Pill Mill Psychiatrist Disciplined

Posted on February 5, 2013 by cchrstl

Effective February 1, 2013, the Medical Board of California placed psychiatrist Nathan Brian Kuemmerle on seven years’ probation, with an actual one year suspension beginning February 17, 2013.

Kuemmerle, who formerly practiced in West Hollywood, was charged with operating a “pill mill” out of his office: writing thousands of narcotics prescriptions for cash, without examining patients.

On May 18, 2011, Nathan Kuemmerle was sentenced in Los Angeles federal court to time served and three years probation, following his January conviction on one charge of distribution of a controlled substance—specifically, 180 tablets of Xanax.

Investigations revealed that Kuemmerle was the number one prescriber of the most powerful dosage of the stimulant drug Adderall in the state of California and the second-highest prescriber of Schedule II controlled substances (the designation used by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration for drugs of greatest danger, addiction and abuse).

Kuemmerle is reported to have written prescriptions for cash, without legitimate medical purposes, to make money to pay for his addiction to methamphetamine.

The Medical Board of California placed conditions on Kuemmerle upon his return to practice: He is prohibited from supervising physician assistants, engaging in the solo act of medicine, and shall not order, prescribe, dispense, administer, furnish, or possess any controlled substances; and, shall not issue an oral or written recommendation or approval to a patient for possession or cultivation of marijuana for personal medical purposes.

YOU CAN HELP spread the word about psychiatric fraud and abuse. Watch the CCHR documentary DVDs and show them to your family, friends, and associates. The fraud is real, the abuse is real, and the truth is real scary – but something can always be done about it. Don’t wait for someone else to do something about it!

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Missouri Legislative News

Posted on January 27, 2013 by cchrstl

Follow the Missouri legislature at www.moga.mo.gov (Missouri General Assembly) and find out how to contact your own Missouri state representative here.

We wanted to tell you about proposed legislation that we think deserves your support. Please contact your Missouri state representative in support of this bill.

(If you do not live and vote in Missouri, then suggest to your own state representative to introduce similar legislation in your state.)

House Bill 287

Introduced by Rep. John McCaherty (Republican, District 97 – Jefferson County) and co-sponsored by Rep’s Higdon, Crawford, Lauer, Cross and Richardson.

This bill extends the statute of limitations for liability of licensed mental health practitioners to five years, from the two years currently provided in RSMo (Revised Statutes of Missouri) chapter 516.105.

Quoting from the proposed bill: “All actions against mental health professionals licensed under chapter 337 for damages for malpractice, negligence, error or mistake related to mental health care shall be brought within five years from the date of occurrence of the act of neglect complained of; except that, in cases in which the person bringing the action is a minor less than eighteen years of age, such minor shall have until his or her twenty-third birthday to bring such action.”</>

We think this bill is a good thing because of the significant amount of fraud and abuse in the mental health care industry.

Contacting your state representative about this proposed legislation is an important civic duty, and is a valuable grass roots action that you can perform. Feel free to forward this newsletter to all your family, friends, and associates in Missouri. Let us know about what you did and any responses you get.</>

You can review hints about how to write to your legislators here.

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Presidential Executive Orders Empower Psychiatry

Posted on January 20, 2013 by cchrstl

On January 16, 2013, President Barack Obama said, “I will sign a directive giving law enforcement, schools, mental health professionals and the public health community some of the tools they need to help reduce gun violence.” The President went on to sign 23 executive orders implementing various aspects of this vision.

At the time of writing this newsletter, these executive orders have not yet been posted to the White House web site. However, we do know the general subject matter of several that readers of this newsletter may find of interest.

#14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

#20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

#22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

#23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

Occasionally, someone asks me why CCHR does not get rid of harmful mental health laws such as involuntary commitment or mental health insurance parity, or why CCHR has not replaced abusive psychiatric drug treatment with something that actually works, or why CCHR does not run hospitals where the mentally traumatized can recover in peace. My standard answer is, what are you doing to help get these things done?

CCHR depends on your grass roots participation: your volunteer work, your calls and letters to your legislators, your donations. It’s hard for most people to imagine the magnitude of the opposition to a sane and effective mental health system. Witness the Executive Orders described above: let’s just put more taxpayer money into the hands of the psychiatric mental health industry, who have already been proven to make matters worse, not better.

Are you interested in expressing your own points of view to the President, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services—Kathleen Sebelius, and Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education—Arne Duncan? Feel free to let them know what you think; let us know what you said and if you got a response. You can find talking points about the violence and suicide caused by psychiatric drugs, for example, by clicking here.

Show the CCHR documentary DVDs to your family, your friends, your school boards, your religious groups, your civic organizations. You don’t have to prepare a speech – you only have to show a DVD; that’s why they were made, for broad public dissemination. Don’t count on CCHR showing them to your associates; that’s what CCHR is counting on from you! If you need a copy of a DVD, let us know — we can at least help you with that.

CCHR St. Louis will have an exhibit at the Missouri State Capitol Building Rotunda in Jefferson City (February 4-5), and at the Working Women’s Survival Show in St. Charles (February 22-24). Let us know if you’d like to help out; we can put to good use your volunteer presence and your donations.

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Do Not Be Fooled By Generic Concerta

Posted on January 1, 2013 by cchrstl

Happy New Year! Include CCHR Support in your New Year’s Resolutions!

On New Year’s Eve, Mallinckrodt, the pharmaceuticals business of Covidien in Hazelwood, Missouri (a city in St. Louis County), announced that it received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to manufacture and market a generic version of CONCERTA® (methylphenidate hydrochloride) Extended-Release (ER) tablets.

Don’t be fooled; it will be called “Methylphenidate HCl ER Tablets” but it is still the same addictive and side-effect-laden central nervous system stimulant long marketed for the fraudulent disorder labeled ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) for people between 6 and 65 years of age.

Methylphenidate HCl is a stimulant drug, classified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as Schedule II, in the same class of highly addictive drugs as morphine, opium and cocaine. It is also known as Concerta LP, Concerta Oros, Daytrana, Equasym, Equasym XL, Metadate, Metadate CD, Metadate ER, Methylin, Methylin ER, Methylphenidate, Ritalin, Ritalin LA, and Ritalin SR.

These are some of the possible side effects:

  • Chronic abusive use can lead to marked tolerance and psychological dependence with varying degrees of abnormal behavior.
  • Frank psychotic episodes can occur.
  • Careful supervision is required during withdrawal since severe depression or other withdrawal symptoms may occur.
  • Serious adverse events, including sudden death, stroke and myocardial infarction, have been reported in patients taking usual doses.
  • Use of stimulants may cause treatment-emergent psychotic or manic symptoms in patients with no prior history.
  • Healthcare professionals should monitor for aggressive behavior.
  • Normal use may cause long-term suppression of growth.

There are 20 million children in the United States who have been diagnosed with some kind of psychiatric disorder and drugged for it. Child drugging has been a hugely profitable market for Big Pharma, earning them $4.8 billion dollars a year.

There are no genetic tests, no brain scans, blood tests, chemical imbalance tests or X-rays that can scientifically/medically prove that any psychiatric disorder is a medical condition.

There are many non-drug alternatives.

Find out! Fight back! Take action!

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Connecticut Shooting Wake Up Call

Posted on December 18, 2012 by cchrstl

Wake Up Call for Federal Investigation of America’s  Failed Mental Health System

In the coming days, as a nation, we will respectfully bow our heads for those brief moments of silence in remembrance of the victims of Newtown, CT. Then, with the same outrage expressed at the murderous act, the nation must rise up and demand a sweeping investigation behind all the possible causes, including the mental health system itself.

According to news reports, the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was a product of the mental health system and had been taking “medication” since the age of ten and reportedly seeing a psychiatrist from at least the age of 15.  Lanza’s mother reportedly told friends that Lanza “was getting worse” and “she was having trouble reaching him.” The questions that need to be answered is when did Adam Lanza first receive mental health treatment, what diagnoses did he receive and what drugs had he been prescribed over his short life.

The larger question is how many times does this senseless scenario have to play out before lawmakers finally acknowledge that the supporting data already exist and, to date, has repeatedly and deliberately been ignored. Between 1998 and 2012, fourteen school shootings occurred, taking the lives of 58 and wounding 109. All fourteen of those shooters were taking or withdrawing from a psychiatric drug and seven of them had been under the “care” of a psychiatrist or psychologist.

In other mass shootings, such as James Holmes, the suspected perpetrator of the July 20, 2012 mass shooting at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, it is known that Holmes was seeing psychiatrist Lynne Fenton, yet no mention has been made of what psychiatric drugs he had been prescribed.

The majority of these shooters had been prescribed psychiatric mind-altering drugs that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, for treatment of children under the age of 18. Yet, antidepressants are at the top of the list of drugs indicted in these shootings, including Prozac, Trazodone, Effexor, Celexa and Luvox, to name a few.

Click here now to read the rest of this article.

Sign the Petition for Federal Investigation into the relationship between school shootings and psychiatric drugs.

 

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Drugging our Troops

Posted on December 16, 2012 by cchrstl

The Creation of Psychopharmaceutical’s Multi-Billion Dollar Market

CCHR International announces the third in a four-part series by award-winning investigative journalist Kelly Patricia O’Meara exploring the epidemic of suicides and sudden deaths in the military and the skyrocketing use of psychiatric drugs being prescribed to soldiers and veterans.

In the third installment, O’Meara examines the history of the psychiatric-military alliance and how psychiatry has created a multi-billion dollar market for military psychiatrists and big pharma.

As has been well documented in the first two parts of this investigative series, the military is at a mental health crossroad. Soldiers are dying by suicide and other sudden unexplained deaths at record—even epidemic—levels; an epidemic that seems to have been spawned by nearly $2 billion the Department of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) have spent on antipsychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, despite international drug regulatory warnings of mania, psychosis, suicide and death. Even according to DoD’s own policy, “Guidance for Deployment-Limiting Psychiatric Conditions and Medications,” antipsychotics like Seroquel are disqualifiers for deployment.

Given that under the advice of mental health professionals suicides and other unexplained deaths still are increasing, why does Command continue to listen to what, for all practical purposes, appears to have miserably failed? Despite the fact that since 2009, mental health staffing has doubled in Afghanistan and a mental health survey of deployed troops found that stress levels among Service members in Afghanistan nearly tripled between 2005 and 2010.

Click here to read the full article now.

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Another School Shooting, Another Psychiatric Drug?

Posted on December 16, 2012 by cchrstl

Federal Investigation Long Overdue

Fact: 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.

Fact: At least fourteen recent school shootings were committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 109 wounded and 58 killed (in other school shootings, information about their drug use was never made public—neither confirming or refuting if they were under the influence of prescribed drugs.)

Fact: Between 2004 and 2011, there have been over 11,000 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system of psychiatric drug side effects related to violence. These include 300 cases of homicide, nearly 3,000 cases of mania and over 7,000 cases of aggression. Note: By the FDA’s own admission, only 1-10% of side effects are ever reported to the FDA, so the actual number of side effects occurring are most certainly higher.

Of the 14 shooters documented to be under the influence of psychiatric drugs, seven were seeing either a psychiatrist or psychologist. See the list of school shooters on psychiatric drugs by clicking here.

School shooters aren’t the only cases commonly found to be under the influence of psychiatric drugs; here is a list of 10 more recent murders and murder-suicides, committed by individuals taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in an additional 43 dead and 37 wounded.

Click the following links to view all documented drug regulatory warnings and studies on Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Anti-Anxiety, and ADHD drugs.

The correlation between psychiatric drugs and acts of violence and homicide is well documented — both by international drug regulatory warnings and studies, as well as by hundreds of cases where high profile acts of violence/mass murder were committed by individuals under the influence of psychiatric drugs.

While there is never one simple explanation for what drives a human being to commit such unspeakable acts, 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.

It is an injustice that the general public are not being informed about the well documented links between psychiatric drugs and violence.

Contact your local, state and federal legislators and officials; contact your local schools and school boards; contact your state boards of education; contact your local and state police; contact your newspapers, radio and TV stations — let them know the proper questions to ask in every case of senseless violence or suicide:

  • Was the perpetrator subjected to psychiatric treatments prior to the violence?
  • Was the perpetrator on psychiatric drugs at the time of the violence?
  • Has the perpetrator been on psychiatric drugs in the past?

Watch the CCHR documentary video “Psychiatry’s Prescription for Violence” at http://www.cchr.org/videos/psychiatrys-prescription-for-violence.html. Find Out! Fight Back!

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DSM-5 Controversy in the News

Posted on December 9, 2012 by cchrstl

It’s in the news. A lot.

The American Psychiatric Association board of trustees voted on December 1 to approve the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5.)

Not everyone was pleased.

Professor of Social Work Jerome Wakefield at New York University was interviewed on NPR December 6. He was not particularly pleased. Speaking about DSM-5 labeling bereavement as a major depressive disorder, he said, “So you’re basically medicating people who are going to remit on their own, are probably going to do fine. I think given the side effects of medication, the uncertainties of medication, it’s a mistake to make it routine; to open up people to medication under these circumstances. We do want to help people who are suffering, but to re-label suffering as a mental disorder subjected to psychiatric treatment seems like opening the door to a very different way of thinking about ourselves and people that might not actually be so helpful after all.”

Professor Wakefield also wrote a scholarly article about this subject. In DSM-IV, bereavement was generally excluded from consideration as a major depressive disorder (called the “bereavement exclusion”), for the very real reason that this is a normal human emotion and most people recover just fine. The DSM-5 removes this exclusion, and here is what Professor Wakefield says about that: “…there is no scientific basis for removing the bereavement exclusion from the DSM-5.”

Brent Dean Robbins, PhD, director of the psychology program at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, was not pleased, and was quoted on Medscape.com saying, “…we believe strongly that the DSM-5 will not provide clinicians with the confidence that they are using a scientifically reliable and valid tool to asses the mental health of patients.”

Allen Francis, Professor Emeritus at Duke University and chairman of the DSM-IV task force, was not pleased. Here is what he says in The Huffington Post on December 3: “This is the saddest moment in my 45 year career of studying, practicing, and teaching psychiatry. The Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association has given its final approval to a deeply flawed DSM-5 containing many changes that seem clearly unsafe and scientifically unsound. … Our patients deserve better, society deserves better, and the mental health professions deserve better. Caring for the mentally ill is a noble and effective profession. But we have to know our limits and stay within them. DSM-5 violates the most sacred (and most frequently ignored) tenet in medicine — First Do No Harm! That’s why this is such a sad moment.”

Well, we’ve been saying all along that there is no scientific basis for the DSM period. Watch the CCHR documentary DVD, “Psychiatry’s Deadliest Scam,” for the truth of the matter. Show it to everyone you know. We have a few DVDs left; become a member of CCHR St. Louis this year and we’ll send you a complimentary DVD.

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Psychiatrist forfeits license in Iowa

Posted on December 6, 2012 by cchrstl

A former psychiatrist at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) has surrendered his medical license to settle a complaint that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a female patient.

An article in the November 21, 2012 Burlington Hawk Eye states that the Iowa Board of Medicine accepted the settlement with Sergio Paradiso, who was accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with a mental health patient and violating professional boundaries for physicians. Paradiso had practiced in Iowa since 2000, and was also an associate professor at the University before resigning in August. The patient now has a lawsuit pending against Paradiso, and the malpractice insurer, Iowa Medical Mutual Insurance, obtained a court order stating it has no obligation to defend Paradiso or to cover any damages resulting from the case.

Click here for more information about psychiatric rape.

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Innovation in Drug Discovery and Development

Posted on December 2, 2012 by cchrstl

We were idly perusing www.WhiteHouse.gov, the President’s web site, when we came across a press release from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology dated September 25, 2012, about “Innovation in Drug Discovery and Development.” It has an interesting quote:

“…treatments for psychiatric diseases, which impose a tremendous burden on society, are frustratingly limited in their efficacy…”

The full report further says that, “…many major pharmaceutical companies are closing down or severely curtailing drug discovery programs…”

Unfortunately, the report recommends “doubling the output of innovative new medicines that meet critical public health needs over the next 10 to 15 years,” and “…the creation of a public-private ‘Partnership to Accelerate Therapeutics,’ involving representatives from the bio-pharmaceutical industry; the academic biomedical research and ethics community; physician societies and pharmacists; patient-focused research foundations and advocacy groups; healthcare providers and insurers; and the Federal Government.”

Without fully understanding the reasons why drugs are not effective for mental distress, nor the actual harm that these drugs do, they yet blindly recommend not just finding more of these drugs, but also accelerating their discovery, manufacture, and use in society.

Did you think the psychopharmaceutical industry was just going to roll over and die because we recognize the harm, the fraud, and the abuse?

You might want to express your opinion about psychiatric treatments, particularly psychiatric drugs, to your local, state and federal officials, to the White House, to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and to the authors of this particular press release. Then let us know who you contacted, briefly what you said, and what they said in response. Find Out! Fight Back! Do It Again!

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