Month: February 2010

Green Mental Health Care: The Alternative to Toxic Psychiatric Drugs

Posted on by cchrstl

Green Mental Health Care: The Alternative to Toxic Psychiatric Drugs

Psychiatry’s solution to life’s problems is the administration of toxic drugs which according to the FDA can cause mania, worsening depression, anxiety, delusions, seizures, liver failure, suicide, mania, heart attack, stroke, fatal blood clots, sudden death, diabetes and much more. Green Mental Health Care is a non-toxic, non-addictive and non-invasive approach to mental health which focuses on workable medical, not psychiatric, solutions that have better patient outcomes and are not harmful or toxic to those seeking help.
Featuring nutritional biochemist Genita Petralli

“My life is dedicated to reclaiming lives from psychiatric drugs and exposing psychiatry for what it is; a gang of white collar drug pushers robbing our society of every resource that supports it right down to our future; the children. To sit on the sidelines and do nothing while I watch people suffer from the effects of psychiatric drugs is not an option.”

Genita Petralli

Fish oil supplements may help prevent mental illness

Posted on by cchrstl

An important new study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry reveals that fish oil supplements beat mental illness. The study involved 81 people deemed to be at high risk for psychosis. The randomized, placebo-controlled study provided fish oil supplements to half the study subjects for just 12 weeks (the other half received placebo supplements). The results? While 11 people in the placebo group developed a psychotic disorder, only 2 in the fish oil group did.

The study concludes, “[omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids] reduce the risk of progression to psychotic disorder and may offer a safe and efficacious strategy for indicated prevention in young people with subthreshold psychotic states.”

For more information read this article at Natural News.

Massive Medicaid Fraud Lawsuit Unsealed

Posted on by cchrstl

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®) announces the unsealing (1/25/2010) of a major Medicaid Fraud lawsuit against psychiatrists, their employers, pharmacies, state officials, and a medical education and publishing company for their roles in submitting fraudulent claims to Medicaid.

(http://psychrights.org/pr/100125MatsutaniUnsealingNR.pdf)

The defendants are:

Osamu H. Matsutani, M.D.
William Hogan, Commissioner Of the Alaska Department Of Health And Social Services
Tammy Sandoval, Director Of The Alaska Office Of Children’s, Services
Steve McComb, Director Of The Alaska Division Of Juvenile Justice
William Streur, Director Of The Alaska Division Of Health Care Services
Juneau Youth Services, Inc.
Providence Health & Services,
Elizabeth Baisi, M.D.
Ruth Dukoff, M.D.
Charter North Star Behavioral Health System
Kerry Ozer, M.D.
Claudia Phillips, M.D.
Southcentral Foundation
Sheila Clark, M.D.
Hugh Starks, M.D.
Lina Judith Bautista, M.D.
Heidi F. Lopez-Coonjohn, M.D.
Robert D. Schults, M.D.
Mark H. Stauffer, M.D.
Ronald A. Martino, M.D.
Irvin Rothrock, M.D.
Jan Kiele, M.D.
Alternatives Community Mental Health Services, D/B/A Denali Family Services
Anchorage Community Mental Health Services
Lucy Curtis, M.D.
Fairbanks Psychiatric And Neurologic Clinic, Pc
Peninsula Community Health Services Of Alaska, Inc.
Bartlett Regional Hospital Foundation, Inc.
Thomson Reuters (Healthcare), Inc.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Safeway, Inc.
Fred Meyer Stores, Inc.

Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v. Matsutani, et al., United States District Court, District of Alaska, Case No. 3:09-cv-0080-TMB.

The lawsuit, which was filed on April 27, 2009, and required to be kept under seal (secret) until now, is brought under the federal False Claims Act, which authorizes private parties to bring fraud actions on behalf of the Government. These cases are also called “whistleblower suits” or “qui tam” actions, and those who file them are entitled to a share in the recovery, if any. Each offending prescription carries a minimum penalty of $5,500.

The Complaint walks through the lack of science supporting the practice and the methods used by the pharmaceutical industry to induce psychiatrists to improperly prescribe these drugs. “Even though the drug companies have been using these methods to induce psychiatrists to prescribe these drugs, it is the psychiatrists’ responsibility to base their decisions on the facts, not drug company marketing,” said Mr. Gottstein, continuing, “the uncritical acceptance of pharmaceutical company hype represents a massive betrayal of trust by the psychiatrists prescribing these drugs to children and youth.”

PsychRights has also developed a streamlined model Qui Tam Complaint for use around the country. See, PsychRights Launches Campaign Against Medicaid Fraud With Model Lawsuit, July 27, 2009. The model Qui Tam Complaint is drafted for former foster youth to bring the lawsuits and receive the whistleblower’s share of the recoverey, but anyone with knowledge of specific offending prescriptions, such as parents and mental health workers, can bring these suits.

Last fall, Mr. Gottstein gave talks at two national conferences, the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA), and the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), where he presented on how to bring and conduct these cases. Mr. Gottstein is also gave a presentation in New York City, February 2nd following oral argument in Lilly v. Gottstein.

Mr. Gottstein indicates a number of these cases are percolating around the country. In one that is not as far along as some others, Ted Chabasinski, a Berkeley, California, lawyer, is seeking a former foster youth as a client to bring such a lawsuit in the Bay Area. Any former foster youth in the Bay Area who was given psychiatric drugs within the last 6 years can call Mr. Chabasinski at (510) 843-6372 to talk to him about bringing such a case. “Foster children are singled out for psychiatric drugging because they and their foster parents have almost no legal protections and no way they can refuse these damaging drugs,” says Mr. Chabasinski, who as a foster child, was electroshocked at the age of six as part of an experiment involving hundreds of foster children.

While PsychRights and Mr. Chabasinski are not bringing these cases for the money, such cases represent a tremendous financial opportunity for attorneys to do well by doing good.

“These are about as open and shut as cases can get,” said Mr. Gottstein, “it is Medicaid fraud to cause or submit prescriptions to Medicaid for reimbursement if they are not for a medically accepted indication. End of story.” PsychRights has developed a Medically Accepted Indications Chart showing what is allowable for common psychiatric drugs. Every other use of these drugs in children and youth and submitted to Medicaid is fraudulent. PsychRights conservatively estimates that at least half of psychotropic drug prescriptions to children and youth submitted to Medicaid are not for medically accepted indications and therefore fraudulent.

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights is further dedicated to exposing the truth about psychiatric interventions and the courts being misled into ordering people subjected to these brain and body damaging drugs against their will. Extensive information about these dangers, and about the tragic damage caused by electroshock, is available on the PsychRights web site: http://psychrights.org/.

James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq.
President/CEO
Law Project for Psychiatric Rights
406 G Street, Suite 206
Anchorage, Alaska 99501
USA
Phone: (907) 274-7686) Fax: (907) 274-9493
jim.gottstein[[at]]psychrights.org

Grand Opening Psychiatry An Industry of Death Exhibit

Posted on by cchrstl

TOURING EXHIBIT TARGETS PSYCHIATRY AS AN “INDUSTRY OF DEATH”

With public distrust of psychiatry mounting—and government agency warnings about psychiatric drugs at an all-time high—a new exhibit in St. Louis, Missouri shows that it could get much worse.

Denouncing the facts that internationally more than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions, and every month psychiatric drugs kill an estimated 3,000 people worldwide, the St. Louis Chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)is launching the Grand Opening of “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” international touring exhibition and documentaries.

You are invited to hear the featured Keynote Speaker, Mr. William Garrett, Vice President for Information and Public Contact at Applied Scholastics International in Spanish Lake, Missouri, officially open the exhibit at 2:30 PM on Saturday, February 13, 2010 at Jamestown Mall in Florissant, Missouri.

The exhibit features display panels that incorporate audio-visual presentations depicting human rights abuses by psychiatry, and carry statements from health professionals, academics, legal and human rights experts, and victims of psychiatric brutalities. The exhibit also addresses a federal plan that would screen the state’s children for “mental illness” that could lead to a threefold increase in the number of children being subjected to the devastating effects of psychotropic drugs.

The exhibit exposes psychiatry as an industry driven entirely by profit. It traces the origins of psychiatry, the role psychiatrists have played in the oppression of blacks and minorities, the roots of their eugenics programs and the pivotal part they played in the Holocaust. It also reveals how psychiatric drugs are behind gun-toting teens today going on shooting sprees, and how millions of federal dollars allocated to screen all 52 million American schoolchildren could increase both child deaths and acts of school violence. People touring the exhibit can sign a petition opposing funding and implementation of mental health screening in schools.

“The touring exhibit shows psychiatry’s deadly ‘treatments’ in graphic detail,” warns CCHR St. Louis chapter spokesperson, Moritz Farbstein, who listed out psychosurgery, shock treatment, deadly restraint and the prevalent inhumane conditions of psychiatric facilities, and the forced drugging of children as young as six months old. “Most importantly, though, this exhibit provides practical guidance for lawmakers, educators, doctors, human rights advocates and private citizens so they can take action in their own spheres to bring psychiatry to account for their abuses.”

The touring “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” exhibit theme is patterned after a permanent museum by the same name at the Los Angeles headquarters of Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a psychiatric watchdog group with 300 chapters worldwide. Co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, CCHR investigates and exposes psychiatric violations of human rights.

Mr. Farbstein said, “Our exhibit shows very clearly how, in the name of ‘help,’ psychiatry, in fact, destroys lives.”

A sampling of current statistics and facts shown in the exhibit bears this out:

• 20 million children worldwide are taking psychiatric drugs, including 9 million in the United States, which can cause suicide, hostility, violence, mania, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes and death.
• Antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children increased fivefold between 1993 and 2002 in the United States, during which time 45 children died from the drugs.
• In recent years, stimulant drugs have caused 19 child deaths, although as only 1% to 10% of drug adverse reactions are reported, the death toll from children taking antipsychotic drugs, stimulants and antidepressants could be as high as 15,000.
• 10% of American teens (2.3 million) are abusing psychiatric stimulants.
• More than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions around the world.
• Psychiatrists are using electroshock, drugs and other barbaric means to torture political dissidents.
• Internationally, psychiatrists kill up to 10,000 people each year with their use of electroshock—460 volts of electricity sent searing through the brain. Three-quarters of all electroshock victims are women.
• Psychiatrists and psychologists have raped 250,000 women. Studies show that 10 to 25 percent of psychiatrists sexually assault their patients; of every 20 of these victims one is likely to be a minor.

Psychotropic Drug Polypharmacy

Posted on by cchrstl

A recently published study [“National trends in psychotropic medication polypharmacy in office-based psychiatry”, Mojtabai and Olfson, Archives of General Psychiatry 2010 Jan;67(1):26-36] investigated patterns and trends in what is known as psychotropic polypharmacy, meaning the prescribing of two or more psychiatric drugs to be taken at the same time.

The study concludes that, “There has been a recent significant increase in polypharmacy involving antidepressant and antipsychotic medications. While some of these combinations are supported by clinical trials, many are of unproven efficacy. These trends put patients at increased risk of drug-drug interactions with uncertain gains for quality of care and clinical outcomes.”

In other words, drugs are being given to patients in all sorts of combinations without sound science showing they even work well together, much less that these drug cocktails are safe to take. In fact, the researchers point out specific dangers of taking multiple psychiatric drugs.

Click here for more information about the adverse side effects of psychiatric drugs.