CCHR INTERNATIONAL

50 Years Ago Thomas Szasz Rocked The World of Psychiatry: The Difference Between A Disease and a Disorder

By Dr. Jeffrey Schaler
Assistant Professor of Justice, Law & Society
March, 2010

The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz It is fifty years now since Thomas Szasz rocked the world of psychiatry by writing The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. His work continues to have a profound impact on how we think about disease, behavior, liberty, justice, responsibility, and most important of all, what it means to be human. Szasz has shown us how the idea of mental illness is used by the state to deprive innocent people of freedom, and guilty persons of justice. Without the state involved, the medicalization of behavior means nothing.

He has shown us how the idea of mental illness functions as legal fiction within our legal system. In this sense, the idea of mental illness has been used much as the idea that African American slaves were considered three-fifths of a person. Persons labeled as mentally ill are now considered three-fifths of a person. It is as if there was a postscript at the bottom of the Bill of Rights that reads: “PS: For mentally healthy people only.”

The courts will not allow the idea of mental illness to be disproved, in much the same way that the idea that slaves could be three-fifths person was not allowed to be disproved. Today, mental illness as legal fiction maintains the institution of psychiatric slavery.

The Theraputic State by Thomas Szasz Mental illness diagnoses have more to do with politics and science fiction, than medicine and science. Take for example the idea that people with a homosexual orientation are mentally ill. The category was excluded from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – our contemporary “Malleus Maleficorum,” or “Hammer of Witches” – the same way it was included, for political reasons, not scientific reasons. No one discovered that homosexuality was a disease, and no one discovered that it isn’t a disease. They pronounced it as such, in each case, because of political pressure.

About two years after The Myth of Mental Illness was first published, Szasz published another book that has had an equally profound impact on freedom and responsibility. In Law, Liberty and Psychiatry he predicted the following:

“Although we may not know it, we have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of social control.”

Thomas Szasz wrote that in 1963.

We live in a Therapeutic State today. Moral management now masquerades as medicine. The state dictates a “duty to be healthy.”

Seventy years ago another state, Nazi Germany, dictated a “duty to be healthy.” Back then, murder masqueraded as medicine. I think you all know what I’m referring to. We don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Today, good health practices have become a social responsibility. Bad health practices are viewed as socially irresponsible behavior. When health and illness are applied to the mind and behavior, this means that people must think and speak and act the right way. Otherwise, they may end up in a prison called a mental hospital.

I am one of the few college professors in the United States, if not in the world, who teaches Szasz’s ideas on a regular basis in college. And in every course, my students have always said at least two things to me: This stuff by Szasz is changing my life. And why hasn’t anyone ever taught his work in class before?

Because professors are punished for teaching Szasz; they can lose their jobs if they do so. I know. I have the scars to prove it. If you read my book, Szasz Under Fire, you will see how the same thing almost happened to Thomas Szasz. He came a hair away from being fired for teaching Thomas Szasz!

The Myth of Mental Illness and the subsequent Law, Liberty and Psychiatry are not so unsophisticated as to deny the existence of behaviors that people find disturbing. Quite to the contrary, Szasz’s writings clarify the difference between behavior and disease, description and explanations for behavior, and the consequences of labeling behavior as a disease within the arenas of law, medicine, social and public policy.

Szasz has simply pointed out what pathologists have always known: A disease refers to cellular pathology. Period. A behavior cannot be a disease. And he has also fought endlessly for the rights of persons labeled mentally ill. He will be ninety years old on April 15. He is still writing one book after another. He writes books faster than I can read them!

He has also shown us how behavior is strategic, the expression of what philosophers call moral agency. Today’s neuroscientists, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have attempted to reduce man to the category of things. They deny the existence of moral agency. Let me give you one simple example of how this is so.

Conventional wisdom, particularly as it appears in the media, leads people to believe that brains cause behavior, as if the brain could act. Psychiatrists and the neuroscientists they aspire emulate, regard man as a machine, an incredibly complicated machine, but a machine nevertheless. Everything that is human is ultimately reducible to electrical and chemical interactions.

This is especially so when it comes to socially unacceptable, abnormal, disturbing and criminal behavior. Bad brains are said to cause bad behavior. Bad brains, in this, sense refers to problems in the structure and function of the brain.

Now if bad brains cause bad behavior, it only follows that good brains must cause good behavior. In other words, brains that work correctly, brains that are structurally and functionally healthy, cause good and admirable behaviors.

While psychiatrists try to excuse bad behaviors by ultimately blaming bad brains, they inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally) are removing personal responsibility for the good things that people do. When someone commits a heroic deed, for example, shows courage, compassion, and care for others at great personal expense and with great risk of danger, the person is then not choosing to do what is clearly important to do.

The brain, according to this way of thinking, is causing the person to do this good thing, in the same way that a bad brain causes someone to prey on others. There is no need to praise someone for his altruism, heroism, and courage, his brain made him do it.

Some psychiatrists have equated human behavior with seizure activity: An alcoholic reaching for that drink too many is having an epileptic seizure. So is the mother sacrificing her own life for the life of her child.

What is left of the person, if this is so? What is left of the person if brains cause bad and good behavior? What is that represented by the pronoun “I?” What happens to moral agency?

Nothing. From this way of thinking, human beings are reduced to the category of things. Things do not choose, they are caused. Things do not feel. Things are not alive. Things have no conscience, no values, no morality, no ethics. And most important, things do not care, for self or others.

This is the legacy of psychiatry and neuroscience today, when it comes to entertaining biological explanations for behavior. Mind is equated with brain, behavior with disease, good with bad, morality with medicine, and ethics with mechanics. In other words, there is no soul. That which we consider uniquely human is destroyed by psychiatry and neuroscience.

How does this fit into law? Through a simple equation. Liberty and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. If we increase one, we increase the other. If we decrease one, we decrease the other. The more free man is, the more responsible he must be. The more responsible man is, the more he is captain of his own ship.

What institutional psychiatry as an extension of the state would have us believe is this: The more we decrease responsibility, the more we increase freedom. In other words, the more you allow us to be in charge of your life, the more you abdicate responsibility, the more you embrace the paternalism we say is good for you, the more you will be free. For obedience to authority is the greatest political virtue.

What then must we do? Szasz has done his job, what is ours? I believe our job is this: We get psychiatry out of the courthouse. We do not need to destroy psychiatry. It will destroy itself if we sever its invisible umbilical cord to the mother-state. Once psychiatry is available to people by choice only, it will die a natural death. Very few people will seek out psychiatrists if they cannot hire and fire them at will.

Psychiatrists know this. That is why they are so afraid of Thomas Szasz.

And that is why they are so afraid of those who understand what I am saying here. As I tell my students every semester, “don’t believe a word I say. Just think about it and come to your own conclusion.” That kind of independence and autonomy scares institutional psychiatrists and those who run the therapeutic state.

It should.

Jeffrey A. Schaler is an assistant professor of justice, law, and society at American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. Professor Schaler’s work is focused on the “therapeutic state”—the union of medicine and state. He completed his doctoral and master’s degrees in human development at the University of Maryland College Park, where the major emphasis of his research was addiction and social policy. Dr. Schaler is particularly interested in how research in the behavioral sciences is interpreted and applied in public, social, and legal policy arenas. He writes and speaks extensively on the relationship between liberty and responsibility.

Dr. Thomas Szasz is a Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, State University of New York. He is a well known critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry and has authored more than 30 books on the subject including the Manufacture of Madness, The Myth of Mental Illness and The Therapeutic State. He is the co-founder of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) and has said of the organization, “We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before.”

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Our U.S. Military: Betrayed and Drugged

“Psychiatrists under contract with the Veteran Affairs—in my opinion—are legal drug dealers who almost took my life.”
- Former Marine Scout Sniper

By Shane Ellison
Award-winning scientist, Masters Degree in Organic Chemistry
March 31, 2010

Chad was a Marine Scout Sniper who served two tours in Iraq. Upon being honorably discharged as a Sgt. in 2007, he summoned the courage to ask for help in dealing with the images and emotions that gnawed on him from being dropped into combat. Like so many of his peers, the help he was given was “meds.” Although Chad was used to putting his life at risk, he never expected that his life would be more directly threatened by the “treatment” he was offered—psychiatric drugs.

After a single day of “following doctor’s orders,” Chad felt things were starting to look up. He seemed to be more cognizant, and the weight of daily struggles was lifted. But, as he describes it, things “quickly flip-flopped.”

“As time passed, I began changing into someone I wasn’t. Once a focused, motivated sniper, my reaction time became stagnant. My thought process became dry and lethargic, while my independence drifted. I became unable to make decisions on my own and reluctantly found myself relying on others in ways I had never done before. I had become a sort of medicated drone. All emotion turned into apathy and I found myself lackadaisical and eventually felt meaningless. That’s where it got really bad for me, and it’s hard to talk about now…. It was as if my brain chemistry went whack.”

This bleak scenario is becoming all too common for today’s military. The psychiatric death threat is becoming riskier than combat. In 2010, Time magazine reported that, “During the month of January, more soldiers committed suicide than were killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.” Mystified by the death toll among troops, Army Chief of Staff George Casey said that, “The fact of the matter is, we just don’t know why suicides have increased.”

A group of U.S. Senators have finally raised concern that the use of antidepressants and other prescription drugs are on the rise in the military, particularly among troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. FDA has warned these drugs can cause worsening depression, mania, psychosis, suicidal and homicidal ideation. Senator Jim Webb, D-Va., who led the recent Senate Armed Services Committee’s hearing in Washington, said the apparent increase in prescription drugs is “on its face, pretty astounding and troubling.” In fact, Department of Defense statistics show that from 2005 to 2008, there was a 400 percent increase in the prescription of antidepressants and other drugs used to treat anxiety. And a 2007 Army report showed that about 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq and 17 percent of those in Afghanistan were taking antidepressants or sleeping pills.

The suicide trend is not inexplicable, and must be highlighted if troops like Chad are to be saved from the psychiatric death threat. Like the loss of power to a car that results from a broken fuse, mental circuitry is shut off with each and every dose of psychiatric medication. The latest cloning techniques and laboratory methods show this to be the result of “neurotransmitter hijacking,” which scrambles brain circuitry, leaving users like Chad feeling “dry and lethargic,” in times of deep emotional turmoil.

Once neurotransmitter hijacking takes place, users become fully under the spell of psychiatry. The brain can become so scrambled that all normal reality and reason are overwritten by a new confusing and violent agenda. A new personality arises—one with homicidal and suicidal tendencies. Commenting on the biochemical fiasco, CNN publicized that, “Antidepressant drugs actually create a perilous brain imbalance.” Chad barely escaped.

“Rebounding on and off the drugs, I reached the darkest point in my life, strangely enough at home. I packed up my ghillie suit—the same thing I used to camouflage myself as a sniper in enemy territory—and hiked into the wilderness late at night, where no one would find me. I held my .45 cal pistol while attempting the unspeakable…many things raced through my mind, and at the forefront were feelings of worthlessness and my inability to relate to anyone, even myself. As a combat decorated Marine, it’s not something I’m proud of. But it’s a reality that seems to be more common among my peers, and it’s scary as hell.… To this day, I’m not sure what stopped me, probably an act of God. I walked backed vowing to reclaim my life – with everything I had. And, since my mental health declined so drastically since getting on the meds, I felt that getting off them was the first place to start.”

No doubt, combat leads to emotional stress beyond what the rest of us can concede. Listening to the combat experience of Chad paints painful images in my own mind. It’s no wonder indelible scars are left on the minds of our troops. And rather than help them cope, they are literally being drugged to death in a large-scale experiment that goes ignored. Former military psychiatrist, Dr. Grace Jackson, substantiated this stating that, “It’s really a large-scale experiment. We are experimenting with changing people’s cognition and behavior.”

Once off the drugs, Chad’s escape came from getting back to basics—really basic. He starts each day with rigorous exercise and ends it with a deep sleep, induced by L-tryptophan and valerian. His diet is fortified with whey isolate twice per day with meals that consist of unprocessed foods. Sugar and alcohol have been reduced to an absolute minimum. Sauna treatments are regular, and real therapy comes from writing and talking to others who share his experience, as well as giving back in the form of support. He knows his story is only “one of thousands” and that other veterans need help.

Today, Chad has earned his bachelor’s degree—with honors—in a record 2.5 years. At the same time, he founded a Veterans center, which serves as a hub at his Alma Mater to offer support in all matters that relate to being a vet. And when he can, he helps others heed his warning about the military death threat: “Psychiatrists under contract with the Veteran Affairs—in my opinion—are legal drug dealers who almost took my life.”

Shane Ellison is the bestselling author of Over-The-Counter Natural Cures and holds a masters degree in drug design (organic chemistry). He is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his studies in biochemistry and physiology.

For international drug regulatory warnings about psychiatric drugs causing violence and suicide go to:

http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/

For more by Shane Ellison, go to:

http://www.cchrint.org/videos/experts/shane-ellison/

For more information on the current U.S. Senate investigation into this topic see related posts below.

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Meet the Psychiatrist Pushing For A Brave New World of Pre-Drugging Kids—Patrick McGorry

By CCHR International
May 21, 2010

One of the most controversial proposed disorders for the upcoming revision of psychiatry’s billing bible of mental disorders, (the DSM-5) is Psychosis Risk Syndrome (PRS) a “mental disorder” that, if voted into DSM, would confirm the allegations that psychiatry is manufacturing a Brave New World for itself—heavily backed by Big Pharma—of drugging children before they develop a “mental illness.” Already criticized for the millions of children being needlessly drugged and the lack of scientific criteria to substantiate any mental diagnosis as a legitimate medical condition, some psychiatrists now want the power to pull out their crystal ball and predict the onset of a psychosis and drug it before it has even occurred. And perhaps the strongest proponent is Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry.

Even psychiatrist Allen Frances, former chairman of the previous DSM task force expressed alarm over the proposed diagnosis and its repercussions should it be legitimized, stating, PRS “stands out as the most ill-conceived and potentially harmful.” The Syndrome fails badly on all 3 counts, he says:

“1. It would misidentify many teenagers who are not really at risk for psychosis;

2. The treatment they would most often receive (atypical antipsychotic medication) has no proven efficacy; but,

3. It does have definite dangerous complications.”

Frances adds: “Drug company marketing would influence parents and clinicians to be especially alert to any strangeness in teenagers.” False positives could be as high as 70-90 percent.[i] This can only lead to greater numbers of children and adolescents being harmfully drugged—already one of the major criticisms against psychiatry and a point of contention among many psychiatrists today.

Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, speaking at the APA convention in New Orleans, as a cheerleader for “early intervention” (i.e. pre-drugging) is undeterred. Despite the unpredictability and risk of the drugs prescribed to treat PRS, McGorry wants to go full steam ahead, increasing the number of children being placed on extremely dangerous and even lethal drugs. It should come as no surprise that McGorry is a paid consultantfor, and has received speaker’s fees from AstraZenecca, Janssen-Cilag, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer.[ii]

The theory of PRS wasn’t McGorry’s. He credits Dr. Ewen Cameron, the Canadian psychiatrist who became infamous in the 1980s after it was revealed he had performed cruel and brain-damaging experiments on his patients in the 1950s and 1960s with funding from the CIA.[iii] However, McGorry tested it in a world-first trial. Another study he conducted in 2002 was funded with an unrestricted grant from Janssen-Cilag and supported by pharmaceutical company-funded groups NARSAD and the Stanley Foundation, as well as several Australian agencies. McGorry and colleagues predictably found that risperidone (Risperdal)—made by Janssen—reduced the risk of “transition to psychosis” in young people.[iv] Risperdal has been linked to Type 2 diabetes.

In Australia, McGorry’s Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Center’s (EPPIC) preventive treatment center for young people, PACE, receives drug company funding from Janssen-Cilag. Much of the policy development embodied in the Australian Clinical Guidelines has come out of EPPIC research programs. As Richard Gosden, Ph.D., a highly respected Australian author and academic stated: “This may have paid off handsomely for the company…. It may not be coincidental that a half page of the Clinical Guidelines is dedicated to dosage recommendations for using risperidone in first-episode psychosis. The Clinical Guidelines do not extend these dosage recommendations to include other schizophrenia drugs and the recommendations for risperidone give the appearance of an official endorsement of the drug.”^[v]

McGorry’s theory has psychiatry’s skeptics and even psychiatrists aghast:

One respected American research group equated the practice of pre-drugging children to “performing mastectomies on women who are at risk of—but do not have—breast cancer.” [vi]

Honorary Professor Anthony Pelosi from the Department of Psychiatry, Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, stated, “So far,evidence from randomized trials does not support the use ofpsychological therapies or drugs as preventive interventions.”[vii] Further, “After teachers, college counselors, and familieswere encouraged to refer young people with possibly prodromal [early] symptoms directly to the same clinic for the same care plans…almost 90% were receiving unnecessary ‘preventive’ interventions.”^[viii]

Fellow Australian psychiatrist Niall McLaren says the diagnostic criteria for PRS “has no scientific validity whatsoever…it can never be reliable and…will have huge unforeseen consequences.” Essentially, it means “putting large numbers of teenagers and young adults under the long-term supervision and control of psychiatrists” and that “supervision” includes the “aggressive, indefinite prescription of antipsychotic drugs.” It is the “clearest example I know of pseudoscience. Not since [lobotomies] has psychiatry stumbled so far from the principle of Primum, non nocere. First, do no harm.”^[ix]

Dr. Richard Warner, professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, counters the idea that science drives McGorry’s pre-disorder assessment, stating that the screening instrument he uses “is not that accurate in routine use.” Further, “McGorry speculates that a variety of interventions may be effective in preventing schizophrenia in high-risk cases…. Given the expected number of false positives, the potential for harm is significant,” stated Dr. Warner. [x]

Dr. Jerald Block, a US psychiatrist writing in Bioethics Forum, reported that “preventive pharmacology” (which McGorry, et al. practice) is “ethically questionable territory” because the treatments given “frequently have side effects and complications” and “you are potentially harming people.” The symptoms used to identify them as at risk of schizophrenia are “also remarkably common…adolescence is a period of life that is normally marked by tumultuous changes in personality.”^[xi]

Melissa Raven, psychiatric epidemiologist and policy analyst, adjunct lecturer in Public Health at Flinders University, South Australia, and David Webb, board member of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and working with the research/policy office with the Australia Federation of Disability Organizations, were published last month, writing: “McGorry’s campaign is part of a wider push to promote the medicalization of mental health (for which psychosocial wellbeing is a better term).” “Further doubts must be raised about McGorry’s agenda when you see the substantial funding his organization (Orygen Youth Health) receives from the pharmaceutical industry and also from the US Stanley Foundation, which is notorious for its particularly aggressive approach to the detention and mandatory treatment of people labeled with psychiatric disorders.” He has “personally received funding from many manufacturers of antipsychotics, frequently reports no conflicts of interest, particularly in his many recent Medical Journal of Australia articles, including a supplement on early intervention that repeatedly advocates the use of antipsychotics.”^[xii]

Psychosis Risk Syndrome is nothing more than psychiatrists with conflicts of interest drumming up more business at the risk of teenage lives, while increasing the profits for the pharmaceutical industry they serve.

[i] Allen Frances, M.D., “DSM5 ‘Psychosis Risk Syndrome’–Far Too Risky,” Psychology Today, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201003/dsm5-psychosis-risk-syndrome-far-too-risky.

[ii] http://www.mhanet.ca/documents/2008/Research-Colloquium/0920%20-%20Keynote%20MCGORRY.pdf; http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695.

[iii] Richard Gosden, Ph.D., “Pre-Psychotic Treatment for Schizophrenia: Preventive Medicine, Social Control, or Drug Marketing Strategy?” Ethical Human Sciences and Services, Vol 1, No. 2, Summer 1999, pp. 165-177, http://sites.google.com/site/richardgosden/ehss.

[iv] Arch Gen Psychiatry, Vol 59, Oct. 2002, http://www.meb.uni-bonn.de/psychiatrie/zebb/literatur/mcgorry.pdf.

[v] Richard Gosden, Ph.D., “Pre-Psychotic Treatment for Schizophrenia: Preventive Medicine, Social Control, or Drug Marketing Strategy?” Ethical Human Sciences and Services, Vol 1, No. 2, Summer 1999, pp. 165-177, http://sites.google.com/site/richardgosden/ehss.

[vi] http://www.ministryoflies.com/pdf-articles/Yale-Lilly.pdf.

[vii] Anthony Pelosi, “Head to Head, Is early intervention in the major psychiatric disorders justified? No,” BMJ 2008;337:a710, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

[viii] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

[ix] Niall McLaren, M.D., “Psychosis Risk Syndrome (PRS),” 14 May 2010 (soon to be published).

[x] Richard Warner, MB, DPM, is director of Colorado Recovery in Boulder, Colorado, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, “Early intervention in psychosis: Future or fad?” Centre for Addiction and Mental Health website, http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Winter_2007-08/futureorfad_crcuwinter0708.html.

[xi] http://www.ahrp.org/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=386; http://ww.bioethicsforum.org/ethics-of-preventive-psychopharmacologic-treatments.asp.

[xii] David Webb, Melissa Raven, “McGorry’s ‘early intervention’ in mental health: a prescription for disaster,” Online Opinion, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10267.

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DSM Panel Members Still Getting Pharma Funds

Despite promises to cut back on Pharma funds, 56% of DSM V panel members have reported industry ties— Zero improvement over the percent of DSM-IV members.

By CCHR International
May 21, 2010

Due to Senate investigations into the American Psychiatric Association, psychiatrists have promised to cut back on their conflicts of interest (pharma funds), but of the current DSM task force members, those who will be deciding on the holy grail of psychiatric disorders (DSM) and what constitutes a “mental illness” are still heavily funded by Pharma. In fact, there is no improvement over cutting down the number of panel members who are getting paid by industry over the last DSM revision in 1994. It was 56% then and its 56% now. So much for psychiatry’s promises…

Former APA president Nada Stotland stated: “We are in the midst of a revolution caused by public and legislative concern about the influence of the for-profit sector….” [Emphasis added] Part of that public pressure for the APA to disclose its conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies was driven by Lisa Cosgrove Ph.D. et al’s study of DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR committee members, which found that of the 170 members, 56% had one or more financial associations with companies in the pharmaceutical industry. Pharma’s psychotropic drug profits have soared commensurately with the increased numbers of disorders voted into the DSM.

Of the 137 DSM-V panel members who have posted disclosure statements, 56% have reported industry ties—no improvement over the percent of DSM-IV members.

Writing in Psychiatric Times (March 6, 2010), Cosgrove and Harold J. Bursztajn, MD, stated: “Although the APA recently announced that it would phase out the visibly industry-supported educational programs, the organization has remained curiously silent about acknowledging and monitoring industry funding of the 2 philanthropic arms of the APA—the American Psychiatric Foundation (APF) and the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE).”

APF’s 15-member board of directors includes 4 high-level executives from pharmaceutical companies that either manufacture drugs recommended by APA (i.e.; in APA’s Clinical Practice Guidelines [CPG]) or have products in development targeted for mental disorders.

Other board members include 2 more with industry ties and a senior vice president at one of the largest public relations agencies in the world, whose clients include 6 drug companies.

APF’s corporate advisory council comprises pharmaceutical companies that contribute significant funding to APF and manufacture drugs recommended in the APA’s CPG; 6 of the companies give $40,000 “and above” per year.

APIRE, like APF, does not require disclosure of financial conflicts of interests, yet 9 of 16 of its board members have industry ties.

At least a quarter of the presenters at this year’s APA congress have significant pharmaceutical company ties.

The APA should sever all ties to pharmaceutical company interests. The US Senate Finance Committee has investigated at least a dozen APA psychiatrists over their undisclosed financial ties to drug companies, including:

Investigated - Alan Schatzberg, APA President: Owned $6 million equity in and as co-founder of drug developer Corcept Therapeutics while principle investigator in an NIH-funded, Stanford-based study of Corcept’s drug mifepristone. Schatzberg initiated the patent application on mifepristone to “treat psychotic depression” in 1997. In 2008, after months of Congressional scrutiny, Schatzberg stepped down from his position as principal investigator in the study.

Investigated – Joseph Biederman: Chief of the Program in Pediatric Psychopharmacology, Massachusetts General Hospital, he earned $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers between 2000 and 2007, most of which was not disclosed to Harvard University officials. In March 2009, court documents showed Biederman promised Johnson & Johnson in advance that his studies of their antipsychotic Risperidone would prove effective when used on preschool age children.

Investigated - Melissa DelBello: Research psychiatrist, University of Cincinnati failed to disclose all her Pharma earnings. In 2002, she was the lead author of a study that reported patients benefited from Seroquel by AstraZeneca, which paid her $180,000. She disclosed receiving $100,000 from the company between 2005 and 2007, but federal investigators discovered it was more than double that—$238,000.

Investigated - Frederick Goodwin: Former NIMH director, Goodwin earned at least $1.3 million between 2000 and 2007 for marketing lectures to physicians on behalf of drug makers, which he did not reveal to the producers of “The Infinite Mind” that he hosted on the National Public Radio during its 10-year run. NPR removed the program.

Investigated - Charles Nemeroff: Perhaps the most egregious case exposed was that of Dr. Nemeroff, chair of Emory University’s department of psychiatry and, along with Schatzberg, coeditor of the influential Textbook of Psychopharmacology. He received more than $960,000 from GSK, but reported to Emory $35,000. He earned a further $2.8 million from various drug makers but failed to report at least $1.2 million. Nemeroff resigned his position at Emory in 2008.

Investigated - Martin Keller: Professor of Psychiatry at Brown University. His (and others’) Study 329 (ghostwritten by a GSK rep.) on Paxil use in children allegedly misrepresented data and suppressed information linking Paxil to suicidal tendencies. Keller didn’t disclose the full extent of his financial ties with companies to medical journals that published his research. In another matter, following a criminal investigation, Brown University returned $300,170 to the state of Massachusetts for research Keller’s department never performed. Keller stepped down as chair of psychiatry at Brown.

Investigated - Augustus John Rush: Former Vice-Chairman of the Dept. of Clinical Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He reported only $3,000 of the nearly $18,000 that Eli Lilly paid him in 2001. Between 2000 and 2007, he failed to report another $12,000 from various drug companies.

Investigated - Karen Wagner: Professor, University of Texas Medical Branch failed to disclose more than $160,000 in payments from GSK, reporting only $18,000. Wagner worked on NIH-funded studies on the use of Paxil to treat teen depression and was a co-researcher on Study 329 (see Keller), for which she was paid more than $18,000. In 2002, Eli Lily paid her over $11,000, which was not disclosed.

Investigated – Thomas Spencer: Assistant Director of the Pediatric Psychopharmacology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, reportedly failed to disclose at least $1 million in earnings from drug companies between 2000 and 2007.

Investigated - Timothy Wilens: Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School allegedly failed to report he had earned at least $1.6 million from drug makers.

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Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global

“Australia is a place that can actually change the world in mental health, provided we get the right government support to do so.” — Patrick McGorry

By CCHR International
June 16, 2010

A Public Service Announcement on Australian TV features Australian of the Year, psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, claiming that nearly half the population will experience mental ill-health during their lifetime. Considering that after World War II, psychiatrists claimed that one in 20 people had a mental disorder, and now it’s every second one of us, that’s a damning 1000 percent failure rate for psychiatrists in reducing “mental illness.” Let’s get real; the reason psychiatrists claim more people are mentally ill is because they can keep inventing new ways to label them mentally ill—but the press and governments are starting to catch on, evidenced by all the controversy surrounding psychiatry’s upcoming edition of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—better known as psychiatry’s billing bible. Yet of all the proposed “mental disorders” ranging from overeating to kids throwing tantrums, no proposed model of mental disorder is more insidious and dangerous than that of Patrick McGorry, who promotes diagnosing people before they develop a so-called mental disorder—drugging them before they become “mentally ill.” Yet the Australian government has bought into it hook, line and sinker—despite the fact McGorry’s plan is so outrageous, even his peers, such as psychiatrist Allen Frances, former Chair of the DSM task force, have called it ”the most ill-conceived and potentially harmful.”

Make no mistake, the pre-drugging agenda is Patrick McGorry’s baby—his dream for a new paradigm in mental health, one that has the power to diagnose and drug people before they become mentally ill—welcome to the Brave New World of Patrick McGorry. And he isn’t stopping with Australia; his plan is to go global. As he recently stated, “Australia is a place that can actually change the world in mental health, provided we get the right government support to do so.”[1]

The fact that McGorry’s agenda is so controversial—it even has other psychiatrists protesting it—has not deterred the Australian government from funding this “ill-conceived” plan. A recent letter to Citizens Commission on Human Rights states, “The Australian Government is providing $25.5 million over four years from 2010-2011 to expand Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC) model,” developed by McGorry who founded EPPIC and the Orygen Youth Health in Victoria, Australia.

The Australian Government has already been criticized for massive expenditure on psychotropic drugs increasing more than 660 percent during the last decade—with a whopping 3,100 percent increase on antipsychotic drugs (with at least 15 Australian deaths in the under 19 year olds as a tragic consequence of this). This can only get worse when under McGorry’s plan, with an enormous client base that can be prescribed drugs despite the fact they are not yet “mentally ill.” It’s called prodrome (prodromos meaning the forerunner of an event)—referring to “a period of prepsychotic disturbance” that may or may not develop into psychosis or “schizophrenia”[2]—in other words, the crystal ball theory.

Australia Meets the US in Pre-Drug Scam

McGorry’s plan for Australia to “lead the change” in world mental health is happening—to the detriment of those who may be forced to undergo drug treatment based on a psychiatrist’s hunch that they might, one day, become ill. In the U.S., on May 13, 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services convened a Technical Expert Panel (TEP) discussed “emerging evidence around psychopharmacological interventions for first episode schizophrenia” citing the research efforts of McGorry and others.[3]

The push for pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging has even those within the psychiatric profession calling foul; Dr. Richard Warner, professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, counters the idea that science drives McGorry’s pre-disorder assessment, stating, “Given the expected number of false positives, the potential for harm is significant.”[4]

However, as Anthony Pelosi, honorary professor, Department of Psychiatry, Hairmyres Hospital, wrote in a counter to McGorry in the British Medical Journal last year, “this has not stopped their skillful lobbying of politicians, journalists, patients, and carers with upbeat messages about the prevention.”

“Skillful lobbying” is right.

In 2006 McGorry and other researchers, including psychiatrist Michael Berk, Karen Hallam, Craig McNeil, Linda Kaler and psychologist Melissa Hasty reported in the Medical Journal of Australia, “Evidence increasingly indicates that earlier identification may allow for appropriate pharmacological and psychosocial treatments….”[5]

Could they have a Pharma incentive behind this agenda? Berk is financially linked to AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen-Cilag, Lundbeck, Organon, Novartis, Mayne Pharma, Servier, Sanofi-Synthelabo, Solvay, and Wyeth and Pfizer.[6] Hallam disclosed received speaker fees from Janssen-Cilag; McNeil received consultancy fees, speaker fees and travel assistance from Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag and Sanofi-Aventis; and Hasty and Linda received financial assistance to attend conferences from or Janssen-Cilag, maker of the antipsychotic Risperdal (resperidone).[7]

McGorry has received grant support from Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Bristol Myers Squibb,Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer, and Novartis.[8] He is a paid consultantfor, and has received speaker’s fees from all or most of these companies.[9] Studies published in the British Medical Journal in 2005 and 2008 declared McGorry’s “early interventionstudies have received partial support in the form of investigator-initiatedunrestricted research grants from Janssen-Cilag.”[10]

The U.S. has already begun adopting the “early intervention” fad, which looks more like a trade in children’s lives and a business opportunity for increased pharmaceutical sales. In March 2010, the Department of Health & Human Services Substance Abuse & Mental Health Service Administration Center for Mental Health Services announced $16.5 million in funding for “Mental Health Transformation Grants,” including the “Early Detection and Intervention for the Prevention of Psychosis Program (EDIPPP).”[11]

EDIPP is the American sister of McGorry’s EPPIC. It was originally bankrolled by a $14.4 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. According to investigative journalist Evelyn Pringle, “The founder of RWJF, Robert Wood Johnson, was chairman of Johnson & Johnson for over 30 years, from 1932 to 1963, as a member of the drug maker’s founding family. Throughout the years, the majority of the Foundation’s money has come from investments in J&J stock.”

In an article in Behavioral Healthcare, in 2008, the Mid-Valley Behavioral Care Network (MVBCN), an intergovernmental Medicaid government insurance-managed healthcare organization situated in Oregon, was recommended to study EPPIC used at Orygen and EDIPPP.

Based on EDIPP and EPPIC, the MVBCN developed the Early Assessment and Support Team (EAST) in 2001. In 2003, the Oregon state legislature allocated $4.3 million to disseminate early psychosis intervention statewide. By March the following year, new programs had begun in 12 counties.[12]

EDIPPP also replicates the “Portland Identification and Early Referral,” or “PIER,” a treatment research program at the Main Medical Center, in Portland, Maine.[13] People typically are referred to PIER by high school guidance counselors, pediatricians, or other clinicians who attended presentations about PIER’s work, says Pringle. “Virtually every person entering the PIER program is prescribed antipsychotics, such as Risperdal or Invega, marketed by Johnson & Johnson,” she added.

Both PIER and EDIPPP are promoted in McGorry’s 2002 book, Implementing Early Intervention in Psychosis: A Guide to Establishing Early Psychosis Services.”[14] The book’s foreword is written by Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Professor of Psychiatry, Chairman Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.[15] Lieberman has taken consulting fees and research grant support from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Upjohn Pharmacia, Novartis, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Hoechst AG, & AstraZeneca. He’s on the Speakers Bureaus for Astra Zeneca, Janssen, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.[16]

Lieberman is also the Vice President (North America) of the McGorry instigated group International Early Psychosis Association (IEPA), which was officially incorporated in Victoria in 1998.[17] McGorry is currently Treasurer of the Association.[18] Lieberman is a member of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical company front groups, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD).

Between 1999 and 2003 IEPA received unrestricted education grants from Janssen-Cilag and AstraZeneca.[19] EIPA’s conferences are supported by Janssen-Cilag, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.[20]

The IEPA lists the “who’s who” of Pre-Psychosis Risk Syndrome (the official label given pre-psychotic symptoms) and many of its board or members disclose manufacturers of antipsychotics as companies they’ve received financing from.

On July 29-30, the First international Youth Mental Health Conference is being held in Melbourne, with keynote speakers, including McGorry. The conference is described by one advocate as an “important and innovative event, attracting the best in the business/industry to discuss the emerging issues of youth mental health.”[21]

It couldn’t have been more adequately stated: business and industry. Herein you see McGorry’s pitch again that Australia is a global leader in this latest psychiatric fad. His invitation online states, “This is an important event for Australia and the mental health field. We expect this to be the first of many similar conferences, bringing together innovators, practitioners, researchers, young people and families to showcase the best of youth mental health innovation from around the globe.”[22] [Emphasis added]

There’s no doubt that this conference, like his Australian award, will be used to demand more funding to increase the business stakes and drive more income into psychiatry’s pre-drugging efforts. Despite the government already allocating $103 million to McGorry, including the $25 million to further research EPPIC, he continues to call for another $800 million in funding for programs for youth mental health over the next four years.[23]

McGorry recently stated, “You have to be able to give something of yourself to people, if you are going to help them.”[24] McGorry’s brand of “helping” entails stigmatizing children with psychiatric labels that have no basis in science or medicine and then drugging them. That does not qualify as “help.” It’s betrayal. If this agenda to pre-diagnose, and pre-drug is allowed to take hold, we will truly have entered a Brave New World; Patrick McGorry’s.

[1] http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/museum/mwmuseum/index.php/McGorry,_Patrick

[2] http://www.mentalhealth.com/mag1/scz/sb-prod.html

[3] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “ASPE Technical Expert Panel on Earlier Intervention for Serious Mental Illness: Summary of Major Themes,” The Lewin Group, 13 May, 2009.

[4] Richard Warner, MB, DPM, is director of Colorado Recovery in Boulder, Colorado, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, “Early intervention in psychosis: Future or fad?” Centre for Addiction and Mental Health website, http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Winter_2007-08/futureorfad_crcuwinter0708.html.

[5] http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_07_011007/ber10341_fm.pdf

[6] http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_07_011007/ber10341_fm.pdf

[7] http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_07_011007/ber10341_fm.pdf

[8] http://www.mhanet.ca/documents/2008/Research-Colloquium/0920%20-%20Keynote%20MCGORRY.pdf

[9] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695

[10] http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/187/48/s108; http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695

[11] http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tracking-the-American-Epid-by-Evelyn-Pringle-100602-668.html

[12] http://www.behavioral.net/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=9B6FFC446FF7486981EA3C0C3CCE4943&nm=Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=64D490AC6A7D4FE1AEB453627F1A4A32&id=BFCD36BFD75E447CA63F662A633F41FB&tier=4

[13] http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tracking-the-American-Epid-by-Evelyn-Pringle-100602-668.html

[14] http://books.google.com.au/books?id=lyLfMPsnvJ0C&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136&dq=Portland+Identification+and+Early+Referral+McGorry&source=bl&ots=lEp9tdT8ZV&sig=_zlnHeFk8oqxTHSjbvLf0XQmlY4&hl=en&ei=lP0RTKThLMWPcMnSzNAH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[15] http://69.5.18.33/ahrp/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=345

[16] http://69.5.18.33/ahrp/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=345

[17] http://www.iepa.org.au/ContentPage.aspx?pageID=10

[18] http://www.headspace.org.au/about/headspace-board/

[19] http://www.iepa.org.au/ContentPage.aspx?pageID=59

[20] http://www.iepa.org.au/ContentPage.aspx?pageID=59

[21] http://www.iymhconference.com.au/why-attend/

[22] http://www.iymhconference.com.au/

[23] Mental Health Update, GetUp! Action for Australia, 21 Apr. 2010, http://www.getup.org.au/blogs/view.php?id=1936&dc=1086,21560,1

[24] http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/museum/mwmuseum/index.php/McGorry,_Patrick

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The Huffington Post— Creating Disease: Big Pharma and Disease Mongering

The Huffington Post
by Dr. Larry Dossey
June 18, 2010

You may think there is enough disease in the world already, and that no one would want to add to the diseases that we humans must deal with. But there is a powerful industry in our society that is working overtime to invent illnesses and to convince us we are suffering from them.

This effort is known as “disease mongering,” a term introduced by health-science writer Lynn Payer in her 1992 book Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick. Payer defined disease mongering as “trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill.” This strategy has also been called “the corporate construction of disease” by Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath and David Henry in the British Medical Journal. “There’s a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they’re sick,” they say. “Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers.”

Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/big-pharma-health-care-cr_b_613311.html

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Our Drug-Obsessed Nation: Obsessed with ‘feeling good’ & ‘forgetting our problems’—prescription drug abuse skyrockets

Tech Jackal
June 19, 2010

Not many people would be surprised to find that drug abuse is on the increase, but they may be surprised to find that the increase is not in illegal drug abuse but pharmaceutical drug abuse.

Emergency room visits have increased 110% over the last 5 years, due to prescription drug abuse. These visits are either for overdoses or excuses to get drugs refilled. Ten years ago, emergency room visits were for heroine abuse and other illegal drugs. Today, these visits are for Oxycodone, Hydrocodone and Hydrocodone abuse. There are also many other prescription drugs, such as antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs.

Today, it is a popular practice for children in high school and college to take prescription drugs to help them study and focus. Some of these prescriptions are for Addeall and Xanax. Some young people are having teeth pulled and wisdom teeth extracted just so they can get a pain prescription.

Read entire article: http://www.techjackal.net/other/2010/06/19/why-are-we-a-drug-obsessed-nation/

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Truly a must-read article by psychiatrist Peter Breggin: The Huffington Post— The Hazards of Psychiatric Diagnosis

The Huffington Post
By Dr. Peter Breggin
June 21, 2010

“I have a biochemical imbalance.”
“My kid is ADD.”
“I’m Bipolar.”
“I suffer from Clinical Depression.”
“I have Panic Disorder.”

Is there anything wrong with diagnosing ourselves or even accepting the mental health diagnoses of psychiatrists, family doctors, psychotherapists and other health professionals?

Psychiatric diagnoses are seductive. They seem to give us important information about ourselves and our emotional ills. They provide a key to what psychiatric drug we may need. It seems rational and scientific. In reality, psychiatric diagnosing is a kind of spiritual profiling that can destroy lives and frequently does.

First, there’s the obvious cookie cutter problem. People can’t be easily fit into the prefabricated labels contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from whence all official diagnoses emanate. Diagnoses frequently change, often in an effort to justify this or that drug. It’s not realistic, enlightening or empowering to reduce yourself or your child to one of these diagnoses. Psychiatric diagnoses are simplistic.

Consider this: Psychiatric diagnoses are always negative. There are no such diagnoses as “Exceptionally Able to Face Stress” or “Remarkably Resilient” or “Courageously Independent in the Face of Abuse.” That’s how I like to think about the people that I try to help–as heroes or potential heroes in their own life stories. I never want them to sum up, categorize or symbolize their lives in such a demeaning fashion as a psychiatric diagnosis.

But that’s only the beginning of the problem. These diagnoses imply that you or your children have a disease, especially an underlying biochemical imbalance. This can be discouraging and disempowering. Having a psychiatric diagnosis tends to make us feel helpless to transform our lives or the lives of our children for the better. It makes us feel less responsible for our own psychological and spiritual recovery and for that of our young and dependent children.

Medical diagnoses are real. When you learn you have pneumonia, diabetes or even cancer, you quickly discover that there are potential remedies. There are scientific tests and studies to diagnose the disease and to evaluate its treatment. Medical diagnoses don’t demean your mind and your soul, they describe your bodily impairments.

Psychiatric diagnoses are not genuinely medical; they are not based on biological defects or disorders. There are no objective tests. They are not about the body; they are about the mind and spirit. The medical aura that surrounds psychiatric diagnoses give them a false validity. Psychiatric diagnoses are not rooted in science but in opinion.

Psychiatric diagnoses take power and authority over your life, and the lives of your children, out of your hands. They place that power and authority in the hands of health professionals. Often it takes but a few minutes in an office to transform you or your child from a complex human being into a product on the psychiatric assembly line–and endless assembly line that can lead to a ruinous lifetime.

Perhaps worst of all, these diagnoses almost inevitably lead to the prescription of psychiatric medication to you or your child. Psychiatric drugs are toxins to the brain; they work by disabling the brain. None of them cure biochemical imbalances and all of them, every single one of them, cause severe biochemical imbalances in the brain. The adverse effects of these drugs on the brain and mind are stunning. In my recent scientific books and articles, including Medication Madness, I have demonstrated they cause medication spellbinding. Spellbound by psychoactive drugs we cannot adequately judge the impairments they create in our brain and too often we mistakenly feel “improved” when in fact our feelings have been dulled or artificially jacked up, and our judgment about ourselves and our lives have been impaired.

Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/mental-health-the-hazards_b_618507.html

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Huffington Post—Adderall: The Most Abused Prescription Drug in America; can cause lasting mental defects & death

The Huffington Post
By Dr. Ronald Ricker and Dr. Venus Nicolino
June 21, 2010

Adderall is abused mostly by college students and young adults. Estimates are that somewhere between 20-30 percent of college students regularly abuse Adderall.

Adderall has the dubious distinction of being the latest addition to the rogue’s gallery of lawful drugs that have made the transition to the black market. In recent years, abuse of Adderall and its imitators has increased by nearly 200 percent. Calling it an “upper” is like calling a hydrogen bomb a grenade. It is made of pure amphetamine, it’s already picked up its share of street monikers: Speed, Beans, Black Beauties, Christmas Trees, and Double Trouble, amongst others.

What are the pluses in this wonder-drug? In ordinary people it often but not always offers increased concentration. It also keeps people awake for more studying and lots more partying. It often offers a sense of euphoria and happiness and a lot better and more frequent sex, all fun at parties.

Between the glut of pop-psychology theories (often fraudulent) and the never-ending blitz of promotion by Big Pharma, people now believe they can diagnose themselves with something like ADHD as easily as ascertaining if they have a head cold and believe they have the ability to determine the correct medication for their condition. Sometimes they’re grandiosely right. Most of the time, however, they’re wrong on both counts. Even more of the time, diagnosis is irrelevant. The relevant question is where’s the “connection?” Sadly, that’s where many of us physicians fit in. We certainly don’t intend to, but often serve as the ‘connection’. Then, of course, there are those ‘patients’ and doctors that inhabit the bottom of the barrel: lying ‘patients’ and immoral doctors. Scripts can and are sold, for lots of money. Never mind the human cost, there’s money to be made and drugs to be copped. Take that prescription to the pharmacy. Or, take your money to a nearby local University. You’ll pay $30 to $40 dollars per pill for a very small amount of Adderall, usually sold to you by a student. Sales are usually student to student although the numbers of genuine drug dealers are growing rapidly in numbers, bringing with them all the problems of low-life, criminal drug dealers. Dealers recognize good business opportunities. Imagining little Johnny, having just finished Geography 1A, dealing with a real dealer chills the mind.

Illicit Adderall is taken in many ways. Most obviously, a pill can be swallowed. Pills can also be chewed, ground up and snorted, and ground up and injected (the most dangerous way of administration, by far). And then there’s ‘Stuffing’. This is accomplished by ‘stuffing’ Adderall in any orifice with a mucous membrane (anus, vagina, penis, mouth, etc.). Shooting gets the most immediate and strongest effect. Snorting is second, chewing third, and stuffing fourth. What ‘stuffing’ lacks in immediate ‘oomph’ and the loss of whatever dignity the person may retain, is made up by the length of effect and allows for the greatest amount of Adderall to be used at one time. The anus and vagina are big places and can hold a great deal of Adderall.

Sadly, there’s no free lunch.

1) Side effects are numerous. Some are minor, some serious, and some very serious. Most users have no clue as to negative side effects and usually don’t care. Ignorance, we suppose, is bliss. The most important and most negative side-effect is the Overdose. Overdose with Adderall is nasty. Results include Cardiac and/or pulmonary arrest, death, severe and lasting mental effects/defects. Which one happens to you is a matter of chance. If you’re in an Emergency Room and still alive your chances are relatively good. If you overdose at your apartment and are alone, the chance of your living is slim. If you Over Dose at a party, maybe a Frat Party, you’ve probably bought it. Drunken, high Frat boys are not known for their medical skills or even a modicum of clear thinking. Minor side effects include anxiety, and transient depression. More serious effects include heart palpitations, elevation of blood pressure, Tourette’s syndrome, seizures, stroke, and psychotic episodes or plain old psychosis.

Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-ronald-ricker-and-dr-venus-nicolino/adderall-the-most-abused_b_619549.html

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Behind the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex; Pharma-funded front groups masquerading as “patient advocates”

Scoop Independent News
By Evelyn Pringle
June 22, 2010

Non-Profit Advocacy Groups

As a main component of the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, the so-called “patient advocacy” organizations have become the leading force behind the American epidemic of mental illness over the past two decades.

Drug makers, and their foundations, funnel millions of dollars to these non-profits every year. In return, the leaders recruit their members as foot soldiers to carry out the latest marketing campaigns and to provide a fire-wall so that no money trail can be tracked back to the drug companies.

Gigantic Pyramid

The psychiatric front groups form a gigantic pyramid and once pharmaceutical money enters the system through a major organization, it gets channeled into a huge spider-web that weaves through many groups, making it nearly impossible to keep track of where it came from or where it all went. Often, when the grant reports of the drug companies list a large donation to one organization, the annual reports of the other groups will show smaller gifts from that same organization.

The “charity” groups are exempt from income tax and the “contributions” funneled through them are tax deductible. The money is used for disease mongering campaigns to both market disorders and pressure public health care programs and private insurers to pay for expensive treatments.

“Presenting themselves as patient advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership, many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press and the American public — for they have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent,” according to Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health watchdog group.

In a June 2, 2010, commentary titled, “Psychiatric Fads and Overdiagnosis,” on the Psychology Today website, Dr Allen Frances points out that it “is too bad that there is no advocacy group for normality that could effectively push back against all the forces aligned to expand the reach of mental disorders.”

The leaders of the supposedly “non-profits” earn outrageously high salaries, along with excellent benefit packages, while many of the patients they claim to represent are encouraged to seek federal disability payments of under $700 a month, and apply for public housing, food stamps, and Medicaid, to make ends meet. The top officials will often move from a leadership role in one organization to a higher position in another.

The drug makers rely on the front groups to do their bidding any time profits are threatened. For instance, if the FDA is considering adding a black box warning about a deadly side effect to a drug’s label, which may result in a drop in sales, representatives of front groups will show up at the FDA advisory panel hearings to testify against adding the warning.

They will also lobby FDA panels whenever there is a chance to increase profits, such as enlarging the drug customer base. In June 2009, the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee was set to meet to evaluate AstraZeneca’s Seroquel, Pfizer’s Geodon and Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa for use with 13 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with schizophrenia, and 10 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder.

On June 8, 2009, nine front groups issued a joint statement urging the panel to vote to approve all three drugs for kids. The groups signing the letter included the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association, Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Families for Depression Awareness, Mental Health America, National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

Read entire article: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1006/S00162.htm

Also see: http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

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Pre-Crime? Try Pre-Diagnose and Pre-Drug: Psychiatrists target infants as mental patients

By CCHR International
June 23, 2010

A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect “brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk” in infants just a few weeks old. We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or brain abnormality to start with. There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one. So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the “associated with schizophrenia risk” amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.

For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, “researchers now believe” they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or “new evidence suggests” evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease. But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of “belief” —no evidence to support the theory. One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains. They’ve spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the “belief” in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science. As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, “There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” —Allen Frances (And Frances isn’t the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.)

The logical question the press should be asking is what are the American Journal of Psychiatry and “the Director of UNC Schizophrenic Research” really after? What is their goal?

As we have exposed in the article “Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global” there is a concerted push being headed by Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry and other pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists for the global implementation of a new mental health paradigm; preventative mental health, i.e., pre-diagnosing (diagnosing children before they develop a “mental disorder”) and pre-drugging children ( before they show “signs” of the mental disorder). There is an obvious push for the same pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging agenda with this latest study, which claims ”major cases of schizophrenia are usually not diagnosed until a person begins witnessing its related symptoms like delusions and hallucinations as a teenager or adult . However, by that time, the disease [notice the term disease despite no medical evidence of disease] crosses the stage of preliminary treatment and is difficult to treat.” In other words, if we wait to administer drugs to them it may be too late. That along with Gilmore’s statement, “It allows us to start thinking about how we can identify kids at risk for schizophrenia very early and whether there are things that we can do very early on to lessen the risk.” This is the pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging agenda being pushed and the new “preventative” model of mental health that is more akin to a Brave New World than anything previously witnessed. And this latest “study” tells us infants are also on the agenda.

And finally, to psychiatrist and lead study author John H. Gilmore, we think you should take a lesson from the former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Chief of the Center for Studies in Schizophrenia, the late Loren R. Mosher, M.D. who stated in his letter of resignation to the American Psychiatric Association, “The fact that there is no evidence confirming the brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to continue to support my membership…After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this is my belief I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization’s true identify requires no change in the acronym…”

To read more from Loren Mosher, including his two-year outcome study treating patients diagnosed “schizophrenic” without the use of drugs, his vehement stance against the biological psychiatric model of “disease” and more, click here.

To read the latest bogus psychiatric study, click here.

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Study shows antidepressants cause major increase in miscarriages (68%) yet pregnant women still being targeted for usage

Before It’s News
June 23, 2010

This study comes on the heels of ones showing these drugs cause birth defects. But even now, regulatory agencies aren’t taking action.

Medical powers-that-be are pressing to identify women “at risk” of depression during pregnancy—likely to push them into taking anti-depressants. Now, a study has shown that SSRI and SNRI antidepressants can increase miscarriages by 68 percent. These drugs have also been associated with birth defects. Now, that is truly depressing.

A study published in the online edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported a 68% increase in miscarriages in women who take modern antidepressants. Paroxetine, the SSRI sold as Paxil or Seroxat, and venlafaxine, the SNRI sold as Effexor, were especially risky, and taking more than one antidepressant was also particularly dangerous.

As previously documented in Babies of Women Taking Antidepressants Born With Deformities, Dr. Anick Bérard, PhD, one of the study’s authors, has also noted that antidepressants have been associated with birth defects. It shouldn’t, of course, come as any surprise that an agent guilty of causing birth defects would also result in miscarriages.

Overall, antidepressant use was found to increase the risk of miscarriage by 68%. Paroxetine increased the risk by 75% and venlafaxine more than doubled the risk to a 110% greater chance of spontaneous abortion.

In comparison, the increased risk of miscarriage due to untreated depression is 19 percent.

It’s obvious that increased miscarriage risks of 68 percent, 75 percent, and 110% with SSRI and SNRI treatment make a 19 percent increase in untreated pregnancy depression pale by comparison.

Read entire article: http://beforeitsnews.com/news/84/868/Antidepressants_Cause_Major_Increase_in_Miscarriages.html

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GlaxoSmithKline Enters into Confidential Settlement with 200 Families Who Say Paxil Caused Birth Defects

Fair Warning
By Lea Yu
June 25, 2010

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has entered into confidential settlements with nearly 200 families who claimed that its antidepressant Paxil caused congenital birth defects.

Most of the claims alleged that babies born to mothers taking Paxil suffered heart defects. Last October, a suit filed on behalf of Lyam Kilker said he was born with three cardiac defects, including a hole between two chambers of his heart that disrupted the aorta.

Kilker’s case is the only one to have gone to trial, and a Philadelphia jury awarded Kilker’s family $2.5 million in compensatory damages. Plaintiffs argued that animal testing revealed potential problems with Paxil, but the company did not follow up with additional tests. A company memo introduced as evidence during the trial also revealed that Glaxo considered covering up any negative test results. “If neg, results can bury,” the 1997 memo said.

In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors about a 35,000-person study that found that pregnant women on Paxil were twice as likely to have a child with defects than women taking other antidepressants.

Read entire article: http://www.fairwarning.org/2010/06/glaxosmithkline-settles-200-birth-defects-cases-linked-to-antidepressant/

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The Total Failure of Modern Psychiatry

Natural News
By David Gutierrez
June 27, 2010

Modern psychiatry went wrong when it embraced the idea that the mind should be treated with drugs, says Edward Shorter of the University of Toronto, writing in the Wall Street Journal.

Shorter studies the history of psychiatry and medicine.

Modern U.S. psychiatry has adopted a philosophy that psychological diseases arise from chemical imbalances and therefore have a very specific cluster of symptoms, he says, in spite of evidence that the difference between many so-called disorders is minimal or nonexistent. These “disorders” are then treated with expensive drugs that are no more effective than a placebo.

“Psychiatry seems to have lost its way in a forest of poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications,” he writes.

Shorter calls for U.S. psychiatry to abandon its emphasis on “psychopathology” and instead adopt the European approach, which focuses on the symptoms and needs of people as individuals. Yet the draft of the latest edition of psychiatric diagnostic “Bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), shows that U.S. psychiatry has no intention of changing course.

“With DSM-V, American psychiatry is headed in exactly the opposite direction: defining ever-widening circles of the population as mentally ill with vague and undifferentiated diagnoses and treating them with powerful drugs,” Shorter writes.

U.S. psychiatry was not always obsessed with psychopharmacology, he notes. Its early years were marked by a psychoanalytic approach that categorized mental disorders in broad, fluid categories such as “nerves,” “melancholia” or “manic-depressive illness.” These categories sufficed because similar treatments would work for people suffering from any version thereof: lithium treated both mania and severe depression, for example, while the specific symptoms experienced by an anxious person had little influence on the therapies needed.

“Our psychopathological lingo today offers little improvement on these sturdy terms,” Shorter said. “A patient with the same symptoms today might be told he has ‘social anxiety disorder’ or ‘seasonal affective disorder.’ … The new disorders all respond to the same drugs, so in terms of treatment, the differentiation is meaningless and of benefit mainly to pharmaceutical companies that market drugs for these niches.”

In the 1950s and ’60s, a new wave of psychiatrists sought to turn away from psychoanalysis — perceiving it as focusing excessively on “unconscious psychic conflicts” — and toward a more “scientific” model instead. As a result, the DSM-III introduced the vague new categories of “major depression” and “bipolar disorder,” even though evidence suggests that there is no substantial difference between the two conditions. At the same time, “major depression” absorbed what Shorter calls two very different conditions, “neurotic depression” and “melancholia.”

“This would be like incorporating tuberculosis and mumps into the same diagnosis, simply because they are both infectious diseases,” he writes.

DSM-V only continues the trend of extending the disordered label to more and more normal people, Shorter warns: “To flip through the latest draft of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in the works for seven years now, is to see the discipline’s floundering writ large.”

For example, the new disorder of “psychosis risk syndrome” associates a whole new class of people with full-blown schizophrenia, under the logic, Shorter says, that “even if you aren’t floridly psychotic with hallucinations and delusions, eccentric behavior can nonetheless awaken the suspicion that you might someday become psychotic.” The implication, of course, is that such people should be treated with antipsychotics.

Symptoms of “psychosis risk syndrome” include such vague descriptors as “disorganized speech.”

Other new “disorders” include hoarding, mixed anxiety-depression and binge eating. “Minor neurocognitive disorder” describes a reduction in cognitive function over time, such as that normally experienced by people over the age of 50, while “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria” refers to children who suffer from outbursts of temper.

“DSM-V accelerates the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases,” Shorter says, “turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety, and boyishness into hyperactivity.”

Read entire article here: http://www.naturalnews.com/029088_psychiatry_failure.html

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Seriously great article: “New Psychiatry Manual Defines Almost Anyone as Insane”

Loewak
By Martijn Benders
June 27, 2010

What is wrong with a psychiatric industry that is financed by drug companies? Well isn’t that very obvious: they will try and try to classify more and more mental conditions as ‘diseases’ simply because their financers want them to do so. Nowadays children can’t behave like children anymore or they are ‘hyperactive’ or diagnosed as ‘ADHD’ and pumped full of drugs of which no one knows what the long term consequences of their use are.

At the same time, digg this, there was a recent research into which jobs have the highest suicide rates. Guess what? Yes, doctors and Psychiatrists rank amongst the highest, the most number of suicides take place in that job catagory.

Ask yourself this: why do these rather suicidally depressed people want to drug everyone? Because that’s basically what the new ‘Psychiatric Manual’ named ‘the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

“With DSM-V, American psychiatry is headed in exactly the opposite direction: defining ever-widening circles of the population as mentally ill with vague and undifferentiated diagnoses and treating them with powerful drugs,” Professor Shorter of the University of Toronto writes in the Wall Street Journal.

New diseases in the thick manual include the ‘Psychosis Risk Syndrome’ which is a particular type of ‘disease’ that can be streched to encompass half the world population. Twitch your eye? Behave a little weird? Have a stutter? Well, those might be signs of you having PSR which basically means you have the potential to become psychotic and, according to the manual, must be treated with drugs.

Symptoms of “psychosis risk syndrome” include vague descriptors as “disorganized speech.”

“Minor neurocognitive disorder” describes a reduction in cognitive function over time, such as that normally experienced by people over the age of 50, while “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria” refers to children who suffer from outbursts of temper.

The psychiatric industry has become a drugdealer culture. All these drugs do not just effect the people that take them but dissapear and mix with the environment. So ALL OF US are effected by these billions of tuns of chemical drugs that are pumped into the various water systems.

Read entire article: http://www.loewak.nl/2010/06/27/new-psychiatry-manual-defines-almost-anyone-as-insane/

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University of Copenhagen; Psychiatric Drugs Cause Birth Defects—responsibility must be taken to warn pregnant women

HealthJockey.com
June 28, 2010

Some psychotropic drugs may be recommended to treat depression as they are believed to affect the mind, emotions, and behavior of an individual. But these medications appear to elevate the risk for various birth defects. As a recent study initiated by the University of Copenhagen suggests, the consumption of psychotropic medication ought to be avoided during pregnancy.

Investigators observed the link of psychotropic medications with birth defects. They analyzed the data between 1998 and 2007 regarding Danish children under the age of 17. The study claims that the data highlighted 429 adverse drug reactions in these children. After thorough examinations the authors concluded that more than half of these cases indicated extreme birth defects including birth deformities and severe withdrawal syndromes.

Associate Professor Lisa Aagaard affirmed, “A range of serious side effects such as birth deformities, low birth weight, premature birth, and development of neonatal withdrawal syndrome were reported in children under two years of age, most likely because of the mother’s intake of psychotropic medication during pregnancy.”

In addition, the investigators inspected 4,500 pediatric adverse drug reaction reports and revealed a clear link between psychotropic medications and birth defects. It was ascertained that psychostimulants like Ritalin known to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD) was accountable in 42 percent of unfavorable reactions. And while antidepressants such as Prozac probably caused 31 percent reactions, 21 percent were contributed by antipsychotics similar to Haldol.

Read entire article: http://www.healthjockey.com/2010/06/28/birth-defects-appear-due-to-intake-of-psychotropic-medications-during-pregnancy/

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Ready for Psychiatry’s latest mental illness? Try this: Healthy Eating Disorder

Natural News
By Mike Adams
June 29, 2010

In its never-ending attempt to fabricate “mental disorders” out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they’ve invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you’re “mentally diseased” and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, “Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder” and goes on to claim this “disease” is called orthorexia nervosa — which is basically just Latin for “nervous about correct eating.”

But they can’t just called it “nervous healthy eating disorder” because that doesn’t sound like they know what they’re talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn’t). That’s where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means “bones with holes in them”).

Getting back to this fabricated “orthorexia” disease, the Guardian goes on to report, “Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.”

Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there’s something wrong with you.

But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be “normal?” If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that’s okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.

Read entire article: http://www.naturalnews.com/029098_orthorexia_mental_disorder.html

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Pre-Crime? Try Pre-Diagnose and Pre-Drug: Psychiatrists target infants as mental patients

By CCHR International
June 23, 2010

A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect “brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk” in infants just a few weeks old. We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or brain abnormality to start with. There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one. So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the “associated with schizophrenia risk” amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.

For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, “researchers now believe” they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or “new evidence suggests” evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease. But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of “belief” —no evidence to support the theory. One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains. They’ve spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the “belief” in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science. As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, “There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” —Allen Frances (And Frances isn’t the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.)

The logical question the press should be asking is what are the American Journal of Psychiatry and “the Director of UNC Schizophrenic Research” really after? What is their goal?

As we have exposed in the article “Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global” there is a concerted push being headed by Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry and other pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists for the global implementation of a new mental health paradigm; preventative mental health, i.e., pre-diagnosing (diagnosing children before they develop a “mental disorder”) and pre-drugging children ( before they show “signs” of the mental disorder). There is an obvious push for the same pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging agenda with this latest study, which claims ”major cases of schizophrenia are usually not diagnosed until a person begins witnessing its related symptoms like delusions and hallucinations as a teenager or adult . However, by that time, the disease [notice the term disease despite no medical evidence of disease] crosses the stage of preliminary treatment and is difficult to treat.” In other words, if we wait to administer drugs to them it may be too late. That along with Gilmore’s statement, “It allows us to start thinking about how we can identify kids at risk for schizophrenia very early and whether there are things that we can do very early on to lessen the risk.” This is the pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging agenda being pushed and the new “preventative” model of mental health that is more akin to a Brave New World than anything previously witnessed. And this latest “study” tells us infants are also on the agenda.

And finally, to psychiatrist and lead study author John H. Gilmore, we think you should take a lesson from the former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Chief of the Center for Studies in Schizophrenia, the late Loren R. Mosher, M.D. who stated in his letter of resignation to the American Psychiatric Association, “The fact that there is no evidence confirming the brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to continue to support my membership…After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this is my belief I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization’s true identify requires no change in the acronym…”

To read more from Loren Mosher, including his two-year outcome study treating patients diagnosed “schizophrenic” without the use of drugs, his vehement stance against the biological psychiatric model of “disease” and more, click here.

To read the latest bogus psychiatric study, click here.

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Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden

The One Click Group
By Janne Larsson
June 29, 2010

The purpose of this investigation has been to find data about the preceding psychopharmacological treatment for all persons who committed suicide in Sweden 2007.

The conclusion is that a large percentage of the persons who committed suicide in Sweden in 2007 had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of and close to the suicide.

This is a report about suicides committed in Sweden (with around 9 million citizens) in 2007 and the psychiatric drug treatment that preceded these suicides.

The report has three main parts:

• It gives unique data about all suicides committed in 2007 and the psychiatric drugs that the persons received within a year of the suicide.

• It compares these data with autopsy reports about psychiatric drugs found in the blood (of 98%) of all the persons who committed suicide in 2007.

• It gives extensive information about the psychiatric drug treatment given within a year to the subgroup of persons who committed suicide in 2007 and then were reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare by reason of law 3 – one third of all suicides committed that year.

The data presented on these pages should have been published by the responsible national authorities.

A large percentage of the persons who committed suicide in Sweden in 2007 had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of their suicide.

The idea that persons who are depressed are suffering from “chemical imbalances”nand are deficient in the substance serotonin has been marketed by the pharmaceutical companies selling antidepressants (in the class SSRI, such as Prozac, Paxil/Seroxat, Zoloft) for more than a decade. The intensive marketing has led persons to believe that their low mood is a deficiency disease – and that it is vital to supply the substance that corrects this deficiency – the antidepressant drug.

But there is no scientific evidence that a low mood is caused by a ”chemical imbalance” in the brain 10 11. The hypothesis has been rejected with the following words by one of the most well known names in the field: “The serotonin theory of depression is comparable to the masturbatory theory of insanity.” 12 (The old theory that masturbation caused insanity.)

The Swedish medical agencies and their psychiatric consultants have used old data from forensic toxicological screenings to mislead the public and to heavily increase the use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs.

The most important information in this area is the patients’ medical history, the treatment history. Antidepressants, neuroleptics and other psychiatric drugs may cause harmful changes in the brain and these brain dysfunctions do not vanish when the drugs are discontinued – in many cases they cause chronic dysfunction to the brain, exemplified by the known neurological harm caused by neuroleptics. Many patients also get serious withdrawal reactions; reactions that can be so severe that they can lead to suicide.

Better sources of information are the unpublished clinical trials of psychiatric drugs done by pharmaceutical companies, and the important studies done by independent researchers. A number of these studies show that antidepressants and neuroleptics increase the risk of suicidal behaviour and directly cause effects that lead to suicide.

Read entire article: http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?start=3660&end=3680&view=yes&id=4926#newspost

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Jury recommends major reforms in drug prescribing after investigation of 18-year-old’s suicide under the influence of Paxil

Pharmalot
By Ed Silverman
June 30, 2010

There have been numerous claims that a medication caused a suicide, but few lead to sweeping changes. In Canada, however, the suicide of 18-year-old Sarah Carlin, who had taken the Paxil antidepressant, is a clear exception. Following a coroner’s inquest, Canada’s provincial and federal governments were told to ensure patients are better informed about drug risks, tighten regulations on drugmakers and establish an independent agency to regulate medications.

“If these things had been in place at the time Sara was prescribed Paxil, she would be alive today,” her father, Neil Carlin, said outside court. “We consider this a great victory…We are truly confident that if these are acted upon there will be young lives saved down the road.”

For more than a year before her death, Sara had been taking Paxil, an anti-depressant, which Health Canada warns can increase the risk of suicidal events in children and adolescents under 18. The teenager hanged herself in her parents’ basement in May 2007. The inquest made numerous recommendations, which you can see if you keep reading…

Of the various recommendations, the one that is garnering the most discussion appears to be the creation of a Drug Safety Board to investigate the side effects and issue warnings to the public, doctors and hospitals. The inquest specifically recommended the new board not receive any funding from drugmakers. Drugmakers must also report all adverse events to Health Canada within 30 days.

A Glaxo spokeswoman writes to says the drugmaker “is supportive of appropriate recommendations designed to prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future, and will give the recommendations addressed to the broader pharmaceutical industry our full attention and consideration. Sara Carlin’s death was a tragedy and we continue to express our deepest sympathies to her family.”

1. The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) should develop a Drug Information System. This system would promote:
• Patient safety in the prescribing and dispensing of drugs.
• Collection and compilation of data in a single repository for all drugs dispensed for all Ontarians.
• Research into drug and patient safety.

2. The Drug Information System should track and monitor all drugs dispensed in Ontario regardless of who is paying for the prescription.

3. The Drug Information System should collect, compile and release data upon request to scientists such as those studying population-based health outcomes at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.

4. The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care should commit to developing a province-wide suicide prevention strategy as has occurred in other provinces such as Alberta.

5. The objectives of the province-wide suicide prevention strategy should include:
• Enhanced mental health and well being for Ontarians.
• The education of the public to de-stigmatize mental health disorders, including depression and substance abuse disorders.
• Improving intervention and support for Ontarians affected by depression and substance abuse.
• Improving intervention and treatment for those at risk of suicide.
• Increased efforts to reduce access to lethal means of suicide.
• Increased research activities in Ontario on suicide, suicidal behaviour and suicide prevention.
• Improved suicide and suicidal behaviour-related surveillance systems.
• Inform and educate the media into strategies when reporting deaths due to suicide to prevent ‘copy cat’ suicides from occurring.

6. Strategies in the province-wide suicide prevention strategy should be humane, effective and evidence based, respectful of community and culture-based knowledge, inclusive of research, surveillance, evaluation and reporting and reflective of evolving knowledge and practices.

7. The ministry of Health and Long-Term Care of Ontario and Government of Ontario should commit to supporting the development of a national suicide prevention strategy for all Canadians.

Read entire article: http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/06/sara-carlin-paxil-and-drug-safety-in-canada/

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The FAA better rethink allowing pilots to take antidepressants; New report says pilot in 2008 plane crash was on Zoloft

News 14 Carolina
June 30, 2010

The National Transportation Safety Board issued a report on the probably cause of a 2008 plane crash in Mount Airy that killed everyone on board. The plane stalled and crashed while circling after an aborted landing.

The NTSB says the pilot failed to maintain control of the plane during instrument flying conditions and deliberately went below the minimum descent altitude.

Officials say the pilot “displayed non-professional behavior” and that a cockpit voice recording showed that he began singing, “Save my life, I’m going down for the last time” after being cleared for approach.

Toxicology tests revealed that the pilot had the drug Zoloft in his system, and medical records revealed he had been treated for anxiety and depression. The report also said it’s not clear whether the medical conditions could account for the behavior or whether they contributed to the accident.

Read entire article: http://charlotte.news14.com/content/local_news/triad/627644/ntsb-releases-report-on-2008-mount-airy-plane-crash

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Pre-Crime? Try Pre-Diagnose and Pre-Drug: Psychiatrists target infants as mental patients

By CCHR International
June 23, 2010

A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect “brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk” in infants just a few weeks old. We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or brain abnormality to start with. There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one. So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the “associated with schizophrenia risk” amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.

For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, “researchers now believe” they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or “new evidence suggests” evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease. But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of “belief” —no evidence to support the theory. One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains. They’ve spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the “belief” in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science. As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, “There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” —Allen Frances (And Frances isn’t the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.)

The logical question the press should be asking is what are the American Journal of Psychiatry and “the Director of UNC Schizophrenic Research” really after? What is their goal?

As we have exposed in the article “Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global” there is a concerted push being headed by Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry and other pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists for the global implementation of a new mental health paradigm; preventative mental health, i.e., pre-diagnosing (diagnosing children before they develop a “mental disorder”) and pre-drugging children ( before they show “signs” of the mental disorder). There is an obvious push for the same pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging agenda with this latest study, which claims ”major cases of schizophrenia are usually not diagnosed until a person begins witnessing its related symptoms like delusions and hallucinations as a teenager or adult . However, by that time, the disease [notice the term disease despite no medical evidence of disease] crosses the stage of preliminary treatment and is difficult to treat.” In other words, if we wait to administer drugs to them it may be too late. That along with Gilmore’s statement, “It allows us to start thinking about how we can identify kids at risk for schizophrenia very early and whether there are things that we can do very early on to lessen the risk.” This is the pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging agenda being pushed and the new “preventative” model of mental health that is more akin to a Brave New World than anything previously witnessed. And this latest “study” tells us infants are also on the agenda.

And finally, to psychiatrist and lead study author John H. Gilmore, we think you should take a lesson from the former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Chief of the Center for Studies in Schizophrenia, the late Loren R. Mosher, M.D. who stated in his letter of resignation to the American Psychiatric Association, “The fact that there is no evidence confirming the brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to continue to support my membership…After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this is my belief I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization’s true identify requires no change in the acronym…”

To read more from Loren Mosher, including his two-year outcome study treating patients diagnosed “schizophrenic” without the use of drugs, his vehement stance against the biological psychiatric model of “disease” and more, click here.

To read the latest bogus psychiatric study, click here.

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Study shows antidepressants cause major increase in miscarriages (68%) yet pregnant women still being targeted for usage

Before It’s News
June 23, 2010

This study comes on the heels of ones showing these drugs cause birth defects. But even now, regulatory agencies aren’t taking action.

Medical powers-that-be are pressing to identify women “at risk” of depression during pregnancy—likely to push them into taking anti-depressants. Now, a study has shown that SSRI and SNRI antidepressants can increase miscarriages by 68 percent. These drugs have also been associated with birth defects. Now, that is truly depressing.

A study published in the online edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported a 68% increase in miscarriages in women who take modern antidepressants. Paroxetine, the SSRI sold as Paxil or Seroxat, and venlafaxine, the SNRI sold as Effexor, were especially risky, and taking more than one antidepressant was also particularly dangerous.

As previously documented in Babies of Women Taking Antidepressants Born With Deformities, Dr. Anick Bérard, PhD, one of the study’s authors, has also noted that antidepressants have been associated with birth defects. It shouldn’t, of course, come as any surprise that an agent guilty of causing birth defects would also result in miscarriages.

Overall, antidepressant use was found to increase the risk of miscarriage by 68%. Paroxetine increased the risk by 75% and venlafaxine more than doubled the risk to a 110% greater chance of spontaneous abortion.

In comparison, the increased risk of miscarriage due to untreated depression is 19 percent.

It’s obvious that increased miscarriage risks of 68 percent, 75 percent, and 110% with SSRI and SNRI treatment make a 19 percent increase in untreated pregnancy depression pale by comparison.

Read entire article: http://beforeitsnews.com/news/84/868/Antidepressants_Cause_Major_Increase_in_Miscarriages.html

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GlaxoSmithKline Enters into Confidential Settlement with 200 Families Who Say Paxil Caused Birth Defects

Fair Warning
By Lea Yu
June 25, 2010

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has entered into confidential settlements with nearly 200 families who claimed that its antidepressant Paxil caused congenital birth defects.

Most of the claims alleged that babies born to mothers taking Paxil suffered heart defects. Last October, a suit filed on behalf of Lyam Kilker said he was born with three cardiac defects, including a hole between two chambers of his heart that disrupted the aorta.

Kilker’s case is the only one to have gone to trial, and a Philadelphia jury awarded Kilker’s family $2.5 million in compensatory damages. Plaintiffs argued that animal testing revealed potential problems with Paxil, but the company did not follow up with additional tests. A company memo introduced as evidence during the trial also revealed that Glaxo considered covering up any negative test results. “If neg, results can bury,” the 1997 memo said.

In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors about a 35,000-person study that found that pregnant women on Paxil were twice as likely to have a child with defects than women taking other antidepressants.

Read entire article: http://www.fairwarning.org/2010/06/glaxosmithkline-settles-200-birth-defects-cases-linked-to-antidepressant/

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The Total Failure of Modern Psychiatry