Risky Business of Sleep Drugs

Risky Business of Sleep Drugs

After reading about the dangers of sleeping pills in the February 2016 edition of Consumer Reports magazine, we thought you might like to know something about that.

Some psychotropic drugs are prescribed as sleeping pills. Trazodone, an antidepressant, is often prescribed off label as a sleeping pill. Benzodiazepines such as Valium are also prescribed as sleeping pills. Other examples are Ambien (an anti-psychotic), Lunesta (an anti-anxiety drug), and Sonata (another anti-anxiety drug).

These have all the potential side effects we have come to associate with psychiatric drugs — including violence, suicide, addiction, and so on.

The latest sleeping pill fad, touted as “the new insomnia drug”, is Belsomra (generic “suvorexant”). It is classified as a “sedative-hypnotic” which means it is a central nervous system depressant; it alters brain chemistry by targeting a neurotransmitter called orexin.

Belsomra is manufactured by Merck, Sharpe & Dohme Corporation, and was approved by the FDA for insomnia in August of 2014.

Guess what? This drug carries the same warnings as other psychotropic drugs; it may cause memory loss, anxiety, confusion, agitation, hallucinations, depression, addiction, and thoughts of suicide — all this along with its own special side effects: inability to move or talk, sleep-walking, sleep-driving, and drowsiness lasting through the next day.

Here is what Consumer Reports has to say about Belsomra: “…people who took a 15- or 20-milligram dose of Belsomra every night for three months fell asleep just 6 minutes faster on average than those who took a placebo. And those on Belsomra slept on average only 16 minutes longer than people given a placebo. Such small improvements didn’t translate to people feeling more awake the next day, either. Instead, more people who took Belsomra reported that they felt drowsy the next day than those who took a placebo.”

“Because of the limited benefits and substantial risks of sleeping pills, Consumer Reports’ medical experts advise that sleep drugs should be used with great caution.”

“Merck spent $36 million on TV ads for its new drug Belsomra from Aug. 1 to Nov. 24, 2015, making it the second most advertised Rx drug in that time frame, according to iSpot.tv. The ads note that Belsomra is the first drug to target orexin, a chemical that plays a role in keeping people awake. But Belsomra doesn’t work much, or any, better than other sleep drugs. And because it’s new, little is known about its long-term safety.”

One take-away here is that even if a prescription drug is not advertised or prescribed for psychiatric reasons, if it messes with the brain’s neurotransmitters and has all the same side-effects as a psychiatric drug — well, you must get the picture by now.

The Consumer Reports article goes on to discuss non-drug sleep alternatives at some length; it is a good and helpful read.

When your doctor prescribes a drug, it is good practice to ask questions so you can give your full informed consent. These are some example questions you can ask:

1. What is the evidence for the diagnosis?
2. How does the treatment affect the body?
3. How does the treatment affect the mind?
4. What unwanted effects may occur?
5. Is it approved by the FDA for this condition?
6. What is known and not known about how safe it is and how well it works?
7. What are the alternatives, including the option of no treatment?
8. Does the doctor or the clinic have a financial interest in pushing the diagnosis or treatment?

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Another Day Another Anti-depressant (Again)

Another Day Another Anti-depressant (Again)

On July 10, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Rexulti (brexpiprazole, an atypical antipsychotic) tablets to treat adults with so-called schizophrenia and as an add-on treatment to an antidepressant medication to treat adults with so-called major depressive disorder. We are now starting to see the TV ads for this.

Rexulti is manufactured by Tokyo-based Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. and its partner Lundbeck. It might be marketed as a replacement for Abilify (aripiprazole), although clinical trials for its usage to treat ADHD were discontinued, likely due to lack of efficacy. It is still a new drug that has not been tested over a long-term in a real-world population.

Rexulti and other such drugs have a Boxed Warning alerting health care professionals about an increased risk of death associated with the off-label use of these drugs to treat behavioral problems in older people with dementia-related psychosis.

The Boxed Warning also alerts health care professionals and patients to an increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults taking antidepressants.

It has the same pattern of debilitating side effects as any other antidepressant or antipsychotic, including addiction and suicidal thoughts and actions. The most common side effects reported by participants taking Rexulti in clinical trials included weight gain and an inner sense of restlessness (akathisia), such as feeling the need to move.

Rexulti is being touted as producing less akathisia, restlessness, and insomnia than other drugs, but it is important to be skeptical of this marketing due to the fact that clinical trials reported all of these side effects. Like all antipsychotics, Rexulti will likely have severe withdrawal symptoms.

While the way Rexulti works is completely unknown, it affects serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine neurotransmitters in the brain; and this effect is called a “serotonin-dopamine activity modulator”. Messing with neurotransmitters in the brain without really understanding how they work is serious business; we don’t recommend it. In any case, we can guarantee that this chemical-in-the-brain-based hypothesis is bogus. Full Informed Consent should be your watchword.

Rexulti was studied in two 6-week clinical trials of 1,054 patients aged 18-65. The patients selected for the studies took another antidepressant for at least 8 weeks. Twenty patients discontinued participation due to adverse reactions.  The incidences of akathisia and restlessness, and some other side effects, increased with increases in dose.

We must recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists and other medical practitioners fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness” and stigmatize unwanted behavior as  “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. Taking such damaging drugs as Rexulti prevents people from finding out what is really wrong and fixing that.

CCHR believes that everyone has the right to full informed consent. FIND OUT! FIGHT BACK!

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CCHR STL MO Legislative Take Action

Legislative Take Action

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.

This time, we’d like to discuss SJR 38 and HB 1755.
Contact your Missouri state Representative and Senator, and let them know what you think about these. We suggest supporting these two bills.  You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.
SJR 38 (Senate Joint Resolution)
Creates a new constitutional provision relating parental rights
Introduced by Senator Kurt Schaefer (R-19). Read the full text here.
This proposed constitutional amendment, if approved by the voters, declares that every parent has a fundamental right to exercise exclusive control over all aspects of their minor children’s lives without governmental interference, including but not limited to, decisions regarding their minor children’s custody, upbringing, education, religious instruction, discipline, physical and mental health care, and place of habitation. This fundamental right does not extend to any action by the parent that threatens clear, immediate, and substantial physical injury to their minor child, nor permit a parent to compel a minor child to have an abortion.
This amendment also declares that every parent has a fundamental right to require government entities to obtain the parent’s explicit permission before soliciting or sharing information obtained from a minor child about the child or the child’s family, unless the information is obtained during a criminal investigation or, if enrolled in public school, the child’s knowledge of academic subjects.
This amendment guarantees that every parent shall have the fundamental right to decide what educational settings in which to place their child.
This amendment lists several circumstances in which government interference with parental rights will be justified, including: (1) when protecting a child from a clear, immediate, and substantial threat of physical injury; (2) when a parent has been found by a court to have knowingly exposed a child to physical neglect, abandonment, reckless endangerment, or sexual or physical abuse; (3) when a parent has been found by a court to be incapacitated or mentally incompetent; (4) when a child has been emancipated by court order in accordance with state statutes; (5) when a court has assumed jurisdiction over a minor child charged with or convicted of violating a criminal statute; and (6) when a court of law has assigned parental rights to one parent or a non-biological parent as a result of mental incompetence, adoption, or marital dissolution.
Finally, this amendment permits any parent whose rights have been adversely affected to challenge the constitutionality of the infringing law, policy, or other government act and seek damages and attorney’s fees.
HB 1755 (House Bill)
Specifies that parental liberty to direct the upbringing, education, and care of his or her children is a fundamental right not subject to infringement without demonstrating a compelling governmental interest
Introduced by Representative Kurt Bahr (R-102). Read the full text here.
This bill specifies that the liberty of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, and care of his or her child is a fundamental right. The State of Missouri and any political subdivision of the state is prohibited from infringing on this right without demonstrating a compelling governmental interest. Any law or policy must be narrowly tailored and by the least restrictive means to achieve the interest. These provisions apply to all laws of the state, whether adopted before or after the enactment of these provisions. Any law adopted after the enactment of these provisions is exempt only if the law explicitly excludes the application by reference to these provisions.
Let us know that you contacted your state legislators and let us know any response you get.

 

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Another Day Another Anti-depressant

Another Day Another Anti-depressant

The New Year brings us another harmful psychoactive antidepressant – Brintellix (vortioxetine hydrobromide).

The mechanism of the antidepressant effect of vortioxetine is not understood, although it is theorized to be related to serotonin in the brain.

It has the same pattern of debilitating side effects as any other antidepressant, including addiction and suicidal thoughts and actions.

Developed by the Danish company H. Lundbeck A/S and marketed by Takeda Pharmaceuticals, it is an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) drug. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September, 2013. Its sales to date have not been inspiring, possibly related to its initial review by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the U.K. which said, “there was no convincing evidence to show that vortioxetine was any more or less effective than other antidepressants.”

Lundbeck and Takeda are making a new push to increase sales by submitting additional clinical trial data to the FDA and to NICE. You may now start seeing TV commercials for it. Don’t be fooled; there has been no change in the drug itself or its devastating withdrawal and side effects.

We must recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists and other medical practitioners fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness” and stigmatize unwanted behavior as  “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful.

CCHR believes that everyone has the right to full informed consent.

FIND OUT! FIGHT BACK!

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S.2388 Reciprocity Ensures Streamlined Use of Lifesaving Treatments Act of 2015

This bill, S.2388, introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) on 12/10/2015, has been referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).

Its stated purpose is “To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for reciprocal marketing approval of certain drugs, biological products, and devices that are authorized to be lawfully marketed abroad, and for other purposes.”

Essentially what this Act would provide is that if a drug, biological product, or device is approved for use in another country, then the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would approve it for use in the United States without it having to go through the entire FDA approval process.

While we applaud the Senators for desiring to reduce the inherent bureaucracy of the FDA, we cannot help but notice that this would open the door for marketing various harmful psychiatric drugs and devices without satisfying the usual FDA requirements for safety and effectiveness.

The Act also authorizes an outreach campaign to encourage the sponsors of such products that are potentially eligible for reciprocal marketing approval to request such approval.

We think this Act deserves to be amended to explicitly exclude psychiatric drugs, and devices such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, deep brain stimulation, or any other electric shock or magnetic wave device designed to interfere with the brain.

Please contact your U.S. Senator and the members of HELP to express your viewpoint regarding S.2388.

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Victims of Brain Stimulation Abuse Urged to Report

Victims of Brain Stimulation Abuse Urged to Report

CCHR Nashville, TN — Almost exactly two years ago on January 1, 2014, Scientific American magazine published an article on Deep Brain Stimulation, describing an experiment on a Dutch man wherein psychiatric researchers “…bored small holes in his skull and guided two long, thin probes deep into his head. The ends of the probes were lined with small electrodes… (psychiatrists) ran the connecting wires under his scalp, behind his ear and down to a battery pack sewn under the skin of his chest. Once turned on, the electrodes began delivering constant electrical pulses.”

In response to this alarming new therapy, the Citizens Commission of Human Rights of Nashville (CCHR Nashville) has called for victims to report abuse suffered during this or any other psychiatric treatment.

On the website cchrnashville.org, is the question: “Do you know someone who has been damaged by experimental psychiatric treatments including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), deep brain stimulation (DBS) or any other electric shock or magnetic wave to the brain?” Then follows a link to report abuse from these treatments.

CCHR has long been an advocate for human rights, especially as relates to patients’ rights in the field of mental health. Per the international CCHR website, cchr.org, “CCHR has long fought to restore basic inalienable human rights to the field of mental health, including, but not limited to, full informed consent regarding the medical legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosis, the risks of psychiatric treatments, the right to all available medical alternatives and the right to refuse any treatment considered harmful.”

Abuses from treatment may be reported online or by mail. The report form can be found at cchrnashville.org/report-abuse.

CCHR is a non-profit, non-political, non-religious mental health watchdog. Its mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections. CCHR receives reports about abuses in the field of mental health and is especially interested in situations where persons experienced abuse or damage due to a false diagnosis or unwanted and harmful psychiatric treatments, such as psychiatric drugs, electroshock (ECT) and electronic or magnetic brain stimulation (TMS). CCHR is often able to assist with filing complaints, and can work with a person’s attorney to further investigate the case. To contact CCHR Nashville for more information, visit cchrnashville.org.

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H.R.271 Creating Options for Veterans Expedited Recovery Act

Elf On A ShelfThis bill, H.R.271, introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. Gus Bilirakis [R-Florida] on 1/12/2015 and forwarded to the full Veterans’ Affairs Committee on 5/15/2015, would “establish a commission to examine the evidence-based therapy treatment model used by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs for treating mental illnesses of veterans and the potential benefits of incorporating complementary alternative treatments available in non-Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities within the community.”

Effectively, this bill calls for an official government investigation into the drugging of veterans and into the treatment of veterans diagnosed with mental illness.

When we checked, it had 30 co-sponsors, although none yet from Missouri. Please contact your U.S. Congressional Representative and ask them to help pursue the passage of this bill.

The drugging of the military is off the charts, especially in the United States. From 2005 to 2011 the U.S. Department of Defense increased its prescriptions of psychiatric drugs by nearly seven times. These powerful mind-altering psychiatric drugs carry warnings of increased suicidal thoughts, anxiety, insomnia, and psychosis, especially with high dosages or when abruptly stopped.

In early 2013, the official website of the United States Department of Defense announced the startling statistic that the number of military suicides in 2012 had far exceeded the total of those killed in battle – an average of nearly one a day. A month later came an even more sobering statistic from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: veteran suicide was running at 22 a day — about 8000 a year.

The situation became so dire that the U.S. Secretary of Defense called suicide in the military an “epidemic.”

According to the CCHR documentary The Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda, all evidence points in one direction: the soaring rates of psychiatric drug prescribing since 2003. Known medication side effects of these drugs such as increased aggression and suicidal thinking are reflected in similar uptrends in the rates of military domestic violence, child abuse and sex crimes, as well as self-harm.

The Hidden Enemy reveals the entire situation in stark relief, while urging that soldiers and vets become educated on the true dangers of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. The answer lies in their right to full and honest informed consent—as well as exercising their right to refuse treatment. Our service members need to know there are safe and effective non-psychiatric solutions to the horrors of combat stress, and that these solutions will not subject them to dangerous and toxic treatments that will only send their health spiraling downward.

For more information:

Download and read the CCHR reportA Review of How Prescribed Psychiatric Medications Could Be Driving Members of the Armed Forces and Vets to Acts of Violence and Suicide.

Watch the CCHR documentary onlineThe Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda.

If you are in the military, a veteran, a member of a military or veteran support group, or family or associate of a member of the military or a veteran, you quality for a free Hidden Enemy DVD. Fill out this form to receive a free DVD.

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More About Fraudulent Psychological Research

More About Fraudulent Psychological Research

Back in September, 2015 we published a report about fraudulent psychological research (“Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed“). The Weekly Standard elaborated on the story in their October 19 edition, “Making It All Up – The behavioral sciences scandal.”

We thought our supporters might appreciate a few choice quotes from The Weekly Standard magazine.

“Over 270 researchers, working as the Reproducibility Project, had gathered 100 studies from three of the most prestigious journals in the field of social psychology. Then they set about to redo the experiments and see if they could get the same results. Mostly they used the materials and methods the original researchers had used. Direct replications are seldom attempted in the social sciences, even though the ability to repeat an experiment and get the same findings is supposed to be a cornerstone of scientific knowledge. It’s the way to separate real information from flukes and anomalies.”

“The researchers, [Shankar] Vedantam glumly told his NPR audience, ‘found something very disappointing. Nearly two-thirds of the experiments did not replicate, meaning that scientists repeated these studies but could not obtain the results that were found by the original research team.'”

“Statistical significance is the holy grail of social science research, the sign that an effect in an experiment is real and not an accident. It has its uses. It is indispensable in opinion polling, where a randomly selected sample of people can be statistically enhanced and then assumed to represent a much larger population.

“But the participants in behavioral science experiments are almost never randomly selected, and the samples are often quite small. Even the wizardry of statistical significance cannot show them to be representative of any people other than themselves.”

“Publication bias, compounded with statistical weakness, makes a floodtide of false positives. ‘Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue,’ wrote the editor of the medical journal Lancet not long ago. Following the Reproducibility Project, we now know his guess was probably too low, at least in the behavioral sciences. The literature, continued the editor, is ‘afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance.'”

“The defenders of behavioral science like to say it is the study of ‘real people in real-life situations.’ In fact, for the most part, it is the study of American college kids sitting in psych labs.”

“A week after the Reproducibility Project set off its cluster bomb, President Obama’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Team issued its first annual report. … Evidently impressed with all this science, President Obama issued an executive order directing federal agencies ‘to use behavioral insights to better serve the American people.’ Agency heads and personnel directors were instructed to ‘recruit behavioral science experts to join the Federal government as necessary to achieve the goals of this directive.’ We should have known! After all the bogus claims and hyped findings and preening researchers, after the tortured data and dazed psych students, this is the final product of the mammoth efforts of behavioral science: a federal jobs program for behavioral scientists.”

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United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

The United Nations (U.N.) has published their master plan for world government: Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There are 91 Declarations, and 17 Goals. Here are some.

Declaration 26. To promote physical and mental health and well-being, and to extend life expectancy for all, we must achieve universal health coverage and access to quality health care. No one must be left behind. We commit to accelerating the progress made to date in reducing newborn, child and maternal mortality by ending all such preventable deaths before 2030. We are committed to ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education. We will equally accelerate the pace of progress made in fighting malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis, Ebola and other communicable diseases and epidemics, including by addressing growing anti-microbial resistance and the problem of unattended diseases affecting developing countries. We are committed to the prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases, including behavioural, developmental and neurological disorders, which constitute a major challenge for sustainable development.

Goal 3.4. By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.

These are laudable goals.

We fear, however, that any goals given to the current mental health care industry for implementation would only pervert the good purpose and cause more suffering than actual help.

They have already tried, more than once, to push heavy drug use on children and teens while rolling out “screening” programs that refer kids to psychiatric and psychological treatment.

Refusing to cooperate with such grand plans might seem U.N.American. We’re only saying, there might be a significant difference between the plans and the implementation.

Psychiatry is the epitome of coercive care. For almost 50 years, psychiatry has promoted its theory that the only “treatment” for severe mental “illness” is neuroleptic drugs. However, this idea rests on a fault line. The truth is that not only is the drugging of severely mentally disturbed patients unnecessary–and expensive, thus profitable–it causes brain- and life-damaging side effects.

The simple truth is that there are workable alternatives to psychiatry’s mind-, brain- and body-damaging treatments. With this U.N. “sustainability” effort, there will be more calls for mandatory mental illness screening for adults and children everywhere. We urge all who have an interest in preserving the mental health and freedom of their families and communities to FIND OUT and FIGHT BACK. Something must be done to establish real help for those who need it.

Click here for more information about alternatives to psychiatric abuse.

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New York City’s War on “Mental Illness”

New York City’s War on “Mental Illness”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a plan to spend $850 million to combat mental illness in the city. Its aim is to hire 400 mental health clinicians for high-need communities as well as providing mental health training to a quarter million New Yorkers.

If you call 311 in NYC you’ll get connected to a mental health professional. Guess what they will do for you?

That’s right; they’ll refer you to a mental health provider who can prescribe psychiatric drugs.

The Mayor has been inaccurately informed that 1 in 5 New Yorkers are mentally ill. In fact, statistics provided on the number of people suffering mental illness are completely false or, at best, questionable. Counting normal human problems, emotions and reactions as “mental illness” is a fraud, designed to solicit funds for the mental health industry and sell more drugs.

Part of that mistaken perception arises from the extraordinarily large number of homeless people in NYC. The homeless individuals commonly seen grimacing and talking to themselves on the street are exhibiting the side effects of psychiatric drug-induced damage.

Training will be provided to 9,200 teachers and school administrators to teach social and emotional skills to children. They will hire 100 school mental-health consultants who will help students connect to mental health services.

Children in America are being medicated to death—death by mind-altering drugs. Children are coerced into mental health screening, they are forced into psychiatric treatment and they are prescribed dangerous psychotropic drugs. Millions of them are diagnosed with alleged mental disorders because they are easily distracted, or they talk out of turn in class, or because they don’t follow directions. Because they have discipline problems, they are subsequently drugged on substances equal to heroin and cocaine.

We are absolutely horrified by this blatant push to get more vulnerable people into the corrupt and abusive mental health care system, instead of providing effective solutions to people in need of help.

People can have problems in life; these are not, however, some mental illness caused by a deficiency of psychotropic drugs in their brains. Click here to find out the alternatives to psychiatric drugs.

Contact Mayor de Blasio’s office and let him know what you think about this. There are effective alternatives.
Mayor Bill de Blasio
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
212-NEW-YORK (212-639-9675)
Or online here.

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