Posts Tagged ‘Bipolar’

Suicide Attempts Increasing In Children

Monday, June 27th, 2022

Responding to federal data on increased suicide attempts by children taking antipsychotics, CCHR reiterates warning that psychotropics are linked to suicidal and homicidal acts, requiring government action.

Suicides among young people have been on the rise with federal data reporting that among those 10 to 24 years old, overall rates of deaths by suicide in the U.S. increased 57% from 2000 to 2018. More and more of these attempts are from ingesting toxic substances or overdosing on medications, a study finds. 

Astonishingly, from 2015 to 2020, researchers found suicide attempts using chemicals, including antipsychotics, soared by 28% among those aged 6 to 9 years old. The increase in children being prescribed mind-altering chemicals in the U.S. is a shocking reflection on the risks being taken with such young minds because many of the prescriptions carry a risk of suicide and violent behavior. These can drive individuals to committing irrational acts of violence and suicide.

Researchers from the University of Virginia School of Medicine found that the most commonly abused substances are the pain relievers acetaminophen and ibuprofen, but these were followed by atypical antipsychotics—like aripiprazole (Abilify)—the latter increasingly prescribed not only for psychosis, but also for depression. Atypical antipsychotics are added to an antidepressant, despite benefits on functioning or quality of life ranging between very small and zero, according to a PLoS Medicine study.

CCHR has consistently warned about prescription drug abuse, especially as around 21% of patient visits to psychiatrists for anxiety disorder treatment involved an antipsychotic prescription in 2004–2007, double that of 1996–1999. Children behaving badly became a target market from the early 2000s. Clinical trials recruited preschoolers to test antipsychotics for purported bipolar disorder. Psychiatrists prescribe antipsychotics to children in one third of all visits, which is three times higher than during the 1990’s, and nearly 90% of those prescriptions written between 2005 and 2009 were prescribed for something other than what the FDA approved them for. Antipsychotics have been described as a chemical lobotomy because of their ability to disable normal brain function.

All antidepressants now carry the FDA’s “Black Box” warning, alerting that they may increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and young adults. The increase in psychotropic drug prescriptions has also brought an increase in acts of violence being committed.

The greatest increase in self-poisonings between 2015 and 2020 occurred among 10 to 12 year olds, increasing 109%. In the 13 to 15 age group, the increase was 30%; and among 16- to 19-year-olds, it was 18%. Girls were hugely overrepresented, accounting for nearly 78% of cases.

CCHR reiterates its call for mandatory toxicology tests when mass shootings and acts of violence are committed and for a database to register drug use found in the blood system of the perpetrator.

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Are You Schizophrenic?

Friday, January 18th, 2019

“Mental health advocates are lobbying Congress to help them get schizophrenia classified as a brain disease like Parkinson’s or Alzheimers, instead of as a mental illness, a move that could reduce stigma and lead to more dollars for a cure.” This according to a January, 2019 article on Politico.com.

More and more health officials, scientists and doctors are recognizing that so-called “mental illnesses” such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are poorly understood and are really physical, medical issues — not some nebulous mental thing for which harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs are prescribed.

There are no clinical tests for these “mental” diagnoses. But there are clinical tests for whatever turns out to be the real medical issue. So why are psychiatrists handing out so many harmful drugs without performing blood or other well-known clinical tests? Could it be because it is profitable, and insurance will pay for them?

Today, psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

Linda Stalters, executive director of the schizophrenia alliance, said, “We are still treating people like they did in the medieval times.”

The late Professor Thomas Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

These are normal people with medical, disciplinary, educational, or spiritual problems that can and must be resolved without recourse to drugs. Deceiving and drugging is not the practice of medicine. It is criminal.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of someone exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist calls schizophrenia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled with so-called schizophrenia needs to receive a thorough physical examination by a competent medical—not psychiatric—doctor to first determine what underlying physical condition is causing the manifestation.

Any person falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with CCHR, the police, and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation. In Missouri, file a complaint with the Board of Registration for the Healing Arts.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, anxiety or panic. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well–being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.

For more information, click here to download and read the full CCHR report “Schizophrenia—Psychiatry’s For Profit ‘Disease’“.

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Patients For Life

Monday, April 2nd, 2018

A leading cause of death in patients diagnosed with a serious mental condition (such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression) has been preventable medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes, metabolic disorders which are typical side effects of being treated with second generation (atypical) antipsychotics.

The majority of those who screen positive for these types of metabolic disorders do not receive treatment for these medical conditions. Even worse, the majority of patients being treated with these antipsychotics are not even screened, with simple blood tests, for these side effects.

A tremendous amount of effort, lasting over at least the last 15 years, has been expended in trying to change the U.S. medical system to implement simple blood test screening protocols for patients being prescribed antipsychotics. Many reasons have been given for this reluctance to change, but the most obvious reasons were not among them — the fact that no one knows how these drugs work, that they are addictive, harmful, and are causing side effects that produce continuing income from these patients for life, a life albeit shortened by the metabolic disorders caused by the drugs.

The general attitude of the mental health care industry is that mental disorders are comorbid with metabolic disorders. This means that there is a simultaneous presence of these two chronic conditions in a patient, with little thought given to the fact that metabolic disorders can be the side effect of the drugs being given for the mental disorder. Since the drugs are addictive, harmful, and have nasty side effects, the obvious solution is to stop prescribing the drugs and use one or more of the many non-drug alternatives. This, however, would deprive the industry of one of its top money-makers.

Patients already presenting with CVD or diabetes, or who have known risk factors for these, should not even be considered as candidates for antipsychotics, and should also be screened for any other undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions which may be causing mental symptoms.

A case could be made for malpractice if blood test screening for metabolic disorders is not being performed for patients vulnerable to these diseases, especially since the medications that psychiatrists prescribe increase vulnerability to metabolic syndrome. [Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of metabolic disorders, usually including increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels — that occur together, increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.]

Psychiatrists should be responsible for monitoring any potential side effects associated with the drugs that they prescribe; therefore, it is negligent if monitoring is not being done.

We are seeing a huge increase in the rate of antipsychotic prescriptions among younger pediatric patients, yet the younger one is, the lower one’s chances of being monitored.

Based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), statistics are touted about near “epidemic” rates of mental illness in order to demand more government funds and sell more harmful drugs, making people “patients for life” as the drug adverse events then require more drugs to handle these harmful side effects.

Contact your local, state and federal authorities and legislators and demand that funding for psychiatric promises be revoked until the mental health industry can prove its effectiveness with actual cures.

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Vraylar to the Vrescue

Monday, February 26th, 2018

We are now seeing TV ads for Vraylar (generic cariprazine) for “manic or mixed episodes of bipolar I disorder.” An atypical antipsychotic, it alters levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Vraylar was first approved by the FDA to treat schizophrenia in 2015. It can be compared to the antipsychotic risperidone, which is now available as a generic and thus not as expensive as the newer drug Vraylar. They say cariprazine is “less risky” than risperidone, but we think it was approved because it is more expensive.

Hungarian drugmaker Gedeon Richter, the developer of the drug, licensed it to the Dublin pharmaceutical company Allergan and receives royalties on its sales. It cost about $400 million to develop, and its projected income at the time was $300 million per year. Allergan’s Vraylar revenue for 2017 was $287.8 million. A month’s supply for one person costs approximately $1,050 (depending on dosage.)

The exact way Vraylar is supposed to work is totally unknown. It is another example of the debunked medical model of psychiatry which fraudulently supposes that messing with the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain can help. The prevailing psychiatric theory is that mental disorders result from a chemical imbalance in the brain; however, there is no biological or other evidence to prove this.

Basically, psychiatrists gave it in clinical trials to a bunch of people with mental disturbances and performed extensive statistical analyses to “prove” that symptoms of mental distress were less severe while taking the drug than while taking a placebo; while at the same time recording, but discounting, all the adverse reactions.

The most common side effects during clinical tests were uncontrolled movements of the face and body (tardive dyskinesia), muscle stiffness, indigestion, vomiting, sleepiness, and restlessness (akathisia). Other possible side effects are stroke, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, falls, seizures, agitation, anxiety — basically most of the adverse reactions we’ve come to associate with similar psychotropic drugs. This particular formulation stays in the body for weeks even after you stop taking it, so that side effects may occur long after you start or stop taking it.

During clinical trials, 12% of the patients who received Vraylar for a diagnosis of bipolar I discontinued treatment due to an adverse reaction. They say that the drug is not habit-forming, but it has withdrawal symptoms. The trials did not run long enough to actually test for physical addiction, although withdrawal symptoms were reported in newborns whose mothers were exposed to it during the third trimester of pregnancy. Also, the drug carries a black box warning that elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis are at an increased risk of death, just like any other atypical antipsychotic.

“Bipolar I disorder” used to be called “manic-depressive”. All it means is that a person roller-coasters — sometimes being up and other times being down. Bipolar disorder is characterized by unusual shifts in a person’s mood, energy and ability to function. Its symptoms are severe mood swings from one extreme of overly high or irritable (mania) to sad and hopeless (depression), then back again. In the 1800s, bipolar was known as manic depression, a term invented by German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. In 1953, another German psychiatrist, Karl Kleist coined the term “bipolar.” There is no objective clinical medical test for the condition.

Psychiatric treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar is complicated by high rates of relapse, indicating that the treatments do not really work. The failures to adequately treat bipolar apparently caused the psychiatric industry to split up the diagnosis into bipolar I and bipolar II, where bipolar II means that the individual has not experienced a full manic episode, just an elevated state of irritable mood that is less severe than a full manic episode. It’s splitting a hair that is completely irrelevant to anything except which drug to prescribe.

An estrogen imbalance, hypoglycemia (abnormal decrease in blood sugar), allergies, caffeine sensitivity, thyroid problems, vitamin B deficiencies, stress, and excessive copper in the body can all cause the symptoms fraudulently labeled as  “bipolar disorder.”

“Schizophrenia,” “bipolar,” and all other psychiatric labels have only one purpose: to make psychiatry millions in insurance reimbursement, government funds and profits from drug sales. If you are told that a psychiatric condition is due to a brain-biochemical imbalance, ask to see the test results.

The global bipolar drug market is growing, possibly due to increasing stress in life. For information about how stress can cause someone to roller-coaster, see our blog here. Click here for more information about bipolar, and here for more information about schizophrenia.

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Latuda Changes its Spots

Thursday, February 9th, 2017

We’ve written previously about Latuda, an antidepressant. Now, the TV commercials for this dangerous psychiatric drug are claiming that it is for “bipolar depression” because that is different than just plain old depression.

The Latuda web site says that bipolar depression refers to the depressive phase of bipolar disorder, which is “different from other forms of depression,” having different “treatments.” In 2014 Latuda was number 95 on the list of top selling psychiatric drugs. It is estimated that about one in six American adults are taking at least one psychiatric drug.

What a crock!

This is akin to a public relations technique known as “propaganda by redefinition of words.” This is not a natural evolution of language, it is a deliberate propaganda technique to change public opinion, in this case to the advantage of the psycho-pharmaceutical industry by boosting sales of this drug for a new diagnosis.

The way to do this is to get the new definition repeated as often as possible; in this case through television and magazine ads.

Ah, so Johnny no longer has “depression”, he has “bipolar depression” — disassociating negative connotations of “depression” from the word by making a new term which miraculously can now be “treated” with this drug.

Regardless of the hokey diagnosis, still no one knows how this drug “works”; and the lengthy list of adverse reactions — well, that’s just the way it “works.”

This is also related to the psychiatric tendency to describe rather than to cure. So there are all kinds of bipolar now, and all kinds of depression, each with their own entry in the DSM and potentially their own “treatment”. In DSM-IV there were eight separate line items for bipolar diagnoses, and eight separate line items for various forms of depression. The DSM-V codes expand that to 58 line items for bipolar and 75 for depression.

Having all these different terms for essentially the same thing means that it is easier to say someone has it just by saying a big word. And psychiatrists have set themselves up as the only authorities who know what it means. Go ahead, say “Amphetamine (or other stimulant)-induced bipolar and related disorder, With moderate or severe use disorder” three times fast. Well, maybe not easier for you to say.

Talk about “fake news!” It’s all the rage now to point to various media and call the news fake. So we’re calling this news about “bipolar depression” totally fake. Fortunately, the real news can be found with diligent observation. Please do so! Find Out! Fight Back!

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The Havering Crowd

Friday, July 3rd, 2015

The Havering Crowd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Shift Work Disorder

Sunday, September 8th, 2013

Shift Work Disorder

Circadian Rhythm Sleep-Wake Disorder, also called Shift Work Disorder, classified in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition) under “sleep-wake disorders”, is a way for the psycho-pharmaceutical industry to sell drugs to people who work nights or rotating shifts and who may experience difficulty adjusting to this sleep-wake rhythm. The implication that this is some kind of mental illness or disorder is most invalidating and simply untrue.

I myself worked a rotating night shift once upon a time, and it was pretty obvious that any sleep-wake discomfort I experienced was simply that and not any kind of mental illness. I found my own way of getting enough sleep without drugs.

“If you work non-traditional hours and struggle to stay awake at work, you may be experiencing excessive sleepiness.” However, for those who buy in to the psychiatric pill-pushers, they can get NUVIGIL® (armodafinil), an addictive, stimulant-like psychiatric drug for adults who cannot stay awake due to “shift work disorder.” Of course, like many psychiatric drugs, possible side effects are headache, nausea, dizziness, insomnia, depression, anxiety, hallucinations, suicide, and aggression. Note that this drug is not a cure for any condition, and is only used to make a person stay awake while working. Of course, the manufacturer warns the user not to drive or operate machinery while taking the drug, so one is not really sure what benefit it could possibly have in any case.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries tried to get the FDA to approve Nuvigil for bipolar depression symptoms, but the results from the “Final Phase III Study of Patients with Major Depression Associated with Bipolar I Disorder” failed to show that it was more effective than a placebo.

The precise mechanism through which armodafinil is thought to promote wakefulness is unknown, but they think it has a similarity in action to amphetamine and methylphenidate, with some kind of effect in the brain involving dopamine and other chemicals. But they want you to try it out and let them know if it works. What do you think?

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