Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis

As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge (1810-1812), the English mathematician Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was a member of the Extractors Club, dedicated to liberating its members from the madhouse, should any be committed to one.

Of course, at the time the most famous psychiatric institution was the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, variously known as St. Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam.

Bedlam became notorious for the brutal ill-treatment meted out to the mentally ill. In the 18th century people used to go to Bedlam to stare at the lunatics. For a penny one could peer into their cells, view the freaks of the “show of Bethlehem” and laugh at their antics. Entry was free on the first Tuesday of the month. In 1814 alone, there were 96,000 such visits.

The word “bedlam” became synonymous with an insane asylum, or any place or situation of noisy uproar and confusion.

One might be confused and noisy indeed if one were involuntarily committed to such an institution and forcibly given psychiatric drugs, as happens frequently today. The fact is, every 1¼ minutes, someone in the U.S. becomes the next victim of involuntary incarceration in a psychiatric hospital.

While involuntary commitment laws enrich the psychiatric industry, they not only deprive individuals of their freedom of choice, but milk millions of health insurance dollars annually from private, state, national and military health plans.

For more information about involuntary commitment, download and read the CCHR booklet Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment – A Crack in the Door of Constitutional Freedoms.

A Living Will lets you specify decisions about your health care treatment in advance. Should you be in a position where you are to be subject to unwanted psychiatric hospitalization and/or mental or medical treatment, a Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment directs that such incarceration, hospitalization, treatment or procedures not be imposed, committed or used on you. Download the document and follow the instructions now.

Mental Health Counselor Gets 35 Years in Prison

By Jay Weaver The Miami Herald jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

The sentencing of Marianella Valera, 40, came only days after the same judge sent her 49-year-old boyfriend, Lawrence Duran, to prison for 50 years. The pair ran Miami-based American Therapeutic Corp, which prosecutors say defrauded the taxpayer-funded Medicare program of more than $200 million.

The couple’s company, with clinics stretching from Miami to Fort Lauderdale to Orlando, collected $87 million in Medicare payments after submitting $205 million in false claims. The couple paid kickbacks to recruiters to supply patients suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s and addictions, but they could not have benefited from the company’s purported group therapy sessions.

Valera and Duran also threw “charting” parties, where they and other American Therapeutic employees altered patients’ records to make it look like they needed the purported group therapy sessions when they didn’t.

A total of 34 people, including American Therapeutic employees, doctors, therapists, nurses and recruiters, have been charged in the ongoing fraud case, which is being investigated by the FBI and Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General.

Previously, federal agents busted 42 South Florida suspects on Medicare fraud charges as part of a Justice Department sweep, including the owners of Biscayne Milieu Health Center, a Fort Lauderdale psychiatrist, Dr. Gary Kushner, patient recruiters and assisted living facility landlords. Out-of-state patients, suffering from disabilities and addictions, were lured to South Florida with the promise of a roof over their head. But once they arrived, with their valuable Medicare cards in hand, they would be squeezed into rundown assisted-living facilities and steered to purported mental-health programs — at a multimillion-dollar cost to taxpayers, authorities say. If they dropped out of the group therapy sessions, the assisted living facility owners would toss the patients out into the street.

Crime in Mental Health Care

For decades psychiatrists and psychologists have claimed a monopoly over the field of mental health. Governments and private health insurance companies have provided them with billions of dollars every year to treat “mental illness,” only to face industry demands for even more funds to improve the supposed, ever-worsening state of mental health. No other industry can afford to fail consistently and expect to get more funding.

A significant portion of these appropriations and insurance reimbursements has been lost due to financial fraud within the mental health industry, an international problem estimated to cost more than a hundred billion dollars every year. The United States loses approximately $100 billion to health care fraud each year, with up to $40 billion of this due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.

For more information about psychiatric fraud, download and read the free CCHR booklet, Massive Fraud – Psychiatry’s Corrupt Industry – Report and recommendations on the criminal mental health monopoly.

The case of Maryanne Godboldo and the defense of her daughter against forced drugging by the state has quickly become legendary.

Earlier this year Godboldo, the mother of a 13-year old girl, was being accused of neglecting her child by refusing to administer the antipsychotic drug Risperdal, a drug so dangerous it is documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause aggression, cardiac arrest, fatal blood clots, liver failure, mania, suicide and violence. Child Protective Services, accompanied by armed police officers, a SWAT team and a tank, arrived at her door with a court order to take her child away.

So what did Godboldo do? A 12-hour standoff ensued, and this mother, who was simply acting within her rights to protect her child from harm, was arrested.

Months later a web of lies and deceit involving Child Protective Services has been uncovered, and Maryanne Godboldo is not only still fighting, but winning the battle.

Click here to read more about the twisted web of lies in the Maryanne Godboldo case.

Click here to read how Johnson and Johnson, Risperdal’s drug makers, currently face $1 billion in federal and state lawsuits.

Watch the video from the Fox Business Channel below:

Dozens arrested in Medicare mental health fraud

Sep 7th, 2011
By Jay Weaver
Miami Herald

Federal agents busted 42 South Florida suspects on Medicare fraud charges as part of a Justice Department sweep targeting hotspots from Miami to Los Angeles.

Out-of-state patients, suffering from disabilities and addictions, were lured to South Florida with the promise of a roof over their head. But once they arrived, with their valuable Medicare cards in hand, they would be squeezed into rundown Assisted-Living Facilities and steered to purported mental-health programs — at a multimillion-dollar cost to taxpayers, authorities say. If they dropped out of the group therapy sessions, the ALF owners would toss the patients out into the street.

Collectively, they’re accused of submitting $160 million in false claims to Medicare for services that were either not needed or provided to patients.

The biggest case was the new indictment of Biscayne Milieu and 23 defendants, including the family owners, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gary Kushner, patient recruiters and ALF operators. The clinic owners are accused of paying recruiters and landlords to lure out-of-state patients into the scheme.

Crime in Mental Health Care

For decades psychiatrists and psychologists have claimed a monopoly over the field of mental health. Governments and private health insurance companies have provided them with billions of dollars every year to treat “mental illness,” only to face industry demands for even more funds to improve the supposed, ever-worsening state of mental health. No other industry can afford to fail consistently and expect to get more funding.

A significant portion of these appropriations and insurance reimbursements has been lost due to financial fraud within the mental health industry, an international problem estimated to cost more than a hundred billion dollars every year. The United States loses approximately $100 billion to health care fraud each year, with up to $40 billion of this due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.

For more information about psychiatric fraud, download and read the free CCHR booklet, Massive Fraud – Psychiatry’s Corrupt Industry – Report and recommendations on the criminal mental health monopoly.

According to an August 17, 2011 news article in the Edwardsville Intelligencer (Madison County, Illinois), “A teenager was insane and ‘involuntarily intoxicated’ by prescription depression medicine when he gunned down two sleeping neighbors in a tiny southern Illinois town before trying to kill himself with a staple gun in his garage, his lawyer told jurors at the boy’s murder trial.”

Sixteen-year-old Clifford Baker had been prescribed an antidepression drug two weeks prior to the shooting.

Psycho/pharma spends billions of dollars a year marketing mental “disorders” and drugs for kids—yet these drugs are documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause mania, psychosis, hallucinations, suicide, violence, homicidal ideation, heart attack, stroke and death. What’s more, they are being prescribed for psychiatric disorders that are simply a checklist of behaviors.

Big Pharma—Define ‘Better’
Click here to watch video featuring Chill EB

Get the facts here http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/.

The relationship between psychiatric drugs and violence has been known for some time. You may be wondering, however, why it is apparently either not known or ignored.

In the news this past week was the sad story about a woman, Yokeia Smith of East St. Louis, accused of killing two of her young children with a shotgun and then hitting two pedestrians with her car. There was apparently no known motive, however the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote on September 1 that, “Smith had recently been prescribed medication to treat depression or some sort of mental illness.”

We see stories like this in the news quite often.

Senseless violence is a side effect of the psychotropic drugs prescribed by doctors and psychiatrists for various symptoms falsely characterized as mental illness. This fact has been documented over and over again, and the information is supposed to be transmitted by doctors to their patients anytime they prescribe such drugs. The patient has a right to this information before consenting to treatment. This is called Informed Consent.

In 2004 the FDA warned that antidepressants could cause anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia, hypomania and mania. Also in 2004 the FDA ordered pharmaceutical companies to add a “black box” warning to all antidepressants because the drugs could cause suicidal thoughts and actions in children and teenagers. The agency also directed the manufacturers to print and distribute medication guides with every antidepressant prescription and to inform patients of the risks. In 2005 a study published in the British Medical Journal determined that adults taking SSRI antidepressants were more than twice as likely to attempt suicide as patients given placebo. In 2007 the FDA officially extended the age group for the black box warning about antidepressants inducing suicide from 18 to 24. There are many more studies and warnings, worldwide, about the danger of psychiatric drugs causing violence.

From the prevalence of cases like Ms. Smith, apparently these warnings are either not told or go unheeded; apparently the police still think that incidents of senseless violence after taking (or withdrawing from) psychiatric drugs have no cause.

As each new incident is reported, we gape in stunned horror and wonder what is happening to our way of life. How can we continue to find ourselves without a solution to the escalating number of acts of random, senseless violence? The reason is that we have been fed all manner of wrong reasons for why these tragedies have taken place, and so they continue.

It is not guns, cars, age, gender or politics that are the common denominator to these horrific events. Psychiatric, mind-altering drugs have been found to be the common factor in an overwhelming number of these acts of random senseless violence.

On the surface, the idea of antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs creating hostility and violence may not make sense. After all, they are supposed to make people calm and quiet. But the reality is that they can and do create such adverse effects. The scientific evidence, only a part of which is presented above, is overwhelming.

Perhaps it is just too incredible to be believed. A thorough review of the facts should dispel that disbelief. What should you do about it? Find out the truth for yourself. Pass this information along. Tell your family, friends, co-workers and associates. Write your local, state and federal representatives. Speak at your school boards and your churches. Have them watch the CCHR documentary DVDs. Write a letter to the editor when stories about senseless violence appear in the media. Volunteer for CCHR projects. Donate money to CCHR so we can continue spreading this word.

Or, you can do nothing and continue to gape in horror every time some mother on antidepressants shoots her children with a shotgun.

CCHR has long fought to restore basic inalienable human rights to the field of mental health, including, but not limited to, fully informed consent regarding the medical legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosis, the risks of psychiatric treatment, the right to all available medical alternatives, and the right to refuse any treatment considered harmful.

If a person wants to consider taking psychotropic drugs, they should only make that decision after being fully informed about it. While we are inclined to think that no one who was so informed would consent, drug companies need to make all the data known, psychiatrists and other medical doctors need to transmit it fully to patients prior to prescribing, and patients need to give their consent for the treatment.

A general legal definition (which may vary from state to state) for “informed consent” is: agreement to do something or to allow something to happen only after all the relevant facts are known. A patient’s consent to a medical treatment must be based on having been told all the possible consequences, except in emergency cases when such consent cannot be obtained. A physician who does not tell all the possible bad news as well as the good, operates in peril of a lawsuit if anything goes wrong.

Many individuals are not given full information about the fraudulent nature of psychiatric diagnoses, the FDA warnings on psychiatric medications, nor are they given full information about the alternatives. This violates their right to full informed consent.

Selection from the Missouri Revised Statutes (RSMo) Chapter 630, Department of Mental Health

630.115. 1. Each patient, resident or client shall be entitled to the following without limitation:
(12) To not be subjected to any hazardous treatment or surgical procedure unless he, his parent, if he is a minor, or his guardian consents; or unless such treatment or surgical procedure is ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction.

History of Informed Consent

There is a long history to the subject of Informed Consent. At first, regulation of the medical community focused on the rights of those who participated in medical research more than those who were receiving medical treatment. Yet, from this work on regulating the rights of patients involved in research, the medical community did gradually put attention on informed consent as a right of the patient for any and all medical treatment.

Throughout the country, there are different rules and regulations state-to-state, regarding consent. To date, there is not a federal bill or law that has passed that defines informed consent.

One court case, Cruzan v. Director, decided by the State Supreme Court of Missouri in 1990, recognized “a right to refuse treatment.” This case and others helped to further refine the concept of informed consent. Today, informed consent is considered a fundamental right of the patient.

The right of a patient  to refuse treatment is based upon five constitutional protections:
1. the 8th amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment
2. the 1st  amendment’s protection of free speech
3. the 1st amendment’s protection of freedom of religion
4. the more broadly interpreted right to privacy
5. the 14th amendment’s protection of liberty

Within medicine, these constitutional guarantees have generally been unchallenged in the case of physical illness. Within psychiatry, however, these guarantees have been variably interpreted and restrained, by saying that a “mentally ill” person is not competent to make an informed decision.

How to make sure you’re getting quality medical care

This is the minimum your doctor should explain:
-  What is the evidence for the diagnosis?
-  How does the treatment affect the body?
-  How does the treatment affect the mind?
-  What unwanted effects may occur?
-  Is it approved by the FDA for your condition?
-  What is known and not known about how safe it is and how well it works?
-  What are the alternatives, including the option of no treatment?
-  Does your doctor or the clinic have a financial interest in pushing the diagnosis or treatment?

For more information review A Model Consent Form for Psychiatric Drug Treatment.

As a watchdog organization, CCHR produces millions of educational properties including booklets, white papers, brochures and documentaries in up to 17 languages covering all aspects of psychiatry’s harmful impact on society and the need for reform to protect patients’ civil and human rights and to require informed consent. Visit www.CCHRSTL.org for more information.

An article in the August, 2011 Scientific American, written by directors at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, claims that “many big drug companies are pulling the plug on R&D for neuropsychiatric and other central nervous system (CNS) medicines.”

While we rejoice at this good news, it is accompanied by equally distressing news about the Coalition Against Major Diseases, and the Cures Acceleration Network (courtesy of the new health care reform law,) which are bent on finding more cost-effective ways to find new drugs.

Given that harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs are a problem of magnitude, an even larger and more fearful problem is the psychiatric industry itself, which relies on fraudulent diagnoses to justify the use of these drugs. Psychiatrists are so anxious to produce an effect, since they know they cannot cure anything, that they rely on shocking people with drugs, electroconvulsive therapy and involuntary commitment, in order to produce an impact. When you produce a sufficient amount of horror in people by shocking them with these “treatments” they react hypnotically and fall under psychiatric control. The combination of false diagnoses and harmful treatments makes patients for life, they just keep coming back for more (the basic definition of addiction,) just the thing to keep up a steady income for the psychopharmaceutical industry.

What is the alternative to psychiatric fraud and abuse? One is afraid that the alternative is an even bigger problem — how to bring enough order, activity, potentiality, good sense and communication into the environment so that people can really function well and improve their conditions in life.

Let us start by putting psychiatry and psychiatrists out of business. Insist that they promise to refuse to accept money from anyone they feel they cannot honestly help. Write your local, state and federal officials and tell them what you think. Tell them to provide funding and insurance coverage only for proven, workable treatments that verifiably and dramatically improve or cure mental health problems; and cut funding and insurance coverage for unproven, unworkable, and harmful treatments that perpetuate the fraud and abuse in the mental health care industry.

Click here for more information about psychiatric fraud and abuse.

Risperidone Ineffective for PTSD

A recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical
Association investigated whether the antipsychotic drug risperidone
would be effective for veterans diagnosed with military-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Serotonin reuptake-inhibiting (SRI) antidepressants are currently the only FDA-approved drugs for the treatment of PTSD. This study used risperidone on veterans who were not responding to ongoing treatment with SRI antidepressants.

Risperidone is an atypical antipsychotic drug, also called a major tranquilizer, neuroleptic (nerve-seizing) drug, or chemical straightjacket. The ingestion of a single tablet of risperidone may cause significant toxic poisoning in a toddler. This class of antipsychotics may also cause increased risk of diabetes, and an increased risk of stroke and death in the elderly.

All antipsychotics can cause akathisia (a word derived from a, without; kathisia, sitting; an inability to keep still). Akathisia is a terrible feeling of anxiety, an inability to sit still, a feeling that one wants to crawl out of his skin. This side effect has been linked to assaultive, violent behavior and can be experienced by up to 76% of patients taking the drugs.

The conclusion drawn by this study is, “Among patients with military-related PTSD with SRI-resistant symptoms, 6-month treatment with risperidone compared with placebo did not reduce PTSD symptoms.”

The study also found that adverse effects limited some patients from reaching their targeted drug dose.

In other words, risperidone is no more effective than a placebo for PTSD, and in addition it has bad side effects.

A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in September, 2005 had already shown that this class of antipsychotic drugs were ineffective and have intolerable side effects.

Why are psychiatric researchers again investigating a drug already proven to be ineffective and that has potentially devastating side effects? One might presume that there is so much money and time invested in developing this drug that they are desperate to find some way to use it and continue to reap its profits. Or one might presume that they really do intend to cause as much damage from this drug as they can.

Behind the alarming reports of mental illness gripping our nation are drug companies inventing diseases. Disease mongering promotes nonexistent diseases and exaggerates mild conditions in order to boost profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

So-called post-traumatic stress disorder emerged in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when veterans were having difficulties overcoming the brutal events they had witnessed. Three American psychiatrists coined the term PTSD and lobbied for its inclusion in the 1980 edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s “billing bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). While the effects of war are devastating, psychiatrists use people’s logical reactions to it to make money at the expense of their vulnerability.

We’ve been led to assume, by psychiatric “crisis teams” sent almost immediately to any terrorism or disaster scene, that people suffer severe psychic wounds from experiencing such traumas, or even from being in the general vicinity when they occur. The DSM categorizes symptoms most survivors experience following a disaster as “acute stress disorder” or “posttraumatic stress disorder” (PTSD), but are these people really suffering from a “disorder” requiring psychotherapy and the use of potentially addictive medications?

Some experts say that most of the soldiers suffering the effects of participating in particularly dangerous missions were experiencing battle fatigue, or in other words, exhaustion, not “mental illness.”

Today, PTSD has become blurred as a catch-all diagnosis for some 175 combinations of symptoms, becoming the label for identifying the impact of adverse events on ordinary people. This means that normal responses to catastrophic events have often been interpreted as mental disorders.

Psychiatric trauma treatment at best is useless, and at worst highly destructive to victims seeking help. By medicalizing what is a non-medical condition and introducing harmful drugs as a therapy, victims have been denied effective treatment options.

What’s more, the prescription of these drugs is often accompanied by a lack of fully informed consent. Look for a future newsletter about this aspect of the situation.

Click here for more information about this.