Posts Tagged ‘Autism’

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Inflation – What it Really is

Monday, November 22nd, 2021

Why are balloons so expensive? Inflation!

There are those whose vested interests encourage them to obfuscate all with which they tamper. Their livelihoods, so they figure, depend on the masses not understanding their manipulations.

So it is that the whole subject of economics has been compromised with large words, so that these vested interests can manipulate the money supply to their advantage and to the disadvantage of everyone else.

Inflation is really a simple thing, when you come right down to it, in spite of massive efforts to keep it confusing.

So what is it?

Inflation occurs when the amount of money in the country exceeds the amount of things there are to buy. This upsets the whole field of economics. You have a cheapening of money, and that’s inflation — a shortage of goods compared to available money, so money won’t buy what it used to buy.

Inflation is an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to the available goods, resulting in a substantial and continuing rise in the general price level.

There are only two ways out of this situation. One is to do our jobs better and make more money; and the other is to increase production so there is more to buy. Oh, and stop pumping extra money into the economy without increasing production, and stop the political harassment keeping everyone on edge.

When the facilities to produce things are lacking, or when the populace is continuously being disturbed by political machinations, you get inflation.

It really isn’t any more complicated than that. And anyone who tells you differently has something personal to gain out of it.

The opposite situation, or deflation, is equally debilitating. Deflation occurs when the amount of products to buy exceed the amount of money there is to buy things.

The best scenario then is a balance between inflation and deflation. There’s enough money to buy what people want, and there’s enough product to buy with it.

Psychiatric Inflation

This idea extends to other, non-economic fields, such as psychiatry. This is called “diagnostic inflation” — the apparent broadening of the definitions of mental disorders, meaning that more people in the society can be diagnosed with mental disorders, giving the false appearance of increasing mental trauma in society. Diagnoses become less stringently defined, as with the fraudulent diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and their prevalence in society increases as a result. Notable examples of diagnostic inflation include Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), autism, eating disorders, and substance dependence.

The ultimate reason for diagnostic inflation is the fraudulent nature of the DSM, which is not backed by any clinical laboratory measure.

Here are some specific examples of diagnostic inflation in the DSM.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder has 6 separate entries.
Eating disorder has 4 separate entries.
Various forms of substance abuse have 100 separate entries.
Various forms of sleep disorder have 60 separate entries.

A psychiatrist would be hard-pressed not to find some disorder to fit anyone sitting in front of them, if only the supreme catch-all diagnosis of “Unspecified mental disorder”.

But unlike with monetary inflation, a psychiatric diagnosis is not a product anyone wants to buy.

Recommendations

Educate Yourself – Find Out About psychiatric Fraud and Abuse.

Take Action – Fight Back Against psychiatric Fraud and Abuse.

Report Adverse psychiatric Drug Reactions to the FDA

Report Any Mental Health Abuse to CCHR

Volunteer Some Time

Donate Some Funds

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Here’s an Idea – Let’s Electroshock Children Who Misbehave

Sunday, March 15th, 2020
The FDA has finally, finally, decided to BAN the electric shock devices (ESDs) used at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts, a residential school for people with autism and other developmental or mental disabilities.

ESDs are devices that administer skin shocks in a form of “aversion therapy” for agitation and behavioral “issues.” School staff could trigger a shock to a child by using a remote control. This isn’t the electroconvulsive shock machine (currently in use) but a skin device machine that zapped children with electric current when they misbehaved.

The FDA has finally realized (after 20 years) that these devices “present substantial psychological and physical risks and, in fact, can worsen underlying symptoms—while leading to heightened anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

According to William Maisel, director of the FDA device center’s Office of Product Evaluation and Quality, “Since ESDs were first marketed more than 20 years ago, we have gained a better understanding of the danger these devices present to public health.”

So we ask you, if it took the FDA 20 YEARS to figure out that torturing troubled kids with electric shocks to the skin was a bad idea, do we really want to leave it up to the FDA to figure out that the electroshock machine, still in use after all these decades, which administers up to 460 volts of electricity to the brain to produce a grand mal seizure, and which is currently being administered to children, the vulnerable and the elderly, is also an obviously bad idea?

[UPDATED July 6, 2021]
A federal appeals court overturned the FDA ban, stating that it was a regulation of the practice of medicine, which is outside the FDA’s area of authority. Approximately 20% of the center’s 300 patients are being treated with these harmful devices at any given time.

The court’s decision to remove the FDA ban on electrochocking these children, was based on the fraudulent claim that electroshocking children is a medical procedure and that the FDA has no authority to rule on medical issues.
The lie in this case is that electroshock is a “medical” procedure; it is not. It is a barbaric method of punishment and has no place in modern society.

Sign the petition to ban electroshock here.

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Neurodiversity – The Latest Psychiatric Disability Trend

Wednesday, October 31st, 2018

We’ve written a considerable amount previously about topics involving various disabilities and their relation to psychiatric fraud and abuse; here is a small selection for example:

People With Disabilities

The Disabled Community has many advocates helping them survive better in the world. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities”. Traditional physical disabilities such as blindness, deafness, missing or impaired body parts, all have their advocates.

However, the psychiatric industry has made it their special emphasis to target people with so-called mental disabilities: Autism, PTSD, Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia (problems with reading), ADHD, Dyspraxia (problems with movement or coordination), Dyscalculia (problems with mathematics), Tourette Syndrome (involuntary, repetitive movements and vocalizations), Hydrocephalus (a buildup of fluid in the brain.)

Neurodiversity

With so many different “mental disorders” and no real clues about curing them, psychiatrists needed a new all-encompassing word to describe them. They picked “neurodiversity” — diversity based on some neurological condition.

Neurodiversity is a concept where neurological differences are to be recognized and respected as any other human variation. Neurodiversity activists may reject the idea that any of these conditions should be cured, since they don’t know how to do so, advocating instead for support systems that help people get along in life with their disability.

Now, we’re not advocating for any particular support system, and we certainly think that helping people with disabilities get along better in life is a laudable activity and deserves support.

Psychiatry

One theory of biological psychiatry is that these various neurological conditions are the result of normal variations in the human genome. Unfortunately, this attitude tends to lean toward eugenics, which is the track taken in Nazi Germany to eliminate anyone with so-called genetic defects from the breeding population. Psychiatrists developed the racial purity ideology used by Hitler which lead to the Nazi euthanasia program and, later, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

We question whether the psychiatric industry has anyone’s best interests at heart, let alone the interests of the disabled. In 2009, the Florida Sun Sentinel reported about the use of dangerous prescription medications for children and adults in residential and group home facilities licensed by the Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities.

In 1987, “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD) was literally voted into existence by a show of hands of American Psychiatric Association members and included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Within a year, 500,000 children in America alone were diagnosed with this, and to expand the client base it has also been associated with Asperger syndrome and Autism spectrum disorder.

In 2018, the media reported on a Massachusetts school [Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, MA] which will be allowed to continue administering electric shocks to its special needs students after a judge ruled the procedure conformed to the “accepted standard of care,” in spite of the practice being condemned by disability rights groups and the ACLU.

[Update 3 December 2018] On December 3, 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of The Organization of American States published a Precautionary Measure calling for the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts to immediately cease electroshocking special needs children as a disciplinary measure.

Our Point

The psychiatric industry continues to find new patient populations in the disability community, and imposes coercive and damaging “treatments” that further compromise people’s mental and physical health.

A parent with a child on psychotropic drugs can receive disability payments as a financial incentive. We observe that psychiatric drugs cause disability, regardless of any pre-existing conditions.

Even the United Nations recognizes the pervasiveness of abuse in the mental health care system. In its July 24, 2018 Annual Report of the High Commissioner, “Mental health and human rights,” it states, “States should ensure that all health care and services, including all mental health care and services, are based on the free and informed consent of the individual concerned, and that legal provisions and policies permitting the use of coercion and forced interventions, including involuntary hospitalization and institutionalization, the use of restraints, psychosurgery, forced medication, and other forced measures aimed at correcting or fixing an actual or perceived impairment, including those allowing for consent or authorization by a third party, are repealed. States should reframe and recognize these practices as constituting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and as amounting to discrimination against users of mental health services, persons with mental health conditions and persons with psychosocial disabilities.”

We rest our case. We need your help. Let us know if you have some volunteer hours to help us expose psychiatric fraud and abuse.

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Autism

Monday, May 21st, 2018

We wish we could give you all the true data about autism, but we don’t know it all. Instead, we can give you many related facts and a few opinions; perhaps these can help you evaluate the subject. The reason we discuss it at all is because the psychiatric industry has claimed this disorder for its own purposes, and continues to wrestle with the line between unusual and abnormal behavior. For obvious reasons, we mis-trust anything that psychiatry has to say about the condition, especially about treating it with psychotropic drugs.

The word “autism” was coined in 1912 by Swiss psychiatrist Paul Bleuler (1857-1939) from the Greek autos- “self” + –ismos a suffix of action or of state. The notion was originally of “morbid self-absorption.”

The number of people diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically since the 1980s, partly due to changes in diagnostic criteria and practice; the question of whether actual prevalence has increased is unresolved, since diagnosis is based on behavior, not cause or mechanism.

Autism, sometimes called “autism spectrum disorder,” “pervasive developmental disorder,” or “Asperger syndrome,” apparently does not have a single definitive definition that can be used across the board to provide a basis for correcting the condition; it generally refers to a range of symptoms characterized by impairment of the ability to form normal social relationships, by impairment of the ability to communicate with others, and by stereotyped behavior patterns.

A study was once done to figure out how common Asperger’s was, and the results were clear — it was vanishingly rare. Then Allen Frances put it in the DSM, and the number of kids diagnosed with the disorder exploded.

Of course, while Dr. Hans Asperger is credited with shaping our ideas of autism and Asperger syndrome, one may not want to give him that much credit, since he is now linked with the Nazi’s child euthanasia program, recommending dozens of children to be sent for euthanasia.

There are many competing theories about autism’s etiology [its causes or origins]. We have seen articles relating autism to toxins (mercury, pesticides, etc.), nutrition, incomplete breakdown of casein or gluten, vaccination, genetic predisposition, neurological brain disorders, an alteration in how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize, birth defects, the stress of circumcision, antidepressants, ad nauseum.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s billing bible, may perpetuate the perception, whether true or false, that autism is related to mental retardation where it discusses atypical autism arising most often in profoundly retarded individuals.

Where to go from here?

Well, we’re not going to spend any more time discussing etiology and treatment, since you can Google those thousands of articles as well as we can. The real point we want to make is that psychiatry currently owns autism, listing “Autism spectrum disorder” in the DSM-5.

In future revisions of the DSM psychiatrists may make it easier to diagnose, increasing the number of children into the mental health system; or they may make it harder to diagnose, excluding children whose families are currently receiving, or hope to receive, some kind of monetary disability support. In any case, the hue and cry is already demanding more psychiatric funding for whatever they are currently calling autism.

At least a million children and adults have an autism diagnosis or a related disorder, such as “Unspecified neurodevelopmental disorder” (and there are ten categories of “developmental disorder” in the DSM-5.)

There are as many recommended therapies for autism as there are theories about the condition; these therapies may include diet, nutrition, behavioral modification, and many other non-invasive alternative health treatments. Of course, the treatment of choice for psychiatrists is the usual list of harmful and addictive antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety drugs, whose devastating side effects are well-documented.

Autism is big business — meaning big profits. One check on the Missouri government web site (www.mo.gov) revealed the word “autism” appearing 1,880 times, and “autistic” appearing 607 times.

The Missouri Department of Mental Health budget in 2012 included over $10 million for various autism services. In 2018 the autism budget is still roughly $10 million, but the budget for the Division of Developmental Disabilities is going to be over one billion dollars.

Granted, there is social justification for providing help to children and families coping with traumatic health situations. Given, however, psychiatry’s history of fraud, abuse, and use of damaging drugs, due diligence suggests examining this field very closely for exaggeration and mis-use.

The Drug Controversy

It is estimated that more than half of autistic school age children are on one or more psychotropic drugs. In at least one study, it was shown that prenatal use of antidepressants increase the risk of autism spectrum disorder in newborn children.

Children with autism are more likely to be prescribed addictive and harmful antipsychotic drugs than their typical peers, according to a large study. They are also prescribed antipsychotics such as risperidone at younger ages, and for longer periods of time. Doctors often prescribe antipsychotics to manage behavioral problems in children with autism rather than as any kind of actual treatment for the condition, since the drugs act to suppress the central nervous system. Other studies also indicate that many children with autism who take antipsychotic medications are not first offered safer and more effective options. A 2017 study suggested that about 20 percent of children with autism in the U.S. are prescribed antipsychotics.

An article in the Los Angeles Times on April 23, 2012 headlined, “Report says studies overstate drugs’ ability to treat autism symptoms.” It went on to say that “Antidepressants are not specifically approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating autism, but they have become the go-to drugs for trying to control some of its key symptoms. By some estimates, the drugs have been prescribed for as many as one-third of children with the diagnosis. … A series of standard statistical tests designed to check the consistency and reliability of the published data [about the effectiveness of psychiatric drugs prescribed for autism] strongly suggested publication bias. The effect appeared to be so great that the researchers could no longer deem the anti-depressants effective.” [Publication bias occurs when studies that show a drug or treatment is effective are more likely to be published than studies with negative findings.]

Find out more about what you can do to expose psychiatric fraud and abuse, and support CCHR St. Louis so that it can continue to expose psychiatric fraud and abuse. Go to http://www.cchrstl.org/takeaction.shtml.

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Does NIMH have your back (or your brain)?

Monday, March 13th, 2017

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is the lead federal agency for research on mental disorders. NIMH is one of the 27 Institutes and Centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency. NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

An argument could be made that NIMH is an unconstitutional organization. Constitutionally, the federal government was only delegated very limited powers, and mental health care was not one of them. Amendment X, “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.”

James Madison made it clear that the powers delegated to the federal government by the States were limited primarily to external (foreign) objects, specifically levy war, conclude peace, establish foreign commerce, and alliance negotiations; and that powers reserved to the States extend to all the objects which concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa45.htm

Madison further says that the clause “promote the general Welfare” in the preamble to the Constitution (and similarly in Article 1 Section 8) was not meant to be used as a justification to expand the power of the federal government beyond its limitations, but simply states the purpose of the powers which had been explicitly enumerated within the Constitution itself.
http://lawandliberty.org/genwel.htm

The process by which the federal government expands its powers and makes such organizations as HHS, NIH and NIMH “legal” is called Regulatory Agencies. For example, in 1912 Congress established a Children’s Bureau in the Department of Labor. In 1939 the Federal Security Agency was created by the Reorganization Act of 1939. In 1944 the Public Health Service Act created the Office of the Surgeon General, the National Institutes of Health, and other new government bureaus. In 1946, the Children’s Bureau was moved to the Federal Security Agency. In 1953 the Federal Security Agency became the cabinet-level Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1979 the Department of Education Organization Act split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); and HHS manages NIH and NIMH.

These Executive branch Regulatory Agencies, established by the Legislative branch (Congress), are then controlled by the Executive branch; and these agencies make Rules (Regulations) which have the force of Law, since Congress originally authorized them by passing a Law creating them.

This is an extremely abbreviated discussion of the matter; whole books and many web sites expound on this subject of Constitutional Liberty. The remedy for this situation, called Nullification, was suggested by Thomas Jefferson, among others: “That the several states who formed that instrument [i.e. The Constitution], being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.”
http://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary-source-documents/virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions/

NIMH Vision
“NIMH envisions a world in which mental illnesses are prevented and cured.”

NIMH Mission
“The mission of NIMH is to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for prevention, recovery, and cure.”

On the surface, the Vision and Mission are not bad statements; the devil is in the details, and the fact that the term “mental illness” is a red herring.

Psychiatric disorders are not medical diseases. There are no lab tests, brain scans, X-rays or chemical imbalance tests that can verify any mental disorder is a physical condition. This is not to say that people do not get depressed, or that people can’t experience emotional or mental duress, but psychiatry has repackaged these emotions and behaviors as “disease” or “illness” in order to sell drugs. This is a brilliant marketing campaign, but it is not science.

Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. is a psychiatrist and the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. His research focuses on the analysis of neural activity in mice. Psychiatrists often believe that studying mouse brains is a worthwhile activity, and that the federal government should pay for this research.

Shelli Avenevoli, Ph.D., is a psychologist and the Acting Deputy Director for NIMH. She completed an NIMH-funded postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology (the branch of medicine dealing with the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases and other health factors.) So her psychiatric indoctrination was bought and paid for by NIMH with your tax money.

NIMH has official Offices under the NIMH Director for AIDS, Autism, Clinical Research, Public Relations, Genomics (genetic risk factors for mental disorders), Global Mental Health Concerns (particularly for those living in rural areas), National Mental Health Policies, and all things related to brain and behavioral research. Additionally there are various Divisions having to do with Neuroscience, Genomics, Training, Technology, and Public Relations. It is quite an extensive bureaucracy.

Email Addresses for officials of NIMH Offices and Divisions:
NIMHinfo@mail.nih.gov
NIMHpress@nih.gov
drausch@mail.nih.gov
ebrouwer@mail.nih.gov
IACCPublicInquiries@mail.nih.gov
Nitin.Gogtay@nih.gov
anna.ordonez@nih.gov
quarteyp@mail.nih.gov
tlehner@mail.nih.gov
pamela.collins@nih.gov
hustonad@mail.nih.gov
meredith.fox@nih.gov
masonjl@mail.nih.gov
FarberG@mail.nih.gov
lbrady@mail.nih.gov
koesters@mail.nih.gov
anjene.addington@nih.gov
lwinsky@mail.nih.gov
nancy.desmond@nih.gov
Jamie.Driscoll@nih.gov
ashlee.van’tveer@nih.gov
mgrabb@mail.nih.gov
merikank@mail.nih.gov
mishkinm@mail.nih.gov
murraye@mail.nih.gov
rheinsse@mail.nih.gov
jsherril@mail.nih.gov
jnoronha@mail.nih.gov
sarah.lisanby@nih.gov
kanders1@mail.nih.gov

The NIMH Strategic Plan has four main Objectives:
1. Define the Mechanisms of Complex Behaviors [really, Brain Research]
2. Chart Mental Illness Trajectories To Determine When, Where, and How to Intervene [really, Brain Development as a person ages]
3. Strive for Prevention and Cures [really, Drug Research]
4. Strengthen the Public Health Impact of NIMH-Supported Research [really, Partnering with Insurers; Medicaid; the FDA; Local, State and Federal legislators; Technologists e.g. Apps for hand-held devices].

The Fiscal Year 2017 NIMH Budget is $1,518,700,000 (i.e. over $1.5 billion). It has gone up from $1.4 billion in 2007. Roughly at least $25 million goes to basic brain research, with a total for all research grants over a billion dollars. There are roughly 550 NIMH employees at an average salary of $107,901; with total personnel compensation (salary + benefits) roughly $95 million for 2017.

Look at the actual products, not at the lofty words. No Cures. Harmful and Addictive brain-modifying drugs. Harmful “treatments” like electroshock, lobotomies, and magnetic brain bombardment. Massive bureaucracy. And You Paid For It.

For example, NIMH recommends the antipsychotic drug clozapine for individuals at risk of suicide. Clozapine (brand name Clozaril) is a newer atypical antipsychotic with side effects such as suicidal thoughts and violence. Long-term use of antipsychotics may lead to tardive dyskinesia which causes muscle movements that a person can’t control, and in some cases cannot be cured.

Do you still think that NIMH has your back, or just your brain?

Find Out! Fight Back!
http://www.cchrstl.org/

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Psychiatry and Assisted Suicide

Sunday, April 10th, 2016

Psychiatry and Assisted Suicide

 We were struck by this paragraph on page 14 in the March 28th issue of the National Review magazine:

“The Dutch have discovered a cure for autism: murder. Dutch law first was changed to accommodate ‘physician-assisted suicide’?i.e., medical euthanasia?for patients with severe conditions some years ago, and, as it turns out, some slopes are slippery: The Dutch soon decided that those suffering from psychiatric problems could be put down like unwanted pets, too, and now are eliminating those who have no diagnosed medical condition whatsoever save autism. Dutch law requires that patients seeking to be put to death do so after sober and careful consideration?a condition that people suffering serious mental problems cannot reasonably be said to have met. Now unhappy people from abroad are traveling to the Netherlands to be killed. Canada is on the same decline, its supreme court having ‘discovered’ a new right, as our own so often does, this time to physician-inflicted death. When a mentally ill person says that he wants to die, the proper response is treatment, not “Does your insurance cover hemlock?”

Not that we have any particular wish to debate the pros and cons of assisted suicide?we wish only to highlight the psychiatric involvement here. Assisted suicide of psychiatric patients is increasing in the Netherlands. The data indicates that euthanasia is often granted despite disagreement by the treating psychiatrists over whether cases meet the legal criteria for assisted suicide.

The Washington Post chimes in: “Once the Netherlands authorized euthanasia for physical illnesses in 2002, demands to extend this ‘right’ to the suffering mentally ill were inevitable … Canadians are debating how to implement last year’s ruling by their Supreme Court establishing a right to ‘physician-assisted dying’ in cases of a ‘grievous and irremediable medical condition.’ A panel of experts advising Ontario and 10 other provinces and territories has urged that the ruling be construed to include mental illness.”

For decades after World War II, leading psychiatrists in Germany and around the world consistently denied or greatly minimized their profession’s main role in Nazi Germany’s euthanasia atrocities. The Nazis murdered well over 5,000 physically and mentally disabled children in over 30 psychiatric and pediatric hospitals. Doctors in German psychiatric facilities seeking to free up beds and save money killed patients—possibly as many as 10,000—by administering overdoses or providing them with so little food that they starved to death.

German psychiatrists created the ‘racial hygiene’ movement, which began with the work of eugenicist Alfred Ploetz in 1895. Almost forty years later this gained supremacy with the passage of the 1933 Sterilization Act in Nazi Germany and the concept of ‘lives unworthy of living’. This led to psychiatrists in Germany murdering hundreds of thousands of people that were ‘racially or mentally unfit’, long before the Holocaust began, and these same psychiatrists were then placed in killing centers during the Holocaust. Millions of people were killed during the Holocaust in Germany led by psychiatrists, which admission was finally made in an international broadcast apology by the President of the Germany Psychiatric Association in November 2010.

The Netherlands and Canada seem now to be following in those footsteps, urged on by the same psychiatric community of greed and misanthropy. Only now instead of calling it euthanasia they are calling it “assisted suicide,” or “death with dignity”, as if that removes the guilt.

Physician-assisted suicide in the United States is legal in the states of California, Oregon, Vermont, Montana, and Washington; a number of other states have considered it. There are alternatives to psychiatric treatment; however, these need to be applied before psychiatry-assisted suicide.

The treatment was successful; unfortunately, the patient died. Contact your state legislators and tell them what you think about this.

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ADHD and Fluoride

Monday, March 10th, 2014

ADHD and Fluoride

A recently published scientific study links various developmental disabilities with fluoride poisoning.

[Lancet Neurol 2014;13:330-38; February 15, 2014; “Neurobehavioral effects of developmental toxicity”]

Here are some salient quotes.

“Neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and other cognitive impairments, affect millions of children worldwide, and some diagnoses seem to be increasing in frequency. Industrial chemicals that injure the developing brain are among the known causes for this rise in prevalence. …epidemiological studies have documented…developmental neurotoxicants” including fluoride.

“Strong evidence exists that industrial chemicals widely disseminated in the environment are important contributors to what we have called the global, silent pandemic of neurodevelopmental toxicity. The developing human brain is uniquely vulnerable to toxic chemical exposures, and major windows of developmental vulnerability occur in utero and during infancy and early childhood. During these sensitive life stages, chemicals can cause permanent brain injury at low levels of exposure that would have little or no adverse effect in an adult.”

“…studies of children exposed to fluoride in drinking water…suggests an average IQ decrement of about seven points in children exposed to raised fluoride concentrations.”

“Developmental neurotoxicity causes brain damage that is too often untreatable and frequently permanent.”

“The antisocial behaviour, criminal behaviour, violence, and substance abuse that seem to result from early-life exposures to some neurotoxic chemicals result in increased needs for special educational services, institutionalisation, and even incarceration.”

“Our very great concern is that children worldwide are being exposed to unrecognized toxic chemicals that are silently eroding intelligence, disrupting behaviours, truncating future achievements, and damaging societies.”

We might also point out that fluorine is a significant component of Prozac (fluoxetine hydrochloride, C17H18F3NO•HCL) and Paxil (paroxetine hydrochloride, C19H20FNO3•HCl•1/2H2O), both common psychiatric antidepressants with rather damaging side effects.

Admittedly, fluorine in chemical combination may behave differently than fluorine or fluoride (an ion of fluorine) alone, and there are those who argue that this difference is significant. The actual evidence, however, indicates otherwise. Regardless of any effect fluoride may have on teeth, it is a toxic substance and should be treated with caution, especially as a major component of a psychiatric drug.

See also the articles “Neurological Impact of Fluoride Toxicity“; “Fluoride Facts: The Inconvenient Truths“; “Chinese Studies Link Fluoride to Low IQ Scores“. For more detailed information, download the book “Directory of Somatopsychic Diseases and Conditions” containing 1400 assorted diseases, medical conditions, and toxins that either cause, exacerbate, or are associated with psychiatric illness.

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Autism

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

We wish we could give you all the true data about autism, but we don’t know it all. Instead, we can give you many related facts and a few opinions; perhaps these can help you evaluate the subject. The reason we discuss it at all is because the psychiatric industry has claimed this disorder for its own purposes, and continues to wrestle with the line between unusual and abnormal behavior. For obvious reasons, we mis-trust anything that psychiatry has to say about the condition, especially about treating it with psychotropic drugs.

The word “autism” was coined in 1912 by Swiss psychiatrist Paul Bleuler (1857-1939) from the Greek autos- “self” + –ismos a suffix of action or of state. The notion was originally of “morbid self-absorption.”

The number of people diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically since the 1980s, partly due to changes in diagnostic criteria and practice; the question of whether actual prevalence has increased is unresolved, since diagnosis is based on behavior, not cause or mechanism.

Autism, sometimes called “autism spectrum disorder,” “pervasive developmental disorder,” or “Asperger syndrome,” apparently does not have a single definitive definition that can be used across the board to correct the condition; it generally refers to a range of symptoms characterized by impairment of the ability to form normal social relationships, by impairment of the ability to communicate with others, and by stereotyped behavior patterns.

A study was once done to figure out how common Asperger’s was, and the results were clear — it was vanishingly rare. Then Allen Frances put it in the DSM, and the number of kids diagnosed with the disorder exploded.

There are many competing theories about its etiology [its causes or origins]. We have seen articles relating autism to toxins (mercury, pesticides, etc.), nutrition, vaccination, genetic predisposition, neurological brain disorders, an alteration in how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize, birth defects, the stress of circumcision, antidepressants, ad nauseum.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s billing bible, may perpetuate the perception, whether true or false, that autism is related to mental retardation where it discusses atypical autism arising most often in profoundly retarded individuals.

Where to go from here?

Well, we’re not going to spend any more time discussing etiology and treatment, since you can google those thousands of articles as well as we can. The real point we want to make is that psychiatry currently owns autism, and they are on the move to re-define it for the next DSM version. They may change the DSM to make it easier to diagnose, increasing the number of children into the mental health system; or they may make it harder to diagnose, excluding children whose families are currently receiving, or hope to receive, some kind of monetary disability support. In either case, the hue and cry will go up demanding more psychiatric funding for whatever they are currently calling autism.

At least a million children and adults have an autism diagnosis or a related disorder, such as “pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified.”

There are as many recommended therapies for autism as there are theories about the condition; these therapies may include diet, nutrition, behavioral modification, and many other non-invasive alternative health treatments. Of course, the treatment of choice for psychiatrists is the usual list of harmful and addictive antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety drugs, whose devastating side effects are well-documented.

Autism is big business. The word “autism” appears 1,880 times on the Missouri government web site (www.mo.gov); and “autistic” appears 607 times.

The proposed Missouri Department of Mental Health budget for the next fiscal year (House Bill 2010) includes $10,621,176 for various autism services.

A search through the Missouri Accountability Portal (for the purchase of goods and services by the state) for the word “autism” finds expenditures for 2012 in the following table:

ServiceVendor NamePayments
EDUCATIONAL SERVICESCENTER FOR AUTISM EDUCATION$1,600
CLIENT ASSISTANCE SERVICESTOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$50,376
MEDICAL ASSIST SERVICESTOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$134
MEDICAL ASSIST SERVICESTOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$361
MEDICAL ASSIST SERVICESTOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$379
MEDICAL ASSIST SERVICESTOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$69
COPIES OF RECORDSTOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$25
CONVENTION, CONFERENCE & TRAINING
FEES		AUTISM PARTNERSHIP INC$85
ADVERTISING SERVICESMISSOURI AUTISM REPORT$205
PROFESSIONAL SPEAKER & ENTERTAINER
SERV		TOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$600
MENTAL HEALTH PAYMNTS-1099CENTER FOR AUTISM EDUCATION$1,498
MENTAL HEALTH PAYMNTS-1099JUDEVINE CENTER FOR AUTISM$95,252
MENTAL HEALTH PAYMNTS-1099THOMPSON FOUNDATION FOR AUTISM$24,996
MENTAL HEALTH PAYMNTS-1099TOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$2,467,598
PUBLICATIONS &
SUBSCRIPTIONS		TOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$518
CONVENTION, CONFERENCE & TRAINING
FEES		TOUCHPOINT AUTISM SERVICES INC$55
 TOTAL$2,643,750

Granted, there is social justification for providing help to children and families coping with traumatic health situations. Given, however, psychiatry’s history of fraud, abuse, and use of damaging drugs, due diligence suggests examining this field very closely for exaggeration and mis-use.

This just in

An article in the Los Angeles Times on April 23, 2012 headlines, “Report says studies overstate drugs’ ability to treat autism symptoms.” It goes on to say that “Antidepressants are not specifically approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating autism, but they have become the go-to drugs for trying to control some of its key symptoms. By some estimates, the drugs have been prescribed for as many as one-third of children with the diagnosis. … A series of standard statistical tests designed to check the consistency and reliability of the published data [about the effectiveness of psychiatric drugs prescribed for autism] strongly suggested publication bias. The effect appeared to be so great that the researchers could no longer deem the anti-depressants effective.” [Publication bias occurs when studies that show a drug or treatment is effective are more likely to be published than studies with negative findings.]

Find out more about what you can do to expose psychiatric fraud and abuse, and support CCHR St. Louis so that it can continue to expose psychiatric fraud and abuse. Go to http://www.cchrstl.org/takeaction.shtml.

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Federal Funds for Learning Disorders

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

IDEA – The Source of Federal Funds for Learning Disorders

Special Education under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) has become a gravy train for psychiatrists and psychologists diagnosing children with ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder] or “learning disorders” and hooking these kids on drugs.

Of the approximate $50 billion spent annually on Special Education, an estimated $29 billion covers education for subjective “mental disorders,” when the law was originally intended for children with physical handicaps such as autism, speech impediments, blindness or other physical disabilities.

Underlying the coerced drugging of children is the definition of “disability” under Special Education law. The primary purpose of IDEA, which covers Special Education, was to provide a free and appropriate education for children with hearing, sight, speech and other physical handicaps. However, the term “handicapped” was changed to “learning disabled,” and children who fidget in class, interrupt their teachers, or simply fall behind academically were classified as “disabled.”

In order to receive federal funds under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, the “Prohibition on Mandatory Medication Amendment,” was signed into law by President Bush in 2004 and requires schools to implement policies that prohibit schoolchildren being forced onto psychiatric drugs as a requisite for their education: “The State educational agency shall prohibit State and local educational agency personnel from requiring a child to obtain a prescription for a substance covered by the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 801 et seq.) as a condition of attending school, receiving an evaluation under subsection (a) or (c) of section 614, or receiving services under this title.” [Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004]

Funding for learning disabilities in Missouri is documented in Missouri Revised Statutes (RSMo), Chapter 162, Section 700 “Special educational services, …” [http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/c100-199/1620000700.htm]

RSMo 162.675 defines “Children with disabilities” or “handicapped children” as “children under the age of twenty-one years who have not completed an approved high school program and who, because of mental, physical, emotional or learning problems, require special educational services.”

Note, however, that RSMo 162.700 denies children needing extra help the most beneficial service by specifying that “remedial reading programs are not a special education service.”

See also RSMo 162.670 “School Districts – Statement of Policy” [http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/c100-199/1620000670.htm] which ties Missouri educational policy to the provisions of IDEA.

It is difficult to determine an exact dollar amount per child; there are a number of formulas governing federal funds given to states for many different programs, which vary year by year based on the federal budget and the state. See also the Wikipedia article on IDEA at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuals_with_Disabilities_Education_Act.

As an example, see this link [http://www.rense.com/general4/addd.htm] for an article called “How Schools Are Making Big Money On ‘ADD/ADHD’.”

Why is this such an issue?

Well, for example, in the news this week is an article about “ADHD-drug abuse popular on Oregon campuses.” The article makes the point that “Adderall and its counterparts, including Ritalin and the over-the-counter Vivarin, are growing in popularity among students who don’t have ADHD but use the medications as study tools to stay awake and alert during prolonged cram sessions.”

One wonders if these college students learned to use/abuse ADHD drugs in elementary or high school. According to this article, various ADHD drugs are readily available with or without a prescription. One student said, “So many kids have Adderall prescriptions. Doctors just give it away like it’s candy or something. A lot of kids just will give it away for free.”

The drugging of children for ADHD is an epidemic. More than 5 million U.S. children, or 9.5 percent, were diagnosed with ADHD as of 2007. About 2.8 million had received a prescription for a stimulant medication in 2008.

The ADHD diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis, from the 2000 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is simply a list of behaviors that may appear disruptive or inappropriate.

The prevalence of this fraudulent diagnosis then increases the availability of the drugs, which are addictive and have harmful side effects, and as we see here are abused by others.

For more information about the side effects of psychiatric drugs, go to http://www.cchrstl.org/sideeffects.shtml.

Contact your schools and your local, state and federal officials and let them know what you think about this.

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Psychiatry’s Deadliest Scam

Saturday, October 29th, 2011

Diagnostic & Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM)
Psychiatry’s Deadliest Scam

It’s psychiatry’s best-selling catalog of mental illness — 943 pages long and covering everything from depression and anxiety to stuttering, cigarette addiction, fear of spiders, nightmares, problems with math and even disorder of infancy — all reinterpreted and labeled as a brain disease.


And though it weighs less than five pounds, its influence pervades all aspects of modern society: our governments, our courts, our military, our media and our schools.

Using it, psychiatrists can enforce psychiatric drugging, seize your children and even take away your most precious personal freedoms.

It is psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and it is the engine that drives a $330 billion psychiatric industry.

But is there any proof behind the DSM? Or is it nothing more than an elaborate pseudoscientific sham?

From the makers of the award-winning documentaries Making a Killing, The Marketing of Madness and Dead Wrong, comes the shocking truth behind psychiatry’s deadliest scam. Watch the documentary here.

Protect Yourself Against Misdiagnosis and Abuse

Anyone diagnosed with a psychiatric (mental) disorder and/or their parent or guardian has the right to informed consent before any treatment is undertaken. Unlike diagnoses for medical conditions, psychiatrists do not have blood tests or any other biological tests to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness. It is important to know that according to one state government medical manual, “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” and to rule out any physical condition causing “a patient’s mental disorder.”

Psychiatrists rarely conduct thorough physical examinations to rule out medical conditions, thereby misdiagnosing the patient. This can result in inappropriate and dangerous treatment, added to the fact that the real underlying medical condition is left untreated. Treatment for alleged mental illness is also extremely expensive to you or to your insurance company.

Further, if a psychiatrist asserts that your mental condition is caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain or is a neurobiological disorder, you have the right to ask for the lab test or other test to prove the accuracy of that diagnosis.

The DSM in Missouri Law

The Missouri Revised Statutes (RSMo) contains several explicit mentions of the DSM in Chapter 376 on Life, Health and Accident Insurance.

Section 376.810: Definitions for policy requirements for chemical dependency

(10) “Recognized mental illness”, those conditions classified as “mental disorders” in the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but shall not include mental retardation;

Section 376.1550: Mental health coverage, requirements–definitions–exclusions

(4) “Mental health condition”, any condition or disorder defined by categories listed in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders except for chemical dependency;

Section 376.1224: Definitions–insurance coverage required–limitations on coverage–maximum benefit amount, adjustments–reimbursements, how made–applicability to plans–waiver, when–report

(3) “Autism spectrum disorders”, a neurobiological disorder, an illness of the nervous system, which includes Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder, Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Rett’s Disorder, and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, as defined in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association;

Contact your Missouri State Senator and Representative and ask them to remove all references to the DSM from Missouri State Law.

CCHR has been vigilant in exposing the lack of science behind psychiatry’s diagnostic methods that, left unquestioned for years by authorities and insurance companies, led to soaring increases in dangerous psychiatric drugs being prescribed. Click here for more information about the DSM.

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