Tell Them The Truth

This great article is from the L.A. Times. Read it in its entirety here. The Times requires a log-in but you can get one for free and it's easy to do.

Truth is, it's best if they know

Depression is less likely in children who are hip to what peers think of them -- good or bad.

By Melissa Healy, Times Staff Writer

Some politicians, public health officials, mental health activists and pharmaceutical companies have worked to establish mental-health screening programs in schools and the community. Those initiatives, including a model program designed at Columbia University called TeenScreen, aim to steer kids who are more likely to develop depression toward help before their emotional difficulties lead them to risky behaviors, academic failure or suicide attempts. In recent years, six states — Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Iowa and New Mexico — have moved to adopt programs that screen schoolchildren for warning signs of mental illness, including depression. Elsewhere, individual school districts have followed suit.

Those efforts have proven controversial. Many parents fear their children will be labeled as mentally ill and marked for special attention because they have expressed sentiments typical of adolescents. Others caution that there are few services and scant psychiatric help available for the millions of children that could be identified. And many suspect such screens are drug company-sponsored efforts to build the market for antidepressants.

Researchers and clinicians, meanwhile, say they are far from having developed accurate predictors of a child developing depression. The younger the child, the murkier the crystal ball.

An Editorial Re Teenscreen From Indiana

The Indiana legislature passed a draconian (severe) law requiring screening of all children from birth to 22 years of age for mental health. Now that this has occurred many legislators are on the warpath. It appears that many of them didn't really read the small print and now see the law as an attack on children. The developments are going to be interesting. Is it any coincidence this law was passed in the home state of Eli Lilly, one of the largest Big Pharma drug companies in the world, and the maker of Prozac?

Here is the content of an editorial in the Fort Wayne Daily News:

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Our View

Yet another study warns of risks of behavior drugs

The first long-term government study on Ritalin and its effect on preschoolers shows that preschoolers are more likely than older children to develop side effects.

The soaring number of preschoolers with severe behaviors being given psychiatric drugs prompted the research.

The study in the November edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry said the benefits of low-dose treatment for preschoolers outweigh the risks.

However, about 40 percent of the preschoolers developed side effects such as irritability, weight loss, insomnia and slowed growth.

We believe there needs to be more research to see if there are links between pollutants, diet and troubled home environments and the surge in childhood depression and behavior problems.

Our children deserve to grow up - if at all possible - without the possible side-effects of short-term and long-term psychiatric drug use. A “drugged up” generation is more likely to end up in a lifelong cycle of prescription drug taking.

We need more information about why attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) seems to be spiraling and how best to meet children's physical and emotional needs.

That about spells it out, doesn't it?

Foster Kids In Chemical Straitjackets

Historically, the handling of underprivileged children, such as orphans and foster children who have been taken away from their natural parents for some reason, has been abysmal. But today people point to the fact that we feed them and clothe them and house them and no longer force them to work long hours for no pay in factories, and say that we now treat them humanely. Think again.

Read this story from CBS on the use of drugs as a control mechanism for foster kids. The bottom line is that if you are taken away from your parents you're destined to be forced to take heavy mind-altering psychiatric drugs on a daily basis. There's just no alternative. You don't get to say, "No today thank you, I feel fine." If I were in that position, I think I might prefer the 12-hour per day job on the factory assembly line, a bowl of gruel for supper, and a clear head. It is criminal to use these drugs as a form of chemical incarceration.

A Rush To Medicate Young Minds

A psychiatrist speaks on the subject of using medication as a solution to supposed "mental illnesses" such as ADHD, bi-polar, etc., with the result of doing serious damage, sometimes even causing death to the patient. This is an illuminating article. Read the original by clicking here.

More and more, concerned and ethical people in the psychiatry and psychology communities are coming forward in objection to Big Pharma's drug-pushing agenda.

Antipsychotics not good for Alzheimer's

Big Pharma (the pharmaceutical industry) is always trying to figure out ways to sell their most expensive drugs, whether they work or not. One of their scams has been the idea of using antipsychotics for Alzheimer's victims. Does that sound crazy? It is. Here's what the Washington Post has to say about it. Read the full article at this link.

Antipsychotic drugs that are widely used to calm agitated patients with Alzheimer's disease help very few of them, and those modest benefits are canceled out by the frequent side effects, a comprehensive government-funded study has found.

The surprising finding is expected to trigger a broad reevaluation of the widespread use of the drugs in patients with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. As many as a quarter of the Alzheimer's patients in nursing homes are prescribed the powerful drugs, even though they have never been formally approved for this purpose.

"I wish I could say the odds are better," said Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the $17 million study. "This paper says most people are not going to be any different on these drugs than they would on placebo."

The researchers did not conclude that the drugs should never be used, and a minority of patients do benefit. But the study suggests that doctors would be well advised to prescribe the drugs sparingly and as a last resort, experts said.

The study is the latest to produce sobering data on the newer, expensive antipsychotics such as Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel, which are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States at an annual cost of about $10 billion. Another government-funded study recently showed that the drugs were no better than an older and much cheaper drug called perphenazine in the treatment of schizophrenia.

Taken together, the government-sponsored clinical trials have highlighted two troublesome issues in the regulation and use of psychiatric medications in the United States.

The schizophrenia study showed that the short-term trials that pharmaceutical companies sponsor to gain Food and Drug Administration approval have limited value in telling doctors how patients will fare overall, or whether newer drugs are worth their higher cost.

The Alzheimer's study has revealed a different problem -- the extent to which physicians are prescribing and using medications in the absence of empirical data to guide them. None of the antipsychotic drugs is currently approved for Alzheimer's disease, and several short-term industry-sponsored clinical trials have failed to show a benefit. The FDA has required prominent "black box" warnings on the drugs' labels about side effects in elderly people following cases where the drugs were associated with strokes and death.

The article continues debunking this area. How much longer before the world realizes that the antidepressant emperor has not clothes?

In an article in Britains The Independent, a clinical psychologist seriously questions the role of drugs and big pharma in solving brain "chemical imbalances" and handling depression. Dr. Rufus May has a different view. Note that when he refers to Arsenal and Tottenham, he is referring to British soccer teams. From the article:

I work as a clinical psychologist in Bradford. Depression, or should I say pain and sadness, are part of life. Yesterday I counselled Celine, an asylum seeker who has been refused asylum despite strong evidence that she is a survivor of political torture. She is demoralised and her spirit is broken. She has no family here and no contact with her family in the Congo. Her problems are not due to a faulty brain, but oppression and isolation. Celine needs both individual support and to find a sense of community and belonging for as long as she is here. After seeing Celine, I felt tremendous shame at what human beings are capable of doing to each other for money and power. But I recovered quickly because I, unlike Celine, have a family and extended network of friends and colleagues who care about me.

I believe it's a myth that there is a worldwide epidemic of clinical depression that needs identifying and treating. The pharmaceutical companies have systematically promoted this myth. In the 10 years up to 2002 the use of antidepressants increased by 234 per cent. Yet still we are told we are more depressed than ever before. The World Health Organisation has a tendency to talk about the widespread and undiagnosed levels of depression internationally, but it also has close links with the pharmaceutical industry.

Yes, it's true that there's a lot of unhappiness in our society, but convincing people it is a medical condition does not help. I meet people who've bought into the idea that their sadness is caused by a chemical imbalance. Many of them have resigned themselves to one cocktail of medication after another. They have given up on their own ability to find a solution. After all, what can they do about their faulty brain-wiring? In fact, the chemical-imbalance theory is extremely dodgy. Joanna Moncrieff, from University College London, is a consultant psychiatrist who has taken a close look at the scientific evidence. She has argued that there is more evidence for psychiatric medication creating a chemical imbalance rather than correcting one. For example, despite it being commonly believed that depression is caused by a serotonin shortage, this relationship is unproven. Research on the serotonin theory is inconclusive, but such is the power of drug company propaganda that most of us accept it as fact.

We also need to question the idea that chemical changes are the main cause of emotional changes. If Arsenal lose to Tottenham I will experience a deep sinking feeling. This will probably be reflected by chemical changes in my brain but they did not cause this; football players did, combined with my attachment to Arsenal. Yet this logic is neatly overlooked by the "blame the brain" explanation for sadness. What we are distracted from is the fact that unhappiness is a social condition. It tells us about our relationships to others, both in the here and now and in the past.

Mother Teresa once observed that in the developing world there is an epidemic of poverty, while in the West there is an epidemic of loneliness. Similarly, the exiled Brazilian drama teacher Augustus Boal was surprised when he discovered that affluent Westerners were considerably unhappier than the deprived and disenfranchised Brazilian peasants he had worked with. His opinion was that the Brazilian peasants were happier because they knew who the enemy was and they had a collective sense of togetherness. In the West people seemed more isolated and unaware of who was oppressing them. He theorised that what had happened to Westerners was that they had internalised the bully - they had developed an inner critic, which he called a "cop in the head".

If you seek psychological help for inner critical thoughts you may well be offered cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT tries to address the negative thoughts by training people to argue in their mind with their inner critic and substitute it with a rational, calm, optimistic personality. However, I, and many colleagues, have found that deep-seated emotional pain does not often respond to such tinkering. Perhaps, rather than trying to magic away pain with pills or positive thinking strategies, we should accept it, understand it and thereby start to transform it. For example, a friend of mine experiences periods of low mood episodically. Her mother died when she was young. Her problem is grief; fighting it won't make it go away. Some sadness will always be with her but understanding it and learning ways to not fear it will help.

Many psychologists want more resources so they can build an army of cognitive behaviour therapists to battle the beast of depression. In Bradford we are trying a different approach: community development through supporting the growth of self-help groups. I first became aware of the power of self-help groups eight years ago in east London. Dawn was adopted as a child. Now, in her thirties, she was low in mood and had episodes of self-destructiveness. Antidepressants had not helped and my psychological support was limited. Meeting her for limited periods every fortnight, I felt like a poor substitute for a friend. We decided to set up a self-help group called Helping Hands. At the group Dawn met Jean, an older woman who remembered Dawn as a baby. The stories she told Dawn about her early childhood encouraged Dawn to seek out her biological mother. This she did successfully, which led to a significant breakthrough in her sense of who she was.

In Bradford we have about 12 self-help groups, many of which are now jointly staffed by mental health workers and volunteers from the groups. Group members are gaining the confidence to go on to vocational training. We have also set up a network of public meetings that explore different approaches to mental well-being. What we have discovered is that people find a vast range of things helpful in dealing with distress, from diet and herbal medicine, through meditation and spiritual healing, to dance and artistic expression. As a result we have tried to make the mental health service more holistic, introducing t'ai chi and spiritual healing into the local psychiatric hospital.

But we also need to think about prevention. In the 1950s, '60s and '70s it was recognised both here and in the US that the root causes of mental illness were in social conditions. Initiatives focused on narrowing the gap between rich and poor and creating opportunities through education and community groups for self-expression and community regeneration. But with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came the denial of society and funding for these projects was pulled. Distress and confusion was due to faulty brains and the market opened up for the drug companies. We now need to reverse this trend. Numbing our minds is not the answer.

Are we more depressed than before? Its difficult to say - there is clearly a lot of loneliness, grief, despair and feelings of inadequacy out there. Modern lifestyles encourage levels of competitiveness that can make us feel very lonely. Advertisers aim to make us dissatisfied with our lives. I would argue that medicalising and numbing our pain does not help; it mystifies its meaning in our lives and ignores the social and psychological avenues to making our lives more fulfilling.

Pro-Drugging Principal Arrested For Assault

"An alert Montana citizen notified us that the high school principal who allowed TeenScreen into his school has been arrested for 'partner or family member assault'. The citizen asked: 'Do you think Principal Kloppel was screened? TeenScreen.com responded: 'Given the FDA warnings of violence associated with psychotropic drugs your speculation may be valid one.' "

New Trial For Zoloft User Pittman?

Christopher Pittman was only 12 years old when he killed his grandparents, set their house on fire and drove away in their stolen car. Today at the age of 17, he is asking for a new trial.

The first kneejerk reaction is to say, "This is one crazy kid." But when all the facts are in, one wonders whether in fact he might deserve a new trial.

There doesn't seem to be any disagreement regarding the facts of the situation. But one fact that was overlooked or insufficiently investigated was the fact that Pittman was on Zoloft. This SSRI anti-depressant is in the same family with Prozac, Paxil and other similar anti-depressants that have been proven to actually cause suicidal and homicidal impulses in children AND adults.

In 2004, years after Pittman's crime, The FDA required Zoloft and other anti-depressants in this family to carry a black box warning (so-called because the warning goes in a black box on the packaging) of an increased suicidal risk in children. More recently they have recommended expanding the warning to include homicidal risk as well. A high percentage of the "school shooters" in the last decade have been on anti-depressants in this class.

The black box warning is the last gradient below banning the drug.

Read the story here.

Try Limiting Sugar Before Using Prozac

Oslo teens who drank the most sugary soft drinks also had more mental health problems such as hyperactivity and distress, Norwegian researchers reported on Thursday.

Their study of more than 5,000 Norwegian 15- and 16-year-olds showed a clear and direct association between soft drink intake and hyperactivity, and a more complex link with other mental and behavioral disorders.

This story is from a Reuters article.

It's remarkable that at this late date, some researchers finally publish what most mothers know: If you give Junior a lot of sugar you're going to be scraping him off the ceiling with a spatula. I remember my own son's reaction to donuts when he was six years old. We traditionally had donuts for breakfast on Saturdays and after several weeks of complete Saturday insanity we finally realized what it was. We dumped the donuts, and the problem went away.

But apparently many are still not acting on this data. So Junior, who regularly ingests several tablespoons of sugar in soft drinks, is acting up in school. Give him a psych drug. Right?

Suicide-risk Screening Effort Blasted

The Fresno Bee

Suicide-risk screening effort blasted
By Anne Dudley Ellis

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Critics, including a Fresno doctor, blasted the Fresno Unified School District on Wednesday for a suicide-risk screening program the district tried out at Hoover High School the past two years.

Concerns were raised during the public comment period at a meeting of the governing board.

The district is not using the TeenScreen Program currently but is working with Fresno County officials and other agencies on possible implementation at high schools, said Pete Summers, executive director of prevention and intervention for the district.

The program includes a 10-minute computer survey that asks students a variety of questions, including whether the teens have considered suicide.

About 400 10th-graders at Hoover High took the survey last year and the year before as part of a pilot program, Summers said.
Critics said students who answered "yes" to many of the questions could be unfairly categorized as suicidal and the program could lead students to take unnecessary psychiatric drugs.

Fresno physician Larry Scortt called TeenScreen "bogus." One of his criticisms was that the program seemed slanted toward psychiatric treatment, when some emotional troubles could be caused by allergies or poor nutrition.

Retired teacher Sharon Kientz said the questionnaire was "loaded for positive responses."

"How many [students] have been sucked into the psychiatric drug market?" Kientz asked the governing board.

Critics' harsh comments prompted alarmed murmuring through the board-meeting audience.

Board President Luisa Medina said Summers and John Marinovich, in charge of high schools for the district, would examine the concerns.

In responding to questions from the media outside the board room, Summers disputed the characterization of TeenScreen as a dangerous program that usurped parents' authority over their children. Summers said students must have their parents' permission to complete the survey, and subsequent counseling sessions with mental health professionals also required permission.

Summers said teen suicide is a significant problem and the questionnaire could help students in distress get help. He did not have statistics on students who have been helped because of the questionnaire.

The TeenScreen Web site says the program is overseen by the Carmel Hill Center at Columbia University in New York.

Media accounts indicate the program has attracted controversy nationwide.

Anna Nicole Smith's Son Killed By Antidepressants?

Anna Nicole Smith's Son on Prescribed Psychiatric Drugs at Time of Death

Antidepressants suspected as possible cause

Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, who performed the second autopsy on Daniel Smith, has announced that Daniel had been on antidepressants at the time of his death. Answers are being avidly sought by the media and the public for the unexpected death of the 20-year-old son of model/actress, Anna Nicole Smith. The recent revelation of his antidepressant use could likely lead to the answer.

Newer antidepressants, called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) have been connected with a life-threatening condition called "serotonin syndrome," caused by an excess of serotonin in the brain due to the drugs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned on July 19, 2006, that SSRIs, when combined with certain migraine drugs, can cause "serotonin syndrome," which may result in headaches, dizziness, vomiting, coma and death. The New York Post and other papers report that Daniel Smith was vomiting uncontrollably before his death.

Antidepressants can also cause cardiac complications, including heart attack and stroke, as well as headaches, nausea, internal bleeding and seizures. Read the Report on the Escalating International Warnings on Psychiatric Drugs, published by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, to find out other dangers of psychiatric drugs.

INHUMAN BEINGS - The Chemicalized Personality

A mother murders her five children. High school students massacre their classmates. An Iraq vet stabs his wife 71 times. How can this happen?

A common thread in these occurrences is the fact that the killers have been taking psychiatric medications.

But that is too simple. So we hear about “post-partum depression” and “combat stress.” In the case of the teens, it's “the breakdown of the family" or it’s the music, the movies, the video games.

The real answer is the dehumanizing effect of drugs.

A human being has more than one aspect. There is a definite electro-chemical component. The body physically functions via electro-chemical processes.

Then there is that aspect which perceives and reasons and creates. This is not electro-chemical. When people communicate with each other, it is not chemical molecules that are exchanging ideas. This is the spiritual aspect; the conscious, aware individual.

There is also a mental component—a mind—which is an interactive link between the reasoning factor and the physical.

A healthy mind (motivated by the spirit) is analytical.

A less healthy mind is less analytical and more and more reactive. It operates on a stimulus/response basis, motivated by random factors. A troubled, unhealthy mind doesn't reason. It doesn't perceive well. It reacts to stimuli.

For a long time now, the mental health establishment has been telling us that we are chemical in nature. They would have us believe that they can solve our problems with mood-altering drugs—a little dash of this and a little dash of that.

That approach may work at the purely physical level, as in taking antibiotics to handle infection, but it is not the physical component that gives us our rationality, our humanity. It is not the molecules in the brain that are thinking and perceiving, loving and caring, creating great music and poetry.

No, the physical component is comprised of cells and electrical impulses, which are as reasoning and creative as an avocado or the electric current that powers your toaster.

When a person is troubled, he is already sliding in the direction of the reactive, unthinking, physical impulse side of his nature. To then give him chemical, mood-altering drugs, pushes him further in that direction. While the sedative effect may appear to calm him down, he is becoming, more and more chemicalized.

So is it any wonder that these killers seem less than human? They ARE less than human. Though they can appear bright and calculating at times, real judgment is gone. They are completely reactive; alienated.

Their minds bubble and boil like the mass of chemicals they have become. The analytical capacity is gone. The spirit is gone. Their humanity is gone. They respond randomly and literally to stimuli (enter music, movies and video games).

Then, in the extreme, they lash out with violence at the imagined demons and enemies in their own unreal world. They have been mentally short-circuited by the drugs that are supposed to be helping them. It is the ultimate betrayal.

And when their bizarre, chemically induced, nightmare world collides with the world of OUR reality—which consists of living people, loving families, children, teachers, learning, accomplishment—a slaughter ensues and we are left to wonder "WHY?" "WHAT HAPPENED?"

The answer: psychiatry happened. And why would anyone perpetrate such a crime as to drug children and adults, driving them insane, all in the name of help? It's too horribly simple. It’s a multi-billion dollar business. They do it for money.

The good news is that when society wakes up to these facts, we will cease to allow these evils to occur.

It's time.

Tom Solari
tom@tomsolari.com

Tom Solari is a professional writer and video producer, living and working in Los Angeles. He is concerned about a culture that promotes chemical dependency as a solution to problems, when logic and the evidence shows that this approach deepens the problem by numbing the brain, muddling the mind and undermining the human spirit.

FDA Puts New Warning On Prozac And Other SSRIs

According to an article in Web MD, the FDA is warning us that taking certain migraine drugs with some types of antidepressants may create a life-threatening condition. The FDA's warning focuses on migraine medications called triptans when taken together with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), or with serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs).

SSRIs and SNRIs are used to treat depression and mood disorders. SSRIs include Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and Prozac. SNRIs include Cymbalta and Effexor.

"A life-threatening condition called serotonin syndrome may occur when triptans are used together with an SSRI or a SNRI," states an FDA news release.

An interesting side-issue here is that the triptan drugs are related to the natural remedy once available at health food stores, tryptophan. The FDA seized upon a contaminated batch of tryptophan to ban it from the market. But the back story seems to be that tryptophan was hysterically opposed by Big Pharma, because of its reaction when used with Prozac and the other SSRIs. It is more than interesting to note that the cheap health food product was simply banned, while the proven incompatibility with the profitable triptan drugs was solved with warning labels. In the meantime, there have been many more deaths from suicide attributable to SSRIs than ever occurred from sickness caused by the batch of contaminated tryptophan.

The question I've always pondered is; why did they ban the trytophan instead of banning the SSRIs? That question is more-or-less rhetorical, but the injustice is nevertheless manifest. I support the free market economy and I don't like bashing big corporations just because they are successful and doing well. But in the case of the Big Pharma drug companies, there is a constant undertow of amoral and corrupt manipulation, as well as distribution of drugs that cause harm rather than help. Without batting an eye, Big Pharma seems to be focused primarily on its profits, and the welfare of the public be damned.

Serotonin syndrome occurs when the body has too much serotonin, a chemical found in the nervous system. Triptans, SSRIs, and SNRIs all raise serotonin levels. As with tryptophan, the higher seratonin levels caused by triptans are an aid to helping with migraine headaches, as well as insomnia.

Big Pharma (Drug Companies) Control Psychiatry

Ever wonder how much control the drug industry exerts on psychiatry? Here's a good one:

As reported in the San Jose Mercury News, Juy 10, 2006:

Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg, Stanford's long-time chair of the department of psychiatry, has reported financial interests with a number of companies that make psychiatric pills and devices, including:

Abbott Laboratories Inc.: consultant or scientific advisory board
Bristol-Myers Squibb: consultant or scientific advisory board; grant support
Corcept Therapeutics: scientific advisory board chairman; board of directors; stock
Elan Pharmaceuticals: stock or options
Eli Lilly and Co.: consultant or scientific advisory board; grant support
Forest Laboratories: consultant or scientific advisory board
GlaxoSmithKline: consultant or scientific advisory board; grant support
Janssen Pharmaceutica Products: consultant or scientific advisory board
Merck: stock or options
Neuronetics: consultant or scientific advisory board
Organon Pharmaceuticals: consultant or scientific advisory board
Pathway Diagnostics: stock or options
Pfizer: consultant or scientific advisory board; stock or options
Sanofi-Aventis: consultant or scientific advisory board
Somaxon Pharmaceuticals: consultant or scientific advisory board; stock or options
Somerset Pharmaceuticals: consultant or scientific advisory board; grant support
Wyeth Pharmaceuticals: consultant or scientific advisory board; grant support

Source: American Psychiatric Association; Corcept Therapeutics

Ethics Are Put In On Another Psych School Counselor

This article is from the Patriot Ledger, a Boston area newspaper:

Read it at http://ledger.southofboston.com/articles/2006/07/08/news/news10.txt

State reprimands counselor; School worker pressured parent, allowed ADHD evaluation of student without parental consent

By JACK ENCARNACAO
The Patriot Ledger

WEYMOUTH - A state department of education investigation concluded that a veteran adjustment counselor at the Thomas Hamilton Primary School violated federal law when she allowed a special education evaluation of a student without parental consent.

The mother pulled her children out of the school over the incident, said Andre Afonso, deputy director of the Massachusetts Citizens Commission on Human Rights, where the mother initially brought her complaints.

The commission on Human Rights was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology to investigate psychiatric violations of human rights.

‘‘This is a big issue right now with us,’’ Afonoso said. ‘‘Bypassing the written consent law ... it can lead to (unnecessary) drugging in the schools.’’

Under a law enacted in 1998 called the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, a student can not be required to submit to an evaluation of mental or psychological problems without prior written consent of a parent.

The state board of education also has a similar regulation about parental consent.

The state’s investigation followed complaints from the student’s mother that for three years the adjustment counselor pressured her to medicate her daughter for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

The student’s mother, who was not named in documents about the case and did not respond to a call for comment, did not give verbal or written permission for a mental evaluation, only for an academic evaluation.

‘‘The district acknowledged parental consent was not obtained for the administration of this test,’’ reads a letter from the department of education to the Weymouth school district.

In an affidavit filed with the commission, the mother said the counselor, Cora Hall, acted ‘‘outside of the scope of her job description and her unrelenting harassment over these past three years (have been) outside the legal barrier.’’

The mother was studying to become a nurse, and sensed something was wrong with the way her daughter was evaluated.

‘‘She knew her rights,’’ Afonso said of the mother.

The state investigation concluded that Hall, a 30-year veteran of school counseling, administered a test called the Connors’ Teacher Rating Scale in April 2005 to detect signs of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in the student, a first grader who was enrolled in a special education class due to a speech delay.

‘‘I do think I rushed,’’ Hall said. ‘‘I regret that because we don’t want to alienate parents, we don't want to upset anybody.’’

Hall said a teacher, not her, conducted the evaluation with her direction.

The state concluded that no punishment is necessary. But officials did require the school district to hold review and training sessions on the issue, which were held in March.

‘‘The penalty is more corrective action to address whatever violations were in place,’’ said Nate Mackinnon, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. ‘‘If a district were to decide not to comply (with corrective action), then we'd take additional steps. But typically with situations like this, the law tends to be rather complex, and it’s more about ensuring that it doesn't happen in the future.’’

Copyright 2006 The Patriot Ledger

The Fraud Of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

A letter from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights:

Last week, major international news outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal ran articles exposing that the psychiatrists who vote “disorders” into existence have ties to pharmaceutical companies who then sell drugs to “treat” those disorders!

American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM, lists the “mental illnesses” recognized by psychiatry. This “bible” of psychiatry has grown from mere 119 pages in 1968 to 886 in the latest edition, and includes categories sufficiently broad as to label anyone as “mentally ill.”

Addicted to coffee? See “Caffeine-Related Disorders.” Have problem with math? See “Mathematics Disorders.” Have a child in their “terrible twos”? The DSM has a whole section on childhood disorders including “Conduct Disorder” and “Oppositional Defiant Disorder."

Yet despite there being no objective medical test to prove any chemical cause for any disorder in the DSM, billions of dollars of psychiatric drugs are prescribed each year to “treat” these conditions.

One might question how so many psychotropic drugs could be prescribed each year to treat conditions that don’t really exist—until you see that same people who create the arbitrary list of “disorders” have financial relationships with drug companies that “treat” them.

A report published last month found that 56 percent of 170 panel members responsible for overseeing the DSM had some type of financial tie to the drug industry. What’s even more alarming is that 100 percent of the “experts” on DSM panels overseeing mood disorders were financially involved with the drug industry. (“Mood disorders” are psychiatry’s cash cow and result in billions of dollars a year in revenue.)

The study is the first to document extensive monetary connections between drug companies, psychiatrists and other people responsible for the list of “disorders” in the DSM — an event or major importance given that the and Drug Administration will not approve a drug to treat a mental illness unless the condition is in the DSM.

With your support CCHR has been working to raise the public awareness in the fight for human rights. Witness the fruits of our labor as story after story in the international media are expositing the fraud being perpetrated by psychiatry their partners in crime, the psychotropic drug industry.

CCHR is on a full-out campaign to rid the planet of the dangers of psychiatry. We are winning, but we have much more to do.

Please give generously and give now to keep the momentum rolling.

All donations are welcome. Please donate to CCHR International at 6616 Sunset Blvd., LA, CA 90028 or call me at 800-869-2247 today. Your donations are tax deductible and you will receive the satisfaction of knowing you helped fund this crucial campaign.

Thanks for your help,


Yours truly,
John B. Fleming
Senior Director of Development

Email john@protectinghumanrights.org
CCHR OFFICE 800 869-2247
LOCAL 323 467-4242
FAX 323 467-7526
CELL 727 647-2692

www.cchr.org

Since 1969, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has worked to safeguard the public from psychiatric violations of human rights.
CCHR is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) public benefit corporation that relies on public donations to carry out its humanitarian objectives.

On Medication, Killed by Alligator

She was on medication, and her mother said she was "out of it" when she went for a jog. She was a drop-dead gorgeous model. The alligator must have found her attractive. They found part of her body in the water, and part in the stomach of the alligator.

The examiner said she was attacked on land, not in the water.

How much would the effect of being "out of it" on psych drugs contribute to the vulnerability of being successfully attacked on land by an alligator?

Read the story here.

State Sponsored Child Abuse

“State Sponsored Child Abuse” trumpets the subhead in the influential e-mail e-zine What We Now Know (subscribe by clicking on this link).

The story recounts a grizzly story about the severe psychiatric misuse of children in the Montreal foster child system. It would be shocking if it was the first time we heard about such shenanigans in the world of psychiatry.

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

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

The children in this story are now called the “Duplessis Orphans”, in a dubious reference to Duplessis, the hard-nosed and seemingly heartless Premier of Quebec during the time the incident occurred.

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

Why? Because psych hospitals were paid more than three times as much per “inmate” than orphanages. It became an obvious economic benefit to define an orphan as “insane”.

According to the article, Hervé Bertrand, one of the victims, remembers how a doctor visited his third-grade class and asked him what the word "compare" meant. "I didn't know," remembers Bertrand. "We hadn't studied it yet. That's how it was decided that I was retarded."

Surviving victims allege that some of the children underwent painful experiments, electroshock treatments, even lobotomies. Most were pulled from their schools and forced into farm labor or hospital maintenance and brutally beaten for non-compliance. Many were physically and sexually abused by the Catholic priests, nuns and administrators. Some died of their injuries. (According to unconfirmed news, a mass grave with the bones of hundreds of children was recently discovered just outside of Montreal.)

The Duplessis scandal was revealed when a 1961 commission on Quebec's psychiatric hospitals found that more than 30% of the 22,000 patients didn't belong there, most of the falsely diagnosed being illegitimate children. (Not all of the children were actual orphans; many were born out of wedlock.)

The Canadian Broadcasting Story on the subject is told at this link.

You Gotta Ask First!

The outcry over the Teenscreen program and its attempts to sneak past parents to test and label their kids without notice has reached a fever pitch. Check out the laws in progress at this site. In Tennessee, there are 71 legislators co-sponsoring the legislation!

ADHD Fraud

There is a new book out by Fred Baughman, Jr. MD, called ADHD Fraud. It's subtitled "How Psychiatry Makes 'Patients' of Normal Children". This data is critical, and we need to stop feeding out children as sacrifices to the Great God Big Pharma, whose attitude seems to be, "There are plenty of children in the world, more than enough to go around. What is one child more or less compared with the kinds of profits we can make by pushing a drug that makes you crazy as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist?"