A new video exposing the extensive conflicts of interest between the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the pharmaceutical industry was released this week on a newly launched website, (http://www.psychconflicts.org/), to coincide with the 161st anniversary of the APA and its annual convention being held in Washington, D.C.

Widespread psychiatric drugging of children has become an increasingly contentious issue, with pharma-funded psychiatrists at the center of the controversy. The psychiatric drugging of foster children in particular is now the subject of a congressional hearing. A study in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics, now garnering international attention, found that American children take antipsychotics at about six times the rate of UK children, while a January New York Times (NYT) investigation revealed that “the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children.”

According to the psychiatric watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which produced the new webpage and video, the soaring increase in psychotropic drugs to children is a result of the incestuous relationship between the APA and the pharmaceutical industry—totaling more than $10 million a year in conflicts of interest.

Today, about 30% of the APA’s income derives from pharmaceutical industry advertising and nearly 20 drug companies this year have invested an estimated $3 million into the APA’s convention alone. Of the nearly 30 pharmaceutical industry-supported symposiums, speakers’ fees could run as high as $250,000. The APA has also made an estimated $40 million from sales of its Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), an “insurance billing bible” that pharmaceutical interests potentially influence.

In 2006, a Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics study determined that 56% of psychiatrists on panels determining what “disorders” would be included in the DSM-IV had undisclosed financial interests in drug companies. Researchers also found that 100% of the psychiatrists on panels overseeing so-called “mood disorders” (which includes the lucrative “bipolar disorder”) and “schizophrenia/psychotic disorders” were financially involved with drug companies that manufacture the drugs prescribed for these conditions, the sales of which are around $40 billion a year worldwide.

Lisa Cosgrove, a clinical and research psychologist from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and co-researcher in the 2006 study reported that these disorders are not based on medical science: “No blood tests exist for the disorders in the DSM. It relies on judgments from practitioners who rely on the manual,” she stated.

Last December, U.S. News and World Report revealed that 19 out of the 27 task force members for DSM-V, due to be published in 2012, had financial ties to drug companies.

The January NYT investigation further found that psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty. In one state, Vermont, drug company payments to psychiatrists more than doubled from $20,835 in 2005 to an average of $45,692 in 2006. Antipsychotic drugs were among the largest expenses for the state’s Medicaid program. On September 4, 2007, the NYT reported, “Drug makers and company-sponsored psychiatrists have been encouraging doctors to look for [bipolar] disorder.” The expanded use of bipolar as a pediatric rather than adult disorder has made it the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion U.S. market for antipsychotics, reported Bloomberg News the next day.

Melissa Delbello, research psychiatrist with the University of Cincinnati who is speaking at the APA convention on May 7, was recently cited by Senator Charles Grassley for her failure to disclose to the university how much she had earned from pharmaceutical companies. In 2002, she was the lead author of a study that concluded that children responded well to the antipsychotic drug Seroquel, which is manufactured by AstraZeneca, one of the companies funding symposiums at the APA this year. She disclosed that she’d received $100,000 from the company between 2005 and 2007, but Senator Grassley discovered it was more than double that—$238,000.

A sample of speakers at the APA convention include:

+   David Kupfer, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, was a member of the DSM-IV Task Force and is Chair of the DSM-V Task Force. He has been a consultant to Eli Lilly & Co., Hoffman-LaRoche, Pfizer, Forest Labs and Servier and also sat on the advisory boards of Eli Lilly & Co., Forest Labs and Pfizer.

+   Kupfer’s wife, Ellen Frank, Ph.D., has received research support from Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer and was also a member of the DSM-IV Task Force.

+   Joseph Biederman, Chief of the Clinical & Research Program in Pediatric Psychopharmacology, Massachusetts General Hospital is giving seminars on pediatric bipolar disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, the latter funded by Ortho-McNeil Janssen Scientific Affairs. He was a member of the DSM-IV committee overseeing what infant, childhood and adolescent disorders would be included. Biederman has received research funds from 10 pharmaceutical companies, including manufacturers of antipsychotic drugs prescribed for bipolar. Last year, his promotion of pediatric bipolar disorder was blamed, in part, for the death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley from Massachusetts from a prescribed cocktail of psychiatric drugs which included antipsychotics for bipolar. Dr. Lawrence Diller, a California behavioral pediatrician, told the Boston Globe, “I find Biederman and his group to be morally responsible in part. He didn’t write the prescription, but he provided all the, quote, scientific justification to address a public health issue by drugging little kids.”

+   David Shaffer, Professor of Child Psychiatry at Columbia University and Director, Division of Child Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, is part of a symposium discussing “disorders of childhood: A DSM-V research agenda.” Shaffer was a member of the DSM-IV Task Force and is responsible for inventing TeenScreen, a subjective survey conducted on teens in schools to determine if they are potentially suicidal. He admits there’s a potential 84% chance of wrongly identifying students using his survey.

+   S. Charles Schulz, Professor and head of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School Minneapolis, Minnesota, was a DSM-IV project participant. His industry-supported seminar about “medication treatment for youth” is funded by AstraZeneca, the manufacturer of the antipsychotic Seroquel. The company faces multiple suits alleging that it downplayed the risk of diabetes with the drug. Schulz has been a consultant for AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly & Co. and has received grants from them and Abbott Laboratories and Janssen Pharmaceutica.

+   Charles Nemeroff, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, is conducting a seminar on depression supported by Sanofi-Aventis. Dr. Nemeroff was one of the psychiatrists on an FDA Advisory Panel in 1991 that exonerated Prozac (the first SSRI antidepressant) from causing suicidal behavior—a fact established 13 years later when the FDA ordered drug companies to add a black box warning that all SSRIs induce suicidal behavior in children and teens. Nemeroff is a consultant for at least 20 pharmaceutical companies and has received research funds from at least 8 psychiatric drug manufacturers.

CCHR has released the new webpage and video on the APA and its conflicts of interest to raise awareness on the fact the DSM medicalizes all human troubles as “mental disorders” in order to sell psychiatric drugs.

In 1969, the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus from SUNY Health Science in Syracuse, New York, co-founded CCHR to investigate and expose psychiatric human rights violations. For more information on CCHR visit http://www.cchrstl.org/.

A recent study by UK researchers found that depression screening is both inaccurate and unhelpful—fueling controversy over a Senate bill called the “Mothers Act.” Critics say the bill, S.1375, is dangerous to mothers and newborns and a violation of informed consent, despite being promoted under the guise of ensuring that “new mothers and their families are educated about postpartum depression, screened for symptoms, and provided with essential services….”

Dr. Chris Manning, Chief Executive of Primary Care Mental Health Education, stated that he was not surprised by the results of the new depression screening study, published in the April issue of the Canadian Association Medical Journal. He warned that population screening was fraught with problems and would produce any number of false positives, resulting in inappropriate treatment and over-medicalization. Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Glenmullen also warns about the problem with depression questionnaires, stating that they “may look scientific,” but “when one examines the questions asked and the scales used, they are utterly subjective measures.”

According to the mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), if passed the Mothers Act will increase the number of new mothers falsely diagnosed with postpartum depression and given powerful psychotropic drugs like antidepressants—potentially lethal to both the mother and child.  There is no language in the bill requiring full disclosure of the risks of these drugs and no language requiring mothers be given other non-harmful treatments and medical care besides drugs, violating their right to informed consent.

Antidepressants, the most common “treatment” for postpartum depression, are documented by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to cause mania, psychosis, hallucinations, suicidal ideation and in some cases, homicidal ideation. Additionally, regulators worldwide have warned that antidepressants prescribed to pregnant women can cause miscarriage, premature birth, and in babies born to pregnant women taking these drugs, congenital heart defects, life-threatening lung disease, neurological symptoms and withdrawal symptoms. Research also shows such drugs could affect the developmental process of the embryo.

One mother, Amy Philo, posted a YouTube video telling the story of what happened to her when she was prescribed psychiatric drugs after the birth of her child: http://youtube.com/watch?v=LQW23XCmOCw

CCHR maintains that mothers have a fundamental right to be fully informed that there are non-harmful, non-drug medical alternatives to being diagnosed with a mental disorder and prescribed dangerous psychiatric drugs, and that mental health “screening” is subjective and could lead to improper diagnoses. The Mothers Act opens the door to the violation of informed consent procedures, and should be defeated.

CCHR 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. For more information, visit www.cchrstl.org or write to cchrstl@cchrstl.org.

Stimulant Heart Risk In Kids Prompts Calls For Registry For All Child Deaths Linked To Psychotropic Drugs
1,300 Child & Adolescent Deaths Per Year Needs Urgent Federal Response
 
The American Heart Association this week recommended that doctors conduct a physical exam and an electrocardiogram before prescribing children stimulant drugs like Ritalin that could cause cardiac arrest. It also recommended a “Sudden Cardiac Death/Arrest registry in children” be established. But the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a group that has been investigating and exposing the potentially deadly effects of stimulants and other psychiatric drugs for nearly 40 years, says a federal registry is needed for all pediatric deaths linked to prescribed psychotropic drug use.
 
The Food and Drug Administration found 19 sudden deaths in children on stimulant drugs while another 24 died of heart-related problems over a period of five years. However, doctors only report 1 to 10 percent of adverse reactions to the FDA. In analyzing the FDA’s Adverse Drug Reaction database for all psychiatric drugs (stimulants, antipsychotics, antidepressants, sedatives), CCHR estimates that the combined total of child deaths each year is more than 1,300. Stimulants are prescribed for “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” which many medical experts say is not a legitimate disease but an excuse to chemically control boisterous childhood behavior. There are no blood or urine tests, brain scans or X-rays that can diagnose ADHD.  
 
CCHR President Ms. Jan Eastgate said, “The pharmaceutical-psychiatric conflicts of interests that make stimulant prescriptions and sales a $3 billion a year industry in the US should be overridden for the safety of children. All psychiatric drugs—the sales of which have soared to $28 billion a year—have serious risks. A federal registry should record the death of every child and adolescent who dies from physical complications—heart attacks, strokes, sudden death, respiratory failure and suicide—while taking a prescribed psychiatric drug. Much stronger drug information warnings are also needed if we are ever going to prevent future deaths.”
 
Eastgate said the first Ritalin death reported to CCHR was in 1986 when 13-year-old Samuel Grossman from Travis County, Texas, died from a heart attack while taking the drug. An autopsy found an enlarged heart caused by long-term stimulant use. At the time, Guenter Lewandowski, a spokesman for Ritalin’s manufacturer, ignored the evidence and stated, “We see no connection between Ritalin intake and the mention of deaths.”
 
In March 2000, Matthew Smith, 14, of Michigan, was skateboarding when he suffered a heart attack and died. He’d been taking Ritalin since he was 7 years old. The coroner determined that Matthew’s heart showed clear signs of the small blood vessel damage that stimulant drugs and amphetamines cause. Then, psychiatrists told the media that the death was unrelated to Ritalin.
 
It was another six years before parents were told the truth. Health Canada acted first when in May 2006 it issued a public advisory caution that stimulant drugs could increase heart rate and blood pressure that could result in “cardiac arrests, strokes or sudden deaths.” The FDA limped behind for three months, waiting until August before issuing a similar warning.
 
Eastgate says that drugging children, even infants as young as one, has become psychiatry’s cash cow and is placing more and more children at risk. Increasing prescription rates should be a warning bell, she said, for federal action and a registry to monitor deaths related to psychiatric drugs. IMS Health found that between 1995 and 1999 stimulant drug use rose 23 percent; the use of Prozac-like drugs for the 7-12 age group was up 151 percent; for kids 6 and under it soared 580 percent. For children under 18, the use of mood stabilizers other than lithium increased 4,000 percent and the use of new antipsychotic drugs rose nearly 300 percent. From 2001 to 2005, the use of antipsychotic drugs in children and teens grew another 73 percent and today, 2.5 million American children are prescribed the drugs that can cause life-threatening diabetes, while 1.5 million children are prescribed antidepressants that can drive them to suicide.
 
“Sudden death and cardiac arrest due to stimulants are just the tip of the iceberg. We need more effective monitoring of psychotropic drug-related deaths if we are going to save children’s lives,” Eastgate said.
 
CCHR was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and eminent New York psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. The author of more than 30 books on psychiatry, Dr. Szasz says there are “catastrophic consequences of child psychiatry, such as the psychopathologizing of child misbehavior and the mass poisoning of ‘hyperactive’ children with Ritalin and other neuroleptic drugs.”

 

Bringing Total to 54 Dead and 105 Wounded in Recent Drug-Induced School/Teen Shootings

MARCH 14:  Illinois police have confirmed that toxicology results show Illinois gunman Steven Kazmierczak had antidepressants in his system during his school shooting rampage—when he shot and killed five before committing suicide—bringing the total of recent psychiatric drug induced shootings to 54 dead and 105 wounded. Kazmierczak is the 12th school or teen shooter in the past decade under the influence of psychiatric drugs documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause suicide, mania, psychosis, hallucinations, hostility and in the case of one antidepressant, “homicidal ideation.” In response to an increasing number of these violent attacks, the mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) says it is time to stop vested interests from spouting their usual propaganda about psychiatric drugs, and instead demand a federal investigation for the sake of public safety. While the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industries have persisted in vehemently denying that antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs cause violence, or quickly denying any possible correlation, CCHR is quick to point out that it was similar vested interests that stalled the FDA from issuing suicide warnings on antidepressants in 1991. 13 years later CCHR was vindicated for its efforts when the FDA finally issued the long overdue black box warning in 2004. (See CCHR’s 1991 FDA hearing video.)

In a new 11-minute documentary entitled Psychiatry’s Prescription For Violence, psychiatrists, psychologists, professors, attorneys and medical experts join CCHR in exposing the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of violence that have been buried by those putting profit before public safety. CCHR’s battle for full public disclosure on the risks of these drugs spans nearly two decades and is chronicled in a new report entitled CCHR: Exposing the Dangers of Antidepressants and Other Psychotropic Drugs—Despite FDA/Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical Cover-Ups.

Today growing numbers of medical professionals, scientists and doctors are publishing studies exposing the facts that have been kept from the public. In September 2006, Dr. David Healy, Director of Cardiff University’s 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.” In a 2003/2004 analysis of psychiatric drug-induced violence/suicide, published in International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, psychiatrist Peter Breggin concludes, “There are many reports and studies confirming that SSRI [Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor] antidepressants can cause violence, suicide, mania and other forms of psychotic and bizarre behavior.”

CCHR’s new documentary is featured on its website http://www.cchr.org, on a section entitled “Psychiatric Drugs, Violence and School Shootings.” The website also features medical studies regarding treating patients without the use of psychiatric drugs under “Solutions/Alternatives.”

What others are saying about the documentary:

“An excellent tool to educate and empower parents on the abuse and proliferation of psychoactive drugs throughout our families and school systems. Parents need to be made aware of the devastating effects of these poisons on our most cherished resource.”

-Dr. Colbey Forman, Dean of Barron University, School of Psychoneurology

“The documentary is not only excellent qualitatively but extremely accurate. The public and the professional communities need to see it.”

-Dr. David Stein, psychologist

“I know that I have to go back to my own state and do what I can to stop the overuse and overprescription of these psychiatric drugs. It is imperative that we educate the public and I am sure they will be as outraged as I am.”

-Georgia Senator Donzella James

“A screeching wake-up call to the desensitizing of the human soul.”

-Carlos Ramirez, actor

To obtain a copy of the documentary click here.

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. Visit CCHR St. Louis at www.cchrstl.org.

54 Dead and 105 Wounded in Recent Teen and School Shootings

SAINT LOUIS: On February 14, Illinois gunman Steven Kazmierczak became the 12th shooter in the past decade under the influence of psychiatric drugs documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause suicide, mania, psychosis, hallucinations, hostility and in the case of one antidepressant, “homicidal ideation.” With casualties from school or teen shootings now totaling 54 dead and 105 wounded, the mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) says it is time to stop vested interests from spouting their usual propaganda about psychiatric drugs, and instead demand a federal investigation for the sake of public safety. While the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industries have persisted in vehemently denying that antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs cause violence, CCHR is quick to point out that it was similar vested interests that stalled the FDA from issuing black box warnings on suicide for more than 13 years. (See video from 1991 FDA hearing.)

In a new 11-minute documentary entitled Psychiatry’s Prescription For Violence, psychiatrists, psychologists, professors, attorneys and medical experts, join CCHR in exposing the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of violence that have been buried by those putting profit before public safety. CCHR’s battle for full public disclosure on the risks of these drugs spans nearly two decades and is chronicled in a new report entitled CCHR: Exposing the Dangers of Antidepressants and Other Psychotropic Drugs—Despite FDA/Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical Cover-Ups.

Today growing numbers of medical professionals, scientists and doctors are publishing studies exposing the facts that have been kept from the public. In September 2006, Dr. David Healy, Director of Cardiff University’s 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.” In a 2003/2004 analysis of psychiatric drug induced violence/suicide, published in International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, psychiatrist Peter Breggin concludes, “There are many reports and studies confirming that SSRI [Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor] antidepressants can cause violence, suicide, mania and other forms of psychotic and bizarre behavior.”

CCHR’s new documentary is featured on its website http://www.cchr.org, on a section entitled “Psychiatric Drugs, Violence and School Shootings.” The website also features medical studies regarding treating patients without the use of psychiatric drugs under “Solutions/Alternatives.”

What others are saying about the documentary:

“An excellent tool to educate and empower parents on the abuse and proliferation of psychoactive drugs throughout our families and school systems. Parents need to be made aware of the devastating effects of these poisons on our most cherished resource.”

  -Dr. Colbey Forman, Dean of Barron University, School of Psychoneurology

“The documentary is not only excellent qualitatively but extremely accurate. The public and the professional communities need to see it.”

  -Dr. David Stein, psychologist

“I know that I have to go back to my own state and do what I can to stop the overuse and overprescription of these psychiatric drugs. It is imperative that we educate the public and I am sure they will be as outraged as I am.”

 -Georgia Senator Donzella James

“A screeching wake-up call to the desensitizing of the human soul.”

 -Carlos Ramirez, actor

To obtain a copy of the documentary click here.

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. Visit CCHR St. Louis at http://www.cchrstl.org/.

Report on Psychotropic Drug Crimes Launched on Online Tracking Database

 SAINT LOUIS: Two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigations into doctors who prescribed cocktails of drugs, including tranquilizers and painkillers, leading to patient deaths, have prompted a new report released today online. The report, “When Prescribing Psychotropic Drugs Becomes Criminal Negligence: Cases and Convictions”, published by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), shows legal precedents where psychiatrists or doctors prescribing psychiatric drugs have been convicted of manslaughter when patients have died as a result of those prescriptions.

 

Published on the website, psychcrime.org, which features the world’s only searchable database of criminally convicted psychiatrists and mental health practitioners, the report calls for referral for criminal investigation of all deaths or injury due to poly-pharmacy or negligent prescribing—rather than to medical boards who can only suspend the license of those found culpable.

 

A case in point is the once prominent Arlington County, Virginia psychiatrist Martin H. Stein. On January 31, Stein lost his five-year effort to regain his medical license when the Virginia Board of Medicine declared him unfit to resume practice. In 2000, Stein’s 48-year-old patient Anita Kratzke died after Stein prescribed her 12 different drugs. No autopsy was performed, but Stein wrote on the death certificate “cardiac arrest” without examining the body. Two years later, in 2002, Stein surrendered his license after the Virginia Board of Medicine ruled that he was a danger to public health and that signing the death certificate without proper investigation was part of a pattern of negligence. The 22-page order from the board describes ethical violations, misdiagnoses and the inappropriate / excessive prescribing of drugs, in the treatment of 10 patients Stein saw between 1991 and 2000. The board also found that Stein “engaged in sexually intimate behavior” for more than two years with a patient he billed for accompanying him on shopping sprees and another incident where an adolescent was given 33 prescriptions. Despite the severity of these acts, Stein was never criminally charged. Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR, says the lack of accountability is astounding, “Cases like these should be referred for criminal investigation instead of a slap on the wrist, particularly when deaths are involved.”

 

The unique psychcrime.org database is searchable by first and last name, type of crime and location. In its nearly 40 years of investigating criminal abuse in the mental health system, CCHR has found that criminal convictions do not always stop practitioners from moving to another state or country and continuing to practice on unsuspecting patients. CCHR has tracked such cases and reported them to local authorities that have been able to locate them and prevent further patient abuse. The database provides a list of almost 1,000 convicted mental health workers. Recent cases include:

 

• On February 1, 2008, Pennsylvania psychiatrist Harold Pascal pleaded no contest to charges of issuing illegal medical prescriptions and Medicaid fraud. He was sentenced to 6-18 months in jail. Narcotics Agent Troy Serfass, who posed undercover as one of Pascal’s patients said, “He was motivated by greed. He prescribed illegal medications even after being told patients were selling those medications on the streets.”

 

• On October 24, 2007, psychiatrist Michael Mavroidis of Massachusetts was sentenced to a year in prison, 10 years probation and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine for illegally prescribing drugs, including the sedatives Klonopin, Ativan and Xanax and the painkiller Oxycontin. He came under investigation following patient overdose deaths and accusations that he extorted oral sex from at least one patient in exchange for prescription drugs.

 

Pending cases include Christian Hageseth, a psychiatrist registered to practice in Colorado, who prescribed 90 capsules of fluoxetine, an antidepressant, over the Internet to John McKay, a 19-year-old student at Stanford University in California, who subsequently committed suicide. Toxicology tests confirmed alcohol and fluoxetine in McKay’s bloodstream. In 2004, the FDA warned that antidepressants could cause suicidal thoughts and actions in children and adolescents and recently increased the warning to age 24. In 1998, the American Psychiatric Association expelled Hageseth and his Colorado medical license was revoked for a relationship with a patient who later became his wife. After his license was reinstated on a probationary basis, he began authorizing prescriptions for an online pharmacy. Hageseth was extradited to California to face trial for practicing without a license in the state of California.

 

“CCHR is dedicated to exposing these crimes for the protection of consumers and invites authorities and the public to make use of this unique database,” Ms. Eastgate stated.

 

CCHR 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.  Contact CCHR St. Louis at 314-727-8307 or email cchrstl@cchrstl.org.

Fuels Demands for Prohibiting Funds to Child Psychiatric Services and Deadly Drugs

SAINT LOUIS: A New York appeals court decision last week found that psychiatrists were wrong for force-feeding potentially lethal psychiatric drugs to a 14-year-old girl against her parents’ objections. The case has fueled calls for insurance coverage and governments to cease funding child psychiatric services. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) that for nearly 40 years has investigated psychotropic drug risks in the pediatric population is calling for a hard-line approach to this abuse of children. Millions of children are prescribed drugs that more than 50 international drug regulatory agency warnings in recent years say can cause suicide, life-threatening diabetes, heart attacks and death. CCHR’s co-founder, eminent professor of psychiatry emeritus, Thomas Szasz says, “Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.” The renowned author added, “The child psychiatrist is one of the most dangerous enemies” of children and “must be abolished.” (Click here to watch a speech by Dr. Szasz.)
 

The group says the case brought against Payne Whitney Hospital in New York and two psychiatrists exemplifies psychiatry’s arrogant belief that it can override parents’ right to make decisions in the best interest of their children. A court hearing, which the parents were not a party to and in which a psychiatrist was the only witness, allowed him to administer psychiatric drugs to the girl, identified as Christine W., despite the parents’ repeated objections. The Supreme Court’s Appellate Division determined this was “constitutionally defective and fatally flawed.” Ms. Jan Eastgate, CCHR’s international president, said, “Psychiatry thinks it can override the legal rights of parents and convince courts that it has the right to force kids onto drugs that can cause serious harm and even death. Putting children in the hands of psychiatrists is a life or death gamble and, given the growing number of fatalities, a roll of the dice not to be taken lightly. Government and private insurance should not be funding this assault on children’s lives.”
 

There is at least a 30% profit margin for a psychiatric bed occupied by a child, compared to 20% for an adult and rakes in well over $1 billion a year in inpatient revenues. More than $184 million in federal grants is also given for pediatric “mental health” services while $29 million is spent annually to fund treatment of “behavioral and learning disorders” through Special Education. CCHR says the cost to children’s lives is chilling:

§    More than 8 million American children are prescribed psychiatric drugs documented to cause suicide, psychosis, hallucinations, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and death.

§   Each year an estimated 1,155 children and adolescents die or commit suicide due to psychiatric drugs.

§    An estimated 1,200 under 18-year-olds attempt suicide, while about 280 become homicidal when taking these drugs.

§    In 2005 in the state of Florida alone, $680,000,000 of Medicaid funds was expended on “behavioral health drugs” for foster care children. This included more than 19,000 children prescribed antipsychotic drugs, of which 4,556 were 5 years of age or younger. In all, 59,697 Medicaid children were put on psychotropic drugs in 2005, a 528% increase over 9,500 in 2000.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog group established by the Church of Scientology, has helped secure legislative protections against children being forced onto psychiatric drugs. But, Ms. Eastgate says, “There needs to be a tougher approach by governments and insurance companies in clamping down on funding for pediatric psychiatric services, given the propensity for psychiatrists to rely upon potentially lethal drugs.”