Thank God For Whistleblowers!

St. Louis, Wednesday, March 29, 2006: The Citizens Commission on Human Rights® of St. Louis (CCHR) filed a complaint against a psychiatrist with the Missouri State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts in the matter of psychiatric abuse of one of its clients and has just been notified that the psychiatrist has been disciplined
and lost his license.

Ronald P. McPike, D.O., of Bonaparte, Iowa, was engaged in the practice of psychiatry and licensed as a physician in Iowa and Missouri. The Iowa Board of Medical Examiners found that McPike demonstrated serious character deficits which negatively impacted his medical practice; his care and treatment of several of his patients constituted a pattern of professional incompetency and practice harmful to his patients, including inappropriate prescribing practices and inappropriate diagnostic practices. The Board suspended his medical license indefinitely in June, 2005.

In a legal settlement reached in February, 2006, McPike voluntarily surrendered his Missouri license in lieu of disciplinary action based on the findings of fact in the Iowa judgment.

CCHR regularly files complaints with local, state and federal authorities for psychiatric fraud and abuse; in this case, justice has been served and another fraudulent psychiatrist has lost his license to abuse patients.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights and to clean up the field of mental healing. Today it has more than 130 chapters in 31 countries and is recognized as an authority on psychiatric abuse. CCHR is primarily concerned with psychiatry's fraudulent use of "diagnoses" that are not based on
science or medical criteria. For more information, call the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis at (314) 727-8307. To lodge a complaint against a psychiatrist or psychiatric facility for fraud or patient abuse, call (314) 729-2854.

A Nurse Writes To The Tucson Newspaper

Tucson Citizen (Arizona)
March 24, 2006 Friday
Effects of anti-psychotropic drugs

Re: your Friday article "Kids' anti-psychotic drug use soars":

This article is right on the money to question the use of anti-psychotropic drugs on children.

Considering that this is when the body and nervous system still are developing, even into the early 20s, this is an open case for attorneys to gather the facts and claim doctors are damaging their patients. This trend is already on the market; I have seen advertisements for attorneys taking cases against diabetes-induced side effects of Zyprexa.

As an RN working with our elderly population, I see the effects of long-term anti-psychotics and anti-depressants use.

Central nervous system damage and blunted emotional capability are the obvious.

When family members say to me, "Grandma just isn't herself anymore," and it's timed coincidental to being put on anti-depressants, I shake my head. Families are being robbed of their most cherished memories of a happy, laughing and communicative grandparent who now just lies in bed shaking uncontrollably from effects of anti-psychotics or sleeping most of the time from anti-depressants.

Shame on any program like TeenScreen for even thinking of offering these drugs to children.

(name withheld on this post)

Pops Prozac, Kills Kids

In another classic SSRI murder, David Crespi killed his two kids, a few days after his doctor switched him from Paxil to Prozac. (SSRIs are the class of psych drugs that includes Paxil and Prozac and Zoloft and several other of those depressing "anti-depressant" drugs.)

Crespi lives in North Carolina. He killed his two kids in January. We noticed it in the news and thought "psych drug murder". But there wasn't a word about psych drugs. That happens a lot. There is an attitude that a person's psychiatric history is privileged information. And prosecutors don't like it when the psych drug thing comes out because they feel it makes it harder for them to get a conviction. In this case it was the media who got the scent and convinced the judge to unseal the psych history, over the objections of the prosecutor. There it was -- he's been on psychiatry lines for years. And as is so often the case, he didn't get better -- he got worse. Psychiatrists just haven't figured out how to actually do people any good. So they drug them instead, with SSRIs that make a percentage of them suicidal/homicidal.

In the case of Crespi, he went off Paxil and went on Prozac, and a few days later he killed his kids. Now he's so suicidal they've taken him out of the jail and put him in an asylum where they can keep him under control.

So let's repeat the big Prozac Causes Depression question: If he wasn't killing himself or his kids years ago, and if he's been under the care of psychiatrists ever since, why NOW does he do this? Shouldn't he be better after years of psychiatric care and psychiatric drugs? Of course, Dear Reader, we know better. The psuedo-science of psychiatry is the child of the same nuts that built Hitler's concentration camps and whisked away Russia's dissidents to Siberia on charges of insanity. They don't help people. They certainly didn't help Mr. Crespi -- or his children.

Wanna Join The Army? Not If You're On Psych Drugs

Uncle Sam wants you! Unless you're a Ritalin user, that is.

One of several things that will disqualify a young man or woman from military service is use of Ritalin or other psychiatric drugs. Other limitations include severely overweight, specific diseases such as asthma, or a criminal record.

That's interesting company for the Ritalin ban.

You may recall that one of the Columbine School shooters had tried to join the Army but had been rejected because of use of psych drugs.

The Army has the right idea. They avoided a person who was capable of shooting a room full of his friends, then himself. Now if the schools would get the right idea, they'd be safe. There is no place in them for kids who are put on these psychiatric drugs. These drugs are the primary source of the severe decline in safety and discipline in schools.

Florida Rep Documents Youth Suicides on Antidepressants

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FLORIDA HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE GUS BARREIRO RELEASES REPORT DOCUMENTING 96 FLORIDA YOUTH SUICIDES LINKED TO PSYCHIATRIC MEDICATION

Florida State Representative Gus Barreiro will release a report on a study just completed which documents that 96 Florida children ages 18 and under who used psychotropic drugs, committed suicide over a five year period from 1999 to 2004.

This number represents an astounding 38% of the total youth suicides during that time period.

Rep Barreiro stated, “This report is significant in light of the September 2004 ‘Black Box’ warning given by the FDA for all antidepressant use in children due to the risk that they may cause suicidal behavior. This report suggests that the danger is even worse than indicated by the FDA.”

Additionally, in June 2005 an FDA advisory committee recommended placing warnings of suicidal behavior for children using the popular “ADHD” stimulant medications, which are being given to some 2.5 million children in America today. This report showed 36 children committed suicide while using these drugs, or with a history of using them.

The report states that the percentages may actually be higher as in some cases all information on use or prior history of use of psychiatric drugs was not available.

Rep. Barreiro intends to release the report and accompanying documentation to the press at a press conference at 12 noon, February 23, 2006 on the steps of the old Florida Capitol building. Rep. Barreiro will also be participating in a gathering at the same time and place of a coalition of human rights, education rights and youth rights organizations in support of a bill sponsored by Rep Barreiro in the Florida House and Sen. Victor Crist in the Florida Senate. The bills if passed will guarantee the right to full informed consent for parents whose children are referred for psychological type evaluations through the school system, which commonly result in recommendations that the children be given the type of dangerous psychotropic drugs identified in this report.

“These drugs are dangerous and there is no question that they kill children. Parents need to know the consequences. We fully expect this bill to pass through the legislature this year and we hope that the Governor will sign it into law. It is long past due,” Rep. Barreiro stated.

The Psychological Harm of TeenScreen

Commonwealth Education Organization Editorial in the state of Pennsylvania:

Much has been written about the use of TeenScreen in 9th and 10th grade as a tool for identifying potential suicide victims. A firestorm of objections has come from a cross-section of parents, political, educational, and health professional organizations – from Patch Adams to Phyllis Schlafly.

However, there is a disturbing aspect about the TeenScreen survey that has not been formally addressed by people opposing the use of this invasive screening test, and that is the impact of the questionnaire itself on the child.

For years, public relations experts and media specialist have known that besides gathering information, tests, surveys, and questionnaires also teach.

On the 10 minute TeenScreen “quick mental health check up” survey, a child sits in front of an impersonal computer screen answering questions about his or her worries, fears, family composition, interpersonal relationships, and even drug use.

Then, in an offhanded, abrupt manner, questions such as - Have you ever thought about killing yourself - appear. The unthinkable notion of killing oneself becomes a “thinkable” solution to his/her adolescent pain.

Killing oneself is further pounded into the adolescent psyche with an extended series of questioning on suicidal ideation:

§ Are you still thinking about killing yourself?

§ Have you seriously thought about killing yourself?

§ Have you thought of killing yourself for some time?

Preceding the “kill” questions, there is not one question that would seed hope in the child’s mind. Such questions might be:

§ Are you aware of the fact that your are not alone, and that many of your friends have the same worries and fears?

§ Are you aware of the fact that many of these feeling will pass as adults help you to learn to cope with adversity?

§ Did you know that there are trained professionals who can help you in private settings?

Dr. Arlene Seal, PhD, Clinical Psychologist, addresses the psychological harm of asking children such questions in her article, Questions, Questions: Do survey’s influence children? 1

The general purpose of any particular survey is evident by its questions. However, in addition to eliciting information, do the questions also influence the respondent? The simple answer is YES!”

First of all, the questions direct focus on the survey’s topics—making the respondent seriously think about them. Secondly, surveys can actually stimulate curiosity about those topics and spark possibilities of which the respondent was previously unaware.

The extent and the detail of the information pursued by the questions is related to the degree of influence that can impact the respondent’s thinking and affective behavior. The critical point..is what attitudes and potential behaviors are being stimulated by the awareness...In such surveys, children’s attention are directed to these negative behaviors and the manner of questions in many instances subtly sets the expectations in that direction…such surveys are actually socializing children INTO the problems that are intended to be prevented. (Emphasis added)

Not only do the questions set expectations in this negative direction, but they also “normalize” the behavior in the mind of the child. Can anyone say child abuse?

1 Seal, Arlene, PhD. ”Questions, Questions: Do surveys influence children?” Education Advocate, July/August 2000, Vol., No.4.

Shhh-hh-h-h

The good Dr. Reading emphasized to his patient, Ms. Blanco, that she "shouldn't tell anybody" about his conduct, according to testimony in a Florida case that stripped him of his right to practice medicine. But she told someone anyway.

The word "medicine" should probably be in quotes, because he wasn't really practicing medicine. He was really a psychiatrist. It is always jarring to recall that psychiatrists have medical degrees. The only part of a medical degree a psychiatrist needs is the right to prescribe drugs. In medical schools they are famous as the ones who couldn't cut it in real medicine. Doctors know the type. They can't hack the surgery and they go crazy trying to help someone with an actual medical problem so they retreat to the theoretical and imaginary world of psychiatry where no patient ever really improves until they stop coming to therapy and get off their drugs.

Reading chaired the psychiatry department at the University of South Florida. The first official complaint came in 2003 when a female patient complained to police that she had been molested. Although she passed her lie detector test and he failed his, the case was dropped. Then other victims began to come forward.

Still it is remarkable what it takes to pierce the veil of medical authority. An allegation of rape or sexual harassment from any reputable young woman is taken seriously in most of the world, unless the accused is a psychiatrist. To overcome the altitude of that position in the legal arena, it usually takes a series of allegations. And in the end, the penalty is usually remarkably light. In this case, Reading lost his license, and was not convicted of any crime – allowing him to keep his pension.

But it’s not over. He now faces a series of civil suits re his psychiatric abuse.

TeenScreen

MENTAL HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CONTROL
By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
February 20, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

In Part 25 of this series, I referred to TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project) and TeenScreen. As an update on these, it is useful to look at the testimony of Ellen Liversidge to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November 2, 2005. A speech pathologist and board member of AHRP (Alliance for Human Research Protection), Ms. Liversidge testified that "Dr. Peter Weiden, who is a member of TMAP expert consensus panel, has charged that the guidelines are based on opinions, not data, and that bias due to funding sources undermines the credibility of the guidelines since most of the guidelines' authors have received support from the pharmaceutical industry.

The invalid screening process of TeenScreen ensures that mostly healthy normal children will be brought into government subsidized mental health dragnet. Once children acquire a psychiatric label they may be branded for life. For example, between 55 and 60 percent of foster children in at least three states---Texas, Massachusetts and Florida---are on psychotropic drugs starting as young as age three....The diagnostic criteria upon which mental health screening instruments rest are scientifically invalid, vague and entirely open to subjective interpretation. TeenScreen was tested on 1,729 children in seven New York City schools using passive parental consent and teen active consent, which is legally invalid. TeenScreen is fraught with suggestive insinuations of failure and self-doubt.

Such questions can lead vulnerable teenagers to obsess about perceived inadequacies....By raising the possibility that suicide may be an option, and that's one of the questions, screening might lead to suicidal thinking....TeenScreen promoters fail to disclose that the risk for children who are screened to be falsely labeled as suicidal or mentally ill is 84 percent....AHRP opposes psychiatric screening of children without active, informed parental consent. Consent of parents must be documented and given voluntarily without a hint of coercion. TeenScreen has attempted to sidestep parental consent by claiming passive parental consent, which is invalid....According to its website, as of October 25th of this year (2005), TeenScreen is actively operating in 460 locations in 42 states and Washington, DC."

Mental health screening is also promoted as identifying ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). However, serious warnings have accompanied drugs used to treat these. According to Evelyn Pringle's article, "ADHD Drugs---Cash Cow For Pharma" (LAWYERS AND SETTLEMENTS, February 13, 2006): "In a February 6, 2006, letter to acting FDA commissioner, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, U.S. Senator Charles Grassley pointed out that in September of 2005, the FDA had issued an alert to healthcare professionals regarding the use of Strattera (ADHD drug), after reviewing data showing an increase in suicidal thoughts in 12 separate studies, and directed Eli Lilly, to 'revise the labeling...to include a boxed warning and additional warning statements regarding an increased risk of suicidal thinking in children and adolescents.'

As an added pressure, Sen. Grassley asked for a complete list of names of participating panel members and a complete list of conflict disclosures for both the February 9-10, 2006, advisory committee and the March 22, 2006, Pediatric Advisory Committee....At the February 10 FDA advisory committee hearing, it was reported by Dr. Andrew Mosholder, a medical officer in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, that about 2.5 million children in this country, between the ages 4 and 17, currently take ADHD drugs....In 1991, schools began receiving educational grants of $400 annually for each ADHD child." Could this financial incentive be one of the reasons for the increase in children placed upon ADHD drugs?
The day before the FDA advisory committee hearings began, ABC News on February 8, 2006, covered an Associated Press report, "FDA reports 51 deaths of attention drug patients," by Andrew Bridges who revealed that "deaths of 51 U.S. patients who took widely prescribed drugs to treat Attention Deficit Disorder prompted regulators to start watching for heart attacks, high blood pressure and other problems in 2004, a report released on Wednesday said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff did not say the drugs were responsible for the fatalities, but they urged close monitoring for 'the rare occurrence of pediatric sudden death during stimulant therapy.'...The information was released one day ahead of an FDA advisory panel meeting on how best to study potential risks from the drugs, which include Shire Pharmaceuticals Group Plc's Adderall and Novartis AG's Ritalin....Use of drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, was controversial before the cardiac issue emerged, with many doctors and parents arguing the medicines are overprescribed....Through 2003, 24 deaths were reported from 1999 through 2003 among U.S. patients who took Adderall for ADHD, the FDA staff report said....Another 16 deaths were reported through 2003 in U.S. patients who took Ritalin or other ADHD drugs known as methylphenidates, the report said."

Further concerning ADHD, Vicky Dunkle (representing Ablechild of Pennsylvania) on February 10, 2006, had written testimony presented to the FDA that her daughter (Shaina) died on February 26, 2001, from drug toxicity. She wrote: "Parents are simply not being given the facts on these psychiatric labels and the recommended drugs' inherent dangers. Parents are all too frequently being pressured into placing their child on these psychotropic drugs by their child's school....We were never given full informed consent. We were never told that the label ADHD itself was both subjective and controversial or that the drug prescribed had many dangerous risks including death.

Desipramine was the drug given to my daughter and we were led to believe this drug was safe and effective in what was described to us as her 'treatment.' We were never informed that this drug was not FDA approved for children of Shaina's age, lacking both safety and effectiveness....Shaina died due to Desipramine toxicity. Little also did we know that we would be reading proof that there had been prior child deaths as far back as 1990 from this one drug. My husband (Steve) and I believed and trusted in the professionals and they only helped me bury our child at 10 years old....What is clear and definite to both my husband and me now is that if we would have been given the right information we would have NEVER placed our daughter on this drug.

If we had been informed correctly on the lack of objective testing used to determine this psychiatric label and the lack of science to back it as a true 'disease,' we would have NEVER placed our daughter on any drugs. We ask this panel to take the time to review the real risks involved in placing children on these drugs and ask yourselves, 'What if it had been my child or family member who was to die from one of these drugs prescribed?' 'What if I wasn't told the facts?' 'How would I feel?' More importantly, 'Does Death as a side effect outweigh any possible benefits?' At the very least, this panel must do something regarding the violation of informed consent rights occurring with the widespread use of these drugs being prescribed to children."

Testifying in person before the FDA was Clinton Libbey, an Ablechild volunteer, who told the hearing panel: "As a concerned parent, I investigated the drugs that were being considered for my son, many of which are being reviewed by this panel currently. What I found was misinformation and distortions pertaining to both the subjective psychiatric labels being assigned to our children and the drugs being prescribed to them....When dealing with drugs that have known side effects, the oath of first do no harm must be transformed to first do no harm without full informed consent....This is especially the case when the treatment may cause the one side effect that is irreversible---Death....I, for instance, was misinformed when several medical doctors told me that no one has died as a result of taking these drugs provided that they are taken in accordance with the dosage guidelines....Upon further investigation, I found parents who had lost their children due to these drugs with autopsy reports directly linking ADHD drugs with their children's deaths.

The fact is that children have died even though dosage recommendations on an approved label were strictly adhered....As a society, we must disclose potential side effects prior to treatment in order to guarantee an individual's right to full informed consent....While many say that there needs to be more research on these drugs, I, with the parents that make up Ablechild, many of whom are victims of the effects of these drugs, find that stronger warning labels and stiffer guidelines regulating full disclosure would be a more appropriate step. Furthermore, Medwatch filings should be mandatory for adverse reactions within the pediatric population....Please don't allow another child to lose her or his life without at least warning their parents."

According to Evelyn Pringle's article mentioned above, "On February 10, 2006, the Drug Safety and Risk Management advisory committee (of the FDA) said that ADHD drugs should carry the strongest warning label that they may be linked to an increased risk of death and injury." Pringle went on to warn that "for school age children, these drugs are providing a spring-board into early addiction."
--
Dennis Laurence Cuddy, historian and political analyst, received a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (major in American History, minor in political science). Dr. Cuddy has taught at the university level, has been a political and economic risk analyst for an international consulting firm, and has been a Senior Associate with the U.S. Department of Education.

Cuddy has also testified before members of Congress on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice. Dr. Cuddy has authored or edited twenty books and booklets, and has written hundreds of articles appearing in newspapers around the nation, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He has been a guest on numerous radio talk shows in various parts of the country, such as ABC Radio in New York City, and he has also been a guest on the national television programs USA Today and CBS's Nightwatch.

Now He Has Three Names

Now his name is Richard Edgar Henderson, Jr. We'll bet it was once "Richard Henderson" or "Dick Henderson". But as soon as you are charged with murder, you get three names. We're not sure why.

In 2001, Richard Edgar Henderson, Jr. took a gun to school with him at age 16. It was a felony. But he didn't go to jail. Instead they sent him off to mental health counselors. He's in jail now, though. Because on Thanksgiving Day in 2005 he killed his parents, his grandmother and his 11-year-old brother.

But wait! Richard Edgar Henderson, Jr. (or Dick, or whatever his name is) was already a handful when they pulled him in on the gun charge. He hadn't killed anybody, though. Let's follow the thought through.

In 2001: Dick takes a gun to school, gets caught. There is evidence that he is a disturbed young man. The judge sends him off to a mental health program. That should have helped him with his problems, right?

In 2005: He pulled out his gun and shot his family. Whoa! Guess the mental health program didn't do much good!

But the side note that caught our eye was a conversation between Dick and the judge, as reported in Florida's Herald Tribune:

"Have you ever been treated for any mental illness?" the judge asked.

"Yes, your honor, depression."

"Are you seeing a doctor right now for that?"

"Yes."

Henderson said he'd been seeing a doctor for several months.

He was taking a medication called BuSpar.

"It takes away my depression, gives me . . . me energy so I can do stuff."

Henderson also said he was taking sleeping pills.

"I put it under my tongue so I can sleep at night," he said.

So... Dick -- or Richard Edgar Henderson, Jr. (take your pick) was newly on psychiatric drugs -- for several months.

This is the pattern we see again and again. People are a little nuts, go to the psychs, get psych drugs, then they start killing and committing suicide and it all goes into the deep end real fast. This daffy situation is going to looked at with some mirth and amazement by future generations reading history books somewhere down the line.

"They did what?"

"They took disturbed people, and ordered them sent off to supposed experts who couldn't do them any good, then they gave them psychiatric drugs and made killers out of them."

"You're kidding?"

"Nope. They did that."

The attack on Big Tobacco was kid stuff

The attack on Big Tobacco was kid stuff. Whether you're for or against smoking and tobacco, you can't ignore the fact that the cigarette industry was gutted by the lawsuits over the last decades that portrayed the tobacco industry as willing to lie cheat and bring enormous economic and political pressure to push their products over the dead and dying bodies of their customers. Whether the outcome is just or not (maybe it was just but overdone -- I don't know) it worked. Smoking is no longer done in polite society. I remember a time when you could smoke anywhere. Elevators were a no-no because of some kind of "safety" excuse, but people carried lit cigarettes on elevators too. Conference rooms, restaurants, movie theatres, business offices, airplanes, were all candidates for a place to light up. There was no slightest thought, in most cases, whether you had to ask. If you were polite, you would try your best to make sure the other guy didn't sit in your smoke. Somehow, into that culture, enough of a shock was injected to change the culture. Now smokers quietly skulk off to the outdoors or their own homes and cars to light up. Lighting up a cigarette on an airplane (most of which are still outfitted with ashtrays at every seat) will get you an emergency landing and an unpleasant interview with the Homeland Security people at the very least, and probably a lot more trouble than that.

Now along comes the real villain. The cigarette companies are pikers. This is the 500-lb. gorilla of evil corporate cultures -- Big Pharma.

This writer is not anti-corporation or anti-corporate America. But there is such a thing as a bad guy. And in the corporate world, Big Pharma is a bad guy. It's like an intractable trouble-maker in the world of basketball, or a priest who likes little boys. It doesn't reflect on all basketball players or all priests, but this particular one is bad to the bone. And people are starting to figure it out. Especially those that work in the legal machine that brought down Big Tobacco. As seemingly normal people suddenly run out and shoot their friends or hang themselves in the garage after taking drugs that are supposedly designed to help with sanity, the bereft survivors and the lawyers who know how to put together class action lawsuits are teaming up for a wave of lawsuits that could be more like a tsunami.

And whether or not you liked what they did to Big Tobacco, you gotta admit this one is justice. How long ago did America turn its sober face on the story of the Columbine School massacre in Colorado, by two boys who were on psychiatric drugs, or the Prozac mother who drowned her own children, or the 12-year-old who shot his grandparents then burned the house down, or the Zoloft-laced wife of comedian Phil Hartman who inexplicably shot him, then herself. The list is very long, and growing daily. Big Tobacco might give you lung cancer eventually, but it was nothing like this.

But Big Pharma isn't going down without a fight. And the latest punch is a drug-industry sponsored law that is wending its way through congress shielding Big Pharma from state-level lawsuits. The specious argument is that because Big Pharma meets the requirements of a federal agency (the FDA) in producing their drugs, they can only be sued in a federal court. Read about it in this article by Stephen Pizzo.

Clever they are. Safe they seem. But Yoda say they will not be able to put it off forever. The actual crime here is enormous. There are individuals who have covered up the ill effects of these drugs very energetically and systematically for years and years while people died. It amounts to multiple counts of manslaughter, potentially. It's the simple truth. Sooner or later the house of cards is going to collapse.

Mothers Who Kill

The following statement was issued by the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights:

MOTHERS WHO KILL

Dear Friends,

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, 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.

For donations of $2,500 or more, you can still be included on the museum Donor Wall.

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.

Click here to donate online, or call 1-800-869-2247.

Or mail a check to:

CCHR International
6616 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Sincerely,
Samantha Garcia
CCHR International

Note: This letter is copyrighted with all rights reserved. Photocopying, telefaxing, e-mailing, reproduction, distribution or quotation are strictly prohibited without the written permission of CCHR.

Copyright © 2005 Citizens Commission on Human Rights. All Rights Reserved. Citizens Commission on Human Rights, CCHR and its logo are trademarks and service marks owned by Citizens Commission on Human Rights International.

TeenScreen – The Making of Mental Patients

TeenScreen – The Making of Mental Patients
By Sandra Lucas

In October, 2004, after taking TeenScreen, a 10-minute computer test developed in the psychiatric department of Columbia University, 16-year-old Chelsea Rhoades of Indiana was told she had two mental health problems, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and social anxiety disorder. The diagnoses were based upon Chelsea’s responses that she liked to help clean the house and didn’t “party” much.

Chelsea is one of countless children who get labeled with fraudulent diagnoses every day. The difference in her case is that her parents, who were unaware that TeenScreen had infiltrated their daughter’s school and had not given permission for the screening, reacted quickly. They filed a lawsuit against the officials of the high school who allowed the test to be administered and the TeenScreen program. In doing so, the Rhoades took a stand for all parents across the nation.

The unscientific nature of psychiatric labeling was admitted to by the American Psychiatric Association’s own president, Steven Sharfstein, when he stated on June 27, 2005, during an interview on the Today Show, “We do not have a clean cut lab test [for diagnosing mental illness or chemical imbalance of the brain.]”

His admission was quickly followed by another similar statement from psychiatrist Mark Graff, Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association Committee of Public Affairs, “Chemical imbalance: it’s a shorthand term really, it’s probably drug industry derived. We don’t have tests because to do it, you’d probably have to take a chunk of brain out of someone - not a good idea.” Graff did more than admit to there being no science behind the chemical imbalance theory. He also pointed out the incestuous relationship between the drug industries and psychiatry.

TeenScreen is definitely a child born of that union, nothing more than an unscientific written mental health survey which professes to discover “mental illnesses”, but in fact trolls for lifelong psychiatric patients in our schools.

TeenScreen has been cleverly sold to numerous schools across the country as a suicide prevention program with no scientific evidence backing up the claim. The 1996 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force found no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality.

The individuals pushing TeenScreen make every effort to hide evidence that mental health screening is of no use in combating teen suicide. In order to gain wide acceptance in our nation’s schools they paint youth suicide as an epidemic and their program as the cure-all.

According to the latest Census Bureau information, gathered in 2000, the U.S. population of 14-19 year olds was around 19,800,000 and suicide for that year accounted for 0.0008% of the total teen population. Each teen suicide is an unfathomable tragedy, yet the actual numbers prove that suicide is not an epidemic. In fact, suicide among American youth fell 25 percent in the last decade.

TeenScreen’s executives are well aware of the actual situation. Rob Caruano, former TeenScreen director, was quoted in the South Bend Tribune on December 22, 2004, “Teen Suicides, while tragic, are so rare that [any] study would have to be impossibly huge to show a meaningful difference in mortality between screened and unscreened students. You’d have to be screening almost the whole country to reach statistical significance.”

TeenScreen is far from being the solution. In fact, some experts agree that widespread screening will increase the number of teen suicides. Jane Pearson, PhD. who chairs the National Institute of Mental Health Suicide Research Consortium said, “ […] a prevention program designed for high-school aged youth found that participants were more likely to consider suicide a solution to a problem after the program than prior to the program...” She also stated, “[…] suicide is a very rare occurrence compared to other causes of deaths. […] when researchers have tried to predict suicide using as many known risk factors as possible, they are still unable to predict who will and who will not commit this act.”
The TeenScreen test is a 14-item, self-completion questionnaire. It usually takes 10 minutes to complete and is used to screen youths from ages 11 to 18 who read at a 6th grade level. It asks questions such as “have you often felt very nervous when you’ve had to do things in front of people?”, or, “Are you the kind of person who is often very tense, and finds it very hard to relax?”, or, “Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren’t interested in anything?”

One would be hard pressed to find a teenager who wouldn’t at one time or another answer yes to those sorts of questions. TeenScreen refuses to release copies of the questionnaire, even to parents and elected officials who have requested to see the test.

TeenScreen, in an effort to make the program appear innocuous, claims that it does not recommend or endorse any particular kind of treatment for the youth who are identified by the screening. But, in one of many conflicting statements Laurie Flynn, TeenScreen’s director, reveals that the long-term goal of TeenScreen is not just identification, but treatment for those in need, and that parents of youths found to be at possible risk are notified and helped in identifying and connecting to local mental health services.

Particularly distressing is the data released by a recent survey, printed in JAM Academy Adolescent Psychiatry 2002, showing that nine out of ten children who see a psychiatrist are given psychiatric drugs.

A recent survey showed that between 1995 and 1999, the use of antidepressants increased 151% for 7 to 12 year olds and 580% for children under six. Between 1998 and 2003, there was another 49% increase in children taking antidepressants. Sales of the drugs have now reached more than $13 billion a year.

To make matters worse, on September 15, 2004, the FDA stated that a causal role for antidepressants in inducing suicidality had been established in pediatric patients, and that children given psychiatric drugs were twice as likely to commit suicide as those given a placebo. As a result of this finding, the FDA ordered drug manufacturers to place a Black-Box warning on all antidepressant labels. The Black-Box warning is the most serious measure that the FDA can take regarding a prescription medication, short of an outright ban. That initial Black-Box warning label requirement has since been followed by 15 more official warnings on psychiatric drugs.

Eileen Dannemann of the National Coalition of Organized Women describes the TeenScreen approach as a telling omission. “We’ve got eight million American kids on psychiatric drugs,” she said. “While TeenScreen asks the kids if they are using street drugs, they omit to find out about the use of psych drugs. Antidepressants play a major role in youth suicide. If [TeenScreen] really wanted to help they would worry about that. The fact that they don’t shows their real intention.”

It becomes obvious that teens will not benefit from TeenScreen. The question that begs to be asked is “Who will benefit?”

Psychologist, author and director of Texans for Safe Education, John Breeding, doesn’t mince words, “TeenScreen is nothing more than a government sponsored marketing tool created to serve the interests of the corporate pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists. It is a shame and a disgrace that the United States is putting millions of children on psychiatric drugs today. This is obviously not enough to satisfy the insatiable greed of big pharma. We must stop TeenScreen and protect our children from more deadly poisoning.”

TeenScreen is the brainchild of psychiatrist David Shaffer of Columbia University. Shaffer is a paid consultant for pharmaceutical companies Hoffman la Roche, Wyeth, and GlaxoSmithKline. Shaffer is also the director of the Division of Child Psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. A New York Post article dated January 31, 1999, State Testing Prozac on 6-Year olds; Parents Not Told About Risks Including Suicide and Mania, read, “The New York State Psychiatric Institute in Manhattan is performing little-known but extensive Prozac experimentation on troubled kids as young as 6 years old, according to internal records. While the potentially deadly danger was cited in the researchers’ documents, it was not included in the consent forms given to children and their parents to read and sign.”

Laurie Flynn, the current director of TeenScreen is also the former director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). While Flynn was the director of NAMI, a group that bills itself as “a grassroots organization of individuals with brain disorders and their family members”, NAMI received $11.72 million from various drug companies between 1996 and mid-1999. One drug company went as far as “loaning” one of its executives to NAMI, still paying for his salary while he worked at NAMI’s headquarters.

In view of Flynn’s cozy relationships with drug companies, officials of the program are working hard at minimizing any link to the drug companies by saying that they are not funded by drug money. Yet, the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities newsletter, Update - May/June 2002, revealed that a recent local TeenScreen survey was partly funded by pharmaceutical giant, Eli Lilly.

The goal of TeenScreen is one item they are not afraid to reveal: to provide mental health screening for every single American teen. If TeenScreen’s goal is achieved, all 19,800,000 youths will receive a “mental health checkup”. Considering that 71% of teens who were screened in Colorado were labeled with a mental disorder, should TeenScreen succeed in its goal, it is possible that 71% of our teens would end up being labeled. This means that no less than 14,058,000 American youth would end up labeled mentally ill. Since nine out of ten children who receive “treatment” are given mind-altering psychiatric drugs, the inevitable conclusion is that 12,652,200 would be drugged.

The average price of a prescription for psychiatric drugs is $102 per month. TeenScreen’s endeavors would increase the pharmaceutical companies’ monthly revenues by $1,290,524,400.

To ensure success, TeenScreen officials prefer the Passive Consent form which requires parents to return a form to the school only if they do not want their child to participate in the screening. Flynn is quick to deny promoting the use of Passive Consent to schools. However, Flynn’s statement, like many others, is far removed from the truth. Numerous high schools only use Passive Consent forms and, as in the case of Flager Palm Coast High School in Florida, the passive acceptance style was discussed by school officials to increase the numbers of participants from 50% for Active Consent to near 95% for Passive.

Incentives such as pizza or movie coupons are distributed to the kids because, as TeenScreen co-director, Leslie McGuire, said during a national conference, “Getting the kids to buy-in is such an essential thing because for the most part, you’re distributing the consent forms to the kids to bring home to their parents and bring them back. So you have to get their buy-in, you have to get them interested.”

TeenScreen goes as far as to advise local schools on how to circumvent federal law. The Protection of Pupil Rights Act (PPRA) protects the rights of parents by making instructional materials available for their inspection if the materials are to be used in connection with a survey, analysis, or evaluation in which their child is participating. It also requires written parental consent before minors are required to take part in such a survey, analysis, or evaluation.

The TeenScreen News (Fall 2003, Vol. 2, Issue 2) instructs schools that making the TeenScreen survey a part of the curriculum will help them get around the PPRA, “[…] if the screening will be given to all students, as opposed to some, it becomes part of the curriculum and no longer requires active parental consent.”

But even if active consent forms were used for all children being tested by TeenScreen, it still would provide no protection for unsuspecting parents. Before parents can make a truly educated decision they must be told all the facts. Then, and only then, can they provide informed consent.

A true informed consent form would tell parents the following:

• Chemical imbalance of the brain is only a theory with no science of proof to back it up
• While screening is not a scientific and medical test it might still result in the child being labeled depressed or mentally ill
• Should the child be labeled, the likely recommended course of treatment will be psychiatric drugs
• Psychiatric drugs are known to cause children to commit suicide
• Should parents refuse the recommended course of treatment, a referral to the local child welfare agency might be made, which could result in the child being taken away from home and forcibly drugged

Flynn has made it clear that she will go to any length in getting acceptance for TeenScreen, including perjury. While testifying in front of a Senate Committee in Washington, she claimed to be in partnership with the University of South Florida in piloting district wide mental Health screenings of 9th graders in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, Florida.

Wilcox Clayton, Pinellas County School Board Superintendent, was quick to set the record straight. He emphatically stated that no such screening was taking place and added, “If this person [Laurie Flynn] said what they allegedly said, I would have serious reservations about partnering with such an organization.”

Flynn and Shaffer have proven that what they care about is the money they receive from the drug companies, not our children.

TeenScreen is designed only to increase psychiatric and drug company revenues by turning normal children into lifelong mental patients. Now is the time for anyone who cares about children and the future to step up and demand that mental health screening not be allowed in any schools at any time.


Sandra Lucas is the Executive Director of the Utah Chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a mental health watchdog group. She was born in Sydney, Australia, raised on the French South Pacific island of New Caledonia. She moved to the United States at the age of 15 and has lived in Salt Lake City with her family since 1992. She can be reached at lucsan (at) yahoo.com

www.teenscreenfacts.com
www.teenscreentruth.com
www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen/html

ADD Drugs Under Attack

FDA to Examine New Ways to Study ADD Drugs
By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 4, 7:35 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Reports of sudden deaths, strokes, heart attacks and hypertension in both children and adults taking drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are spurring new government study into the medications' safety.

Sales of drugs to treat ADHD have increased sharply in recent years, with use growing at a faster rate among adults than children, according to a recent study by Medco Health Solutions, a prescription benefit manager. Spending on ADHD drugs soared from $759 million in 2000 to $3.1 billion in 2004, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information and consulting firm.
The Food and Drug Administration said it had received reports of what it called "serious adverse events" — including deaths — in association with the therapeutic use of the drugs. The agency considers the reports "rare though serious," FDA spokeswoman Susan Bro said Wednesday.

The FDA's Canadian counterpart, Health Canada, yanked the ADHD drug Adderall XR from the market for six months last year in response to reports of 20 sudden deaths and 12 strokes in adults and children using the drug. A number of the cases involved children with structural heart defects.

Here is the link for the complete story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060105/ap_on_he_me/attention_deficit;_ylt=AqjMzYnVeYTVEgCTRWEMIeOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3czJjNGZoBHNlYwM3NTE

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.