Patients For Life

Posted on April 2, 2018 by cchrstl

A leading cause of death in patients diagnosed with a serious mental condition (such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression) has been preventable medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes, metabolic disorders which are typical side effects of being treated with second generation (atypical) antipsychotics.

The majority of those who screen positive for these types of metabolic disorders do not receive treatment for these medical conditions. Even worse, the majority of patients being treated with these antipsychotics are not even screened, with simple blood tests, for these side effects.

A tremendous amount of effort, lasting over at least the last 15 years, has been expended in trying to change the U.S. medical system to implement simple blood test screening protocols for patients being prescribed antipsychotics. Many reasons have been given for this reluctance to change, but the most obvious reasons were not among them — the fact that no one knows how these drugs work, that they are addictive, harmful, and are causing side effects that produce continuing income from these patients for life, a life albeit shortened by the metabolic disorders caused by the drugs.

The general attitude of the mental health care industry is that mental disorders are comorbid with metabolic disorders. This means that there is a simultaneous presence of these two chronic conditions in a patient, with little thought given to the fact that metabolic disorders can be the side effect of the drugs being given for the mental disorder. Since the drugs are addictive, harmful, and have nasty side effects, the obvious solution is to stop prescribing the drugs and use one or more of the many non-drug alternatives. This, however, would deprive the industry of one of its top money-makers.

Patients already presenting with CVD or diabetes, or who have known risk factors for these, should not even be considered as candidates for antipsychotics, and should also be screened for any other undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions which may be causing mental symptoms.

A case could be made for malpractice if blood test screening for metabolic disorders is not being performed for patients vulnerable to these diseases, especially since the medications that psychiatrists prescribe increase vulnerability to metabolic syndrome. [Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of metabolic disorders, usually including increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels — that occur together, increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.]

Psychiatrists should be responsible for monitoring any potential side effects associated with the drugs that they prescribe; therefore, it is negligent if monitoring is not being done.

We are seeing a huge increase in the rate of antipsychotic prescriptions among younger pediatric patients, yet the younger one is, the lower one’s chances of being monitored.

Based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), statistics are touted about near “epidemic” rates of mental illness in order to demand more government funds and sell more harmful drugs, making people “patients for life” as the drug adverse events then require more drugs to handle these harmful side effects.

Contact your local, state and federal authorities and legislators and demand that funding for psychiatric promises be revoked until the mental health industry can prove its effectiveness with actual cures.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Patients For Life

Psychiatric Sexual Assault – April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Posted on March 28, 2018 by cchrstl

In 2009, President Obama first proclaimed April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The Presidential Proclamation does not mention sexual assault in the mental health care field, so we’d like to mention it here.

In Missouri, there are a number of Statutes that specify crimes and penalties for various forms of sexual assault, but patient rape by a psychiatrist or psychologist is not specifically one of them.

The United States Code, Chapter 109a, Title 18, Section 2242, Sexual Abuse, states, “Whoever…knowingly…engages in a sexual act with another person if that other person is…incapable of appraising the nature of the conduct…shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for any term of years or for life.”

There is a long-standing consensus in the medical profession that sexual contact or sexual relations between physicians and patients is unethical. The prohibition against such was incorporated into the Hippocratic Oath: “I will come to the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons… .” (Other translations from the Greek may read slightly differently, but the intention remains the same.) Contrary to popular belief, the Hippocratic Oath is not required by most modern medical schools.

In no other area of medicine is the patient in such a state of emotional vulnerability as when they visit a psychiatrist or psychologist. It is a relationship in which the patient can be most easily exploited and manipulated.

But psychiatrists and psychologists rarely consider that raping a patient is rape. Instead, it is euphemistically called “sexual contact,” a “sexual relationship” or “crossing the boundaries” when one of its members sexually forces themself on a patient, often with the help of drugs or electroshock treatment.

Yet, the American Psychiatric Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics states:
“[T]he inherent inequality in the doctor-patient relationship may lead to exploitation of the patient. Sexual activity with a current or former patient is unethical.”

Similarly, the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct states: [3.08] “Psychologists do not exploit persons over whom they have supervisory, evaluative, or other authority such as clients/patients, students, supervisees, research participants, and employees.” [10.05] “Psychologists do not engage in sexual intimacies with current therapy clients/patients.”

Unfortunately, too many of them do not heed their profession’s codes. This is well understood by government and law enforcement: as of 2004, there have been more than 25 statutes enacted to address the increasing number of sex crimes against patients by psychiatrists and psychologists in the United States, Australia, Germany, Sweden and Israel.

Psychiatric Rape Statistics

A review of more than 800 convictions of psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists between 1998 and 2005 revealed that more than 30% were for sex crimes.

Studies in numerous countries reveal that between 10% and 25% of psychiatrists and psychologists admit to sexually abusing their patients.

A 1997 Canadian study of psychiatrists revealed that 10% admitted to sexually abusing their patients; 80% of those were repeat offenders.

In a 1999 British study of therapist-patient sexual contact among psychologists, 25% reported having treated a patient who had been sexually involved with another therapist.

As reported in 2001, a U.S. study of therapist-client sex, reported that 1 out of 20 clients who had been sexually abused by their therapist was a minor. The female victims’ ages ranged from 3 to 17, and from 7 to 16 for the males. The average age was 7 for girls and 12 for boys.

Medical & Licensing Boards

While psychiatric rape is punishable by the justice system, in most of the cases professional registration boards deal with psychiatrists’ and psychologists’ rape merely as “professional misconduct.”

These boards decide what discipline should be imposed. Following this logic, if a plumber raped a customer, his fate should be decided by a society of plumbers. That, of course, will not happen and in the same way, neither should professional registration boards be allowed to operate as law. Especially when they have proven they cannot be trusted.

In Missouri, the Board of Registration for the Healing Arts and the Committee of Psychologists have this function.

The so-called ethics system used by psychiatrists has been universally attacked as soft and inadequate. In 1996, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) claimed that “Ethical practice is based on the psychiatrist’s individual sense of responsibility to the patient and judgment in determining what is correct and appropriate conduct. External standards and influences such as professional codes of conduct, the study of ethics, or the rule of law by themselves will not guarantee the ethical practice of medicine.”

Psychiatric and psychological professional societies do not police their memberships. State licensing agencies’ disciplinary actions frequently fail to meet the severity and lasting damage of the practitioner’s violations. Rape is rape and sexual abuse is sexual abuse, whether it occurs in an alley at knife point or on the couch in a professional office. It should be treated as a crime under existing sexual abuse statutes or legislation should be created and enacted that specifically targets sexual exploitation by psychotherapists.

Additionally, any law enforcement agency investigating such a sexual assault complaint should determine if insurance was involved and, if so, should suspect and investigate for potential insurance fraud (billing private, state or federal insurance programs for “treatment” that was actually sex).

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights exposes the criminal convictions of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health personnel for sexual assault, rape and other crimes. See also the documentation on PsychSearch.net if you suspect a psychiatrist of malfeasance.

Click here for more information about psychiatric sexual assault.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , | Comments Off on Psychiatric Sexual Assault – April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Did You Know You Have Been Paying for Drug Company Ads?

Posted on March 26, 2018 by cchrstl

Drug companies have too much influence in Washington, D.C. – so it figures we’re one of the only nations in the world that allows both advertising of prescription drugs to consumers and for those ads to be subsidized by taxpayers.

Under current law, drugmakers can fully deduct the cost of television, online, magazine, and radio ads from their taxes—-all while continuing to hike drug prices for all Americans. You might be tired of paying for it with your taxes.

In 2015 alone, drug companies in the U.S. spent more than $6 billion on fully tax-deductible advertising expenses.

According to the Internal Revenue Code “ordinary and necessary” business expenses are tax deductible, including most advertising costs.

The direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs, however, should not be treated the same as other advertising, since in many cases it disperses deceptive information, hinders the patient-doctor relationship, encourages patients to choose drug-based solutions over lifestyle-based ones, reduces the amount spent on research and development, and increases spending on drugs without a corresponding health benefit.

In the case of psychotropic drugs, clearly these ads dispense deceptive information, as we have repeatedly written about. In the face of these compelling public policy justifications, the Tax Code could be revised to deny tax deductions for DTCA. While the First Amendment protects free speech, this protection does not require Congress to continue to subsidize DTCA.

Hence Senate Bill S.2478 has been introduced into Congress – “A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to deny the deduction for advertising and promotional expenses for prescription drugs” [115th Congress, 2017-2018].

The real problem with the psycho-pharmaceutical industry is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, stigmatize unwanted behavior as  “diseases,” and prescribe harmful and addictive drugs to keep patients in the mental health care system. Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. Why are we continuing to subsidize their advertising? Contact your U.S. Senators to support S.2478.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged | Comments Off on Did You Know You Have Been Paying for Drug Company Ads?

Take Action – Missouri Legislature – Abolish ECT on Children

Posted on March 21, 2018 by cchrstl

Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.

The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site:  http://revisor.mo.gov/.

You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.

We’d like you to write your legislators about the bill discussed below. Please write from your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of this bill can be found here.

Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.

If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.

Very Good Bill
This bill supports human rights, particularly those of children. Please express your support and opinion about this to your Missouri State Representative.

HB1451 – House Bill 1451 – sponsored by Representative Karla May (Democrat, District 84, St. Louis City).

This bill prohibits the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on children under 16 years of age. Any person or mental health facility that administers electroconvulsive therapy to someone under 16 years of age will be fined up to $100,000 or imprisoned for two years, or both, and will be liable for compensation to the person that was given the electroconvulsive therapy.

What can we say? You are being hoodwinked by a small group of psychiatric industry special interests who claim that electroshock is good for you. About time to get this one passed! Write your legislators now! Stick your finger in an electric socket if you think ECT is good for anyone!

In fact, we just heard about a case in Missouri where a 5-year-old child was given electroshock. This is unconscionable, and a no-brainer to pass into law.

When we speak with people about electroshock, the typical response is, “We didn’t know that was still being done.” In fact, ECT is a huge money-maker for psychiatry in Missouri, because the damage it does to the brain makes a patient for life. Barbaric practices like shock treatment need to be eradicated.

Despite modern ECT being promoted as “new and improved,” there is much evidence that contradicts this claim. California, Colorado, Tennessee and Texas have already banned the use of ECT on those aged 0-12 and 0-16. The Western Australian government banned the use of ECT on those younger than 14, with criminal penalties if this is violated. ECT should never be used on children.

In light of the fact that the FDA admits ECT can cause cardiovascular complications, memory loss, cognitive impairment, brain damage and death and that psychiatrists admit they do not know how ECT “works,” we call upon the Missouri legislature to pass HB1451 into law this session.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Take Action – Missouri Legislature – Abolish ECT on Children

Mental Health “Care” Coming to Your Community

Posted on March 18, 2018 by cchrstl

News articles extolling “Community Mental Health” continue to be published across the United States and abroad. We thought you should know more about this.

These articles generally discuss funding, either the lack or availability of public funding, for various mental health care programs — such as Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC), police Crisis Intervention Teams, Suicide Programs, Veterans Programs, Mental Health Courts, Emergency Management or Crisis Counseling, Violence Prevention, School Safety, or other public/private ventures in the mental health care industry. They also generally complain about the lack of a sufficient number of psychiatrists or psychologists in relation to the target population. Let us help put the record straight about this.

History of CMHC

In 1955, a five-year inquiry by the U.S. Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health recommended replacing psychiatric institutions with Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs). According to Henry A. Foley, Ph.D., and Steven S. Sharfstein, M.D., authors of Madness in Government, “Psychiatrists gave the impression to elected officials that cures were the rule, not the exception,” a claim that the psychiatric industry could not and still cannot substantiate.

The advent of Community Mental Health psychiatric programs in the 1960s would not have been possible without the development and use of neuroleptic drugs, also known as antipsychotics, for mentally disturbed individuals. Neuroleptic is from Greek, meaning “nerve seizing”, reflective of how the drugs act like a chemical lobotomy.

These community facilities and programs were promoted as the solution to all institutional problems. The premise, based almost entirely on the development and use of neuroleptic drugs, was that patients could now be successfully released back into society as long as they were taking these drugs. Ongoing service would be provided through government-funded units called Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC). These centers would tend to the patients from within the community, dispensing the neuroleptics that would keep them under control. Governments would save money and individuals would improve faster. The plan was called “deinstitutionalization.”

The first generation of neuroleptics, now commonly referred to as “typical antipsychotics” or “typicals,” appeared during the 1960s. They were heavily promoted as “miracle” drugs that made it “possible for most of the mentally ill to be successfully and quickly treated in their own communities and returned to a useful place in society.”

These claims were false, as neuroleptics are now known to have devastating side effects. In an article in the American Journal of Bioethics in 2003, Vera Sharav stated, “The reality was that the therapies damaged the brain’s frontal lobes, which is the distinguishing feature of the human brain. The neuroleptic drugs used since the 1950s ‘worked’ by hindering normal brain function: they dimmed psychosis, but produced pathology often worse than the condition for which they have been prescribed — much like physical lobotomy which psychotropic drugs replaced.”

Author Peter Schrag wrote in Mind Control, by the mid-seventies enough neuroleptic drugs and antidepressants “were being prescribed outside hospitals to keep some three to four million people medicated fulltime – roughly ten times the number who, according to the [psychiatrists’] own arguments, are so crazy that they would have to be locked up in hospitals if there were no drugs.”

After a decade of the Community Mental Health program, consumer advocate Ralph Nader called it a “highly touted but failing social innovation.” It “already bears the familiar pattern of past mental health promises that were initiated amid great moral fervor, raised false hopes of imminent solutions and wound up only recapitulating the problems they were to solve.”

As for the funding of CMHCs and psychiatric outpatient clinics, the fact is that psychiatry’s budget in the United States soared from $143 million in 1969 to over $9 billion in 1997 – a more than 6,000% increase in funding, while increasing by only 10 times the number of people receiving services. The estimated costs today are over $11 billion.

If collecting these billions in inflated fees for non-workable treatments wasn’t bad enough, in 1990 a congressional committee issued a report estimating that Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs) had diverted between $40 million and $100 million to improper uses, and that a quarter of all CMHCs had so thoroughly failed to meet their obligations as to be legally subject to immediate recovery of federal funds.

Psychiatrists have consistently blamed the failure of deinstitutionalization on a lack of community mental health funding. In reality, they create the drug-induced crisis themselves and then, shamelessly, demand yet more money.

The CMHCs became legalized drug dealerships that not only supplied drugs to former mental hospital patients, but also supplied psychiatric prescriptions to individuals not suffering from “serious mental problems.” Deinstitutionalization failed and society has been struggling with the resultant homelessness and other disastrous results ever since.

Accompanying the psychiatric push for expanded community mental health programs is their demand for greater powers to involuntarily commit individuals. Psychiatrists disingenuously argue that involuntary commitment is an act of kindness, that it is cruel to leave the disturbed in a tormented state. However, such claims are based on the dual premises that 1) psychiatrists have helpful and workable treatments to begin with, and 2) psychiatrists have some expertise in diagnosing and predicting dangerousness. Both suppositions are patently false.

In spite of receiving huge increases in funding in the United States, psychiatry and psychology not only failed but managed to make things drastically worse; rates of drug abuse, suicide, illiteracy and crime continue to rise.

The real message is this: in spite of an investment of billions of dollars for psychiatric promises, the world has received nothing but presumptuous demands from psychiatric vested interests for more money.

Contact your local, state and federal authorities and legislators and demand that funding for psychiatric promises be revoked until the mental health industry can prove its effectiveness with actual cures.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mental Health “Care” Coming to Your Community

“Shoot ’em up” Is No Longer Just for Westerns

Posted on March 12, 2018 by cchrstl

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
[with thanks to Charles Stross in The Apocalypse Codex.]

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog that has investigated school and other mass shootings since the Columbine High School Shooting in 1999, warns about pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into more mental health services in response to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Valentine’s Day.

An investigation into the shooting must include what psychotropic drugs the alleged shooter, Nikolas Cruz, has been prescribed and the fact that he had apparently undergone “behavioral health” treatment which did nothing to prevent the murderous outcome. A 2016 Florida Department of Children and Family Services report indicated that he was regularly taking “medication” for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); these types of psychotropic drugs are known to have violence and suicide as potential side effects.

CCHR International’s investigation into school violence reveals that at least 36 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence have been committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 172 wounded and 80 killed.

At least 27 international drug regulatory agency warnings have been issued on psychiatric drugs being linked to mania, violence, hostility, aggression, psychosis, and homicidal ideation (thoughts or fantasies of homicide that can be planned).

Cruz, 19, charged over the Parkland, Florida shooting, is a prime example of the failure of the mental health system. Expecting better mental health treatment to solve these problems is a forlorn hope, since it promises something that has not and cannot be delivered.

Pouring more funds into a mental health system that keeps failing and continues to use “treatments” that may induce violent and suicidal behavior in a percentage of those taking them, is a recipe for future disaster. Recognize that the repeated violence caused by psychiatric drugging of school children is neither happenstance nor coincidence, and is in fact an enemy action, and the enemy is psychiatry.

The survivors of the Parkland shooting, the families of those killed and the community at large deserves answers and accountability. CCHR is calling on families with knowledge of a loved one who has experienced treatment abuse and for whistleblowers who have concerns about any behavioral facility to contact CCHR by reporting the abuse here.

For more information read this news release.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on “Shoot ’em up” Is No Longer Just for Westerns

The Russians Are Coming? No, They Never Left!

Posted on March 4, 2018 by cchrstl

In 1966 the movie “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” dramatized the Cold War as a plot to make the world die laughing.

We had to laugh about it, because the reality of Soviet infiltration to topple America was too serious to confront.

In fact, as current events are unfolding, the Russians are apparently still at it — attempting to infiltrate via fake news and social media and destabilize American society for their own evil purposes. But frankly, this is nothing new; they’ve been at it since communism began around 1844, in one form or another.

For a communistic state to exist, slaves to the state need to exist. The marriage of psychiatry with communist regimes has spanned countries across the globe as an effective means to deal with political dissension by making people into slaves. They have been using psychiatry ever since as a significant part of the plot.

Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig University, who founded “experimental psychology” in 1879, declared that man is an animal with no soul, claiming that thought was merely the result of brain activity — a false premise that has remained the basis of psychiatry until this day. In 1884, Russian psychologist and physiologist Ivan Pavlov and his countryman Vladimir Bekhterev studied under Wundt. They later developed what they called “conditioned reflex” which laid the groundwork for much of behavioral psychology used in schools today. What is not well known is that Pavlov performed the same type of experimentation on children to see if humans could be conditioned that way, too.

The 1920’s Russian Revolutionary Communistic plan for world domination as originally conceived used psychiatry as a weapon designed to undermine the social fabric of the target country. Using psychiatrists trained as agents provocateurs that were sent in by the KGB (Soviet Secret Police), the Communists of Russia controlled a vast empire. Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria (1899-1953), the founder of the KGB, using his crude and brutal methodology of beating a person half to death in his version of brainwashing, created a feared and dangerous spy network. Eventually surer techniques were stolen from the American intelligence services and then taught at the Lenin University in Moscow. It has been estimated that 80 million people have died as a result of coercive psychiatry in Russia.

Here are some relevant quotes from BRAIN-WASHING – A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics (Charles Stickley, 1955; from Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria). Click here to download and read this manual. You have to know what the enemy is up to in order to fight back against it.

“PSYCHOPOLITICS—the art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaus, and masses, and the effecting of the conquest of enemy nations through ‘mental healing’.”

“To produce a maximum of chaos in the culture of the enemy is our first most important step. Our fruits are grown in chaos, distrust, economic depression and scientific turmoil.”

“You must work until every teacher of psychology unknowingly or knowingly teaches only Communist doctrine under the guise of ‘psychology’.”

“With the institutions for the insane you have in your country prisons which can hold a million persons and can hold them without civil rights or any hope of freedom. And upon these people can be practiced shock and surgery so that never again will they draw a sane breath. You must make these treatments common and accepted. And you must sweep aside any treatment or any group of persons seeking to treat by effective means.”

“Entirely by bringing about public conviction that the sanity of a person is in question, it is possible to discount and eradicate all of the goals and activities of that person. By demonstrating the insanity of a group, or even a government, it is possible, then, to cause its people to disavow it. By magnifying the general human reaction to insanity, through keeping the subject of insanity itself forever before the public eye, and then, by utilizing this reaction by causing a revulsion on the part of a populace against its leader or leaders, it is possible to stop any government or movement.”

“Exercises in sexual attack on patients should be practiced by the psychopolitical operative to demonstrate the inability of the patient under pain-drug hypnosis to recall the attack, while indoctrinating a lust for further sexual activity on the part of the patient.”

“Defamation is the best and foremost weapon of Psychopolitics on the broad field. Continual and constant degradation of national leaders, national institutions, national practices, and national heroes must be systematically carried out.”

“Mental health organizations must carefully delete from their ranks anyone actually proficient in the handling or treatment of mental health.”

“The psychopolitical operative should also spare no expense in smashing out of existence, by whatever means, any actual healing group… .”

“Should any whisper, or pamphlet, against psychopolitical activities be published, it should be laughed into scorn, branded an immediate hoax, and its perpetrator or publisher should be, at the first opportunity, branded as insane, and by the use of drugs the insanity should be confirmed.”

“By various means, a public must be convinced, at least, that insanity can only be met by shock, torture, deprivation, defamation, discreditation, violence, maiming, death, punishment in all its forms. The society, at the same time, must be educated into the belief of increasing insanity within its ranks. This creates an emergency, and places the psychopolitician in a saviour role, and places him, at length, in charge of the society.”

“The psychopolitician has his reward in the nearly unlimited control of populaces, in the uninhibited exercise of passion, and the glory of Communist conquest over the stupidity of the enemies of the People.”

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Russians Are Coming? No, They Never Left!

Vraylar to the Vrescue

Posted on February 26, 2018 by cchrstl

We are now seeing TV ads for Vraylar (generic cariprazine) for “manic or mixed episodes of bipolar I disorder.” An atypical antipsychotic, it alters levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Vraylar was first approved by the FDA to treat schizophrenia in 2015. It can be compared to the antipsychotic risperidone, which is now available as a generic and thus not as expensive as the newer drug Vraylar. They say cariprazine is “less risky” than risperidone, but we think it was approved because it is more expensive.

Hungarian drugmaker Gedeon Richter, the developer of the drug, licensed it to the Dublin pharmaceutical company Allergan and receives royalties on its sales. It cost about $400 million to develop, and its projected income at the time was $300 million per year. Allergan’s Vraylar revenue for 2017 was $287.8 million. A month’s supply for one person costs approximately $1,050 (depending on dosage.)

The exact way Vraylar is supposed to work is totally unknown. It is another example of the debunked medical model of psychiatry which fraudulently supposes that messing with the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain can help. The prevailing psychiatric theory is that mental disorders result from a chemical imbalance in the brain; however, there is no biological or other evidence to prove this.

Basically, psychiatrists gave it in clinical trials to a bunch of people with mental disturbances and performed extensive statistical analyses to “prove” that symptoms of mental distress were less severe while taking the drug than while taking a placebo; while at the same time recording, but discounting, all the adverse reactions.

The most common side effects during clinical tests were uncontrolled movements of the face and body (tardive dyskinesia), muscle stiffness, indigestion, vomiting, sleepiness, and restlessness (akathisia). Other possible side effects are stroke, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, falls, seizures, agitation, anxiety — basically most of the adverse reactions we’ve come to associate with similar psychotropic drugs. This particular formulation stays in the body for weeks even after you stop taking it, so that side effects may occur long after you start or stop taking it.

During clinical trials, 12% of the patients who received Vraylar for a diagnosis of bipolar I discontinued treatment due to an adverse reaction. They say that the drug is not habit-forming, but it has withdrawal symptoms. The trials did not run long enough to actually test for physical addiction, although withdrawal symptoms were reported in newborns whose mothers were exposed to it during the third trimester of pregnancy. Also, the drug carries a black box warning that elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis are at an increased risk of death, just like any other atypical antipsychotic.

“Bipolar I disorder” used to be called “manic-depressive”. All it means is that a person roller-coasters — sometimes being up and other times being down. Bipolar disorder is characterized by unusual shifts in a person’s mood, energy and ability to function. Its symptoms are severe mood swings from one extreme of overly high or irritable (mania) to sad and hopeless (depression), then back again. In the 1800s, bipolar was known as manic depression, a term invented by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. In 1953, another German psychiatrist, Karl Kleist coined the term “bipolar.” There is no objective clinical medical test for the condition.

Psychiatric treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar is complicated by high rates of relapse, indicating that the treatments do not really work. The failures to adequately treat bipolar apparently caused the psychiatric industry to split up the diagnosis into bipolar I and bipolar II, where bipolar II means that the individual has not experienced a full manic episode, just an elevated state of irritable mood that is less severe than a full manic episode. It’s splitting a hair that is completely irrelevant to anything except which drug to prescribe.

An estrogen imbalance, hypoglycemia (abnormal decrease in blood sugar), allergies, caffeine sensitivity, thyroid problems, vitamin B deficiencies, stress, and excessive copper in the body can all cause the symptoms fraudulently labeled as  “bipolar disorder.”

“Schizophrenia,” “bipolar,” and all other psychiatric labels have only one purpose: to make psychiatry millions in insurance reimbursement, government funds and profits from drug sales. If you are told that a psychiatric condition is due to a brain-biochemical imbalance, ask to see the test results.

The global bipolar drug market is growing, possibly due to increasing stress in life. For information about how stress can cause someone to roller-coaster, see our blog here. Click here for more information about bipolar, and here for more information about schizophrenia.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Vraylar to the Vrescue

Smoking is So Last Year

Posted on February 15, 2018 by cchrstl

“Given the disproportionate burden of tobacco health harms in psychiatric patients, e-cigarettes are being considered as a potential tool for harm reduction.”

E-cigs are battery-powered devices that typically contain nicotine, flavorings, and other chemicals. The liquid is heated into an aerosol that the user inhales. The use of an electronic cigarette is colloquially called “vaping” as a contraction of the inhaled “vapor”. More than 2 million middle and high school students were current users of e-cigarettes in 2016. While E-cigs are not tobacco, the fact that they generally contain nicotine means that they are often considered as tobacco products. In fact, as of 2016 the FDA considers “Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems” as regulated tobacco products, although the deadline for regulatory compliance has been extended.

Within an 18-month tobacco-treatment clinical trial with smokers with serious mental illness over a five-year period, electronic cigarette use by those recruited for the trial increased over time, from 0% in 2009 to 25% in 2013. From this data the authors concluded that serious study should be given to the use of e-cigs as a psychiatric treatment for smoking cessation and/or mental disorders.
[“E-Cigarette Use among Smokers with Serious Mental Illness“, Judith J. Prochaska & Rachel A. Grana, 11/24/2014]

Psychiatric “best practices” recommend that psychiatrists assess tobacco use at every patient visit, since tobacco addiction is covered in the DSM-V under eight separate items, and disorders related to inhalant use have 33 entries. Therefore, the psychiatric industry considers that smoking cessation therapies are their territory, which now extends into vaping.

The DSM considers that addiction is a mental illness. It is not a mental illness and cannot be fixed with psychiatric drugs. This debunked medical model of mental distress is what justifies the prescription of harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs. There is certainly such a thing as addiction and mental distress. There can be physical addiction, which requires physical detoxification; and the mental distress, resulting from a lapse of ethics and morals and not from some hokey chemical imbalance in the brain, requires its own effective treatments.

We’ve written previously about harmful psychotropic drugs being used as smoking cessation therapies. One would expect there to be new psychiatric initiatives to use these for vaping addiction, since it opens up a new class of potential [-victims-] patients for the psychiatric industry. Don’t be fooled. There are non-drug methods to stop smoking or handle other forms of addiction, including addiction to psychiatric drugs themselves. Treating substance abuse with drugs is a major policy blunder; contact your state and federal representatives and let them know you disapprove of this trend.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Smoking is So Last Year

The White House Taking Action on Veteran Suicides

Posted on February 10, 2018 by cchrstl

Presidential Executive Order on Supporting Our Veterans During Their Transition From Uniformed Service to Civilian Life (January 9, 2018)

Relevant quotes from the Presidential Executive Order:

“It is the policy of the United States to support the health and well-being of uniformed service members and veterans. … our Government must improve mental healthcare and access to suicide prevention resources available to veterans … Veterans, in their first year of separation from uniformed service, experience suicide rates approximately two times higher than the overall veteran suicide rate. To help prevent these tragedies, all veterans should have seamless access to high-quality mental healthcare and suicide prevention resources as they transition, with an emphasis on the 1-year period following separation.”

Mr. Trump’s order makes a wide range of mental health services available to all veterans as they transition back to civilian society.

It sounds nice; it sounds appropriate; it sounds like everyone would support it. What’s the “but?”

But, in this society at this time, “mental health services” generally means psychotropic drugs. “Psychotropic” means “acting on the mind; affecting the mental state,” meaning that that the drugs change brain function and result in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness or behavior. They don’t actually fix anything, they just suppress both good and bad feelings.

There is another “but” — these drugs also have serious adverse side effects, and three of the most troubling of these are addiction, violence and suicide.

So the preferred “treatment” for veterans’ mental health and suicide are drugs which have suicide as a side effect. Which came first? The drugs, of course.

The psychiatric industry protests that they have many services available, not just drugs. Well, let’s see —

  1. They can talk about it, which they call “cognitive-behavioral therapy” — which is when a therapist evaluates for the patient and tells them what behaviors they need to change.
  2. They can cut out part of the brain with surgery; like you’re going to let them do that to you.
  3. They can shock the brain with high-voltage electricity; and if you believe that is going to help, we’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn we know you’ll be eager to buy; and once you’ve had a course of electroshock treatments you won’t remember we told you so.
  4. They can wire your vagus nerve, which controls such things as heart rate, to send short bursts of electricity directly into the brain. Uh-huh.
  5. They can wrap a huge magnet around your head, called transcranial magnetic stimulation, and zap the brain with induced electric currents. You might as well just shoot yourself. Whoops, many veterans are already doing that.
And then there are all the other efforts to prescribe “breakthrough” drugs, since the normal psychotropic ones are so damaging — drugs like marijuana, magic mushrooms, MDMA (Ecstasy), Ketamine, etc. Talk about desperation!

What are the alternatives? What can the White House and the Veterans Administration do that would actually be effective help for veterans? If enough people tell the White House and the VA about the horrors of psychiatric treatments and the availability of workable alternatives, they might start to listen. Can you call the White House and make a comment about this?

Contact the White House at https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ and/or leave your comments at 202-456-1111. Contact the various key White House personnel mentioned in the President’s Executive Order as well, but WH musical chairs may make it difficult to nail down their names and contact information. Last we knew, here are some of the names:

Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council- Andrew Bremberg
Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council – either Paul Winfree or Lance Leggitt
Healthcare Policy- Katy Talento
Secretary of Defense – Gen. James Mattis, USMC
Secretary of Homeland Security – Kirstjen Nielsen
Secretary of Veterans Affairs – Dr. David J. Shulkin

You can reference the CCHR STL blog here for more information.

Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter, Press Releases | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on The White House Taking Action on Veteran Suicides