Mental Health Watchdog Protests U.S. Psychiatrists’ Use of Electroshock; Procedure Violates International Human Rights Standards When Forcibly Administered

Posted on March 4, 2024 by cchrstl

Psychiatrists perform electroshock on patients, especially women and older people, despite risks of brain damage and permanent memory loss and no conclusive proof of effectiveness, experts say.  Even young children are electroshocked in the U.S.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

Calling for a ban on the psychiatric procedure of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or “electroshock”), protesters demonstrated Thursday against psychiatrists attending the annual meeting of the American College of Psychiatrists (ACP) in New Orleans.  The protest was organized by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog organization that has long advocated for laws to ban ECT. 

Psychiatrists administering electroshock generate an estimated $3 billion in revenue annually, despite significant risks to their patients of permanent memory loss and brain damage, as well as no conclusive proof of effectiveness, according to experts. CCHR calls on the ACP to actively take a stand against the procedure.

The protest was followed by the opening of CCHR’s traveling exhibit, “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death,” at a nearby venue.  The exhibit documents the history of psychiatric fraud and abuse up to present day.

ECT is a procedure in which psychiatrists shoot up to 460 volts of electricity through brain tissue, intentionally causing seizures that can last up to 30 minutes.  It is reportedly used mostly on women and the elderly. 

Psychiatrists still cannot explain how this procedure is supposed to work to alleviate depression or other behavioral issues.  The voltage and number of sessions used is a matter of trial and error.  While the use of ECT is not tracked across the U.S., a conservative estimate is that over 100,000 Americans are electroshocked annually.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), electroshock can cause brain damage, cognitive impairment, permanent memory loss, prolonged or persistent seizures, worsening psychiatric symptoms, cardiovascular complications (including heart attacks), breathing complications and death. 

A new study has provided additional evidence of memory loss, finding that 61% of adults and 69% of teenagers who received electroshock suffered memory impairment after the procedure.

However, patients are not always fully informed of these risks before consenting to the procedure, and psychiatrists can get a court order to perform ECT against a patient’s will.

“Patients should not be exposed to such extremely serious, even life-threatening risks just because their psychiatrists don’t know what else to do,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the National Affairs Office of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.  “The procedure should be banned outright.”  

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recently issued guidance calling on U.N. member nations to ban all forced electroshock.  “International human rights standards clarify that ECT without consent violates the right to physical and mental integrity and may constitute torture and ill-treatment,” the guidance says. 

WHO and OHCHR also oppose any use of ECT on children and call for laws to be enacted to ban it.  In the U.S., reports required to be filed in some states on the use of ECT reveal that children 5 years old and younger are given electroshock.

Although psychiatrists recommend electroshock for depressed patients who may be at risk for suicide, recent research has found no evidence that ECT is any more effective than sham ECT (general anesthesia but not the electric shock).  Patients who received treatment with ECT had no lower risk for suicide than mental health patients who did not.

John Read, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., associate director of the Program in Placebo Studies at Harvard Medical School, and psychologist Laura McGrath, Ph.D., conducted a comprehensive analysis of prior studies on ECT. They found that the quality of those studies was so poor that nothing could be concluded about any effectiveness of the procedure. 

“There is no evidence that ECT is effective for its target demographic – older women, or its target diagnostic group – severely depressed people, or for suicidal people, people who have unsuccessfully tried other treatments first, involuntary patients, or adolescents,” they concluded. 

Psychiatrists performing electroshock can greatly increase their income.  It has been estimated that a psychiatrist spending just a few hours a week to do 20 ECT procedures can bring in an additional $300,000 per year.  Electroshock rakes in an estimated $3 billion a year in the U.S. alone.

CCHR’s documentary, Therapy or Torture: The Truth About Electroshock, warns consumers about the serious risks of ECT.  To date, more than 134,000 people have signed CCHR’s petition to ban electroshock.

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Human Rights Group Renews Call for Laws to Ban Electroshock – A Procedure Never Proven Safe or Effective, Experts Say

Posted on February 27, 2024 by cchrstl

Psychiatrists perform electroshock on depressed patients despite serious risks of brain damage and permanent memory loss.  Psychiatrists do not know how ECT-induced convulsions are supposed to treat depression, or how much voltage or how many sessions of the procedure to use.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights has renewed its call for legislation to ban electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or “electroshock”), a procedure performed by psychiatrists on depressed patients despite the significant risk of permanent memory loss and brain damage, as well as the lack of any conclusive proof of effectiveness, according to experts. 

Electroconvulsive therapy is a procedure in which psychiatrists shoot up to 460 volts of electricity through brain tissue to induce convulsions that can last up to 30 minutes.  It is reportedly used mostly on women and the elderly.  Psychiatrists still cannot explain how ECT is supposed to work, how much voltage it will take, or how many sessions of ECT to administer.  It is a matter of trial and error with human lives. 

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), electroshock can cause brain damage, cognitive impairment, permanent memory loss, prolonged or persistent seizures, worsening psychiatric symptoms, cardiovascular complications (including heart attacks), breathing complications and death.  

A new study has provided additional evidence of memory loss, finding that 61% of adults and 69% of teenagers who received electroshock suffered memory impairment after the procedure.

In 2018, as a result of a lawsuit against Somatics, a manufacturer of ECT machines, the company revised its disclosures to patients to warn that ECT can cause permanent memory loss and permanent brain damage.

However, patients are not always fully informed of these risks before consenting to the procedure, and psychiatrists can get a court order to perform ECT against a patient’s will.

“Patients should not be exposed to such extremely serious, even life-threatening risks just because their psychiatrists don’t know what else to do,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the National Affairs Office of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR).  “The procedure should be banned outright.”   

Psychiatrists recommend electroshock for deeply depressed patients who may be at risk for suicide, but recent research has found no evidence that ECT is any more effective than sham ECT (general anesthesia but not the electric shock).

John Read, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., associate director of the Program in Placebo Studies at Harvard Medical School, and psychologist Laura McGrath, Ph.D., conducted a comprehensive analysis of prior studies on ECT. They found that the quality of those studies was so poor that nothing could be concluded about any effectiveness of the procedure.  

“There is no evidence that ECT is effective for its target demographic – older women, or its target diagnostic group – severely depressed people, or for suicidal people, people who have unsuccessfully tried other treatments first, involuntary patients, or adolescents,” they concluded. 

They further wrote, “Given the high risk of permanent memory loss and the small mortality risk, this longstanding failure to determine whether or not ECT works means that its use should be immediately suspended until a series of well-designed, randomized, placebo-controlled studies have investigated whether there really are any significant benefits against which the proven significant risks can be weighed.”  Their findings were published in 2020 in Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry.

Other recent research has found that ECT fails to reduce the risk of death by suicide.  One study found that the odds of patients committing suicide in the year after receiving ECT were not statistically different from the odds of those who did not receive it, while another study revealed that patients who received ECT remain at an elevated risk of suicide and are 44 times more likely to die from suicide in the two years following treatment than the general population.

Psychiatrists performing electroshock can greatly increase their income.  It has been estimated that a psychiatrist spending just a few hours a week to do 20 ECT procedures can bring in an additional $300,000 per year.  Electroshock rakes in more than $3 billion a year in the U.S. alone.

CCHR’s documentary, Therapy or Torture: The Truth About Electroshock, which can be viewed online, warns consumers about the serious risks of ECT.  To date, more than 134,000 people have signed CCHR’s petition to ban electroshock.

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CCHR’s Warnings of Potential Harms from ADHD Diagnosing and Treatment Supported by New Research

Posted on February 19, 2024 by cchrstl

Evidence of benefit from ADHD diagnosis and treatment is uncertain, but the ADHD label itself, as well as the stimulant drugs that may be prescribed as treatment, can harm children, researchers find. Addressing behavior instead of diagnosing is advised.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has long warned about the potential harm of giving inattentive and overactive children the psychiatric label of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and prescribing them stimulant drugs as treatment, rather than addressing the true underlying causes of the behavior.  A new analysis of evidence on ADHD diagnosis and treatment details how the labeling itself, as well as the stimulant drugs that may be prescribed as treatment, carry potentially harmful consequences for children, while evidence of any benefit is uncertain.  The study’s researchers call for a greater focus on the care and appropriate support of children with behavioral issues, rather than on whether they should be given the psychiatric label of ADHD. 

The prevalence of ADHD in children has been rising for several decades without any accompanying increase in the severity and frequency of symptoms, according to Australian researchers who analyzed the benefits and harms of ADHD diagnosis.  This indicates children are being wrongly diagnosed, as ADHD diagnosis is highly subjective.

“Rising rates of ADHD diagnosis without changes in behavioural symptom profiles suggest an epidemic of ADHD diagnosis, not an epidemic of ADHD,” wrote lead author Luise Kazda of the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney in Australia. 

Kazda and colleagues point out that diagnostic labels can be harmful and that “evidence that all children given an ADHD diagnosis will benefit from the diagnosis is currently lacking.”  They cite a study finding that children with low and moderate levels of inattentiveness or overactivity who were given an ADHD diagnosis scored lower in reading and math than children with similar levels of symptoms who were not diagnosed with ADHD. 

The researchers also reference studies that indicate “an ADHD diagnosis does not protect children against adverse academic or socioemotional outcomes and has a negative effect on young adults’ ability to get and keep jobs.”

A 2022 study by Kazda and colleagues found that labeling teens with a diagnosis of ADHD does not lead to any improvement in their quality of life compared to teens not diagnosed with ADHD, but it is associated with lower self-esteem, worse social behavior, and a significantly increased risk of self-harm.  The negative outcomes were greatest in those adolescents who were diagnosed with ADHD earliest (6-7 years of age).

Other research has found that individuals who are given diagnostic labels may experience harmful psychological consequences, including sadness, anxiety, confusion, and perceptions of themselves as unwell, less competent, powerless, stigmatized, and isolated.

The psychiatric label of ADHD often leads to treatment with prescription stimulants.  These drugs are classified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as Schedule II controlled substances, defined as “drugs with a high potential for abuse, with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence.”  Stimulant drugs commonly prescribed for ADHD include Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall and Vyvanse. 

The FDA recently required an update to the prescribing information for stimulants to warn that the drugs carry the risks of misuse, abuse, addiction, and overdose.  According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 1.8 million teens ages 12-17 and 4.3 million young adults ages 18-25 reported taking prescription stimulant drugs in the past year.  Among those users, 430,000 teens (24%, or one in four teen users) and 1.9 million young adults (45%, or nearly half of young adult users) reported misuse of their prescription stimulants.

As for results in children who take stimulant drugs, research has found no convincing evidence of any long-term benefit.  Meanwhile, the drugs carry the risks of side effects that include loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, headaches, nausea and vomiting, tremors, and increased heart rate and blood pressure.  Though rare, heart disease, psychosis, seizures, and stroke have a greater chance of occurring.  Stimulants have also been linked to delayed growth in children.  The stimulant-type ADHD drug methylphenidate has been associated with an increased risk of depression in children.

Given the uncertain benefits and known harms of ADHD diagnosis and treatment, Kazda and colleagues argue for community health organizations and schools to deliver “services that focus on behaviours (rather than on diagnoses) to optimise children’s skills and functioning.”  They call for inclusive educational environments that “tackle the needs of all children, irrespective of their hyperactive/inattentive behaviours, without requiring a diagnosis.”  Their findings were published in the British Medical Association’s journal, The BMJ.

Mary Ann Block, D.O., author of No More ADHD, has written that providing children with appropriate services that address the underlying causes of children’s inattention or hyperactivity can eliminate any reason for an ADHD diagnosis or stimulant drug treatment.

“By taking a thorough history and giving these children a complete physical exam as well as doing lab tests and allergy testing, I have consistently found that these children do not have ADHD, but instead have allergies, dietary problems, nutritional deficiencies, thyroid problems and learning difficulties that are causing their symptoms,” she wrote.  “All of these medical and educational problems can be treated, allowing the child to be successful, without being drugged.”

WARNING:  Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an ADHD drug or any other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

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Black History Month: African Americans Warned of Long History of Psychiatrists and Psychologists’ Racism and Its Legacy in Today’s Mental Health System

Posted on February 12, 2024 by cchrstl

Scientific research shows Blacks are more likely than Whites to be labeled with a mental disorder related to disruptive, defiant, or psychotic behavior, to be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility, and to be physically, mechanically, or chemically restrained, and for a longer time.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

A largely unrecognized, but major part of Black history is the prime role of psychiatrists and psychologists in promoting and sustaining so-called “scientific racism” in America.  The term “scientific racism” refers to the use of false or quack science to supposedly prove racial inferiority and so to supposedly justify racial inequality and discrimination. 

This racism is still ingrained in the mental health system, as admitted by leading psychiatric and psychological associations and as found in the experiences of Blacks in the mental health system today. “The legacy of ‘scientific racism,’ heavily promoted for more than 200 years by American psychiatrists and psychologists, is still pervasive and entrenched in the U.S. mental health system and throughout our society today,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the National Affairs Office of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). “African Americans should be aware of who instigated and perpetuated this racism.”

In 2021, the American Psychiatric Association detailed psychiatrists’ long history of promoting “scientific racism,” admitting that “these appalling past actions, as well as their harmful effects, are ingrained in the structure of psychiatric practice and continue to harm…psychological well-being even today.”

That same year, the American Psychological Association laid out the details of “the role of psychology…in promoting, perpetuating, and failing to challenge racism, and the harms that have been inflicted on communities of color as a result.”

The harm by psychiatry and psychology started with Dr. Benjamin Rush, the slave-owning “father of American psychiatry,” who claimed in 1792 that black skin was caused by a disease that he called “negritude” and that Blacks needed to be segregated to prevent them from infecting others.  In so doing, he created the first false-science justification for racism. 

Just before the Civil War, psychologist Samuel Cartwright, who had apprenticed with Benjamin Rush, invented a racist mental illness that he claimed caused slaves to have an uncontrollable urge to escape.  The treatment was “whipping the devil out of them.” 

In the years following the Civil War, English psychologist Francis Galton, who was a cousin of Charles Darwin, applied Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” to humans and came up with the idea of racial purification, which he called “eugenics.”  This pseudoscience led people to believe that for the good of the country, those with “undesirable” traits could be subjected to forced birth control and sterilization to prevent them from having children.

In the U.S., psychiatrists and psychologists in the American mental health movement from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s adopted and heavily promoted the false science of eugenics, actively spreading racist ideas of Black inferiority and the need for segregation.  More than half of the American Psychological Association presidents between 1892 and 1947 also had leadership positions in eugenics organizations.  Courses on eugenics were offered by psychiatrists and psychologists at America’s leading universities, leading the public to believe that laws mandating racial segregation were supported by science.

Psychologists assumed a particularly central role in the eugenics movement throughout the 1900s with their use of culturally biased intelligence testing that supposedly proved African Americans possessed lower IQs. 

Starting in the 1950s, African Americans were used in unethical psychosurgery and drug experiments conducted by psychiatrists and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the country’s top psychiatric research facility.

In the 1960s, psychiatrists targeted African Americans by inventing a new mental illness, “protest psychosis,” to portray Blacks participating in the Civil Rights movement as aggressive and mentally ill.  In psychiatric journals, images of angry Black men or African tribal symbols were used in ads to sell powerful antipsychotic drugs.  Today, African Americans are still disproportionately diagnosed with psychosis and disproportionately prescribed antipsychotic drugs.

In the second half of the 20th century, psychologists continued to promote racist, false-science theories.  As the American Psychological Association admitted, “From the 1960s on, psychologists gave explicit assistance to, and participated in racial extremist, white nationalist, and neo-Nazi groups….”

The legacy of “scientific racism” is still prevalent today in the mental health system. Government data reveals that African Americans receive disproportionately more diagnoses of mental disorders related to disruptive, defiant, and psychotic behavior, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD).  Blacks are overly prescribed antipsychotic drugs, with Black men more likely to be prescribed excessive doses of them.

African American children are disproportionately diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed stimulant drugs that the FDA warns can lead to abuse, addiction and overdose.  African American children are also disproportionately diagnosed with conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.       

Blacks are more likely than Whites to be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility and more likely to be physically, mechanically, or chemically restrained there and for a longer time. As a human rights organization and mental health industry watchdog, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights has exposed and campaigned against racism and racial abuse in the mental health system since CCHR’s inception in 1969.  CCHR has worked with the NAACP since 2003 in exposing the stigmatizing labeling and drugging of African American children and, with Rev. Fred Shaw of CCHR’s Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics, obtaining three national NAACP resolutions on these issues.

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CCHR Renews Call for Ban on Restraint and Seclusion After New Report of School Districts Ignoring Reporting Requirements

Posted on February 5, 2024 by cchrstl

The number of schoolchildren subjected to restraint or seclusion is unknown.  No federal law bans the practices, which are disproportionately used on disabled students and students of color and have resulted in children’s broken bones and death.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

A report from KFF Health News sheds new light on the failure of school districts to accurately provide the U.S. Department of Education with the number of K-12 students placed in restraint and seclusion – practices that are disproportionately used on students with disabilities, students of color, and boys.  The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) renews its long-standing call for laws prohibiting restraints and seclusion in schools, nursing homes and psychiatric facilities, a ban now strongly advocated by the World Health Organization and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

No federal law prohibits restraint and seclusion, and state laws concerning the practices vary widely.  However, federal law does require school districts to report to the U.S. Department of Education the instances of restraint and seclusion of students. 

Physical restraint is defined as any personal restriction that prevents the student from moving freely, such as being pinned to the floor.  Mechanical restraint is the use of devices or equipment to restrict the student’s freedom of movement, such as belts to strap them down.  Seclusion is subjecting the student to solitary confinement in a room or area that they are physically prevented from leaving, such as locking them in a room or closet.

Despite the federal reporting requirement, KFF Health News reports that for nearly a decade, a public school district in North Carolina, one of the largest in the nation, failed to report incidents of restraint or seclusion that were, in fact, occurring in the district. 

The nonreporting came to light after a mother reportedly found no documentation in school records of her autistic son’s repeated instances of restraint and seclusion, including an alleged incident of seclusion in second grade in which her son repeatedly punched himself in the face, splattering blood on the walls of the room.

“Sometimes school communities are making a deliberate choice not to record,”said Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education, quoted in the KFF article.  She said that restraint and seclusion are “used at often very high rates in ways that are quite damaging” and called the practices “a life-or-death topic.”

The harm resulting from the use and abuse of restraint and seclusion in public and private schools was the focus of a 2009 investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).  The probe found hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death over the prior two decades from the use of these methods on schoolchildren.

“Examples of these cases include a 7 year old purportedly dying after being held face down for hours by school staff, 5 year olds allegedly being tied to chairs with bungee cords and duct tape by their teacher and suffering broken arms and bloody noses, and a 13 year old reportedly hanging himself in a seclusion room after prolonged confinement,” the GAO’s report on their investigation stated.

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Education issued a resource document on restraint and seclusion, advising that “as many reports have documented, the use of restraint and seclusion can, in some cases, have very serious consequences, including, most tragically, death.”

Importantly, it further stated, “There is no evidence that using restraint or seclusion is effective in reducing the occurrence of the problem behaviors that frequently precipitate the use of such techniques.”

Yet the use of restraint or seclusion in schools has continued, and it disproportionately affects students with disabilities, students of color, and boys. 

National level data from 2020-21, released by OCR last November, revealed that students with disabilities who receive school services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act represented 14% of K-12 student enrollment, but accounted for 81% of students physically restrained, 32% of students mechanically restrained, and 75% of students put in seclusion.  Black students represented 15% of student enrollment, but 21% of students physically restrained, 42% of students mechanically restrained, and 19% of students put in seclusion.  Boys represented 51% of student enrollment, but 83% of students physically restrained, 82% of students mechanically restrained, and 82% of students put in seclusion.

Last October, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a blueprint for laws to end all coercive mental health practices, including restraint and seclusion. The report states, “Not only are seclusion and restraint contrary to international human rights law, their use is incompatible with a recovery approach, counters the purpose of care, and can lead to physical and psychological harm, even death,” adding, “There are always alternatives to seclusion and restraint.”

The report cites examples of countries with laws prohibiting the practices:  “For example, India, Italy, Mexico and Peru have banned the use of seclusion or solitary confinement in their mental health systems, with Mexico expressly prohibiting the use of restraints.”

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights has been a global leader in the fight to eliminate coercive and abusive mental health practices, including restraints and seclusion, to protect individuals from violations of their human rights. CCHR continues to call for legislation to ban restraint and seclusion.

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CCHR Says FDA Must Correct Widespread Misinformation: Antidepressant Withdrawal Symptoms Are Not Short and Mild for Many Patients

Posted on January 29, 2024 by cchrstl

Recent research and antidepressant users’ lived experience show that antidepressant withdrawal symptoms may be severe and long-lasting. Patients and their prescribers need accurate information on withdrawal risks and tapering guidance from the FDA.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

A mounting body of evidence has found that many patients who attempt to stop taking antidepressants experience physical, mental, and emotional withdrawal symptoms that are more severe and longer-lasting than the conventional medical view of mild symptoms lasting only two to three weeks.  It is long past time for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to address this issue, correct the widespread misinformation, and issue guidance to prescribers on how to discontinue antidepressants, says the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an international mental health watchdog organization.

Even though withdrawal symptoms have been documented for more than 40 years for older antidepressants and for more than 30 years for newer generation antidepressants, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), there is still a lack of scientific studies of withdrawal.

While some people may experience mild, short-lived withdrawal symptoms, for others the symptoms may be so severe and long-lasting that normal functioning is impossible, even when the antidepressant dosage has been tapered slowly and gradually.

A 2019 study revealed that more than half (56%) of people who attempt to come off antidepressants experience withdrawal symptoms, with nearly half (46%) of them describing those symptoms as severe.  The researchers also found that it is not uncommon for the withdrawal effects to last for several weeks or months.

A separate study pegged the average duration of withdrawal symptoms at 90.5 weeks for SSRIs and 50.8 weeks for serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) antidepressants.

There is also evidence of a growing number of long-time users who have been unable to come off their antidepressants because of the debilitating withdrawal symptoms they experienced when trying to stop.  

“Some 15.5 million Americans have taken antidepressants for at least five years,” according to science reporter Benedict Carey, writing in the New York Times in 2018.  “The rate has almost doubled since 2010, and more than tripled since 2000.”

“What you see is the number of long-term users just piling up year after year,” said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, quoted in Carey’s article.

Antidepressant withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, dizziness, headache, flu-like symptoms, nausea, insomnia, irritability, hallucinations, muscle tremors, electric shock-like sensations (“brain zaps” or “body zaps”), mania, emotional blunting, and sexual dysfunction that can be long-lasting or even permanent.

A new study focused on the emotional and social effects of withdrawal.  Researchers found that withdrawal had a significant negative impact on the emotional and social functioning and overall well-being of those going through withdrawal from antidepressants.  More than half of the study participants said their relationships were negatively affected, such as by angry outbursts.

Psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff, M.D., recently co-authored an article about why antidepressant withdrawal should be taken seriously.  Moncrieff with colleagues previously conducted the landmark 2022 study which found no scientific support for the theory that depression is caused by a chemical (serotonin) imbalance in the brain.

The recent article points out that updated guidelines have been issued by British medical authorities, advising that after long-term use, antidepressant users wanting to stop should be tapered off the drugs gradually over months and sometimes years, with the dose reduced by smaller and smaller amounts, known as “hyperbolic tapering.”  The U.S., however, has not yet updated its guidance, which still recommends stopping the drugs relatively rapidly, the authors report.

CCHR calls on the FDA to address this issue and provide updated guidance on discontinuing antidepressants, as well as updated antidepressant prescribing information.  Patients and their prescribers need accurate and complete information on the risks associated with discontinuing antidepressants so they can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs.  Some 45 million Americans are currently taking antidepressants.

The FDA should also update its antidepressants webpage for consumers, which only mentions “withdrawal symptoms” once, listing them as a “less common” side effect.

WARNING:  Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

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CCHR Calls Out Psychiatric Association’s Nondisclosure of Conflicts of Interest Among Psychiatrists Who Revised “Psychiatric Bible”

Posted on January 22, 2024 by cchrstl

Citizens Commission on Human Rights says American Psychiatric Association’s unwillingness to provide full disclosure of pharmaceutical companies’ payments to psychiatrists involved in developing the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders prevented public scrutiny of industry influence.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

Psychiatrists who worked on the latest edition of the so-called “bible of psychiatric disorders” received more than $14 million in industry payments from pharmaceutical or medical device companies, but until now that information was kept from public scrutiny.  The American Psychiatric Association (APA), which published the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) in 2022, chose not to publicly disclose the industry-related financial conflicts of interest. 

To collect and analyze that information, a team of researchers turned to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Open Payments database, which contains data on payments made by drug and medical device companies to physicians and teaching hospitals.  Data from Open Payments can be used to assess how physicians may be influenced by industry compensation.  For their study, the researchers examined industry payments made from 2016 to 2019 to those who subsequently worked on the DSM-5-TR.

They found that 60% of the psychiatrists who served in some capacity in the preparation of the DSM-5-TR received industry compensation, mostly for travel and consulting.  But more than one in three received income for other reasons, such as for their research or for speaking on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.  The latter is widely recognized as an especially egregious conflict of interest because the speakers are basically marketing pharmaceutical companies’ drugs.

By dollar amount, 71% of the funds paid by pharmaceutical and medical device companies to DSM-5-TR psychiatrists was funding or payments for their research, a clear financial conflict of interest.

“Conflicts of interest among panel members of DSM-5-TR were prevalent,” the researchers concluded.  They pointed out that the impact of pharmaceutical company payments on physicians’ behavior and prescribing practices can lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment of patients.

“Additionally, it is important to emphasize that the problem of overdiagnosis is not limited to the inclusion of new disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” they wrote.  “Even seemingly small changes to the manual (e.g., to [symptoms] of previously included disorders) can have a substantial impact on increasing the number of people who would receive a diagnosis and increasing the number of people prescribed drugs.”  The study was published January 10 in The BMJ.

More fundamentally, the DSM has long been under attack for the lack of scientific basis for its “mental disorders,” which psychiatrists voted into existence in an attempt to imitate the biomedical model used in the field of medicine. 

In 2013, psychiatrist Thomas Insel, M.D., then-director of the National Institute of Mental Health, publicly stated that there is no objective basis for psychiatry’s mental disorders and that “the weakness of the [DSM] is its lack of validity.”  In other words, there is no way to precisely identify or “diagnose” any psychiatric disorder.

Nevertheless, without any scientific validity, the DSM’s subjective “mental disorders” continue to be used to “diagnose” patients and prescribe powerful psychotropic drugs as treatment.  Some 77 million Americans are currently taking psychiatric drugs. 

Hundreds of research studies and warnings from international drug regulatory agencies have warned about the risks of serious side effects when taking or stopping psychotropic drugs.

Beyond the adverse effects of the drugs, a recent study found that psychiatric diagnoses and treatment with psychiatric drugs were linked to negative outcomes in patients’ lives, including lower income, increased unemployment, and a greater likelihood of being single and living alone.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights calls out the American Psychiatric Association for its unwillingness to provide the public with full disclosure of the extent of pharmaceutical companies’ payments to psychiatrists involved in the development of the DSM-5-TR – a disclosure that magnifies the DSM’s true function as providing cover for the unscientific labeling of patients with fake “mental disorders” in order to treat them, all too often with psychotropic drugs that may harm them.

WARNING:  Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of a psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

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Benzodiazepine Use Linked to Miscarriage; Stopping the Drugs After Long-Term Use Increased Risk of Fatality, New Research Finds

Posted on January 15, 2024 by cchrstl

Mental health watchdog CCHR presses for DEA reclassification of benzodiazepines due to risks of physical dependency and addiction.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

The use of benzodiazepines during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage, new research has indicated.  A separate study unexpectedly found that long-term benzodiazepine users face a greater risk of dying after discontinuing the drugs than continuing to take the drugs, calling into question long-term benzodiazepine treatment.  Researchers involved in the studies advised prescribers to carefully consider these potential harms when making treatment decisions about whether to start patients on benzodiazepines.

Benzodiazepines are a class of psychiatric drugs used as treatment for anxiety, panic attacks, and insomnia.  Commonly prescribed benzodiazepines include Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan and Valium.

Studies on an association between benzodiazepines and miscarriage were limited until recently.  Researchers in Taiwan analyzed health and birth certificate records to identify pregnancies that ended in miscarriage between 2004 and 2018, looking for a potential association with benzodiazepine use. 

They found that the risk of miscarriage was 69% greater for those taking benzodiazepines than those who were not.  The increased risk of miscarriage was found with all commonly used benzodiazepines.

“The use of benzodiazepines during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of miscarriage,” wrote lead author Lin-Chieh Meng, MS, of the Graduate Institute of Clinical Pharmacy, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.  The study was reported in JAMA Psychiatry.

There also had been no studies dedicated to investigating the risk to benzodiazepine users of discontinuation until recently.  A new study unexpectedly found that long-term benzodiazepine users face a greater risk of death from discontinuing than continuing the drugs.  The incidence of death from any cause over the year following discontinuation of benzodiazepine use was 5.5% as compared to 3.5% for those who did not stop taking the drugs.  This equates to a risk of mortality 1.6 times greater for those who discontinued benzodiazepines than for those who did not, the researchers wrote.

Compared to those who continued benzodiazepines, those who stopped also faced greater risks of suicidal ideation, suicide attempt or self-inflicted injury, nonfatal overdose, and emergency department use, the researchers found. 

“It is possible that, having become physiologically dependent on benzodiazepines, patients experience adverse outcomes from withdrawal,” they wrote, reporting in JAMA Network Open.

These results are especially concerning in light of what the researchers say is “interest in reducing long-term benzodiazepine prescribing given harms associated with use.” 

From 2015-2016, over 10% of U.S. adults reported benzodiazepine use at some time in the prior year, and use had been increasing over the prior two decades.  In 2019, an estimated 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions were dispensed from U.S. outpatient retail and mail-order pharmacies, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The medical literature has extensive evidence of the risks associated with benzodiazepine use, including drowsiness, fatigue, weakness, impaired coordination, impaired memory, confusion, irritability, and decreased sex drive.  The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lists the effects of the drugs on the mind as amnesia, hostility, irritability, and vivid or disturbing dreams.

Discontinuing the drugs can be dangerous.  The FDA warns that “stopping benzodiazepines abruptly or reducing the dosage too quickly can result in serious withdrawal reactions, including seizures, which can be life-threatening.” 

The FDA further advises that even when the benzodiazepine dosage is decreased gradually, patients may experience abnormal involuntary movements, anxiety, blurred vision, memory problems, irritability, insomnia, muscle pain and stiffness, panic attacks, and tremors.  More serious withdrawal symptoms include seizures, hallucinations, mania, psychosis, depression and suicidal thoughts.  Withdrawal symptoms can last many months, the FDA says.

Along with an increasing number of benzodiazepine users is a growing number of overdoses and overdose deaths.  After opioids, benzodiazepines are the prescription drugs most involved in overdose deaths.  In 2020, as benzodiazepine-involved overdose deaths reached a record high in the U.S., the FDA updated the black box warning on the package inserts for benzodiazepines to include warnings about “the risks of abuse, misuse, addiction, physical dependence, and withdrawal reactions.” 

In light of the FDA’s updated warning about dependence and addiction, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has called on the DEA to align with the FDA and change the classification of benzodiazepines, which are still classifed as Schedule IV drugs.  Schedule IV drugs are defined by the DEA as “drugs with a low potential for abuse and low risk of dependence.”  The classification is clearly at odds with the FDA’s findings.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of a benzodiazepine or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

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CCHR Urges Doctors to Heed New Study Indicating Placebo Effect, Not Antidepressant, Improved Teens’ Depression

Posted on January 8, 2024 by cchrstl

Teens guessing they were taking an antidepressant led to substantial improvement, while actual treatment with the drug did not, researchers found.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

Prescribing an antidepressant to depressed teens is challenged by a new study finding that the drug’s apparent effectiveness is accounted for by the placebo effect.  Because antidepressants carry the risk of serious adverse effects, including suicide and violence, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is urging doctors who are prescribing antidepressants to heed recent studies indicating the drugs may be doing more harm than good. 

Researchers in Australia and the U.K. who conducted the study cited concerns about the rising number of children and adolescents being prescribed antidepressants, given the questionable effectiveness and known harms of the drugs.

“There has been a significant rise in the use of antidepressants throughout the world in recent decades, with dramatic increases among children and teenagers, despite concerns about a heightened risk of suicidality, the influence of financial interests and general concern about the use of drugs in children,” wrote lead author Jon Jureidini, a child psychiatrist at the Critical and Ethical Mental Health Research Group at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

In the study, researchers addressed the fact that outcomes of clinical trials testing whether drugs are effective can be influenced by the placebo effect, whereby participants’ beliefs about whether they are receiving the actual drug or fake treatment (placebo) can affect results and inflate any apparent effectiveness of the drug. 

Using data from an influential previous study of treatments for depressed teens, in which the drug given for treatment was the antidepressant fluoxetine (commonly sold as Prozac), the study focused on the accuracy of participants’ guesses about whether they were getting the drug or a placebo and to what extent that influenced their outcomes. 

The researchers found that those depressed teens who guessed they were taking the antidepressant, regardless of whether they guessed correctly or not, improved more than those who were actually given the drug.  What’s more, adolescents who thought they were on the antidepressant but were actually given a placebo experienced the greatest improvement. 

“Treatment guess strongly predicted outcomes and may have led to the exaggeration of drug effectiveness in the absence of actual effects,” the researchers concluded.  The study was published in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

One of the researchers involved in the study, British psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff, M.D., was previously an investigator and lead author in the landmark 2022 study that found no scientific basis for the theory of a chemical imbalance in the brain, presumed to be the cause of depression and a rationale for prescribing antidepressants to correct that supposed imbalance.

For years, psychiatrists promoted the theory, which received considerable coverage in psychiatric and psychopharmaceutical journals.  However, despite decades of brain research, Moncrieff found there is no conclusive evidence of a chemical imbalance or other brain abnormality causing depression for antidepressants to fix, which calls into question the prescribing of antidepressants.

Known adverse effects of antidepressants include weight gain, nausea, insomnia, agitation, emotional blunting, sexual dysfunction, suicide and violence.  An analysis of the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System in 2010 found that 31 out of 484 prescription drugs were disproportionately associated with violence, and 11 of those 31 were antidepressants.  On discontinuing antidepressants, patients may experience withdrawal symptoms that can be severe.

Because of the risk of serious side effects and the lack of effectiveness of antidepressants, 31 prominent British medical professionals, researchers, patient representatives, and politicians, including Moncrieff, recently published an open letter in the prestigious British medical journal, The BMJ, calling for the U.K. government “to commit to a reversal in the rate of prescribing of antidepressants.”

WARNING:  Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

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CCHR Renews Call for Laws to Prohibit Restraining Children with Drugs After Use in Psychiatric Facilities Rose 141%

Posted on January 1, 2024 by cchrstl

Young, male, Black, and economically disadvantaged children were disproportionately restrained with antipsychotic drugs.

by CCHR National Affairs Office

The use of antipsychotic drugs to chemically restrain agitated children who are hospitalized for mental health conditions rose 141% in recent years, largely as a result of more pediatric admissions to psychiatric facilities, a new study reports. Young, male, Black, and economically disadvantaged children were disproportionately administered pharmacological restraint. The study did not investigate how many of these children were taking mind-altering psychotropic drugs, whose side effects could have led to their hospitalizations and agitation.

Searching a health records database for pediatric patients aged 5 to 17 years admitted to the medical units of 43 children’s hospitals for mental health conditions from 2016 through 2021, researchers focused on children who were administered any of five antipsychotic drugs intravenously or by injection, presumably for acute agitation. The researchers acknowledged this was a narrow definition of pharmacologic restraint.

They found that one of every 33 mental health hospitalizations of children involved restraint with antipsychotic drugs. Researchers noted that another study using a broader definition of pharmacologic restraint found that one in eight children’s mental health hospitalizations involved sedation with psychotropic drugs.

Overall, the number of days antipsychotics were used to restrain children increased by 141%.  Males, Blacks, children aged 5 to 8, children who were economically disadvantaged, and children covered by public insurance were disproportionately subjected to the drugging.

“The observations noted in this data set…are suggestive of racial and socioeconomic disparities within pharmacologic restraint use in the United States,” wrote Benjamin Masserano, MD, of the pediatrics department at University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, lead author of the study, which was published in Pediatrics.

The number of days of pediatric mental health hospitalizations increased 138% during the period studied, continuing a trend over the past two decades. Researchers cited a previous study which found that the rise in hospitalizations of children for psychiatric conditions was five times greater than the increase in pediatric admissions for any reason between 2005 and 2014.

Since psychiatric diagnoses and emergency procedure laws used for hospitalizations rely on subjective assessments, which lack any objective basis or scientific validity, it is far too easy to admit children to psychiatric facilities for mental health treatment. Allen Frances, M.D., professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and chairman of the task force for the 4th edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,  put it this way: “There are no objective tests in psychiatry – no X-ray, laboratory or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.”

Once children are too easily admitted, the hospital environment itself might bring on agitation, the researchers observed, which increases the likelihood of restraints.

The researchers, however, did not investigate a link between psychotropic drug use and pharmacological restraint. Some 6.2 million children in the U.S. under the age of 18 are prescribed powerful, mind-altering psychiatric drugs, which carry the risks of serious side effects that include agitation, anxiety, aggression, mania, hallucinations, psychosis, violence and suicidal thoughts and action.

These adverse effects, suffered by children taking the drugs prescribed to them as mental health treatment, can lead to the hospitalizations and agitation that result in chemical restraint. The antipsychotic drugs used to restrain the children also carry these side effects. As the researchers further cautioned, any restraint “can be associated with significant medical and psychiatric complications” and so make children’s mental and physical health conditions worse.

In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued guidance on ending all coercive mental health treatment, including forced admission to psychiatric facilities, restraints, seclusion, forced drugging, and nonconsensual electroshock. WHO stated that its opposition to nonconsensual mental health treatment extends even to individuals in mental health crisis, who “are at a heightened risk of their human rights being violated, including through forced admissions and treatment…. These practices have been shown to be harmful to people’s mental, emotional and physical health, sometimes leading to death.”

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has been a global leader in the fight to eliminate coercive and abusive mental health practices and has specifically called for laws to prohibit physical and chemical restraints. CCHR has long pushed for widespread adoption of a Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights, which lays out fundamental human rights in the field of mental health to ensure the right to one’s own mind and the right to be free from forced mental health treatment.

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