Army psychiatrist convicted of murder

Army psychiatrist convicted of murder

A military jury on August 23 convicted Maj. Nidal Hasan in the deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, returning a unanimous verdict of premeditated murder that makes the Army psychiatrist eligible for the death penalty in the shocking assault against American troops at home by one of their own.

Hasan, a Virginia-born Muslim, said he acted to protect Muslim insurgents abroad from American aggression; and that his attack was a jihad against U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Prosecutors never charged Hasan as a terrorist, in spite of the obvious and intentional terrorism of the attack. Hasan leaked documents during the trial to journalists that revealed him telling military mental health workers that he could “still be a martyr” if executed.

Now, let’s notice the really significant part of this drama — Hasan is a PSYCHIATRIST!

Would anyone reading this be surprised to discover that there is a solid link between psychiatry and terrorism?

Terrorism is created; it is not human nature. Terrorists are made, not born. Ultimately, terrorism is the result of madmen bent on destruction, and these madmen are typically the result of psychiatric behavioral control, and psychiatrists are often found to be consumers of their own treatments.

The huge missing “elephant in the room” is the high likelihood that Hasan was medicated with potent brain-altering, violence-causing, psychiatric drugs. These would be drugs that Hasan had easy access to and which he was probably prescribing widely to his traumatized soldier-patients. Psychiatrists are notorious for treating themselves with their own psychiatric drugs.

Some might express surprise that a man whose profession is about caring would turn to violence. “Caring” actually has nothing to do with it. Modern psychiatry is not about caring for, counseling and empowering people; it’s about medicating, controlling and suppressing them.

Dr. Peter Breggin says that, “The most recent data show that soldiers are being snowed under not only with antidepressants and tranquilizers, but increasingly with antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon and Seroquel. To cover up their own therapeutic impotence, psychiatrists chemically suppress our troops and push them back onto the front lines. That’s the kind of poisonous psychiatry that Hasan was practicing in combination with his poisonous ideology.”

Over the last decade an explosion of gratuitous violence has terrorized the world scene. Examination of these destructive phenomena reveals the influence of psychiatric treatment behind virtually all acts of terrorism. From glorifying the blatantly criminal acts of suicide bombers to reducing the hideous acts of a maniacal murderer to psychological or biological bad luck, psychiatrists on both sides of the terrorist conflict share the same twisted perspective on the criminal mind. This perspective protects and denies the dangerousness of the criminal at the expense of honest citizens.

Most terrorist groups today embrace extremist political views and hold racist positions that range from “white supremacism” and anti-Semitism to radical religious fundamentalism and anti-Westernism. Research shows that psychiatry or psychology has influenced and even created such characteristics, spawning racial and political hatred that has resulted in the murder of millions.

Hasan is a domestic terrorist, a traitor, and a madman — much like the rest of the psychiatric profession which is bent on promoting violence in society with harmful, violence-causing drugs.

Citizens groups and government officials should work together to ensure governments first expose, and then work to abolish, psychiatry’s hidden manipulation of society. Please support your local CCHR in this effort.

For more information, click here to download and read the full CCHR report “Chaos and Terror Manufactured by Psychiatry”.

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Your Federal Government at Work

Your Federal Government at Work

Last June the President hosted the National Conference on Mental Health to talk about how to raise awareness of mental health issues and make it easier for everyone to get the mental health care “they need.”

The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget proposal includes large amounts of taxpayer money helping teachers recognize signs of “mental illness” in their students and referring them to “mental health care;” supporting state-based mental health programs aimed young people ages 16-to-25; and training 5,000 additional mental health professionals with an emphasis on treating these students and young adults.

The goal is to have more Americans seek mental health treatment, and make sure that their insurance pays for it.

The Affordable Care Act is a major player in this big brother view of mental heath care, expanding mental health benefits and federal insurance parity protections for more than 60 million Americans. There are 314 million Americans, so this expansion is aimed at roughly 20% of the entire U.S. population. The Affordable Care Act requires new health plans to cover depression screenings for adults and behavioral assessments for children, and soon insurance companies will no longer be able to deny health care coverage to anyone because of a pre-existing mental health condition.

Are you looking forward to this? Are you not excited about the government guaranteeing “treatment” for all the fraudulent mental disorders in the new DSM-5? Get ready to sign up, because the Whitehouse knows what’s good for you!

The only thing is, they are not talking about the rampant fraud and abuse in the mental health care industry, and the very real damage that psychiatric drugs and treatments cause. They are not funding any efforts to curb the fraud and abuse. They are certainly not suggesting that psychiatry itself is a fraudulent and abusive practice.

What can you do about it? As a non-political organization, we are not suggesting political action. But we are suggesting that you Find Out and Fight Back in a manner consistent with your own views in the matter. Occasionally we might make some particular suggestions about what you can do.

Speaking of which, here are some suggestions.

FIND OUT

Review the material on the various CCHR websites and in the various CCHR publications and documentaries. You can start here: www.CCHRSTL.org.

If you have not seen any of the CCHR documentaries, watch them now. You can request a free information kit here.

Satisfy yourself that psychiatry and the current mental health care industry in America does not have your best interests at heart.

Sure, people can have mental trauma, and they need effective care. However, psychiatry is harmful junk science; your family and friends deserve better. Find out about the alternatives to harmful psychiatric treatments.

Ask yourself how many people you know who are taking psychiatric drugs, and if you really think this is OK.

FIGHT BACK

Support CCHR by becoming a member of CCHR St. Louis and request a DVD documentary. Show the documentary to your family, friends and associates; to your school groups and church groups; to your legislators; to your attorney and your insurance provider. You get the idea. Tell us what you did.

Give a CCHR documentary or booklet to someone.

Contact your local, state and federal officials, and let them know what you think about the fraud and abuse in the mental health industry. Write Letters to the Editor of your local news media.

Forward this newsletter to everyone you know and recommend they subscribe.

Volunteer some time to help CCHR fight back. Donate some funds to help CCHR fight back.

Execute a Living Will — a Letter of Protection Against Unwanted Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment.

Report all instances of complaints and adverse psychotropic drug reactions to your national drug regulatory agency. In the U.S. this is at www.fda.gov/medwatch.

There are many other ways to help. The alternative may be a United States where everyone is taking psychiatric drugs on government orders.

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Amanda Bynes case and its relevance to Missouri

Amanda Bynes case and its relevance to Missouri

Former child star Amanda Bynes was committed to a psychiatric facility and reportedly is being treated for mental symptoms labeled as schizophrenia. According to California law, doctors can extend her commitment if she is “gravely disabled as a result of a mental disorder.”

This case is relevant for Missouri because of the legal standard used to commit her, that she was “gravely disabled.” That is not currently allowed in Missouri, but there was legislation introduced in the last session that would have allowed that, and it will likely be introduced again in the next legislative session.

Missouri House Bill 929 purportedly would help parents deal with their adult children who go off the rails before it gets to the point of physical harm — just like Amanda Bynes’ parents are trying to do. She is literally the “poster child” for this type of legislation and will help fertilize the ground for passage next year unless we write our Missouri legislators and let them know what we think about involuntary, or civil, commitment.

The bill changes the standards for determining when a person is in need of mental health detention and evaluation. The person must be held in a psychiatric facility if mentally ill and “gravely disabled” which is defined as “a condition in which a person, as a result of mental illness or mental disorder, lacks judgment in the management of his or her resources and in the conduct of his or her social relations to the extent that his or her health or safety is significantly endangered and he or she lacks the capacity to understand that this is so.”

Statutory checks on the abuse of civil commitment laws are scarce, readily sidestepped and widely ignored. Yet the minds and memories of those subjected to this capriciousness have frequently been destroyed after involuntary imprisonment in psychiatric facilities across the nation — be it a small clinic, private hospital or a government–run institution. And commitment laws have been used for every wrong reason: financial, sexual, business advantage, inheritance, political suppression, and even to maintain governmental secrecy.

When any psychiatrist has full legal power to cause your involuntary physical detention by force (kidnapping), subject you to physical pain and mental stress (torture), leave you permanently mentally damaged (cruel and unusual punishment), with or without proving to your peers that you are a danger to yourself or have committed a crime (due process of law, trial by jury) then, by definition, a totalitarian state exists.

Because of their ubiquity and far–reaching powers, involuntary commitment laws lay a truly concrete foundation for totalitarianism. And they are not, it must be stressed, a threat of what might be, but a present danger — representing America’s gaping breach in the otherwise admirable wall of individual Constitutional rights.

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.

Involuntary commitment creates an astonishing debt load on our health care system. Given a very conservative daily cost of $940 for hospitalization and treatment, each involuntary commitment costs around $16,700. With up to 1.5 million people committed yearly, and using the conservative individual figure of $16,700, the annual health care drain is almost $25 billion! And this is paying for a service that most would refuse if given the chance.

The Missouri Revised Statutes (RSMo) Chapter 632 Section 300, Chapter 660 Section 290, and Chapter 632 Section 305 specify the conditions under which, and by whom, someone can be forcibly incarcerated in a mental health facility.

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.

Download and read the full CCHR report “Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment – A Crack In The Door Of Constitutional Freedoms“. Forward this newsletter to your family, friends and associates, and recommend that they subscribe.

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Salem Missouri, psychiatric hotbed

Salem Missouri, psychiatric hotbed

The Salem Missouri News reported June 25 that staff at a Department of Mental Health (DMH) contractor, Enrichment Services Inc. (ESI) located in Salem (125 miles southwest of St. Louis,) took developmentally disabled consumers to adult establishments for sex entertainment and gambling.

While the DMH insisted that no patient abuse occurred, they did admit that this was inappropriate behavior and that if such trips continued the provider’s contract would be cancelled.

So, another mental health care provider gets away with inappropriate behavior. No discipline, just a warning. “The legal standard for abuse or neglect could not be met,” they said, while at the same time bemoaning the fact that taxpayer dollars were used for the offense.

Meanwhile, everyone is so pleased that the DMH took such a strong stand against inappropriate behavior with their mental health care consumers. (That was sarcasm; sometimes my sarcasm if not stated as such does not completely come through in an email.)

Such treatment of those under the care of the Department of Mental Health is never help; it is a betrayal in the guise of help, and an all-too-frequent occurrence in the mental health industry. Psychiatrists and psychologists cannot be allowed to continue to determine the standards of conduct in any society.

Patients, their families and guardians, should be provided written information on their caretakers’ professional standards and informed that any behavior outside those standards is inappropriate and subject to discipline; and that “patient consent” is not a defense. Any patient, or their family or guardian, who is subjected to such inappropriate behavior should file a complaint with the Missouri Office of Constituent Services at 800-364-9687 or email constituentsvcs@dmh.mo.gov with a copy to the local police department.

If you are so moved, please express your concern to ESI, the Dent County Developmental Disabilities Board, the Missouri Association of County Developmental Disabilities Services, the Missouri Department of Mental Health, and the Salem News.

[All emails here for convenience: constituentsvcs@dmh.mo.gov; enrichmentservices@embarqmail.com; sb40board@embarqmail.com; leswagner@macdds.org; Keith.Schafer@dmh.mo.gov; salemnews@thesalemnewsonline.com]

Click here for more information about psychiatric sexual misconduct.

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Psychiatric Morphology

Psychiatric Morphology

Morphology: the study of the form and structure of something (from Greek morphe, form.)

We have been seeing a recent spate of media about the jam the psycho-pharmaceutical industry has placed itself in, and how that came to be. Many news and magazine articles, radio and TV programs are discussing the history and morphology of psychiatry, the ridiculous fraudulent nature of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and the epidemic of harmful and addictive psychiatric drug use across this nation and the world.

This is not limited to the United States. Much of the rest of the world uses the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) in the same manner as the U.S. uses the DSM. ICD has the same kind of silly characterizations for mental distress as the DSM, such as “mental disorders” related to one’s difficulty reading, spelling, doing arithmetic; and other categories that the rest of us just know as stress such as disaster, war and other hostilities; smoking, drinking, “lack of physical exercise,” “inappropriate diet,” “lack of relaxation or leisure;” and indeed even for other peoples’ problems such as a “family history of mental and behavioural disorders.” Yes, one can be labeled with a mental disorder because someone else in one’s family was so labeled; we call this the eugenics of psychiatry.

An August 2nd article by Will Self in the United Kingdom’s Guardian News, “Psychiatrists: the drug pushers,” is an example of the recurrent backlash against psychiatric fraud and abuse. Here are a few choice quotes:

“What do psychiatrists have to offer … beyond their capacity to legally administer psychoactive drugs, and in some cases forcibly confine those they deem to be mentally ill?”

“… only psychiatry deals in mandatory social care and legal sanction.”

“Yet while the regime under which those diagnosed with mental pathologies has changed immensely in the last half-century, the prognosis remains no better. Some say that it is manifestly worse.”

This is what we would like to address in our morphology of psychiatry: the fact that, even with the many changes the psychiatric industry trumpets over the last fifty or hundred years, the bottom line is that psychiatry’s reliance on brutality and coercion has not changed since the moment it was born.

Without any ability to cure, psychiatrists have always relied on intimidation, force and fear to control those they claim to help. Because of its history of cruel and unworkable treatments, psychiatry is the ugly stepchild of medicine, and must enforce its treatments on the helpless in order to exist at all.

The pseudoscientific ideology of eugenics, the theory that human beings could be selectively bred to encourage desirable traits and weed out the undesirable, was spread by psychiatrists as blatant racism that justifies shoddy treatment of poor people and ethnic minorities. Between 11 and 17 million people were murdered during the Holocaust, all judged eugenically “inferior” and marked for death. And psychiatrists designed the entire machinery and, in some cases, ran it.

The psychiatric ideology of eugenics embraced by Nazi psychiatrists was never abolished after the end of Hitler’s Third Reich, but has continued to present day, and is evident in the ICD’s classification for “family history of mental and behavioural disorders.” For the proof, watch the CCHR documentary, “The Age of Fear – Psychiatry’s Reign of Terror,” and show it to your family, friends and associates.

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Common Core Controversy Continued

Common Core Controversy Continued

Opposition to the Common Core State Standards is growing

Four states — Texas, Virginia, Alaska, and Nebraska — have not adopted the Common Core State Standards for public school curricula and testing. Minnesota chose to adopt only the English standards and declined the Mathematics standards.

Nine states which had previously adopted the Standards — Missouri, Kansas, Michigan, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Carolina, Utah — are having second thoughts about it in one form or another. For example, in Missouri:

HB 616 “Prohibits the State Board of Education from adopting and implementing the standards for public schools developed by the Common Core Standards Initiative” was introduced by Representative Kurt Bahr (R-102) although it did not come to a vote during the legislative session just ended.
SB 210 “Requires the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to hold public meetings in each congressional district on the Common Core State Standards” was introduced by Senator John Lamping (R-24) although it did not come to a final vote during the legislative session just ended.

In May, the Texas House of Representatives voted 140-2 to pass language prohibiting Texas from participating in the standards. Texas, however, has never adopted the standards and likely will not.

One flaw of Common Core seems to be around the assessment tests, and the maxim that “what gets tested gets taught.”

Critics also say that the whole Common Core effort is a backdoor way of establishing a national school curriculum, taking educational decisions away from the states. Amendment X to the Constitution of the United States, states that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This is taken to mean, in this context, that a national educational curriculum mandate is in violation of the Constitution. Of course, proponents of Common Core point out that these Standards are developed and run by the states, not by the federal government. On the other hand, opponents of Common Core consider it as an end-run around having a federally mandated curriculum; in other words, while it is not officially a federal mandate, there are most certainly federal incentives (read “federal dollars”) for those states who implement it.

Without going any further into the pros and cons of the Common Core Standards themselves, we do want to watch out, however, for the first step down a fast slide toward the federal government telling teachers what should go on in their classrooms, and the conversion of schools and classrooms into the mental health clinics that the White House seems to desperately desire.

The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget includes $205 million for programs to help identify children’s mental health concerns, improve access to mental health services and “support safer school environments,” including $55 million for Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education) to provide Mental Health “First Aid” training in schools and communities and to help school districts and their communities work together to ensure that students with mental health issues are referred to the services they need; $50 million to train 5,000 new mental health professionals to serve students and young adults, including social workers, counselors, psychologists, and other mental health professionals; and $25 million for Healthy Transitions, a new competitive grant to help support transitioning youth (ages 16-25) and their families access and navigate behavioral health treatment systems.

The federal government is even now working out how existing group health plans that offer mental health services must cover them at parity under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. In addition, the Affordable Care Act requires all new small group and individual plans to cover mental health.

For more information about the dangers of mandated mental health insurance coverage, download and read the CCHR report “The Vital Case Against Mandated Mental Health Parity.”

For more information about harmful psychiatric influences in education, download the CCHR report “Harming Youth — Psychiatry Destroys Young Minds — Report and recommendations on harmful mental health  assessments, evaluations, and programs within our schools.”


As a result of psychiatric and psychological intervention in schools, harmful behaviorist programs and psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs now decimate our schools. These programs have trampled on the rights and roles of parents and have provided society with rising crime, drug abuse and suicide rates.

Contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know what you think about turning our schools into mental health clinics and turning our children into mental health patients.

Forward this newsletter to your family, friends and associates and recommend that they subscribe.

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Common Core Controversy

Common Core Controversy

The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) is a set of educational standards for each grade level (K-12) that are intended to provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so that teachers and parents know what they need to do to help their students and children. There are currently only standards for Math and English, and they incorporate both content and skills standards.

The official authors, publishers and copyright holders of the Common Core State Standards are the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Since its inception in 2008, forty-five states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the Common Core State Standards.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and Commissioner of Education Chris L. Nicastro, with the approval of the State Board of Education, signed a Memorandum of Agreement in 2009 permitting Missouri to work with other states on the development of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics. The Missouri State Board of Education (not the Missouri legislature) adopted the Common Core State Standards on June 15, 2010 with full implementation expected during the school year 2014-15.

There will be a new set of assessment tests aligned with the Common Core Standards. Because the tests are computer-based, schools will need adequate computer technology and bandwidth available to conduct the assessments.

Both ACT and the SAT have announced that these tests will become aligned with the Common Core State Standards.

Missouri has allied itself with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to develop the Common Core assessment tests for Math and English, which will replace the current Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) tests for these subject areas.

There are a number of groups opposing this initiative for a variety of reasons, including ParentalRights.org, MissouriEducationWatchdog.com, MOAgainstCommonCore.webs.com, The American Principles Project, Concerned Women of America, National Coalition of Organized Women, UtahnsAgainstCommonCore.com, and PioneerInstitute.org.

While CCHR does not particularly endorse nor oppose CCSSI, there may be ramifications in the mental health field about which you may wish to know.

The main objection voiced that might relate to CCHR interests is that these standards raise the prospect of privacy violations and data mining of private student information. The fear is that this data could include such items as family income, religion, family voting history, mental health screenings, and disciplinary actions. (In fact, current data reporting already includes disciplinary actions.)

Currently the Missouri Department of Education collects 119 data points for each student. These are a combination of requirements from Missouri state law, Missouri state Department of Education, court rulings, federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act, and federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

While the Common Core Standards officially do not contain data collection or reporting requirements, the means of assessing students and the data that results from those assessments are up to the discretion of each state. There is also a separate data collection effort called the Common Core of Data which is a program of the U.S. Department of Education, although this ostensibly uses aggregate statistics only and not individually identifiable information.

A less well-known, hard to find and disturbing bit of information comes from the CCSSI co-author Council of Chief State School Officers web site, which lists one of its prime principles as “Continued Commitment to Disaggregation,” referring to making the data collection and reporting systems provide more data that is tied to individuals rather than aggregated solely as statistics.

In a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan advocated having healthcare clinics associated with schools. He also indicated that schools should be the center of community life and be open 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, 12 months a year. When not operating strictly as a school, they should be partnered with community service organizations to operate the facilities and hold various programs.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a Fact Sheet January 19, 2012 called “Unlocking the Power of Education Data for All Americans,” announcing a number of public and private data collection and reporting initiatives.

It is certainly no secret that the White House strongly supports mental health efforts in schools. Quoting from the White House blog:

“The budget supports initiatives to help teachers and other adults identify early signs of mental health problems and refer young people to services they may need, and to advance new state-based strategies to prevent young people ages 16 to 25 with mental health or substance abuse problems from falling through the cracks when they leave home. The budget will help 8,000 schools implement evidence-based behavioral practices to improve school climate and behavioral outcomes for all students.”

We’re not particularly prone to cry “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” having stirred up enough fireless smoke ourselves. All we’re really saying here is, there might be something to watch about all this — dig a little deeper when the news media says how wonderful some new program is, especially if it involves an area already infiltrated by the psychiatric industry such as education.

For more information about harmful psychiatric influences in education, download the CCHR reportHarming Youth — Psychiatry Destroys Young Minds — Report and recommendations on harmful mental health assessments, evaluations, and programs within our schools.”

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Nursing Home Abuses

Nursing Home Abuses

The June 2013 issue of Consumer Reports magazine had this to say about antipsychotic drugs given to nursing home patients:

“These and related drugs are supposed to be used only for patients with diagnosed psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and not for disciplinary reasons such as quelling agitation in patients with Alzheimer’s dementia. In a large 2010 study, almost 30 percent of nursing-home residents had received an antipsychotic; of them, almost one-third had no identified indication for use. The drugs don’t help dementia and have been linked to other risks, including less functional improvement, longer nursing-home stays, and a greater chance of dying. A review published in March by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that most older adults with dementia can successfully be taken off antipsychotic drugs.”

Nursing-home residents have human rights protected by law. The Consumer Reports article goes on to say that “some nursing homes disregard the law, and often they get away with it. One reason is that residents or their families might be reluctant to make a formal complaint because they fear the staff will retaliate.”

In Missouri the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program provides support and assistance with any problems or complaints regarding residents of nursing homes and residential care facilities. Complaints concerning abuse, neglect and financial exploitation should be reported to the Missouri Division of Senior Services Elder Abuse Hotline, 800-392-0210, email address LTCOmbudsman@health.mo.gov.

In the U.S., 65-year-olds receive 360% more shock treatments that 64-year-olds because at age 65 government Medicare insurance coverage for shock typically takes effect.

Indiscriminate use of psychiatric drugs, electric shock, and violent restraints on the elderly are responsible for much needless suffering.

This abuse is the result of psychiatry maneuvering itself into an authoritative position over aged care. From there, psychiatry has broadly perpetrated the tragic but lucrative hoax that aging is a mental disorder requiring extensive and expensive psychiatric services. For example, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) labels Alzheimer’s Dementia as a mental disorder, even though this is a physical illness and the proper domain of neurologists. Medical experts say that 99% of Alzheimer’s cases do not belong in psychiatric “care.”

In most cases, the elderly are merely suffering from physical problems related to their age, but psychiatry claims that they are manifesting symptoms of dementia which necessitates “treatment” in a nursing home or psychiatric hospital. This is then used to involuntarily commit the elderly to a psychiatric facility, take control of their finances, override their wishes regarding their business, property or health care needs and defraud their health insurance.

If an elderly person in your environment is displaying symptoms of mental trauma or unusual behavior, ensure that he or she gets competent medical care from a non-psychiatric doctor. Insist upon a thorough physical examination to determine whether an underlying undiagnosed physical problem is causing the condition.

Contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know what you think about this. Forward this newsletter to your family, friends and associates and recommend they subscribe.

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Hot Flashes? Take psych drugs!

Hot Flashes? Take psych drugs!

A nonhormonal drug, paroxetine mesylate (brand name Brisdelle), was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) June 28, 2013 for hot flashes associated with menopause, despite an agency advisory committee having rejected it as too much risk for minimal benefit.

Paroxetine is a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the active ingredient in two drugs for depression and other psychiatric disorders, Paxil and Pexeva. Brisdelle’s label features a boxed warning about the increased risk for suicidality.

While Brisdelle and related antidepressant medicines may increase suicidal thoughts or actions, there are many additional potential side effects such as nervousness, hallucinations, coma, or other changes in mental status; coordination problems or small movements of the muscles that you cannot control; racing heartbeat; high or low blood pressure; sweating or fever; nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea; muscle rigidity; dizziness; flushing; tremors; seizures or convulsions; may increase your risk of bleeding or bruising; headache; weakness or feeling unsteady; confusion, problems concentrating or thinking or memory problems; higher risk of bone fractures; manic episodes; reckless behavior; unable to sit still or stand still.

So now menapause is a psychiatric disorder? We think we’d rather just suffer the hot flashes. Oh, and did you notice that hot flashes (“flushing”) are also one of the side effects of this concoction you’re supposed to take to suppress hot flashes!

What’s the point? Did you say greed? Ya think?

By the way, this thing about “side effects” … You do realize that these are the body’s natural response to having a chemical disrupt its normal functioning. One could also say that there are no drug side effects, these adverse reactions are actually the drug’s real effects; some of these effects just happen to be unwanted.

Psychotropic drugs may relieve the pressure that an underlying physical problem could be causing but they do not treat, correct or cure any physical disease or condition. The drugs break into, in most cases, the routine rhythmic flows and activities of the nervous system; the nerves and other body systems are forced to do things they normally would not do. Once the drug has worn off, the original problem remains. As a solution or cure to life’s problems, psychotropic drugs do not work.

Embrace the hot flashes! Contact your government representatives and suggest they stop funding psychiatric drugs.

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ADHD Drugs Don’t Boost Kids’ Grades

ADHD Drugs Don’t Boost Kids’ Grades

Studies of Children With Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Find Little Change

New studies of children taking psychiatric drugs find that there is little evidence that the drugs actually improve academic outcomes.

A growing body of research finds that in the long run, achievement scores, grade-point averages or the likelihood of repeating a grade generally aren’t any different in kids diagnosed with symptoms called ADHD who take psychiatric drugs compared with those who don’t take such drugs.

A June, 2013 study looked at ADHD drug usage and educational outcomes of nearly 4,000 students in Quebec over an average of 11 years and found that boys who took ADHD drugs actually performed worse in school than those with a similar number of symptoms who didn’t. Girls taking the medicine reported more emotional problems, according to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The results “suggest that expanding medication use can have negative consequences given the average way these drugs are used in the community.”

The reason this issue was studied by an economics research think tank is because a policy change in the province of Quebec, Canada greatly expanded insurance coverage for prescription medications; the change was associated with a sharp increase in the use of Ritalin relative to the rest of Canada.

If you agree that alternatives like good nutrition, effective non-psychiatric medical diagnosis and treatment, and teaching children how to read and study are preferable to harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs, clap your hands — and contact your local, state and federal representatives to tell them what you think. Ask them to stop funding psychiatric drugs for children.

Forward this newsletter to your family, friends and associates and suggest that they subscribe.

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