The New ECT – Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Posted on April 4, 2013 by cchrstl

The New ECT – Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

In our last newsletter we discussed Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) as an alternative to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in order for the psychiatric industry to continue generating income if ECT were banned.

One can even buy, with a doctor’s prescription, a portable home cranial electrical stimulation device for $695 from Fisher Wallace Laboratories, with a special price of $595 for the military. The doctor, by the way, does not have to be your own doctor; the company will provide someone for $50 who will write the prescription with a phone call.

As if that prospect wasn’t bad enough, we now have Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), the new horizon of psychiatric brutality, for use when other psychiatric methods have failed. TMS is recommended for those who are squeamish about getting ECT.

Guess what — none of these psychiatric methods have failed to produce their intended effect — making patients for life and ensuring the continuation of psychiatric profits at the expense of actually helping anyone.

With TMS, a large electromagnetic coil is placed against the scalp near the forehead. The electromagnet used in TMS creates electric currents that stimulate nerve cells in the brain. As with VNS, TMS is experimental; no one knows quite how it works or its long term adverse effects; it is still under investigation, so anyone succumbing to this procedure is in actual fact a research subject, a guinea pig as it were. There is still considerable controversy over its effectiveness, with the psychiatric industry touting miracle cures and pretty much everone else highly skeptical.

TMS is an outpatient procedure that doesn’t require anesthesia, surgery or electrode implantation. A typical course of “treatment” is five 40-minute sessions per week for up to six weeks. The cost can range from $6,000 to $10,000, depending on the clinic and the number of sessions, and is usually not covered by insurance. The cost of a portable TMS machine is around $6,000.

Health care costs are being driven out of control by litigation, malpractice suits, fraud, and the coercive use of psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric methods. Decades of psychiatric monopoly over mental health has only lead to upwardly spiraling mental illness statistics and continuously escalating funding demands.

The many critical challenges facing societies today reflect the vital need to strengthen individuals through workable, viable and humanitarian alternatives to harmful psychiatric options. For more information, download and read the CCHR booklet The Real Crisis in Mental Health Today – Report and recommendations on the lack of science and results within the mental health industry.

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The New ECT – Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Posted on April 1, 2013 by cchrstl

The New ECT – Vagus Nerve Stimulation

An electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) device is used for treating psychiatric disturbances by inducing in the patient a major seizure by applying a brief intense electrical current to the patient’s head, also called shock treatment.

About 100,000 people are being given ECT each year in the U.S. ECT has long been known to cause serious harm to patients, including extremely severe and permanent memory loss, inability to learn and remember new events, depression, suicide, cardiovascular complications, prolonged and dangerous seizures and even death. An ECT session costs between $1,000 and $2,000 and is usually given between 6 to 12 times to an individual over several weeks; an ECT machine sells for about $15,000.

In January, 2011 the Neurological Devices Advisory Panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended that ECT machines remain classified as high-risk devices (Class III for the most dangerous medical devices, also called “premarket approval”.) The panel recommended that the companies which manufacture ECT devices be required to prove that ECT is both effective and safe in order to remain in use, with the exception of catatonia for which a less stringent classification was recommended. No effective date has yet been established for ECT machine manufacturers to provide this proof, so the machines are still very much in use.

To confuse the issue, psychiatrists also call this “cranial electrotherapy stimulation,” which uses less electrical current than an ECT machine but is supposed to be something new and different.

To offset the potential loss of income if ECT machines are banned, new methods of psychiatric income are being devised. Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) is one such.

The vagus (Latin for “wandering”) nerve stretches from the head, through the neck and chest, to the abdomen. Besides connecting to the various organs in the body (heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, etc.), it conveys sensory information about the state of the body’s organs to the central nervous system. This means that the vagus nerve is responsible for such varied tasks as heart rate, intestinal contractions, sweating, keeping the larynx open for breathing, and so on.

VNS produces short bursts of electricity directed into the brain via the vagus nerve. The energy comes from a battery, about the size of a silver dollar, which is surgically implanted under the skin, usually on the chest. Leads are threaded under the skin and attached to the vagus nerve. The device is programmed to deliver these small electrical bursts every few minutes. The mechanism by which this is supposed to work is not entirely understood; it’s just a theory, and the patient is the research guinea pig.

Health care costs are being driven out of control by litigation, malpractice suits, fraud, and the coercive use of psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric methods. Decades of psychiatric monopoly over mental health has only lead to upwardly spiraling mental illness statistics and continuously escalating funding demands.

The many critical challenges facing societies today reflect the vital need to strengthen individuals through workable, viable and humanitarian alternatives to harmful psychiatric options. For more information, download and read the CCHR booklet The Real Crisis in Mental Health Today – Report and recommendations on the lack of science and results within the mental health industry.

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On the Sea of Memory

Posted on March 23, 2013 by cchrstl

On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering

a book by Jonathan Cott

Cott describes what it was like to re-invent himself after 36 ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) sessions created a fifteen year gap in his memory. “At the end of the 1990s, the esteemed writer Jonathan Cott lost fifteen years of his life. After receiving repeated rounds of electroshock treatments to combat his severe clinical depression, Cott couldn’t remember anything he had experienced between 1985 and 2000. Not a shred remained of his intimate relationships, his travels, his writings, his joys and sorrows.”

Mr. Cott was interviewed by Steve Paulson on Public Radio International’s To The Best Of Our Knowledge (12/21/12). He said, “…basically, I don’t remember anything for 15 years from about 1985 to about 2000. And when I got out of the hospital I was still depressed. … I would never have signed a consent form to have ECT knowing what I know now.”

When a string broke during one of Itzhak Perlman’s performances, he continued to play on the remaining strings, and said, “…make new music with what you have, then with what you have left.”

Jonathan Cott continued to play his life with the memory he had left, going around to everyone in his address book and asking them to tell him who they were and how they knew him — little by little reconstructing his own memories from the memories of others.

One shouldn’t have to cope through this kind of trauma; life is tough enough without psychiatry destroying a person’s memory with ECT. Perhaps you know someone who has been harmed by psychiatric abuse; have them contact CCHR at www.CCHR.org/abuse.

Find out more about the harm that ECT does by clicking here, then write your state representative and senator and tell them to stop funding ECT, which is a big money-maker in the psychiatric mental health industry. Let us know who you contacted and what they said.

When we talk with people about ECT, many have the mistaken impression that this barbaric procedure is no longer used, when in fact it is still being heavily promoted and used by the psychiatric industry. The last time we checked, Medicare was paying for roughly 153,000 ECT shocks per year; over 6,000 of these in Missouri. Washington University in St. Louis is a leader in promoting and delivering ECT, and the WU psychiatrists say that if ECT didn’t fix your depression, you just didn’t get enough of it.

The second quarter 2010 newsletter of the Missouri Psychiatric Association (edited at Washington University) promoted ECT for pregnant women, and lamented the fact that in Missouri a cumbersome court order is required to shock someone under court protection for dementia, saying, “We believe that psychiatrists who administer ECT should be able to do so without legal and/or legislative barriers.” We say that these barriers are not strong enough; what say you?

Write your state legislators to abolish the practice of Electro-Convulsive Therapy. This barbaric pseudo-medical treatment is responsible for thousands of Missouri citizens being on the roles of Medicare and Medicaid. ECT causes permanent brain damage and the victims rely on Medicaid to survive.

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Struck by a turtle lately?

Posted on March 20, 2013 by cchrstl

No? Then surely you’ve been smacked by a raccoon, chicken … or at the very least, a nonvenomous lizard.

TurtlesWell, regardless, starting in 2014, your doctor will be prepared when animals, lightning, or even unpowered watercraft strike, burn, bite or injure you in just about any other way.

The U.S. health care system is ramping up to implement a massive new coding system called ICD-10. It’s a bland name for a system capable of coding thousands of colorful injuries. A full 68,000 to be exact, as opposed to the 13,000 under the current ICD-9. The codes are intended to help health care providers keep track of what happened to you, how much it should cost and what follow-up care you need.

Take these, straight from ICD-10:

Hurt at the opera: Y92253

Stabbed while crocheting: Y93D1

Walked into a lamppost: W2202XA

Walked into a lamppost, subsequent encounter: W2202XD

Submersion due to falling or jumping from crushed water skis: V9037XA

Even with the new descriptive phrases at their disposal, many health care providers strongly oppose the coding system. In December, the American Medical Association, 42 state medical organizations and 40 medical specialty groups, wrote a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to cancel implementation of the ICD-10 code set.

Not only do they say it will “create significant burdens on the practice of medicine with no direct benefit to individual patient care,” they also say ICD-10 will distract from other upcoming health information initiatives, including major ones tied to the health care reform law.

[The above taken from an NPR News Hour interview on March 4, 2013.]

Briefly reviewing the 263 pages of ICD-10 devoted to the classification of mental and behavioral disorders, we counted roughly 500 codes. There were codes for PTSD, insomnia, abuse of vitamins or herbal remedies, reading disorder, spelling disorder, arithmetical skills disorder, sibling rivalry, drug withdrawal symptoms, too little sex, too much sex, mental disorders due to tobacco and caffeine indulgence, and of course the catch-all “mental disorder, not otherwise specified.”

We’ve been alerting you about the DSM-5. This may be even worse.

Find Out! Fight Back!

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Petition to Release Adam Lanza Toxicology Reports

Posted on March 14, 2013 by cchrstl

A few weeks ago, AbleChild, a parents’ group (www.ablechild.org) started a petition requesting that the Newtown Selectwoman and Connecticut lawmakers take the necessary steps to ensure that the complete autopsy/toxicology results of alleged Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, be released to the public. This is important because toxicology tests would determine whether Lanza was yet another school shooter under the influence of, or in withdrawal from, psychiatric drugs, documented to cause violent behavior.

In just a few weeks, there are already 2,200 signatures on this petition but in order to get this to occur, they need more signatures. So please sign it if not already done and forward it to your friends and associates to help get this widely supported.

Here is the link to the petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/release-adam-lanza-toxicology-reports.html

For more information about psychiatric drug side effects click here.

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Too Many Missouri Children Drugged for ADHD

Posted on March 12, 2013 by cchrstl

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) analyzes and publishes statistics for various conditions. A January 24, 2013 CDC research survey [“State-Based and Demographic Variation in Parent-Reported Medication Rates for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, 2007–2008”] reports that Missouri had the second-highest number of children in the nation who are prescribed ADHD drugs.

The actual statistic is that in 2007-2008 Missouri had the second highest rate, 78.3%, of children aged 4 to 17 years who had an ADHD diagnosis and were taking ADHD drugs. Only Mississippi with 79.0% was higher.

Of U.S. children aged 4 to 17 years, 4.1 million had a current ADHD diagnosis in 2007, and approximately 2.7 million were taking ADHD medication. The average rate by state was 66.3% of children having an ADHD diagnosis and taking ADHD drugs. Missouri comprised 6.7% of the national total of children diagnosed with ADHD and taking ADHD drugs.

Should we be worried that such a large percentage of children are being diagnosed and drugged for ADHD? You bet!

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on this survey February 4th, saying that the CDC is working with the Missouri Department of Mental Health to determine why this rate is so high. Email your concerns about psychiatric drugging of children to Patsy Carter (patsy.carter@dmh.mo.gov) in the Office of Children, Division of Comprehensive Psychiatric Services, Missouri Department of Mental Health. You might want to mention that ADHD is a fraudulent diagnosis, and that psychiatric drugs are harmful and addictive.

The ADHD diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis, from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is simply a list of behaviors that may appear disruptive or inappropriate.

These are the spontaneous behaviors of normal children. When these behaviors become age-inappropriate, excessive or disruptive, the potential causes are limitless, including: boredom, poor teaching, illiteracy, inconsistent discipline at home, tiredness, malnutrition, and underlying physical illness. Children who are suffering from bullying, abuse or stress may also display these behaviors in excess. By making an ADHD diagnosis, we ignore and stop looking for what is really going on with the child. ADHD may also be Teacher Attention Disorder or Parent Attention Disorder. These children need the adults in their lives to give them improved attention.

Go here for more information about the fraudulent ADHD diagnosis.

Go here for more information about ADHD drug side effects.

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More About Presidential Memoranda

Posted on March 1, 2013 by cchrstl

In a previous newsletter, we discussed what at the time were being called Presidential Executive Orders regarding gun violence. One of these has now shown up on the Whitehouse web site as a Presidential Memorandum rather than an Executive Order.

In any case, we thought you might be interested in more detail about this issue and how it might relate to the purpose and mission of Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

Following are selected quotes from this Presidential Memoranda and the White House web page devoted to preventing gun violence — which is located at http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/preventing-gun-violence.

Presidential Memorandum “Engaging in Public Health Research on the Causes and Prevention of Gun Violence”, January 16, 2013:

“The Secretary of Health and Human Services (Secretary), through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other scientific agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, shall conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it.”

From the White House web page on preventing gun violence:

“Though the vast majority of Americans with a mental illness are not violent, we need to do more to identify mental health issues early and help individuals get the treatment they need before dangerous situations develop. As President Obama has said, ‘We are going to need to work on making access to mental health care as easy as access to a gun.’ The Administration is proposing steps to identify mental health issues early and help individuals get the treatment they need before these dangerous situations develop.”

If you have information about the causes of gun violence and ways to prevent it, please send it to:

Secretary HHS in care of Kathleen.Sebelius@hhs.gov

Director CDC in care of Tomfrieden@cdc.gov

You might want to mention that important and often neglected causes of violence are psychotropic drugs, whose violence-causing side effects are already documented by the Food and Drug Administration; and that the way to prevent it is to simply stop taking these drugs (but do not stop taking these drugs suddenly, as the violence caused by withdrawal symptoms are just as deadly as violence caused by taking the drugs in the first place.) For evidence, go to the FDA’s web site www.fda.gov and search for “black box warning antidepressant” — for example, the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in children and adolescents being treated with antidepressant drugs.

For more information about the relation between violence, suicide and psychotropic drugs, download and read the booklet “Psychiatry and the Creation of Senseless Violence” from the CCHR St. Louis web site.

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Stigma

Posted on February 13, 2013 by cchrstl

What is a “stigma”?

A mark or characteristic indicative of a history of a disease or abnormality. [Middle English stigme, brand, from Latin stigma, stigmat-, tattoo indicating slave or criminal status, from Greek, tattoo mark, from stizein, stig-, to prick]

Is there a stigma associated with mental distress? First of all, the psychiatric manifestation known as “mental illness” is not a disease, it’s a symptom. And let’s face it, what a psychiatrist calls “abnormal” is just a label for something they don’t like.

Thomas Szasz proposed in 1960 that we view the phenomena conventionally called “mental diseases” as simply behaviors that disturb others (or oneself.)

So how do you fix disturbing behavior? Do you suppress it with drugs, involuntary commitment, restraints, surgery, or electric shock?

Or do you actually handle it by finding and treating the root cause, whatever that may be?

The campaign to “stop the stigma” of mental illness is a pharmaceutical marketing campaign.

With its seemingly altruistic sounding agenda to eliminate “stigma” the fact is the real “stigmatization” is coming from those behind this campaign — pharma, psychiatry and pharma-funded front groups such as NAMI and CHADD. For example, take NAMI’s campaign to stop the “stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill — the “Founding Sponsors” were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs.

The real stigmatization is coming from those that benefit from labeling behaviors as diseases to be “cured” or “treated” despite the complete lack of medical/biological evidence to support them.

Psychiatric labels are the stigma.

The forthcoming 2013 revision of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) will increase the number of people in the general population diagnosed with a mental illness — but what they need is help and understanding, not labels and medication.

Fraudulent diagnoses perpetrated by the DSM obscure the role of family, drug abuse, undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions, nutritional deficiencies, stress, illiteracy, and other factors contributing to mental distress. The result is often further stigma, discrimination and social exclusion.

What shall we do about this? How about labeling jars instead of people?

CCHR: Psychiatry Labeling Kids with
Bogus ‘Mental Disorders’

Watch the Video
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The Military’s Billion-Dollar Pill Problem

Posted on February 9, 2013 by cchrstl

A recent article in Men’s Journal magazine by Paul John Scott presents a vivid human interest story about the damage that psychiatric drugs are doing in the U.S. Military.

“At a time when soldiers kill themselves in record numbers – 18 veterans per day – the armed forces spend a fortune on a drug known to increase the chance of suicide.”

The article goes on to say —

“American soldiers (active soldiers as well as retired) have never been more medicated than they are now: In 2010, more than 213,000 service members (roughly 20 percent of active-duty military) were taking medications the military considered “high risk” – from epilepsy drugs to psychiatric pills like Seroquel. But what’s more incredible is that Seroquel and other antipsychotics are expensive (as much as $10 a dose) and not proven to be effective in treating the very conditions for which the military and VA most often prescribe them: insomnia and PTSD. But that didn’t prevent their use by the military from increasing tenfold between 2002 and 2009.”

and

“…80 percent of soldiers with PTSD are given psychotropic drugs, many of which can raise the risk of suicide.”

and

“While the military is doling out all kinds of psychiatric drugs, none is more troubling than the atypical antipsychotics – blockbuster drugs with names like Seroquel, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon, and Abilify. According to 2010 Department of Defense records, about 11,000 active-duty troops were on Seroquel. Since 2001, the VA has spent more than $1.5 billion and the Department of Defense more than $88 million on two atypicals alone, Seroquel and Risperdal.”

Please thank the article’s author by leaving him a message here.

Read more about drugging in the military here.

You can have a voice in this waste and abuse. Here are places you can express your outrage:

Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
dpcintrn@osd.pentagon.mil

Department of Defense
Office of Inspector General
4800 Mark Center Drive
Alexandria, VA 22350-1500
hotline@dodig.mil

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
9999 Joint Staff Pentagon
Washington, DC 20318-9999
jointstaffig@js.pentagon.mil

Secretary of the Army
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
usarmy.pentagon.hqda-oaa.mbx.oaa-communications-poc@mail.mil

Secretary of the Navy
1000 Navy Pentagon
Washington, DC 20350-1000
ray.mabus@navy.mil

Secretary of the Air Force
1670 Air Force Pentagon
Washington, DC 20330-1670
http://www.af.mil/main/contactus.asp

Commandant of the Marine Corps
Headquarters USMC
2 Navy Annex (CMC)
Washington, DC 20380-1775
marine.mail.fct@usmc.mil

Department of Veterans Affairs
VA Inspector General Hotline (53E)
P.O. BOX 50410
WASHINGTON, DC 20091-0410
vaoighotline@va.gov

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Pill Mill Psychiatrist Disciplined

Posted on February 5, 2013 by cchrstl

Effective February 1, 2013, the Medical Board of California placed psychiatrist Nathan Brian Kuemmerle on seven years’ probation, with an actual one year suspension beginning February 17, 2013.

Kuemmerle, who formerly practiced in West Hollywood, was charged with operating a “pill mill” out of his office: writing thousands of narcotics prescriptions for cash, without examining patients.

On May 18, 2011, Nathan Kuemmerle was sentenced in Los Angeles federal court to time served and three years probation, following his January conviction on one charge of distribution of a controlled substance—specifically, 180 tablets of Xanax.

Investigations revealed that Kuemmerle was the number one prescriber of the most powerful dosage of the stimulant drug Adderall in the state of California and the second-highest prescriber of Schedule II controlled substances (the designation used by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration for drugs of greatest danger, addiction and abuse).

Kuemmerle is reported to have written prescriptions for cash, without legitimate medical purposes, to make money to pay for his addiction to methamphetamine.

The Medical Board of California placed conditions on Kuemmerle upon his return to practice: He is prohibited from supervising physician assistants, engaging in the solo act of medicine, and shall not order, prescribe, dispense, administer, furnish, or possess any controlled substances; and, shall not issue an oral or written recommendation or approval to a patient for possession or cultivation of marijuana for personal medical purposes.

YOU CAN HELP spread the word about psychiatric fraud and abuse. Watch the CCHR documentary DVDs and show them to your family, friends, and associates. The fraud is real, the abuse is real, and the truth is real scary – but something can always be done about it. Don’t wait for someone else to do something about it!

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