Citizens Commission on Human Rights St. Louis

Indiana General Assembly

House of Representatives

News Release

State Rep. Jackie Walorski

Room 401-8, Statehouse

Indianapolis, IN  46204

 

STATEHOUSE (Aug. 7, 2008) — The cause of parental rights and personal liberty won a victory Tuesday (August 5) as a federal court affirmed the right of Hoosier parents to sue a school system for subjecting their daughter to mental health testing without their consent.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana ruled that a lawsuit filed on behalf of Chelsea Rhoades and her parents, Teresa and Michael, may proceed to trial. The family charges that the Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp. violated the family’s rights when school officials subjected Chelsea, a student at Penn High School in Mishawaka, to the TeenScreen examination without parental consent.

“I am elated that the federal court is allowing the family the opportunity to pursue this lawsuit,” said state Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Jimtown) “This kind of testing without parental consent led me to go on a petition drive that collected more than 12,000 names and eventually resulted in a state law requiring written parental approval before screenings such as this.

“The court, through its ruling, reaffirms parents’ right to control their children’s mental and physical health and wellbeing,” Rep. Walorski said, “and it sends a message to schools and agencies that they should be very, very careful about interfering with parental prerogatives.”

In December 2004, representatives of Madison Mental Health tested Chelsea and other Penn High School students using the TeenScreen, which asks questions that can be answered with only a “Yes” or a “No.” According to the lawsuit, Chelsea was diagnosed as possibly suffering from two mental health disorders. Several other students also were similarly diagnosed, the lawsuit said. Chelsea’s diagnosis turned out to be incorrect.

The Rhoades family is being assisted in the lawsuit by The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization that provides legal services to people whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated.

Mr. and Mrs. Rhoades said they had no knowledge of the testing until after the fact, and they sued in federal court, charging that their constitutional rights to family integrity and privacy were violated. School officials sought to have the suit dismissed.

“There are boundaries to keep schools and other agencies from interfering in the parent-child relationship,” Rep. Walorski said. “Those boundaries should not be ignored or taken lightly, and this case shines a light on that issue.”

Vermont AG Calls Heavy Weight of Drug Money Towards Psychiatrists “Troubling”

The psychiatric watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights, says the July 2008 Vermont Attorney General report revealing psychiatrists again top the list of doctors receiving Pharma payments, coupled with recent investigations into Pharma funds influencing psychiatric drug studies, prescribing patterns and the creation of new mental “disorders,” merits a federal investigation for conflicts of interest that is long overdue. The organization created a new website containing recent reports, disclosures, documents and videos exposing the major conflicts of interest between psychiatry and the Pharmaceutical industry called PsychConflicts.org (“psychiatry & pharma – the unholy alliance”).

The July 8, 2008 Vermont Attorney General report on pharmaceutical marketing disclosures revealed that $3 million was spent on drug promotions in Vermont in 2007, with 11 psychiatrists receiving 20% of the total amount, $630,000, a 25% increase from what psychiatrists were paid in 2006. The report also reveals that 7 of the top 10 drugs that companies paid prescribing fees for were psychiatric drugs. An article in the Vermont Rutland Herald, quoted Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell, “It is particularly troubling that the industry is paying large sums of money to influence prescribing practices involving psychiatric drugs.” This is the second consecutive year in which Vermont psychiatrists have topped the list. The only other state that requires pharmaceutical companies to disclose payments to doctors, Minnesota, had identical results; psychiatrists received the most pharma funding over all other doctors.

On the federal level, Senate investigators uncovered three industry-shaping psychiatrists who failed to report a combined total of about $7.9 million, two of which were psychiatrists attributed with fuelling widespread child psychiatric drugging. First was Maria DelBello, a child psychiatrist at the Cincinnati Children’s hospital, who failed to report being paid $180,000 from AstraZeneca, manufacturer of the antipsychotic drug Seroquel. According to the New York Times, “Dr. DelBello’s studies of Seroquel in children have helped to fuel the widespread pediatric use of antipsychotic medicines. Those studies were inconclusive, but she has described them as demonstrating that Seroquel is effective in some children.” Second is Dr. Joseph Biederman, a child psychiatrist who also fueled an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs in children, who failed to report $1.6 million in consulting fees he earned from drug makers between 2000 and 2007. The third is Alan Schatzberg, who failed to report over $6 million in pharmaceutical stocks and income. Schatzberg is not only chairman of the psychiatry department at Stanford University, but President Elect of the APA, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), also known as the “billing bible” of mental disorders for which the drugs are being prescribed.

Unlike medical diseases, which are discovered through verifiable physical conditions or abnormalities, DSM disorders are invented by codifying key behaviors and repackaging them as diseases, literally voting them into existence by a show of hands from DSM task members. The influence of pharmaceutical funding over these task members in “creating” the disorders was exposed in a 2006 study — 56% of those participating in revising the 1994 DSM had undisclosed financial ties to drug companies. Researchers also found that 100% of the psychiatrists on panels overseeing so-called “mood disorders” (which includes the lucrative “bipolar disorder”) 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. About 30% of the APA income comes from pharmaceutical industry advertising, which has earned over $10 million a year from conflicts within the APA and the pharmaceutical industry. The Washington Post reported that “Last year’s meeting of the American Psychiatric Association…reflects the extent of corporate sponsorships…. Some instructors were sponsored by at least a dozen companies.”

With pharmaceutical conflicts of interest garnering increasing scrutiny, both in the press and in federal investigations, the DSM is increasingly coming under fire. A New York Times article, “Psychiatry Handbook Linked to Drug Industry” reported in March this year that “More than half of the task force members who will oversee the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s most important diagnostic handbook have ties to the drug industry.” These ties have created a skyrocketing prescribing rate for psychiatric diagnoses, including a sevenfold increase in “bipolar” diagnoses in the past 13 years, according to a 2007 study.

With federal investigations currently focused on pharmaceutical funds influencing drug approval, drug safety and prescribing habits, CCHR says that psychiatrists creating mental disorders or approving them into psychiatry’s billing bible, the DSM, must be fully investigated for being funded by the drug companies that rely on new mental “disorders” to sell more drugs.

Learn more about the unholy alliance between psychiatry and pharma by visiting PsychConflicts.org.

This week, the “MOTHERS Act” — federal bill requiring mental health screening for pregnant women and new mothers which frequently leads to psychiatric drugging — was defeated as part of an omnibus package proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Although the defeat of the MOTHERS Act is a victory for those who oppose it, the controversy over the purpose of the bill and those who back it continues to mount. In an article featuring an exclusive interview with one of the bill’s leading opponents, Mrs. Amy Philo, founder of UNITE (United Non-profits and Individuals for Truth and Ethics), describes in graphic detail her personal experience of becoming violent and suicidal from the antidepressants prescribed to her following the birth of her son and her battle against the vested interests that continue to promote this treatment for new mothers.

 READ THE WORLD NET DAILY EXCLUSIVE WITH MRS. AMY PHILO HERE.   

Involuntary Commitment and Forced Psychiatric Drugging in the Trial Courts: Rights Violations as a Matter of Course

JAMES B. GOTTSTEIN
Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®); International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP); National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA); Law Offices of James B. Gottstein

 

Replacing the Vermont State Hospital with Humane Community-based Recovery—and Saving Millions of Dollars for Vermont Taxpayers

A report from Vermont’s Ethan Allen Institute (EAI) shows that there are low-cost, humane alternatives to sending emotionally or mentally troubled individuals to Vermont State Hospital (VSH), the state’s public psychiatric facility.

VSH has been decertified by the federal government for poor care three times since 1986. Decertification means that Medicaid no longer participates in treatment coverage, leaving the entire burden on Vermont’s taxpayers. The most recent decertification occurred in 2005, following a condemnatory report by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that called VSH “dehumanizing” and “prison-like.”

The results of the DOJ’s report have created on one side, a call for a new facility to be built (strongly supported by the state employee’s labor union) and on the other side, support for the abandonment of the state facility in favor of far less expensive, humane and community-based services (strongly supported by civil rights groups, psychiatric patients and legislators responding to taxpayers.)

However, the issue for closure of the 110-year-old VSH goes back to at least 1987 (following the hospital’s first decertification), when researchers led by a former Vermont commissioner of mental health concluded that it was both feasible and desirable to have “community support and rehabilitation services to replace the state hospital.”

Based on two subsequent decertifications, it is still both feasible and desirable.

VSH costs vs. benefits

According to the EAI’s report, the cost to treat a patient at VSH is $1,050 per day, or $383,250 per year. Among specific violations noted by the DOJ in their most recent investigation of VSH:

• Over-reliance on drugging of patients on PRN (pro re nata, “as needed”) basis with no physician monitoring.¹
• Consistent use of seclusion and restraint as an intervention of first resort, when the patient is neither an immediate danger to himself nor others. More than 90% of such incidents involved strapping patients to a bed in five-point restraints in a seclusion room—the most restrictive and dangerous form of intervention. The percentage of restrained VSH patients substantially exceeds the national average.
• Insufficient risk management system and unsafe conditions in the building’s physical structure that could facilitate suicide or self-injury. The DOJ’s report notes “the history of suicides at VSH.”
• There is nothing in the DOJ’s report (or publicly available elsewhere) that speaks of the benefits of treatment at VSH or of the institution’s statistic for patient rehabilitation. Their report does however state that due to its inadequate review process, “patients are likely being unnecessarily institutionalized and potentially deprived of a reasonable opportunity to live successfully in the most integrated, appropriate setting.”

The solution is peer support programs

The solution presented by EAI is that of the “peer support” model of treatment. Such programs are operated in communities, in residential housing—no locked wards, no forced drugging, restraint or seclusion and, in many cases, no mental health professionals—and provide a safe, non-coercive environment where a patient can rest, eat right and in some cases work.

The EAI report makes a distinction between forensic (criminal or potentially violent patients) and non-forensic populations—acknowledging that the peer support system is for non-forensic populations and that forensic patients belong in a more secure setting, for the safety of the public.

Examples of Vermont peer support programs:

Safe Haven houses six patients and is funded partially by a U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program for the homeless and routinely accepts patients discharged from VSH that have no home to return to. An analysis of patients housed at Safe Haven in 2006-07 showed that each of them successfully transitioned to the community, to either senior housing or a private apartment. Former patients often return to college, get degrees in the field and come back to work in recovery programs. Cost: $32 per day or $11,680 per year. This is a 3181% savings over VSH.

Second Spring serves up to 11 discharged VSH patients, and is staffed by peers and non-peers. Former patients come on a voluntary basis to learn how to live again in the community, something impossible to learn in a hospital setting. Cost: Approximately $750 a day—still less than VSH’s $1,050 daily rate—and a 40% savings.

The EAI’s report gives numerous examples of such programs in other states, such as Minnesota, Alaska and New York.

In addition to the savings, these programs provide recovery—something the state hospital model does not often approach. A 2003 report by the King County (Washington) Department of Community and Human Services showed that of 9,302 people who received publicly funded mental health services over a one-year period, less than 1 percent recovered.² Mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights could find no reports from any county or state agency from any time period that painted a different picture.

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Compared to the state hospital’s failings and high cost, the benefits and low cost of the peer support model bring one to the inescapable conclusion that such a change in the treatment of the emotionally/mentally disturbed would result in a level of patient recovery that rarely, if ever, is attained in the state hospital model—not to mention significant savings to the state and thus, relief for taxpayers.

State legislators and others with budgetary or state hospital concerns owe it to themselves and their constituents to read it and examine the alternatives, which can be utilized or established anywhere.

To read the EAI report, “Don’t Send Me to Waterbury,” go to www.ethanallen.org/home.html and then select “Publications” from the list on the left side.

 

In October 2007, news stories appeared on the death of a 17-year-old boy at the hands of staff members in a Tennessee psychiatric facility. The death was ruled a homicide. A month later, another story appeared, exposing the circumstances surrounding the death of a 14-year-old who was violently restrained by a 260-lb. staff member in the same Tennessee facility. That same month, Fox News broke the story of the death of another 14-year-old in a Massachusetts psychiatric facility, from failure to receive proper medical attention.

Investigation of these reports by the mental health watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) found that the facilities these children died in are owned by Universal Health Services (UHS). Further research turned up numerous abuses in their psychiatric hospitals across the United States. There are 114 UHS psychiatric facilities in 33 states, two of them in Missouri: St. Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute and Two Rivers Psychiatric Hospital Kansas City.

The cruel and violent deaths of three children in UHS psychiatric facilities — as well as an extensive list of abuses and violations found from CCHR investigation — seems sufficient evidence that perhaps UHS is not as focused on patient welfare as they are on the bottom line, a common finding with psychiatric facilities around the world.

CCHR is not the only agency to notice these troubles at UHS. In December 2006, the Service Employees International Union issued the report “Failure to Care, A National Report on Universal Health Service’s Behavioral Health Operations,” which declares, “This report finds that UHS has disregarded the safety and recovery of the patients it serves, as well as the communities in which it operates.” A preface from the National Alliance of Professional Psychology Providers, states, “There is a crisis in our nation’s mental health care system…of placing earnings and exorbitant profits above the public interest at the expense of quality services to those in need. Using Universal Health Services (UHS) as an example, this report clearly documents why mega healthcare corporations such as UHS need to be held accountable….”

Read the full CCHR report Universal Health Services: Profits Over Patients at www.psychcrime.org.

If you know about abuses at a UHS psychiatric facility, or if you want to know if a particular facility in your state belongs to UHS, contact CCHR St. Louis.