying to get off the drugs. The Internet is filled with heart-rending support sites for people who are trying to get off the drugs, including anecdotes about self-mutilation, and homicidal and suicidal thoughts while trying to “kick the habit”.

So it goes on. The grisly killing fields of the 21st Century are the homes of families who are only trying to get a little help with their depression or their upsets with life. Unwitting, they are lured into the offices of the high priests of psychiatry and psychology who give them the psychosis-inducing pills. Like wicked witches and warlocks cackling and rubbing their hands together, they smile and issue the prescription death warrants. “This will help you…”

FDA Footdragging Attacked Re Prozac, Paxil

According to a story on U.S. Newswire, 125 medical practitioners have signed onto a joint letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), renewing a call to take immediate action on issuing stronger warnings for antidepressant and stimulant drugs, as a 3-day protest rages by consumer groups demanding Glaxo recall its $950 million antidepressant Paxil. The same letter, sent to FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford in July, 2005 and signed by 20 doctors, was left unanswered by the Commissioner prompting many to accuse the FDA of bureaucratic foot-dragging and procrastination. Senator Charles Grassley, (R-Iowa) who has spent months investigating the FDA, said the agency "demonstrated a too-cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry," and that "the opportunity to name a new commissioner is a chance to take the agency in the right direction."

The doctors' letters join recent efforts by Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director of the International coalition for Drug Awareness (ICFDA) and Mrs. Bonnie Leitsch, founder of "Prozac Survivors Support Group" (PSSG) in calling for immediate federal action to warn the public that antidepressants can not only induce suicidality in adult patients - but also acts of violence, pointing out that the U.S. FDA has known of these effects since a 1991 public hearing on antidepressant drugs. Prompted by a spate of recent incidents of mothers murdering their own children while taking antidepressants, Dr. Tracy said, "These are extremely dangerous drugs that should have been banned, as similar drugs were in the past. Federal investigations into the violence- inducing effects of these drugs are long overdue." Mrs. Leitsch added, "In 1991, there was evidence of 500 deaths associated with antidepressants presented to an FDA Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee hearing investigating Prozac. The FDA's failure to issue timely warnings then has led to more suicides, homicides, school shootings and mothers killing their own children."

Concerned doctors are also pushing for FDA reform and action under new leadership. 25 European countries recently warned that antidepressants should not be used in patients under 18 due to the suicide and violence inducing effects of the drugs and recent clinical studies linked ADHD drugs to hallucinations, violence, psychosis, and suicide. Dr. Julian Whitaker, M.D., and principal author of the letter says the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of these drugs makes further FDA procrastination unacceptable, "It is beyond debate that these drugs have extremely dangerous side effects and that the public is not being kept adequately informed about these dangers," states Whitaker, "It is our hope that the new Commissioner will take immediate and swift action to protect the public from these dangerous and too often deadly psychiatric drugs."

Fueled by $4.5 billion in direct consumer advertising, ADHD stimulant drug sales have quadrupled since 2000 while antidepressant sales have passed the $20 billion mark, prompting many to question how profit-driven vested interests may be involved in the FDA's failure to warn patients of the drugs risks. "With literally billions of dollars of profits at stake, we are not surprised when we hear stories of skewed clinical trials, suppressed study outcomes, pressure placed on reviewers, and a host of other abuses," stated Dr. Whitaker.

Rock Icons Attack Ritalin

This L.A. Times article hits the nail on the head.

A Prescribed Threat

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.

September 25, 2005

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.

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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Protect Your Children From Teen Screen

Teen Screen. Sounds friendly, helpful, upbeat, right? Well, it’s not. It is a marketing technique to addict and control our children by using bogus “suicide screening” questions and then, if a child identifies some of these universal experiences as their own, they are sucked into a vortex of procedure and misuse of professional words and ideas to make sure that huge numbers of children are doped and made dopey. Make them dopey enough, and you will make them damaged and dead, too. Oh, by the way, there is no need to have parental approval for this doping and dieing in more and more places, by the way. Object and you can loose your children to the power of the state. The list of abominations goes on and on and on here. Let me remind you that these psychoactive drugs are dangerous toxins and have never been tested for long term effects in human, especially not on the developing brains of children Six to 13 weeks is about average for a test protocol for psychoactive drugs despite the fact that these horrific substances are addictive and used for years on end on children. They are often used in combination, too, despite the absolute lack of clinical testing to assure anyone at all that these are safe procedures.

In case I did not mention it, I am a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist by training as well as an Adult Psychiatrist. I know whereof I speak because I practiced out-patient psychiatry without drugs for more than 35 years before I closed my practice in order to take on the Body Politic: health freedom. I know first hand what these drugs do and I know first hand what is, and is not, known about the use and damage of these powerful mind altering chemicals and their impact on brains in development. I also know with the certainty of long practice that orthomolecular psychiatry, NeuroBioFeedback, clean food and psychotherapy are powerful, non-toxic, empowering tools to help with real issues of cognition, affect and attention.

I know, too, that these techniques are not very good for the biggest, and meanest, business in the world, Big Pharma. Not good at all. How much does a bottle of B3 (Niacin) cost compared to any of the dangerous doping compounds the patent medicine companies have convinced us are essential for life and health? You do the math. Or, if you’d rather look at some really interesting math done by some pretty smart people, take a look at the real story on Teen Screen and, scrolling down, take a look at the $30B which the Teen Screen poisoning of our children’s brains and bodies will result in for Big Pharma!

Here is my advice for you if you have kids: Do Not Allow Teen Screen Anywhere Near Your Child. Teach your child to resist the blandishments, the Video coupons and the Pizza Parties that are used as inducements for this diabolical program. Just Say No! and teach your kids to say “NO!”, too.

If a child is mentally ill, there are ways to screen and to help him or her that do not involve blandishments and enticements and treatments that do not involve poisoning your child’s developing brain. Love your child. Keep him/her free of mind-bending poisons with addictive and other dangerous potentials. Please.

Yours in health and freedom from profitable poisons,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director

Psychiatrists Recommended Putting The Children In A Cage

While many are shocked at news reports of a psychiatrist advising an Ohio couple to confine their 11 foster children in caged beds, the practice of caging patients in beds in not uncommon for the psychiatric industry.

In 2004, after young children and adults were found in Hungarian psychiatric wards, imprisoned in caged beds as punishment for “misbehavior,” such as getting out of bed in the night or taking food from the hospital refrigerator, the practice was banned in Hungary and the Czech Republic by the European Parliament. This was due to the dedicated efforts of human rights groups and Harry Potter author JK Rowling who demanded an end to this degrading and inhuman treatment of both adults and young children. Harry Potter Author JK Rowling slams psychiatrists use of cage beds.

As abusive and harmful as caging children may be, psychiatry's unrepentant use of such arcane practices spans more than 200 years.





Circa 1998: CCHR found Hungarian mental
patients forced to live in cages
Psychiatric cage beds date back
to the 1800s



To download images: http://www.cchr.org/news/index.htm

For more information on psychiatry's brutal treatment of children, including caged beds, heavy drugging and deadly restraint procedures that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of American children over the past 10 years, read: Deadly Restraints—Psychiatry's 'Therapeutic' Assault


To find out how you can help Click here

Handling ADHD In Adults Without Prozac, Ritalin Or Other Drugs

An interesting essay by Dr. Mike Adams appeared recently. It is instructive on the issue of ADHD, especially in adults, which is apparently the variety Dr. Adams has experience with:

Adams doesn't buy the adult ADHD diagnosis. He says it's fictional. His solution is highly inventive. He says:


One of the toughest things about being a teacher is dealing with all the latest “syndromes” in our culture of victimization.

Often those fictional problems take the form of “disorders” like adult ADHD. I always know which of my students have been told that they suffer from adult ADHD. They are often late and sometimes leave class early to go potty, unlike most students who go potty before class begins. They blurt out the answers to my questions constantly – always without the courtesy of a raised hand. And, usually, they fall asleep in class (probably from exhaustion) after the fifteenth or twentieth interruption. Later, they are awakened by the cell phone they forgot to turn off before arriving in class.

After being diagnosed with ADHD, two things usually happen to the newly “disadvantaged” student. First, a psychologist tells the victim that he cannot pay attention nor control various impulses. Next, he is given a dosage of drugs. Neither one of these responses actually works. In fact, telling him that he cannot pay attention – rather than that he simply does not pay attention – usually reinforces the problem. The drugs don’t work because, again, the disorder is fictional.

But, fortunately, I have discovered a cure for students with this so-called disorder, which I am now sharing (free of charge, mind you) with my readers. Here’s how it works.

At the beginning of the semester I lay out a few ground rules with my students. For example, they are not to bring cell phones into my class. They are also forbidden from walking into class after the lecture has started. But I don’t just tell students not to do these things. I also make them sign an agreement (on the first day of class) that they will not do these things under penalty of writing a research paper if they break the promise.

The first student to ever violate the agreement was named Chris. After he walked into my class very late one day, then interrupted it approximately fifteen times by shouting out the (usually wrong) answer to a question, then fell asleep in class, then woke up and went potty (thankfully in the restroom, not in his seat), I sent him the following letter:

Chris: Your research paper this semester will take the form of an interview of either:

a) A teacher, or b) A psychologist.

If you choose "A," you will be asked to conduct an interview on how the teacher’s job is made more difficult when students 1) come to class late 2) sleep in class 3) interrupt the lecture by blurting out answers without a raised hand, and 4) get up and walk out in the middle of a lecture to go to the restroom.

If you choose "B," you will be asked to conduct an interview on the causes of the following behaviors: 1) coming to class late 2) sleeping in class 3) interrupting the lecture by blurting out answers without a raised hand, and 4) getting up and walking out in the middle of a lecture to go to the restroom.

Whether you choose "A" or "B," the paper must be, at present, one page long. It is due with your final exam. Between now and then, one more page will be added to the length of the paper, each time you 1) come to class late 2) sleep in class 3) interrupt the lecture by blurting out answers without a raised hand or 4) walk out of class during the lecture to go to the restroom.


Dr. Mike S. Adams

Of course, Chris did write back to say that a medical condition – adult ADHD -was responsible for his behavior. But I quickly informed him that his condition was a fiction and that the behavior was fully under his control. Thus, the assignment stood.

Chris made the choice to cooperate. And, wouldn’t you know it, every one of the disruptive behaviors he exhibited disappeared the very next class period. Of course, he made that choice simply because it was easier than writing a 600 page research paper to cover the projected pace of about 600 interruptions he had set during the first few classes.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, and social workers around the world will surely be angry with this present column – largely because it provides a rather simple solution to a rather simple problem. They will no doubt also be angry over my seemingly calloused attitude towards those who suffer from adult ADHD. But I choose not to pay attention to them – remember, paying attention is a choice for adults – until they answer a few simple questions. For example:

Why did my solution work so immediately and so effectively after, presumably, years of therapy and drug prescriptions failed?
Will you continue to use the term “irresistible impulse” to describe what is obviously merely an impulse not resisted?
Are you at all concerned that other fictional disorders will be exposed by other equally simple experiments?
How can one be a part of a helping profession, if he does not, first and foremost, help people to help themselves?
And, finally, what will happen if you ever win your war upon free will? Will you protect people from the prospect of failure? Or will you deprive people of the prospect of success?

Kiddie-Porno Psychs

Another psychiatrist is accused of being a kiddie-porn freak. This one is in Salt Lake City. If there's anyone who is surprised that it was in a typical American city, not "New York" or "San Francisco", realize that psychiatrists have infiltrated all of America -- red states, blue states, small towns, big cities. They are endemic.

This one, named Bruce Guernsey, asked a friend to help him set up a computer. The friend was transferring files from an old computer and noticed child porn. So he call the FBI.

Here's the fun part -- and the reason why it's so frightening to have a psychiatrist committing this crime. He has been working at mental health hospitals! He was working for the government in a mental health capacity most recently.

That makes sense. Nobody but the government really supports these guys. Without government support most of them would be flipping burgers -- which would be a great place for them to ogle all the little kids, so maybe it's a good thing we use our tax money to keep them busy elsewhere.

Europe Regulators: No More SSRI for Kids

This just in from a CCHR press release:

August 31 2005: Europe’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has just issued the strongest warnings against child antidepressant use to date following a review of clinical trials that showed the drugs cause “suicidal behavior, including suicide attempts and suicidal ideation and/or related behavior like self-harm, hostility (predominantly aggression, oppositional behavior and anger) and mood lability [instability] in children and adolescents.” Due to the drugs dangerous side effects, the agency said they should not be prescribed to any under 18-year-old.

Worldwide sales of antidepressants reached more than $19.5 billion in 2002, but evidence continues to mount that clinical trial data was withheld from drug regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during the approval process.

An estimated 17 million children worldwide are prescribed some form of psychotropic (mind-altering) drug, with 8 million of these in the United States. Up to 2 million American children are prescribed the drugs condemned by the CHMP: Paxil, Effexor, Prozac, Luvox, Celexa, Lexapro, Zoloft, Remeron, and Strattera, another type of antidepressant, prescribed for “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” a diagnosis plagued by controversy because there is no physical means to test for or diagnose it.

Since 1991, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a psychiatric watchdog group, and independent doctors and researchers have raised the alarm about many of these drugs causing suicide and violent behavior. Nine out of 13 school shooters in the United States were taking antidepressants or “ADHD” stimulants known to cause aggressive behavior. In October, the FDA finally ordered that a black box label be added to antidepressant information warning that the drugs cause suicide in children and adolescents.

Vioxx

They came up with a cute new marketing gimmick -- the name Vioxx, with two exes. Very cute.

A jury in Texas says they did some marketing things they shouldn't have, though.

We're talking about Merck -- the drug company.

For instance, they targeted doctors that were not friendly to Vioxx to either bring them into the fold, or else to neutralize or discredit them. "Neutralize" meant get them to change their mind, said the head of Merck's epidemiology department. Notes subpoenaed from her department suggest that "neutralization" may take the form of payoffs and bribes -- or if you want to be polite, research grants -- to doctors. She said such grants are common.

Her definition of "discredit" was somewhat murkier.

The marketing department reportedly taught reps to handle antagonistic doctors with drills called "Dodge Ball". But the company representative said this doesn't mean they dodge questions.

The marketing department also downplayed or misrepresented Vioxx safety concerns in expensive and aggressive advertising campaigns, according to FDA warning letters exposed in the trial.

Now the jury in a Texas case says Vioxx was the cause of death for a 59-year-old produce manager at a Wal-Mart in Fort Worth. He wasn't a couch potato. He ran marathons and worked as a personal trainer. Then he died. After he took the Vioxx. So the jury says Merck needs to pay a lot of money to the man's survivors -- about a quarter of a million dollars.

Thus went the first of hundreds or perhaps thousands of lawsuits against Merck, being generated by survivors of people who died using the drug, which vascillated on and off the market over a period of a few years as the company ran roughshod over multiple evidences of heart trouble in users.

The risk of heart attack more than doubled when Vioxx was taken, according to a Swiss study in 2000. Swiss researchers say this should have caused Merck to pull the drug at that time.

Those who did that study say the data was ignored. They not only attacked Merck. They also attacked "drug licensing authorities" (read FDA in our case) who "did not evaluate the data available on Vioxx sooner."

This writer is normally something of a free market animal, and detests the idea of lawsuits dragging down hard-working business people and crashing commerce. But in the case of drug companies such suits are more than justified. We've seen the evidence in the world of SSRI psychiatric drugs and drugs like Ritalin -- products that reap obscene profits, which are used by the drug companies to counter or cover up the destructive effects of the drugs.

Today's Robber Barons are Big Pharma. But the world is catching on. Something tells us this is only a little first step in the avalanche to come. You can't fool all of the people all of the time.

The Authority Technique In Drug Sales

Drug companies and psychiatrists/psychologists are always dreaming up new subterfuges to sell their wares. The idea of a "screening" program for mental illness is one of the most clever and most seditious. If you "screen" people for something that can't be proven to exist or not exist, i.e. mental illness, you have no way to judge the "screen" except the opinion of one or more human beings. If you are mentally ill in the opinion of somebody with authority, the consequences could destroy your life.

The stinky part is that the people who are offering their opinion stand to gain financially by saying yes rather than no. Now that sucks, to use the vernacular. In other words, we are asking someone for his expert opinion on whether someone is sane, and he makes money if he says no, but makes no money if he says yes. Backed by Big Pharma, he is going to be looking for ways to say yes.

The nutty "teenscreen" program that was supposed to sweep the country's school systems is just such a recruiting program for the purveyors of Prozac and Ritalin. The "authority" tag of the psychs who administer such a program is more than a suggestion of what might help. It's a raw insistence, backed by threats in many cases. Parents have had their children taken away from them for refusing to give them psychiatric drugs.

It would seem that the biggest conflict here is the odd concept that someone with an opinion can establish the existence of a mental illness or deficiency where it cannot be proven or verified with any kind of science. Unlike measles, mumps and whooping cough, ADHD cannot be scientifically verified with a blood test or an x-ray or in any other way.

But the larger data inconsistency is the statistic that goes with the violence that all of this is supposed to solve or prevent -- the emergence of the phenomenon of the madman (or child) who shows up with a gun and shoots everyone in sight, including in many cases him or herself, just out of frustration, with no apparent clear cut motive of the type we used to associate with murder (i.e. large sums of money, etc.) The statistic is that this kind of violence is closely associated with psychiatric and psychological help and with psych drugs. The people who do this, at any age, are victims of psychiatry, psychology and psych drugs.

And make no mistake, this phenomenon is new. If you're not old enough to remember when this stuff never happened, talk to someone who is. It's a new phenomenon, it's not normal, and it correlates with the introduction of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs into the society. In 1955 there was almost never any such phenomenon in the public school system. Now it repeats and repeats. And the people who do it are usually hopped up on psych drugs.

And the sequence is the key. These people go crazy and start shooting after they get their anger management counseling and psychiatric drugs, not before.

So to "prevent" violence, we are subjecting people to the very social phenomenon that causes violence -- psychiatric counseling and drugs like Prozac, Ritalin, Zoloft, Paxil and others. These drugs make billions of dollars per year for the manufacturers, but the cost people their sanity and in many cases their lives.

The latest "screening program"? Massachusetts wants to screen veterans who return from service in Iraq. That oughta sell a lot of pills. Do you rest better knowing that some expert wants to authoritatively give an opinion based on nothing as to whether these veterans are sane? If Mr. Authority says they're not up to snuff, he's going to give them treatment that causes homicide and suicide in many cases. That's a great idea.

The army has a better view. They won't take a soldier who has been on psychiatric drugs. They know it causes these guys to become wild men who are too dangerous to trust with a gun. Eric Harris, the shooter that killed his fellow students at Columbine school in Colorado, had tried to join the army -- but they found out he was a psych patient, and they said no.

Let's just say no to these cretins that want to drug up our children and our soldiers. We only need one "screening" program. We need to screen out people who want to use their authority to push psychiatry on unsuspecting victims in our schools and in our society.

Beverly Eakman On Psych-Based Education

This great article can be read in its entirety at http://www.newswithviews.com/Eakman/beverly31.htm

In the article, Eakman talks about the "brouhaha surrounding actor Tom Cruise and his Hollywood colleague, Brooke Shields, regarding their respective views on antidepressant drugs."

"Inevitably," she says, "psychotherapies in general became intertwined with the topic of mind-altering substances -- and so did Scientology, the bête noire of the psychiatric profession."

Eakman clarifies that she is not a Scientologist. She sayst that until Scientology’s spin-off organization, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, contacted her in 1996 concerning two of her books on education, she had only heard of it in passing and had never heard of CCHR.

She had, however, independently discovered that psych-based education was ruining the school system. In fact, she says it is why she quit her job as a teacher. "Long ago and quite independently, I had come to certain conclusions, the primary one being that psychology had compromised the educating process. That was why I left the teaching profession. The new emphasis on emotions meant that academics took a back seat. It inaugurated what I felt was a phony and counterproductive self-esteem movement. Finally, psychologized education brought in a counseling industry that undermined the moral authority of adults, with the consequence that teachers were handling little 'mob-ocracies' instead of kiddy cliques."

"With the arrival of the counselor-therapist," she says, "I got the sinking feeling that psychology in schools was 'morphing' into something more ominous: psychotherapy and drugs were replacing the discipline and character-building functions that had been the staples of education and childrearing."

Her suspicions were confirmed by the time reports started appearing, in the late 1980s, alleging that schools were intimidating parents into putting their children on psychiatric drugs.

She says, "Not only was real, scientific research on learning methods being scuttled, but I couldn’t find any hard, statistical validity behind the claims for psychiatric drugs that were being prescribed for behavioral problems. Eventually, renowned experts in government and on the boards of major pharmaceutical companies were blowing the whistle on unreported side-effects, unsubstantiated claims, and outright fraud -- and they weren’t Scientologists. Experts and authors like Drs. Peter Breggin, David Healy, Charles Medawar, and (more recently) former Pennsylvania Inspector General Allen Jones were, in many cases, actually hostile toward Scientology.

"Today, reports that many antidepressants have no more effect than a placebo are ubiquitous. Which brings up the question: Is the aggressive marketing of psychotropic drugs creating a market based on the power of suggestion?"

She says she takes most of what Hollywood stars say "with a grain of salt," and that Tom Cruise’s June 24th interview on NBC’s “Today Show” may not have been the most articulate discussion about drugs or that whole field technically known as “behavioral science.” She says Mr. Cruise was particularly blasted for suggesting that vitamins and exercise could serve as solutions for emotional and mental problems.

"But we must remember," she goes on, "that such interviews revolve around sound bites. That’s all television journalists really want: short sentences that explain little but are easily merged into a 7-minute topic segment that TV executives believe will keep viewers keep from changing channels. Hollywood’s stars know whatever they say must be condensed down to a sentence.
Experts increasingly are learning how to do that, too."

Her indictment is scathing. She says, "The fact is, there is nothing in the medical, scientific literature that confirms objective abnormality (“objective abnormality” equates to disease) in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Conduct Disorder (CD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Post-partum Depression, “math disorder” or hundreds of other “diseases” that psychiatrists swear up and down are “biological.” If they were biological, scientists would be able to see evidence in blood workups, x-rays, urinalyses, taps of spinal fluid, or something. But they can’t. No one knows, for example, how much serotonin (the chemical associated with depression) is normal, or how much is too much or not enough. But medical doctors can tell for sure if you have a vitamin deficiency, and they can tell you which vitamin, too. Vitamin deficiencies, allergies and sedentary lifestyles frequently do contribute adversely to mental function."

This is a former educator and a very articulate writer who sees the insanity being perpetrated on our school system by psychiatrists, psychologists and psych-based education.

The article is worth the read.

Another Prozac Murder

Another Prozac murder. Or maybe it's another anti-depressant, but Prozac is the most popular one. Which anti-depressant wasn't specified in the article. This one will make you wince:

In Brockton, Massachusetts a man lifting his infant daughter out of his car was killed in an apparent case of road rage by a motorist "who obviously exploded" and shot him four times at close range in front of dozens of witnesses, authorities said.

The victim's 10-month-old girl was covered with blood but uninjured when police found her in a car seat on the floor of the vehicle.

Walter R. Bishop, 60, who was taking medication for depression, was arrested Tuesday and charged with first-degree murder in the death of 27-year-old Sandro Andrade. He pleaded innocent and was ordered held without bail; a hearing was scheduled for Aug. 26.

Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said Bishop had made a calculated decision to "shoot a man in cold blood in broad daylight on the streets of Brockton."

Bishop told investigators he was driving his wife to the train station when Andrade's vehicle backed toward him on Main Street, Cruz said. The two exchanged heated words.

"He said his wife was scared, and he said he was angry at that encounter," Cruz said of Bishop. "He said he made up his mind right there that he had to do something."

After dropping his wife off, he allegedly returned to the scene of the confrontation, pointed a handgun through an open window and fired, police said.

Boy, think about how crazy Bishop would be if he wasn't taking his psychiatric drugs. No! Wait! He didn't kill anybody BEFORE he took the drugs!!! But the drugs are supposed to HELP you. Can it be that anti-depressants actually MAKE people insane????? Huh? Can it??

Letter To South Florida Sentinel Newspaper

Regarding the latest hype about the drugging of America, I cannot believe how gullible people have become regarding mental illness. We're being snowed. Millions are spent on developing and advertising psychotropic drugs to get people to "feel" better. The drug companies and psychiatrists want a stoned population that can't really face anything. They've put billions of dollars in their pockets without coming up with any cures. Wouldn't it be better to have a population that can have a chance of solving its own problems by confronting them? We're in a society of legalized drug pushing.

Why? Because the psychiatrists put a label on an ordinary problem and the drug companies develop a drug to "treat" it. They certainly don't cure anything. Just read the letter by your writer whose wife has been on anti-depressants for 12 years. Kudos to the Scientologists. They're promoting finding ways to make people feel better without drugs. Now that's new!

"Big Pharma" is using "Western Medicine" to Destroy America...

Opinion by consumer Advocate Tim Bolen

In the United States every company with over two hundred employees is required to provide full health insurance coverage to its employees. Since 1999, when the US FDA allowed "Big Pharma" to advertise directly to the American consumer, the cost of the average prescription drug has increased 500% - with no reason other than greed.

The same prescription drugs cost five to twenty times as much in the US as other countries. Because of this, the average cost of health insurance for a family of four, including the amount a company pays, and what the employee pays, is now $14,700 per year.

No company in the US can afford those increases in health care costs - so just to survive, at all, much less compete in a word-wide market, US companies are sending their labor requirements overseas - and shutting down US production facilities, laying off US workers, supervisors, managers, vice presidents, etc.

It's time America recognized "Big Pharma" for what it really is - the enemy of mankind - and does something about it.

To read the entire article, click on the URL below:
http://www.quackpotwatch.org/opinionpieces/big%20pharma%20destroying%20America.htm

Psychology Today Tells The Truth!

This partial article is from Psychology Today. You can read the whole article here.

PSYCHIATRIST LOREN MOSHER RECENTLY RESIGNED IN DISGUST FROM THE American Psychiatric Association, claiming that some of his colleagues are too quick to hand out drugs in what he terms an "unholy alliance" between psychiatrists and drug companies. A substantial number of cases of misdiagnosis and fraud support his view that patient care may be in jeopardy.

"I Want No Part of It Anymore"

The trouble began in the late 1970s when I conducted a controversial study: I opened a program--Soteria House--where newly diagnosed schizophrenic patients lived medication-free with a young, nonprofessional staff trained to listen to and understand them and provide companionship. The idea was that schizophrenia can often be overcome with the help of meaningful relationships, rather than with drugs, and that such treatment would eventually lead to unquestionably healthier lives.

The experiment worked better than expected. Over the initial six weeks, patients recovered as quickly as those treated with medication in hospitals.

The results of the study were published in scores of psychiatric journals, nursing journals and books, but the project lost its funding and the facility was closed. Amid the storm of controversy that followed, control of the research project was taken out of my hands. I also faced an investigation into my behavior as chief of the National Institute of Mental Health's Center for Studies of Schizophrenia and was excluded from prestigious academic events. By 1980, I was removed from my post altogether. All of this occurred because of my strong stand against the overuse of medication and disregard for drug-free, psychological interventions to treat psychological disorders.

I soon found a less politically sensitive position at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland. Eight years later, I re-entered the political arena as the head of the public mental health system in Montgomery County, Md., but not without a fight from friends of the drug industry. The Maryland Psychiatric Society asked that a state pharmacy committee review my credentials and prescribing practices to make sure that Montgomery County patients would receive proper--read: drug--treatments. In addition, a pro-drug family advocacy organization arranged for more than 250 furious letters to be sent to the elected county executive who had hired me. Fortunately, my employers were not drug-industry-dominated, so I kept my position.

Why does the world of psychiatry find me so threatening? Because drug companies pour millions of dollars into the pockets of psychiatrists around the country, making them reluctant to recognize that drugs may not always be in the best interest of their patients. They are too busy enjoying drug company perks: consultant gigs, research grants, fine wine and fancy meals.
Pharmaceutical companies pay through the nose to get their message across to psychiatrists across the country. They finance major symposia at the two predominant annual psychiatric conventions, offer yummy treats and music to conventioneers, and pay $1,000-$2,000 per speaker to hock their wares. It is estimated that, in total, drug companies spend an average of $10,000 per physician, per year, on education.

And, of course, the doctors-for-hire tell only half the story. How widely is it known, for example, that Prozac and its successor antidepressants cause sexual dysfunction in as many as 70% of people taking them?

What's even scarier is the greed that is directing a good deal of drug testing today. It is estimated that drug manufacturers have, on average, 12 years to recoup costs and make profits on a given medication before a generic form can be made. So pressure to test new drugs mounts. In the field of psychiatric drug testing, organizations make a profit of as much as $40,000 for every patient who successfully completes a trial. And university psychiatry departments, private research clinics and some individual doctors live on this money.

The good news is that the press is catching on. The New York Times, Dallas News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and New York Post have recently run articles or series on how pharmaceutical companies use cash incentives to encourage doctors to prescribe their drugs.

This spring, the New York Post revealed that Columbia University has been cashing in. Its Office of Clinical Trials generates about $10 million a year testing new medications--much of which is granted to the Columbia Psychiatric Institute for implementing these tests. The director of the institute was being paid $140,000 a year by various drug companies to tour the country promoting their drugs. He also received payments of nearly $12,000 from a drug manufacturer to head up a study on panic disorders. How could he rate these drugs fairly when his livelihood was dependent on the success of the drug manufacturer? The director resigned in the aftermath of the article's publication.

At least one drug company, Wyeth-Ayerst Research, has spoken out against offering cash bonuses and other incentives to researchers. But company representatives admit it's difficult to stay competitive when other groups so eagerly violate ethical concerns.

The APA Connection

The American Psychiatric Association--representing the majority of psychiatrists in America, with about 40,000 members--is also unduly influenced by pharmaceutical dollars. The association:

o receives substantial rent from drug companies for huge symposia spaces at national conventions.
o derives an enormous percentage of its income from drug companies--30% of its total budget is from drug company advertising in its many publications.
o accepts a large number of unrestricted educational grants from drug companies.

This relationship is dangerous because researchers and psychiatrists then feel indebted to the drug companies, remain biased in favor of drug cures, downplay side effects and seldom try other types of interventions. And they know they have the unspoken blessing of the APA to do so.

Collectively, these practices aggressively promote reliance on prescription drug use-so much so that many people think drugs should be forced on those who refuse to take them. The APA supports the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which believes that mentally ill patients should be coerced to take medication. I am appalled by this level of social control. Mentally ill people should be given a choice to have their illness treated in alternative ways.

Over the last decade, ! have written a number of letters bringing my concerns to the APA's attention but have received no response. The association claims that what it's doing is in the "best interest of patients," but its strong ties to the drug industry suggest otherwise.

Recently, it was dues-paying time for the APA, and I sat there looking at the form. I thought about the unholy alliance between the association and the drug industry. I thought about how consumers are being affected by this alliance, about the overuse of medication, about side effects and about alternative treatments. I thought about how irresponsibly some of my colleagues are acting toward the general public and the mentally ill. And I realized, I want no part of it anymore.

Loren R. Mosher, M.D.