Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis

DC 0 to 3

Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood, Revised (DC:0-3R)

Your future generations are in peril. Your children are at risk from psychiatric fraud and abuse.

The Zero To Three organization first published DC:0-3 in 1994 to classify what they called “mental health and developmental disorders” in the first four years of life (ages 0 to 3.)

Like the fake “psychosis risk syndrome” we’ve discussed before, they extoll the virtue of diagnosing and treating infants from birth to age 3 for mental disorders, or treating them pre-emptively for the potential to develop a mental disorder at a later age.

Gag me!

Here are some of the “mental disorders” for which an infant can be diagnosed and given psychiatric drugs:

We don’t know about you, but we’ve never met an infant (especially ourselves) that did not exhibit one or more of these symptoms at one time or another. We grew out of it; we presume, with proper medical and parental attention, that the vast majority of infants recover normally as well.

The current revision, DC:0-3R, is supposed to help mental health and other professionals recognize mental health and developmental challenges in young children, and of course provide a rationale for prescribing psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric treatments, not unlike the psychiatric billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) but specific to infants.

This is really happening, folks. Your children are at risk.

We suggest you express your outrage to your local, state and federal officials. Show the CCHR DVD documentaries to your schools, churches, doctors, newspapers, legislators, and so on — wherever you have an opportunity. If you need a copy of a CCHR DVD to play for others, let us know. A donation to help us spread this information around would be helpful.

What are the alternatives to a child’s restless dreams of the bogeyman? Given that the very first alternative to psych drugs is No-Psych-Drugs, one suspects that there are any number of natural alternatives.

Because if an infant or child gets hooked on psychiatric drugs, the bogeyman dreams may be a lot more difficult to manage.

ADHD—Labeling
normal kids “mentally ill”

Click the picture to watch a short video.

ADHD is a bogus mental “disorder” based off a checklist of behaviors.
There are no medical tests to prove any child has ADHD, yet more than 4.5 million kids have been diagnosed and put on drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta, which the U.S. DEA places in the same highly addictive category of drugs as cocaine, morphine and opium. The “checklist” for ADHD could fit any normal child and literally includes such ridiculous criteria as

“loses pencils or toys”
“often does not seem to listen”
“is easily distracted by extraneous stimuli” (what kid isn’t?)
“fidgets”
“runs about or climbs excessively in situations when it is not appropriate” (we are talking about KIDS here… right?)

To summarize: there are no blood tests, brain scans, chemical imbalance tests, X-rays or “genetic” factors to prove any child has a mental “illness” called ADHD. This is simply a list of child-like behaviors that psychiatrists clustered together, repackaged as a mental disorder and the result is a multi billion dollar empire — the child labeling and drugging industry.

For more information go to http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/.

The
Psychiatric Abuse of the Elderly

Click on the picture to find out about the disastrous legacy of the widespread introduction of psychiatric treatment into the care of the elderly over the last few decades.

Click here to download and read the CCHR booklet “Elderly Abuse — Cruel Mental Health Programs — Report and recommendations on psychiatry abusing seniors.”

Psychiatric Labeling

“Confirmation bias” is a term used to describe the tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions regardless of whether the information is true.

As a result, people may gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way.

A recent paper (“Confirmation bias: why psychiatrists stick to wrong preliminary diagnoses“, published 5/20/11 in Cambridge Journals Online) studied this phenomenon to find out whether psychiatrists and medical students are prone to confirmation bias, and whether this leads to poor diagnostic accuracy in psychiatry.

The results were revealing. After having made a preliminary diagnosis, it was common for the study participants to stick to this diagnosis, right or wrong, when presented with new information that could potentially change the diagnosis. Participants making a wrong diagnosis also prescribed different treatment options compared with participants choosing the correct diagnosis.

The paper concludes, “Confirmatory information search harbors the risk of wrong diagnostic decisions.”

Now, couple this built-in bias with a blatantly fraudulent psychiatric diagnostic manual, and we get diagnostic mayhem and treatment nightmares.

The DSM IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, volume 4) is the current version of the psychiatrist’s billing bible from which they must draw their diagnoses in order to collect insurance payments.

Using the DSM, a psychiatrist labels the patient with a “mental disorder”, prescribes him a drug, and bills the patient’s insurance. The psychiatrist with the DSM in hand can try various labels on the patient until he finds one that either fits the patient’s symptoms or comes close enough to allow him to bill the patient’s insurance.

As the diagnoses completely lack scientific criteria, anyone can be labeled mentally ill, and subjected to dangerous and life threatening “treatments” based solely on opinion.

Fraudulent diagnoses, harmful treatments, confirmation bias, and bogus labels = psychiatry’s own psychosis, labeling everything a mental illness.

Forest Labs’ CEO Faces Exile

The Forest Laboratories CEO, Howard Solomon, who built his company’s fortune on the antidepressants Celexa and Lexapro, faces exile from the health-care industry.

On Apr. 12, Solomon learned that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) which handles the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s efforts to fight waste and fraud in government health programs, is considering “excluding” him. Technically, this means exclusion from doing business with federal health programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Affairs Department. Functionally, it means a ban from the entire health-care industry.

Forest’s troubles began in 2001, when Joseph Piacentile, a non-practicing physician in N.J., filed an action alleging that Forest was providing kickbacks to doctors who prescribed Celexa. In 2003, Christopher Gobble, a salesman who had been fired in 2002 by Forest Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary, filed a whistleblower suit in federal court in Boston alleging that the company was illegally pushing doctors to prescribe its antidepressants to children.

In September 2010, more than seven years after Gobble filed his suit, Forest Pharmaceuticals pleaded guilty to three criminal charges and settled civil claims filed by the Justice Department with a $313 million fine. Forest admitted it obstructed the FDA by concealing information, distributed an unapproved thyroid drug, and illegally promoted Celexa for use by children and adolescents.

In March, Lewis Morris, chief counsel to the inspector general, testified to Congress that “we are concerned that the providers that engage in health-care fraud may consider civil penalties and criminal fines a cost of doing business” and said that the government is forced to allow major pharmaceutical makers that have been convicted of crimes and have paid millions in fines to continue to participate in health-care programs because of the “potential patient harm that could result from an exclusion” of an entire company.

Hence, the move currently under consideration by the OIG to hold the CEO accountable by excluding him personally from participating in federal health programs, and thus forcing him out of the company.

Read the full article in the July 18 Bloomberg Businessweek and send an email to the author, Dune Lawrence, thanking him for a fine job of reporting.

Write the OIG (paffairs@oig.hhs.gov; hhstips@oig.hhs.gov) and let them know you think excluding Solomon is a necessary action. It may not hurt to mention that Celexa and Lexapro manufactured by Forest are addictive and harmful psychotropic drugs prescribed for fraudulent mental disorders. There are no physical tests or scientific evidence to substantiate the theory that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes depression or any mental disorder. SSRI’s such as Celexa and Lexapro are no more effective than placebo, and can cause violence and suicide.

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

Jared Loughner pleaded not guilty to 49 charges in the January 8 shooting that left six people dead and 13 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. He has been at the Springfield, Missouri federal prison since May 27 after a federal judge concluded that he was mentally unfit to help in his legal defense.

Loughner was forcibly medicated between June 21 and July 1. He was given twice-daily doses of risperidone, an antipsychotic also called a major tranquilizer or neuroleptic.

Prison officials stopped doing that on July 2 after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted his lawyers’ request for a temporary stay of involuntary medication.

While being examined on July 8, Loughner said he was depressed and he was put on a suicide watch. The federal appeals court reversed itself and refused to bar prison officials from forcibly administering psychotropic drugs to Loughner, which they promptly resumed.

What are they not telling us?

It could be dangerous to immediately cease taking psychiatric drugs because of potential significant withdrawal side effects. Sudden withdrawal from risperidone specifically has the side effects of depression, hostility, violence, mood changes, unusual behavior, and suicidal thoughts.

Psychiatrists then blame these drug withdrawal side effects on some fraudulent mental disorder requiring treatment by more psychiatric drugs.

Notwithstanding the fact that Loughner is charged with serious crimes for which he should be held accountable if found guilty, there is still a serious violation of medical ethics and human rights in forcibly drugging a person with addictive, psychotropic drugs that have the same behavioral results for which the person is ostensibly being “treated.”

The rehabilitation of criminals is a long-forgotten dream. We build more prisons and pass even tougher laws in the belief that these will act as a deterrent. Meanwhile, honest people are losing faith in justice itself as they see vicious criminals avoid conviction through the use of bizarre and incomprehensible defense tactics. The hidden influence of psychiatry and psychiatrists in our courts and justice system has betrayed us.

Click here for more information about psychiatry subverting the courts.

The Chantix Fraud

A study published July 4, 2011 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal concluded that smokers who take Chantix, a smoking cessation drug, could increase their risk of heart problems.

The study found that there are “safety concerns about the potential for an increased risk of serious adverse cardiovascular events associated with the use of varenicline among tobacco users.”

The heart problems are the latest in a growing list of concerns raised by patient reports, lawsuits and studies since the drug’s approval in 2006.

The drug could cause changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions, according to its warning label. Chantix carries a boxed warning — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s most restrictive safety labeling — because of the risk of psychological events.

Chantix has been banned by the Federal Aviation Administration for pilots and air-traffic controllers because it may cause loss of consciousness and blackouts. Truck and bus drivers are also not allowed to take the drug.

Among all this is the apparently deliberate attempt to mislead the public regarding the true nature of Pfizer’s Chantix. What are they not saying?

Guess what? Chantix is an addictive benzodiazepine-based psychotropic anti-anxiety drug.

That’s a mouthful.

Just don’t put it in your mouth.

It might just stop you from smoking – permanently.

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

How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs

A recent opinion article in Al Jazeera English is an interesting read (“Mass psychosis in the US” by James Ridgeway, a senior Washington correspondent with Mother Jones Magazine.)

The article starts with, “Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux,”

and ends with “Stop Big Pharma and the parasitic shrink community from wantonly pushing these pills across the population.”

This reminds us about one of the truly abhorrent uses of psychotropic drugs, and the role of psychiatry in international terrorism.

Terrorism is created; it is not human nature. Suicide bombers are made, not born. Ultimately, terrorism is the result of madmen bent on destruction, and these madmen are typically the result of psychiatric or psychological techniques aimed at mind and behavioral control.

Suicide bombers are not rational—they are weak and pliant individuals psychologically indoctrinated to murder innocent people without compassion, with no concern for the value of their own lives. They are manufactured assassins. Part of that process involves the use of mind–altering psychiatric drugs.

For more information, go to http://www.cchrstl.org/terrorism.shtml.

Federal Court Rules Against Loughner’s Forced Medication

Jared Lee Loughner — who was accused of shooting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 more people in Tucson, Ariz., in January — can continue to reject psychotropic drug treatment, a federal appeals court decided Tuesday, July 12, 2011.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the prison’s interest in protecting other inmates from Loughner does not override Loughner’s “strong personal interest in not being forced to suffer the indignity and risk of bodily injury” resulting from forced medication, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The court order goes on to say, “Because Loughner hasn’t been convicted of a crime, he is presumptively innocent and is therefore entitled to greater constitutional protections than a convicted inmate.”

Although we cannot presume that our newletter of July 5th about the human rights abuse of involuntary commitment and enforced psychiatric drugging was a decisive factor in the court’s ruling, we are pleased to see a federal appeals court agree with us. However, we must also note that involuntary commitment and enforced psychiatric drugging are human rights abuses regardless of the criminal conviction status of an individual.

The court order to temporarily halt the forced medication of Mr. Loughner by officials at the Missouri federal prison where he is being held calls for a further hearing the week of August 29 to fully consider the medication issue. You may express your opinions regarding enforced psychiatric drugging to the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office at USAAZ.ComplaintAtty@usdoj.gov.

For more information download and read the CCHR information letter, “Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment – A Crack In The Door Of Constitutional Freedoms.”

An article in The Economist (25 June 2011, “Mass observation”) discussing the 2006 health care reform legislation in Massachusetts, and on which the current federal health care legislation was based in part, makes the point that, although the percent of those lacking health insurance in Massachusetts dropped from 6.4% to 1.9%, the costs of health care and health care insurance have increased, and according to The Economist these costs are “unsustainable.”

Costs for MassHealth rose 40% between 2006 and 2010, and costs for the subsidized health program for adults was 32% more than expected in 2008 and 11% more than expected in 2009. Also, uninsured hospital visits in 2010 were 14% above the level in 2009. Insurance premiums rose 12% between 2006 and 2008.

There are so many ifs, ands and buts about these figures that it is hard to make generalizations. However, one thing we can say for sure is that there is a general unwillingness to acknowledge and confront the contribution of fraud to the rising costs of health care and health care insurance, in particular the amount of patient abuse and fraud in the mental health industry.

Mental health practitioners perpetrate more fraud than any other sector of medicine. The U.S. loses about $100 billion to health care fraud each year, and up to $40 billion of this is due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.

The mental health monopoly has practically zero accountability and zero liability for its failures. This has allowed psychiatrists and psychologists to commit far more than just financial fraud. The roster of crimes committed by these “professionals” ranges from fraud, drug offenses, rape and sexual abuse to child molestation, assault, manslaughter and murder.

With mental health care insurance coverage being mandated in the U.S. through state and federal legislation, levels of fraud and abuse can be expected to continue to escalate, in spite of health care reform legislation.

What is the alternative? Provide funding and insurance coverage only for proven, workable treatments that verifiably and dramatically improve or cure mental health problems.

For more information download and read the CCHR booklet, “Massive Fraud — Psychiatry’s Corrupt Industry — Report and recommendations on the criminal mental health monopoly.”