Citizens Commission on Human Rights St. Louis

Psychiatric Watchdog Group Offers Assistance to Victims, Urges Filing Report

SAINT LOUIS: Psychiatry Professor Carolyn Quadrio of the University of New South Wales presented research at the World Psychiatric Association conference in Melbourne on Dec 1 showing between 7% and 10% of male therapists have had sexual relations with a patient.

This study is only the latest in a long line of evidence that psychiatrists and psychologists routinely sexually exploit vulnerable patients, according to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). Too often, says the group, mental health practitioners who molest their patients escape criminal prosecution because the cases are handled by licensing boards, which treat it merely as “professional misconduct”. CCHR, an international psychiatric watchdog group, strongly advises patients to report any sexual abuse by psychiatrists and psychologists to the police.

Professor Quadrio’s findings correspond with an earlier Canadian study, which found that 10% of psychiatrists admitted to sexually abusing their patients. 80% of those were repeat offenders. Another study, by British psychologists Tanya Garrett and John Davis, found that almost 40% of psychologists knew of others in their profession who’d had sex with patients—yet only 13% of the psychologists who knew of such stories had taken any action.

As a public service to law enforcement agencies, health care fraud investigators, licensing boards and the general public, CCHR has tracked more than 1,000 mental health workers convicted of crimes and has created a database of these criminals, found at www.psychcrime.org. CCHR also actively alerts the media to mental health workers in their area who have been disciplined for sexual assault of patients.

Two weeks ago, a former psychologist was fired from a high school teaching position in Florida after CCHR provided information about her previously undisclosed past: The psychologist, Constance Reynolds, had lost her license in Montana after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a patient who died in her care.

Laws exist in 19 states making therapist sexual exploitation a crime, though this should be otherwise prosecutable as sexual assault or rape. If you have been molested or abused by a mental health practitioner, file a complaint to the police and fill out CCHR’s psychiatric abuse report form at www.cchr.org/abuse or call 800-869-2247. CCHR may be able to help you find legal assistance.

Watchdog Says Omaha Mall Shootings Reflect Why They Launched Startling PSAs

SAINT LOUIS: 19-year-old Robert Hawkins, who killed eight people and wounded five before committing suicide in an Omaha, Nebraska mall, appears to be the latest kid killer under the influence of psychiatric drugs (click here for CNN video) documented to cause violence, mania, psychosis, suicide and “homicidal ideation.”

With ten recent school shooters under the influence of psychiatric drugs, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) a mental health watchdog, says the government can no longer ignore the violence inducing effects of these drugs and must launch a federal investigation. With 39 dead and 84 wounded from these ten recent drug-induced shootings alone, CCHR produced a series of three startling new Public Service Announcements, called “Get the Facts – Fight Back”, depicting the consequences of prescribing violence and suicide inducing psychiatric drugs to children and teens (click here to watch PSAs).
The group says the evidence of drugs causing violence, murder and homicide is overwhelming – yet ignored due to billions in drug company/psychiatric profits. In September 2006, Dr. David Healy, director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, and colleagues published the findings of their study of the antidepressant, Paxil, in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine stating: “We’ve got good evidence that the drugs can make people violent and you’d have to reason from that that there may be more episodes of violence.” (link)
Fox National News reporter Douglas Kennedy exposed the link between school shooters and antidepressant/psychiatric drug use in his ground breaking expose “Deadly Drugs” as far back as 2002. (link) 
 

Despite the deadly side effects, antidepressants are commonly prescribed to children and teens, raking in $20.6 billion in profits worldwide in 2006. In the meantime, the senseless drug-induced violence continues, taking a heavy toll on our nation’s children and teens.
CCHR launched the PSAs to help galvanize the public to demand a federal investigation of the violence inducing effects of psychiatric drugs before more children and innocent bystanders are murdered.  The group fought for more than a decade against vested psychiatric and pharmaceutical interests to have black box suicide warnings added to antidepressants, and was the first to expose the suicidal effects of the drugs in 1991 – 13 years before the government took action and finally issued the black box suicide warnings on all antidepressant drugs in 2004. Click here to watch a video of the 1991 FDA hearing on antidepressants and violence/suicide.

CCHR has also published a report Psychiatric Drugs and Anger Management Curricula—A Perspective on School Violence, which can be found by clicking here.

 

Stimulant Side Effects, Not “ADHD”, May Be to Blame for Slow Brain Development

LOS ANGELES:  A Nov 16 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on delayed brain development in children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is misleading, claims a psychiatric watchdog group.

Researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), examining a series of brain images of more than 400 children (half of them “ADHD”), concluded that some regions of the brain of children with ADHD matured several years later than normal. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) says the researchers underplayed the fact that 66% of the ADHD subjects studied had been on powerful stimulants (as reported in the study), warned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to cause suppression of growth—which could logically include brain development. With stimulant “treatment” the only physical variable, and ADHD never validated as a real disease, it is likely that the stimulant drugs, not ADHD, are to blame for the slow brain maturation reported by study authors Philip Shaw, et al.

Earlier researchers have also ignored the probable connection between the drugs and problems with brain size and growth. At a 1998 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Conference on ADHD, 14 MRI studies of people treated for ADHD were reviewed. The presenters reported on-average 10% brain atrophy (shrinkage) in ADHD subjects—however, pediatric neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman pointed out that the vast majority of the ADHD subjects had been treated long-term with stimulants—the only physical difference from the control group—suggesting that it was the drugs, not the so-called disorder, that was causing the brain atrophy. In the end, the NIH Panel concluded: “…there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.”

In fact, researchers have repeatedly failed to prove any physical abnormality that can validate the existence of ADHD. In 2003, Jonathan Leo, Professor of Anatomy at the Western University of Health Sciences and Professor David Cohen of the School of Social Work at Florida International University, reviewed 33 brain-imaging studies of ADHD-diagnosed subjects. They confirmed that every study concerned medicated children, a major variable because stimulant drugs “cause very persistent changes in the brain.” They also reviewed a widely touted 2002 NIMH study that included unmedicated subjects and claimed that unmedicated ADHD children had significantly smaller brains. However, the comparison group was two years older and taller, so naturally the smaller children had smaller brains.

In 2000, a study published in The Lancet claimed ADHD was linked to an over-production of dopamine. This was passed off as “fact”, even though the study involved only six adult subjects diagnosed with ADHD—all of whom were most likely to have been on long-term drug treatment, particularly stimulants. Critical details as to precisely what drugs they had been on or for how long were not provided, but the authors stated that one month before the brain scanning commenced, the subjects were taken off any drug that may affect the dopamine system. Stimulant drugs administered for ADHD affect the dopamine system. Based on this alone, the scanning differences found between the ADHD subjects and the normal subjects were likely to have been caused by drug treatment.

Despite all the research done in an attempt to prove otherwise, there remain no physical tests that can validate the existence of ADHD.  Even the American Psychiatric Association admits in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Edition IV, that there are “…no laboratory tests that have been established as diagnostic” for ADHD.  Instead, the diagnosis is entirely subjective—based on a checklist of “symptoms” that sound a lot like normal childhood behavior: “Fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in chair,” “Difficulty engaging in activities quietly” and “Acts as if driven by a motor.” Even with this lack of scientific basis for the so-called disorder, vested interests such as CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), which received more than $1 million in pharmaceutical funding in 2004-2005 alone, aggressively promote ADHD and the drugs used to “treat” it. Now, as many as 10% of children are alleged to have ADHD—many of whom are prescribed cocaine-like stimulants.

In addition to suppressed growth, the FDA warns that the drugs can cause psychosis, aggression, heart attack, stroke and sudden death.  Many parents, however, remain unaware of the risks of ADHD stimulants and other prescribed psychotropic drugs. To increase public awareness of the dangers of these drugs, CCHR has launched a new phase in its “Fight For Kids” campaign, with the slogan, “Get the Facts. Fight Back.” Their first Public Service Announcement series warns of the suicide and violence inducing side effects of antidepressants, prescribed to millions of children, and has already been translated into 15 languages. The group says it will be releasing additional PSA series on dangerous psychiatric “treatments” for children.

To view the first series of PSAs, go to www.CCHRSTL.org. 

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) U.S. President Bruce Wiseman interviews chemist Shane Ellison in this new “Take America Back” radio show exposing the corruption within the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries.

Ellison abandoned his career in manufacturing drugs for Eli Lilly when he discovered that the drugs he was making were not intended to cure real diseases. Instead, he discovered that “illnesses,” including ADHD and depression, were being invented and marketed to the population so that drugs could be sold to virtually any healthy individual. Ellison explains that the drugs often cause the very symptoms they are supposed to “cure”. After leaving the pharmaceutical industry, Ellison became an authority on therapeutic nutrition, starting a company that offers nutritional supplements and writing a book called Health Myths Exposed.

Wiseman points out that the black box warnings on antidepressants exemplifies how the drugs can cause serious side effects, including what they allegedly cure—antidepressants allegedly alleviate depression but in fact can cause suicidal thoughts and behavior.

Confirming that none of the drugs are curing depression whatsoever, Ellison likens antidepressants to a chemical lobotomy. With Pharma money and their lobbyists heavily influencing politicians, the host warns that two bills are currently pending in Congress forwarding the profitable lie that psychiatric diagnoses are real and need “treatment”. Wiseman urges listeners to contact their federal representatives and insist that these measures are not passed: The Mental Health Parity Bill, which mandates that insurance cover psychiatric treatment equally with physical treatment, and the Mother’s Act, which supports “mental health screening” of new moms.

Click here to listen to the show.