Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis

Risks of Direct-To-Consumer Advertising

A new study published November 12, 2009 in the American Journal of Public Health concludes that prescription drug direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) carries significant risks for the public.

The drugs don’t work

There were 36 million prescriptions issued for antidepressant drugs in the United Kingdom in 2008, nearly one for every adult in the population, according to numbers obtained by the Liberal Democrat party. The number is 2.1 million higher than in 2007.

Could Drugs Used to Treat Mood Disorders, Pain and Epilepsy Cause Psychiatric Disorders Later In Life?

According to an October 20, 2009 press release from Georgetown University Medical Center, some drugs used to treat epilepsy, mood disorders and pain may predispose to psychiatric disorders later in life.

Heart patients lacking vitamin D more likely to be depressed

People with heart disease and similar conditions who don’t have enough vitamin D are more likely to be depressed than their counterparts with adequate levels of the “sunshine vitamin,” according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando. This link seems to be even stronger in the winter.

Half of all dementia patients leave hospital in a worse state than when they arrive

Criminal Psychiatrist Alerts

BARLOW SMITH, TEXAS On October 12, 2009, the Medical Board of California issued a Public Letter of Reprimand on psychiatrist BARLOW SMITH of Marble Falls, Texas (Smith is licensed in both states). The state took this action in response to disciplinary action taken against Smith in Texas. On June 18, 2009, the Texas Medical Board reprimanded Smith for unprofessional conduct. The Board found that Barlow engaged in repeated sexual contact with a former patient who was treated by Smith three times in 2007 for depression. The former patient revealed to Smith during her initial assessment that she had a history of sexual abuse in her childhood. In addition to the Texas reprimand, Smith was ordered to pay a $3,000 fine and successfully complete a professional boundaries course.

Source: Public Letter of Reprimand, Barlow Smith, M.D., Physician’s and Surgeon’s Certificate No. 6-35320, Case No. 16-2009-201531, Medical Board of California, October 12, 2009 and “Marble Falls psychiatrist disciplined for sex with former patient,” Burnet Bulletin, September 1, 2009.

MARYANN THERESA WEISMAN, PENNSYLVANIA On October 27, 2009, the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine indefinitely suspended psychiatrist MARYANN THERESA WEISMAN because she was unfit to practice as a physician due to mental illness.

Source: Entry on Maryann Theresa Weisman, as found in monthly online Disciplinary Actions report of the Pennsylvania Department of State Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs, October, 2009.

SHADI DUCHESNE, PENNSYLVANIA On October 27, 2009, the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine suspended psychiatrist SHADI DUCHESNE for no less than three years, with suspension immediately stayed in favor of no less than three years of probation, said probation retroactive to September 23, 2008, and subject to certain terms and conditions, because she pled guilty to and was convicted of a misdemeanor relating to a health profession.

Source: Entry on Shadi Duchesne, as found in monthly online Disciplinary Actions report of the Pennsylvania Department of State Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs, October, 2009.

Interaction Between the Serotonin Transporter Gene (5-HTTLPR), Stressful Life Events, and Risk of Depression

The Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 301 No. 23, June 17, 2009.

“This meta-analysis yielded no evidence that the serotonin transporter genotype alone or in interaction with stressful life events is associated with an elevated risk of depression in men alone, women alone, or in both sexes combined.”

What This New Study Means

This means that research claiming that “depression” has a genetic cause is flawed; there is no credible evidence that depression is genetic and linked to serotonin transport, which also calls into serious question claims that SSRI drugs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] have any valid use for depression.

In fact, there is no medical illness called “depression.” While it is true that people do have problems for which they may need help, the psychiatric diagnosis of a mental illness called depression disorder is fraudulent since it is based solely on subjective criteria (for example, asking a person if they are depressed); there are no clinical tests for depression — no blood tests, no urine tests, no genetic markers, no x-rays, no brain scans. And thus the prescription of addictive and harmful psychotropic drugs for this non-existent illness is also fraudulent and done just for money.

What Should Be Done About It

So how do you help someone who says they are depressed? That’s fairly easy — you find out exactly what their problem is and fix that.

The solution is proper medical care. Article 3 of CCHR’s Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights states that any patient has “The right to have a thorough physical and clinical examination by a competent registered general practitioner of one’s choice, to ensure that one’s mental condition is not caused by any undetected and untreated physical illness, injury or defect, and the right to seek a second medical opinion of one’s choice.”

CCHR has long been an advocate for competent, non-psychiatric, medical evaluation of people with mental problems. Undiagnosed and untreated physical conditions can manifest as “psychiatric” symptoms. In 1982, CCHR campaigned for Senate Bill 929 in California that established a pilot project to provide medical evaluation of people in public psychiatric hospitals. Subsequently, the California Department of Mental Health Medical Evaluation Field Manual—which CCHR assisted in introducing—stated: ”Mental health professionals working within a mental health system have a professional and a legal obligation to recognize the presence of physical disease in their patients…physical diseases may cause a patient’s mental disorder [or] may worsen a mental disorder.”

More information about non-abusive alternatives to psychiatric treatment is available here.

Report and recommendations on psychiatry subverting the courts and corrective services

[Go here to download the full report.]

When psychiatry entered the justice and penal systems, it did so under the subterfuge that it understood man, that it knew not only what made man act as he did, but that it knew how to improve his lot. This was a lie. Psychiatry has had opportunity to prove itself. The experiment has been a miserable failure.

This report is a detailed examination of the fierce assault on the justice system that has occurred over the past six decades — and not only by criminals. There is a hidden influence in our courts, one which, while loudly asserting its expertise and desire to help, has instead betrayed our most deeply held values and brought us a burgeoning prison population at soaring public costs. That influence is psychiatry and psychology.

A major part of the treatment for prison inmates (used less for rehabilitation than for managing and disciplining inmates) is a regimen of powerful psychiatric drugs, despite numerous studies showing that aggression and violence are tied to their use.

In the 1940’s, psychiatry’s leaders proclaimed their intention to infiltrate the field of the law and bring about the “re-interpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of right and wrong.” And they did, with the consequence that today, because of their influence, the system is failing. Now it is up to the many conscientious, hardworking and increasingly disheartened people within the system to realize this and rid it of these destructive intruders.

In this report, we hope to help you understand how this occurred. We show how psychiatry’s ideologies and actions have contributed to today’s failing criminal rehabilitation and increasing crime rate. Finally, we propose to reverse these trends. We trust that the information will help those of goodwill and integrity correct a system that is failing its citizenry. The decent, the productive, the vast majority of us, deserve no less.

Download the full report from here.

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said October 29, 2009 that it had reached a $520 million agreement to settle two federal investigations and two whistle-blower lawsuits over the sale and marketing of its psychiatric drug Seroquel, which has been increasingly used for children and elderly people for indications not approved by the FDA.

AstraZeneca’s third quarter operating profit was $3.6 billion. There are currently 14,444 civil lawsuits over the damaging side effects and misleading marketing of Seroquel. Does this suggest anything to you about the rising cost of health care?

Seroquel (generic name quetiapine) is a newer atypical antipsychotic or major tranquilizer with side effects such as depression, liver failure, diabetes, impotence, heart failure, hostility, and suicidal thoughts. This class of drugs are also called neuroleptics, which means nerve seizing.

In 2001 the Journal of Toxicology reported that the newer antipsychotics “will soon account for the majority of poisonings from antipsychotic agents that get presented to health care facilities in the U.S.”

In 2006 an analysis of FDA data showed at least 45 children died between 2000 and 2004 from the side effects of this type of antipsychotic drug. Despite an adults-only FDA approval for these drugs, up to 2.5 million children were prescribed them. As the FDA’s Adverse Drug Reactions reporting database only collects 1% to 10% of drug-induced side effects and reported deaths, the true child death rate could be between 450 and several thousand.

In April 2009 the Irish Medicines Board published in their Drug Safety Newsletter a warning about antipsychotics causing a risk of stroke.

Do you want your friends and family to play Russian Roulette with these drugs, when there are many effective non-drug alternatives?

For more information about alternatives, go to http://cchrstl.org/alternatives.shtml.

For more information about the causes of mental symptoms and how drugs work, go to http://cchrstl.org/causes.shtml.

For more information about psychiatric drug side effects, go to http://cchrstl.org/sideeffects.shtml.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/business/30drug.html?_r=4]

New Initiative Launches Police State Under Guise of Mental Health

by Beverly Eakman, Author, Educator
Former Editor-In-Chief, NASA’s Newspaper (JSC)

It’s zero hour in America. Do you know where your country went?

Now that America’s education system and parenting “experts” have brainwashed a generation of now-grown schoolchildren-cum-parents into believing that what we once called personality quirks, character flaws and moral issues are, in essence, mental disorders, politicians have taken the ball and run with it. Law enforcement agencies and the judicial system are in the process of adopting Stalinist and Mao-inspired methods of controlling dissidents at home.

Only a few, short years ago, what was held up as independent thinking, speaking one’s mind, and robust dialogue is now decried as a prelude to terrorism. Our nation’s leaders are pulling off communist-style thought-control by implying that any words uttered in print or out loud that runs contrary to “accepted wisdom” (and that can change in a “New York Minute”) is the result of mental illness.

Click here to read more.

In 2003 a report on “mental health care” presented to the federal government recommended that all 52 million American schoolchildren be screened for “mental illness,” claiming—without a shred of scientific evidence—that “early detection, assessment, and links with treatment” could “prevent mental health problems from worsening.” Already implemented in many states, screening and “intervention” is to be provided through primary health care facilities, schools, juvenile justice and child welfare—to anyone aged between 3 and 21. Millions of taxpayer dollars have already been allocated to this, which means that America’s already burgeoning numbers of children being prescribed potentially lethal psychiatric drugs could treble within a few years to 30 million.

Drugs Cause Violence, Suicide and Death

Ten million American children are already prescribed drugs that can kill them or predispose them to later illicit drug abuse, violence or suicide.

§         Antidepressants are commonly prescribed as a result of mental health screening, yet dozens of international drug regulatory agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), warn that these drugs cause anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania (abnormal excitement) and mania (psychosis characterized by exalted feelings and delusions of grandeur).

§         In October 2004, the FDA ordered its most stringent “black box” warning that antidepressants also cause suicide in children and adolescents. In November 2005, it ordered labeling changes to the antidepressant, Effexor, warning that it could cause “homicidal ideation.”

§         In 2006, the FDA also revealed that stimulants—prescribed to 6 million American children for so-called “learning” or “behavioral disorders”—could cause hallucinations, psychosis, strokes, heart attacks and death. Already there have been 25 deaths. The public was also warned that there had been 45 child deaths from antipsychotic drugs, largely prescribed for the same “disorders.”

The Prescribed Drugs Behind School Shootings

§         At least 8 out of 13 school shootings have been committed by teens taking these prescribed mind-altering drugs. The medical information of the other teen killers is not publicly available.

§         False claims have been made that screening can prevent suicides. Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America, says, “They’re pulling numbers out of thin air—falsely presuming that this crisis is about lack of access to drugs and calling for government to provide more and more of what many of us believe is the wrong kind of treatment.”

Screening Doesn’t Prevent Suicide; Drugs Increase It

§         Psychiatrists claim that antidepressants decrease suicide, but according to a Journal of the American Medical Association study, “Despite a dramatic increase in treatment, no significant decrease occurred in suicidal thoughts, plans, gestures, or attempts in the United States during the 1990s.”

§         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.”

§         A 2005 study by Dr. David Healy and Graham Aldred from the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University, Wales, reported that the studies of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants show that they increase the risk of suicide.

TeenScreen Lacks Reliability and Science

§         One of the recommended screening programs for schools is called TeenScreen™. Dr. David Shaffer, the psychiatrist that developed this, admitted that use of this screening method could mean 84 non-suicidal teens could be referred for further evaluation for every 16 youths “correctly identified.” Kelly Patricia O’Meara, journalist and former congressional staff, warns: “Since when does an 84% failure rate equate to a reliable scientific test? In other words, based on [Dr.] Shaffer’s study of his own test, 84 students out of 100 will be incorrectly identified as suffering from a specific mental illness. One has to wonder if parents of America are informed of this astonishing statistic as part of information to consider when having to decide whether or not to allow the mental health screening test.”

§         The subjective questions in TeenScreen include, “Has there been a time when nothing was fun for you and you just weren’t interested in anything?” and “Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good looking or as smart as other people?” Based on the outcome, a further questionnaire looks for 18 psychiatric disorders, based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

§         The DSM is noted for its lack of scientific credibility and its unreliability. In April 2005, a study published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics also determined there were undisclosed financial relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists involved in voting on which “mental disorders” should be included in the DSM. Researchers Lisa Cosgrove, a psychologist from the University of Massachusetts and Sheldon Krimsky, a Tuft University professor, found that drug companies funded 100% of psychiatrists involved in the panels determining “mood disorders,” “depression” and “psychotic disorders,” which account for more than $20 billion in drug sales. Drug companies also fund TeenScreen testing of students.

Parental Consent and Government Funding

§         Parents need to know that unlike medical diseases, there is no x-ray, blood or other physical test to determine if a child has a “mental disorder,” that mental health screening is based on subjective questions, not medical science, and that any “informed consent” form must obtain the above information.

§         Government funding should never be used for mental health-screening programs and should be allocated, instead, to better educational facilities, teachers and tutoring to improve the literacy and educational standards of students.

For more information visit http://www.cchrstl.org/screening.shtml

The Marketing of Madness–Are We All Insane?
There is no money in “normal”

This is the story of the high-income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center.

But appearances are deceiving.

How valid are psychiatrists’ diagnoses–and how safe are their drugs?

Psychiatrists tell us that the way to fix unwanted behavior is by
altering brain chemistry with a pill.

But unlike a mainstream medical drug like insulin, psychotropic
medications have no measurable target illness to correct, and can upset the very delicate balance of chemical processes the body needs to run smoothly.

Nevertheless, psychiatrists and drug companies have used these drugs to create a huge and lucrative market niche.

And they’ve done this by naming more and more unwanted behaviors as “medical disorders” requiring psychiatric medication.

But should these really be called diseases?

So the question is:

How did psychotropic drugs, with no target illness, no known curative
powers and a long and extensive list of side effects, become the go-to
treatment for every kind of psychological distress?

And how did the psychiatrists espousing these drugs come to dominate the field of mental treatment?

Click here to preview this new documentary video.

There are dozens of organizations that are objecting to provisions in the U.S. health care reform bills. As the primary mental health watchdog organization, CCHR has been hard at work identifying the specific mental health provisions in these bills so we can inform the public of the very real risks of various aspects of these bills that clearly are designed to benefit the psycho/pharmaceutical industry, not the general public.

To read CCHR’s analysis of the House Bill and two Senate Health Care Reform bills (which will soon be merged into one Senate bill), and to find out where all of this is heading before a final bill/vote is completed, click here.

Army Psychiatrist Kills 12, Wounds 38

An Army psychiatrist about to be shipped overseas allegedly opened fire at the Fort Hood, Texas, Army post Thursday, November 5, 2009 on a rampage that killed 12 people and left 38 wounded in the worst mass shooting ever at a military base in the United States.

The psychiatrist was identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old, eight-year veteran from Virginia. The shooting occurred at the Soldier Readiness Center where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening.

Hasan may have been treating himself with psychotropic medications. Psychiatrists in general have a history of “self-medication” because of the easy access they have to psychotropic drugs. It is possible that the Major was taking one of these drugs that carry warnings of increased risk of violence and suicide attached to their use; it is important for those investigating this crime to find out if he was taking or withdrawing from any psychiatric drugs, or if he was receiving any other form of psychiatric treatment. For more information about the side effects of psychotropic drugs, click here.

This is not the first such incident of violence or suicide in the U.S. military.

Antidepressants Cause Suicide and Violence in Soldiers

A sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants, according to a June, 2008 report in Time Magazine. The psychiatric drugs prescribed to soldiers are known to have side effects that include violence and suicide.

According to the army, in 2007 17% of combat troops in Afghanistan were taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills. In the past year one-third of marines in combat zones were taking psychiatric drugs. The army confirms that since 2002 the number of suicide attempts has increased six-fold. And more than 128 soldiers killed themselves last year.

Last year the rate of suicide in the military exceeded that of the general population, and was the highest since the Army began tracking it in the 1980s. In May, 2009 a U.S. soldier allegedly killed five other military personnel and wounded three at Camp Liberty, a U.S. base just outside Baghdad. The shooting took place at a stress clinic, where soldiers suffering mental problems can go for treatment or counseling.

On July 22, 2009 the US Senate approved an amendment (SA 1475 page:S7416) proposed by Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) to the 2010 defense authorization bill (S. 1390) that would order an independent study by the National Institute of Mental Health on the potential relationship between suicide or suicide attempts and the use of antidepressants, anti-anxiety and other behavior-modifying prescription drugs.

The use of psychiatric drugs escalates when, and only when, the psychopharmaceutical industry targets new markets to increase profits. Antidepressants are a hoax — a hoax that is killing members of our armed services.

Watch the video documentary The Marketing of Madness – Are We All Insane?; this is the definitive documentary on psychotropic drugs and how the psychiatrists market madness. Here is the story of the high income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center. Digging deep beneath the corporate veneer, this three-part documentary exposes the truth behind the slick marketing schemes and scientific deceit that conceal a dangerous and often deadly sales campaign.