MedWatch Consumer Protection

Posted on September 8, 2015 by cchrstl

MedWatch Consumer Protection

Landmark Legislation: Consumer Protection MedWatch Phone Number Placed on Generic Prescription Drug Containers in Connecticut

For immediate release:
Contact Sheila Matthews, Cofounder AbleChild (203) 253-0329
Westport, Connecticut

AbleChild is pleased to announce the passage of Connecticut SB 28, a bill that makes it mandatory for all generic prescription drug containers to carry the 1-800 MedWatch telephone number. This is a first-in-the-nation legislative action to provide this important consumer information and a landmark win for consumers in Connecticut. In February of 2015, AbleChild proposed an amendment to SB 28, taking the unique opportunity to propose this very specific protection on behalf of the consumers.

MedWatch is a drug safety reporting system made available to consumers to allow direct reporting of Adverse Drug Events to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Information provided to MedWatch, by consumers, provides a unique tool to the FDA by giving the federal agency the ability to identify adverse reactions and monitor prescription drugs. The information collected about adverse reactions is used to determine if FDA action is needed on a specific drug.

According to the FDA, it receives information on less than 1% of the actual adverse drug reactions (ADRs) from the consumers. Prescription drugs are currently responsible for killing more people annually than illegal drugs, and according to Tom Friden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “It’s a big problem and getting worse.” Furthermore, according to the Medical Journal of Medicine, prescription drugs are responsible for 291 deaths every day.

Representative David Baram of Bloomfield, co-chairman of the General Law Committee, stated that, “The passage of legislation requiring the MedWatch information to be provided with prescription medications is a positive consumer bill. I applaud Sheila Matthews for bringing this to our attention and helping us to pass this great consumer protection legislation.  Now consumers will have information on how they can report adverse prescription reactions so the manufacturers can review medication issues, and the FDA can re-evaluation safety concerns. This is a major consumer protection that will help promote the safe use and manufacturing of medicines that many of us rely on to live productive lives.”

Senator Joe Markley, who also supported AbleChild’s efforts from the beginning said, “I’m delighted at the progress AbleChild has made in getting out the word on MedWatch, which will enhance the conversation on prescription drugs. Reactions to these drugs differ dramatically, and it’s important that people who have a bad experience have a place to report what happened. I hope we can do more to let people know about MedWatch, and to make them aware of the problems sometimes associated with certain prescription drugs.”

AbleChild’s amendment received bipartisan support and was unanimously passed on June 1, 2015. AbleChild would like to acknowledge and thank the cosponsors of this important consumer protection legislation, including Senator Joseph J. Crisco, 17th District, Representative Jonathan Steinberg, 136th District, Senator Joe Markley, 16th District, and the General Law Committee Chairman, Representative David A. Baram of the 15th District.

AbleChild also would like to extend our sincere gratitude to the entire General Law Committee staff for their assistance in navigating the often, complicated legislative process.

FDA MedWatch Adverse Event Reports:
1-800-FDA-1088
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Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed

Posted on September 4, 2015 by cchrstl

Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed

An article in the New York Times (27 August 2015) shocks us to the core!

“…a painstaking yearslong effort to reproduce 100 studies published in three leading psychology journals has found that more than half of the findings did not hold up when retested.”

We are simply shocked! Not!

We’ve said all along that psychology, along with psychiatry, is a pseudo-science; junk science, if you will.

This finding invalidates much of the core knowledge by which psychologists think they understand the dynamics of personality, relationships, learning and memory.

One of the essential problems with psychology is its reliance upon psychiatric or biological behavioral models—a far cry from its foundations. Psychology once followed early philosophy and initially meant the study of the soul—psyche (soul) and ology (study of). The general thought was that the mind and body were separate entities. Thus, each man and woman was regarded as a composite of soul, mind and matter.

In 1829, Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language defined “psychology” as “a discourse or treatise on the human soul; the doctrine of the nature and properties of the soul.”

However, all this changed in the late 1800’s when German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt established the first “experimental psychology” laboratory in Leipzig University, officially rejecting the existence of the soul and declaring – without a shred of evidence – that man was merely a product of his genes.

By 1961, Merriam Webster’s 3rd International Dictionary defined “psychology” as “the science of mind or mental phenomena or activities; the study of biological organism (as man) and the physical and social environment.”

In placing man as the direct and unknowing effect of an authoritarian and soulless philosophy, those psychologists supporting this view are promoting the idea that one’s mental health depends upon an adjustment to the world rather than its conquest.

This presumes that man cannot, therefore, effect positive change on the world around him but must submit to its random will. Implicit also is the belief that he cannot even be responsible for his own mental healing, as his behaviors are entirely the product of the functions or malfunctions of the brain. In other words, that like dogs, men are basically stimulus response mechanisms.

Where psychiatric and psychological doctrine and thought influence and permeate our culture, those who succumb to this fraudulent philosophy have no hope of finding happiness outside of a medicine cabinet.

Click here for more information about this real crisis in mental health care.

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The New “Female Viagra” is an Antidepressant

Posted on August 29, 2015 by cchrstl

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just approved (18 August, 2015) the drug Addyi (generic flibanserin) which is misleadingly being touted as the “Female Viagra.”

But unlike Viagra, which affects blood flow to the male genitals, Addyi, the “pink Viagra” for women, is all about messing with their minds: it’s an antidepressant drug and there are some very serious, even life-threatening adverse reactions.

While most would agree that it is insulting and demeaning to suggest women suffer from a mental illness because of a lack of desire to participate in a sexual act, the use of dangerous mind-altering drugs to allegedly increase a woman’s sexual desire is simply a continuation of the FDA and APA’s (American Psychiatric Association) history of pathologizing normal female behavior and it is a disservice to women, not a mental disorder. This fraudulent diagnosis, Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), appears in the DSM-4 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), and as Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder in DSM-5.

Because of the severity of the potential side effects, and to get around the complaint that many patients are being given psychotropic drugs without full informed consent, this drug can only be dispensed by certified prescribers using a Patient-Provider Agreement Form about the risk of serious side effects.

Two hundred sales representatives from Sprout Pharmaceuticals are targeting obstetricians and gynecologists, as well as psychiatrists and primary care physicians.

Clinical trials had a very large placebo effect; 38% of placebo patients indicated improvement. One suspects that there are many natural alternatives without the risks of psychotropic drugs.

Flibanserin was originally developed as an antidepressant before being re-purposed for the treatment of so-called HSDD. It messes with the levels of dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin in the brain. No one really understands how it works.

Read more about this drug by clicking here.

Read more about full informed consent here.

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Sneaky Ways to Enforce Mental Health Care on Citizens

Posted on August 8, 2015 by cchrstl

Sneaky Ways to Enforce Mental Health Care on Citizens

We would like to discuss Missouri Senate Bills 331 & 21 [SS/SCS/SBs 331 & 21 – This act modifies and enacts provisions relating to law enforcement officers.] This act is mostly about police officers wearing cameras.

While it did not progress through this year’s legislative session into law, we might assume it will be re-introduced in December for next year’s session. It has a particularly odious section on mental health care.

Here is the offending section:

“If a state of emergency is proclaimed in response to civil unrest, the governor shall, at the request of the county health department, assign a sufficient number of state social workers, counselors, or psychologists to provide counseling and mental health services in the region affected by the unrest.”

This language was originally introduced in SB 21 by Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal (Democrat, District 14).

We predicted last year, after the Ferguson riots, that the mental health care industry would be moving into the community in force. (See our newsletters Behavioral Health in St. Louis and Ferguson Missouri Mental Health Tips and Ferguson and Human Rights.)

Specifically —

“A primary strategy of behavioral health is the extension of services into the community — at home, school, workplace and other community settings.”

“Be aware that every mental health group in the area, and indeed in the country, is going to be offering ‘support and counseling’ to Ferguson residents for their ‘anger and grief.’ Since we already know that the psychiatric and psychological mental health care industry is an affront to human rights, special care is needed to avoid getting sucked into the mental health treatment mill.”

“State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal … is pushing psychiatric mental health care on the community.” She was quoted as saying, “What should have happened since day one is we should have had counselors out in the streets and psychologists because this community is experiencing PTSD right now and frankly, I think some officers are, too.”

Now the mental health care industry would like to make their interference in social unrest a law. Next they will be involuntarily committing protestors as a solution. We’ve been down that “final solution” path before, and it isn’t pretty.

For sure, incidents like Ferguson need to be addressed. Whether it is called “civil unrest” or “riot”, it is really, at bottom, caused by injustice.

You can not cure injustice with psychological counseling. You cure it by restoring justice.

Go here for more information about psychiatric and psychological corruption of justice.

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Lies About Missouri’s Mental Health Budget

Posted on August 1, 2015 by cchrstl

Lies About Missouri’s Mental Health Budget

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article about suicide prevention on May 4, 2015 which began with a blatant lie. They said, “Missouri whacked the state’s mental health department budget from 2007 through 2012,” which they used to claim that suicides rose during that time, as if there were a causal connection.

In fact, the Missouri department of mental health (DMH) annual budgets for 2007 through 2012 were:

2007: $1,071,888,631

2008: $1,159,524,427

2009: $1,211,794,318

2010: $1,199,029,884

2011: $1,238,073,489

2012: $1,393,104,435

As you can see, the DMH budget increased every year except for 2010, ending up 30% higher in 2012 than in 2007. We got these numbers from the Missouri House appropriations bills, so we know they are correct.

This is the kind of disinformation being fed to the public by the mental health industry in order to justify asking for more money. If they had actual positive outcomes, meaning people getting better, they would not have to justify the ask.

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

The scientific research documenting the connection between violence, suicide and psychiatric drugs is overwhelming; yet despite 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.

Between 2004 and 2012, there were 14,773 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system on psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects. While there is never one simple explanation for what drives a human being to commit such unspeakable acts of violence, all too often one common denominator has surfaced in hundreds of cases—prescribed psychiatric drugs which are documented to cause mania, psychosis, violence, suicide and in some cases, homicidal ideation.

The risk of suicide is actually increased with the use of (or withdrawal from) psychiatric drugs. In fact, suicide is the major complication of withdrawal from Ritalin and similar amphetamine-like drugs.

While suicide may have been escalating in some cases, too often this has been falsely attributed to their “mental illness,” when, in fact, the very methods used to “treat” such “illness” are the cause of the suicide.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention, said it had “found no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality.”

So tell us, how will increasing the Missouri Department of Mental Health budget make a dent in suicides, since their treatment actually causes the condition?

For more information, actual facts, and recommendations, download and read one or more of the several booklets on the connection between violence, suicide and psychiatric drugs from www.CCHRSTL.org.

 

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Involuntary Commitment Records in Missouri are No Longer Confidential

Posted on July 22, 2015 by cchrstl

Involuntary Commitment  Records in Missouri are No Longer Confidential

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon signed into law Senate Bill 426 on July 13 which expands the conditions under which confidential mental health care records can be released.

Mental health care facilities that hold patients who have been civilly committed, either voluntarily or involuntarily, can now disclose information about patient medications and other medical records “to individuals designated by the department of mental health as community mental health liaisons for the purpose of coordination of care and services.”

We expect that this means the government wants to follow these patients back into the community when they are released so that they can be monitored as continuing to take their prescribed psychiatric drugs.

As if commitment is not an abusive human rights violation in itself! Now the government wants to make sure the abuse continues for the rest of the person’s life.

“The fact that psychiatric imprisonment is called ‘civil commitment’ is, of course, simply part of the linguistic deception characteristic of the mental–health system. Since civil commitment results in the loss of liberty, and subjects the victim to health hazards at the hands of medical criminals whose ostensible healing function is legitimized by the state, it entails far greater deprivation of rights than does incarceration in prison, a penalty carefully circumscribed by constitutional guarantees and judicial safeguards.”
(Dr. Thomas Szasz, M.D., late Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus)

With health care eating up vast amounts of our national budget, the first spending cut to make is the cost of “treating” people who prefer not to be mentally treated. Involuntary commitment laws hike federal, state, county, city and private health care costs under the strange circumstance of a patient–recipient who cannot say no.

CCHR recommends that citizens execute a Living Will, or Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment, which directs that psychiatric incarceration, hospitalization, treatment or procedures not be imposed on you.

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Human Rights Concerns with the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015

Posted on July 18, 2015 by cchrstl

Human Rights Concerns with the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015

Congressional Rep. Tim Murphy (R., PA) originally introduced the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R.3717) in 2013. Not to be outdone by H.R.6 the 21st Century Cures Act, he has reintroduced it to this year’s Congress as H.R.2646 the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015.

Rep. Murphy is a psychologist, and a staunch supporter of “mental health care” as defined by the psychiatric and psychological industries; not to mention the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

Official Title of the Act: “To make available needed psychiatric, psychological, and supportive services for individuals with mental illness and families in mental health crisis, and for other purposes.”

The Act creates a new position in the Department of Health and Human Services – an official to be known as the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders. (As if we need another bureaucracy in the psych industry.)

The Act creates more funding for psych-based “treatments.”

The Act expands the bureaucracy surrounding “parity in mental health and substance use disorder benefits” under Medicare and Medicaid.

The Act provides for grants in early childhood intervention and treatment programs, and specialized preschool and elementary school programs.

The Act provides for grants in “Assisted Outpatient Treatment” programs.

The Act requires states to have a law that enforces court-ordered involuntary mental health treatment for the “mentally disabled” if the state want to receive certain federal funding.

The Act expands mental health training for primary care physicians.

This isn’t even half of the proposed legislation.

The Act spends lots more money on “suicide prevention” all up and down the entire educational chain, from elementary school through college.

The Act establishes an entirely new bureaucracy called the “Interagency Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee.”

Of course, the Act also expands the availability of and insurance coverage for psychiatric prescription drugs, as well as lifting limits on Medicare payments for inpatient psychiatric hospital services.

The Act expands the Community Mental Health Care programs.

The Act increases funding for the National Institute of Mental Health.

And even that’s not all the Act does to strengthen the already fraudulent and abusive psychiatric mental health industry.

CCHR Supporters should really consider contacting their Congressmen to express their opinions about this affront to rationality.

Let us know when you contact your Congressmen about this, and any response you may receive.

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21st Century Cures Act

Posted on July 12, 2015 by cchrstl

21st Century Cures Act

H.R.6, the 21st Century Cures Act, is rushing through Congress now. This bill amends the Public Health Service Act to reauthorize the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget, and to make some major changes in the NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Medicare, the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

We are pretty sure that not all of these changes are going to be benign. We invite you to read the Act and read the rebuttal, decide for yourself, and contact your Congressmen now with your personal opinions.

Warning: the text of the Act is difficult to read in the context of the laws it is proposing to change, since it does not print the revisions in line of the original law, as in proposed Missouri legislation for example, but instead just prints the text being removed and the text being inserted.

Here are some salient quotes from the rebuttal:

“The Act is a give-away to the pharmaceutical industry, removing many of the safety mechanisms in place that are supposed to keep the public protected from unsafe drugs and medical devices.”

“The 21st Century Cures Act will diminish another bedrock of modern medicine – informed consent.”

“But if pharmaceuticals are no longer required to have evidence that they improve health outcomes, how are they any better than snake oils? One only needs to look as far as the recent history of psychiatry to see that the line between snake oils and ‘evidence based medicine’ is already woefully thin.”

“The 21st Century Cures Act diminishes the rocks on which modern medicine are based – informed consent, individual body autonomy, the Hippocratic Oath, and basing medicine on scientific evidence.”

Obviously we are not diagnosing or recommending treatments here. We want to alert you to this Congressional action, and make sure you are informed so that you can exercise your own judgment. While sections of this proposed legislation are likely useful, there are other sections that may be damaging in the long term and may be passed into law in haste.

Here is an example of a section called out in the rebuttal (“With the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act, drugs will be rushed to market with little testing required.”):

“SEC. 2022. Accelerated approval development plan. In the case of a drug that the Secretary determines may be eligible for accelerated approval in accordance with subsection (c), the sponsor of such drug may request, at any time after the submission of an application for the investigation of the drug under section 505(i) of this Act or section 351(a)(3) of the Public Health Service Act, that the Secretary agree to an accelerated approval development plan described in paragraph (2).”

This refers to paragraph (2) which describes the use of a “surrogate endpoint” in an accelerated approval development plan. The term “surrogate endpoint” means a marker, such as a laboratory measurement, radiographic image, physical sign, or other measure, that is not itself a direct measurement of clinical benefit. So a result of this could be that clinical trials no longer measure the clinical benefit of a new drug on the fast track to approval, just unspecified changes in various measurements that may, or may not, be beneficial to the patient. This is the kind of change that causes us to question the haste and wisdom of this proposed Act.

Let us know when you contact your Congressmen about this, and any response you may receive.

And read what we have to say about Informed Consent.

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The Havering Crowd

Posted on July 3, 2015 by cchrstl

The Havering Crowd

haver – verb
gerund or present participle: havering
[Scottish] talk foolishly; babble.
“Tom havered on.”
[British] act in a vacillating or indecisive manner.
“Most people giggle at their havering and indecision.”

Psychiatry and psychology employ havering as a method of professional communication. Otherwise known as “psychobabble,” this speech mechanism can put those unaware of its nature in a confused state.

psychobabble – noun
a form of speech or writing that uses psychological jargon, buzzwords, and esoteric language to create an impression of truth or plausibility

Googling the word “psychobabble” returns 456,000 results. It’s a popular pastime.

The word “psychobabble” came into popular use after the 1977 publication of Psychobabble: Fast Talk and Quick Cure in the Era of Feeling by R. D. Rosen, leading to another interesting definition: jargon speech that is heavily based on experience and emotion instead of well-known science.

Here is an example: bipolar. Yes, the word “bipolar” is a classic example of psychobabble, because when people claim they are bipolar they’re really saying that they are just moody. Saying you’re bipolar abdicates all responsibility for the control of your emotions.

Scanning the brains of children and adolescents labeled with ADHD is one of the latest psychobabble ideas being used in an attempt to bring some credibility to this fraudulent diagnosis, demonstrating that psychiatrists are still looking for an answer to justify the widespread drugging of children and adolescents.

Of course, the biggest psychobabble scam is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). And if you chewed on a page from the DSM while reciting one of its fraudulent diagnoses, you could be accused of havering your babble and eating it, too.

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The Name Game, Latuda

Posted on June 24, 2015 by cchrstl

The Name Game, Latuda

Latuda, Latuda, bo-buda
Banana-fana-fo-fuda
Fee-fi-mo-muda
Latuda

One might as well be talking gibberish, since Latuda does not make any sense. Unless you consider that it makes a lot of cents.

We recently saw a commercial on TV for Latuda (generic name lurasidone HCL), lauding its use for bipolar depression.

It’s another psychiatric drug, originally promoted for the symptoms called schizophrenia, and lately for bipolar depression. It’s similar to risperidone or olanzapine, an atypical anti-psychotic drug that alters the levels of serotonin and dopamine in the brain. The chemical class is called “benzisothiazol derivative.”

It was developed by Sumitomo Dainippan Pharma and marketed in the U.S. by Sunovian Pharmaceuticals.

The Latuda manufacturer’s website has this to say about it, “It’s not known exactly how Latuda works, and the precise way antipsychotics work is also unknown.”

Manufacturer warnings include, “Increased mortality rate in elderly patients … and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.”

867 other drugs are known to interact with it.

The side effects are similar to all other antipsychotics, and could be increased in intensity if the user drinks grapefruit juice with it.

An average dose is estimated to cost about $5,000 per year.

It was not tested in published clinical trials lasting longer than 6 weeks; and one of its trials failed to show any improvement at all.

At this point, it is definitely looking more like banana-fana than anything else. One might as well eat some bananas instead, it would be a whole lot healthier and likely just as effective.

We’re making fun of the psych drug, not the symptoms. People certainly can have mental trauma for which they might need help. We’re just saying, the psych drug is not help; it is, rather, harm.

Psychiatry is a harmful pseudo-science; they know it, they admit it. Don’t swallow it.

Go here for more information. Find Out! Fight Back!

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