Posts Tagged ‘Depression’

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Depression and The Marketing of Madness

Sunday, March 10th, 2019

The high-income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center, requiring constant marketing to push harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs on a vulnerable public.

How did psychotropic drugs, with no target illness, no known curative powers and a long and extensive list of harmful 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?

Clever marketing hides the harm in a succession of consumer ads constantly churning through “new revelations.”

The most recent we’ve seen have been these gems:

— A new marketing catchphrase is being used in a Trintellix commercial — “Depression is multiple symptoms.”

— Another new marketing catchphrase is being used in a Latuda commercial — “A different type of depression.”

Psychiatry continues heavily pushing false data about depression

The fact is, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association and the National Institute of Mental Health admit that there are no medical tests to confirm depression as a disease but do nothing to counter the false idea that these are biological/medical conditions when in fact, diagnosis is simply done by a checklist of behaviors.

There are 77 entries in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) using some variation of the word “depressive”, so that nearly anyone can be so diagnosed and prescribed harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs.

Yes, people experience various symptoms of mental distress. This does not make them “mentally diseased” and there is no evidence of physical/medical abnormality for the so-called diagnosis of “depression.” This doesn’t mean that there aren’t solutions for people experiencing difficulty; there are non harmful, medical alternatives. But they do not require a psychiatric “label” to treat them. There is no mental illness test that is scientifically/medically proven. This isn’t a matter of opinion — psychiatrists who are opposed to the labeling of behaviors as mental illness openly admit this.

Dr. Thomas Szasz said, “The term ‘mental illness’ refers to the undesirable thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of persons.” More properly, it is just what psychiatry and psychiatrists have inappropriately labeled as “undesirable behavior;” the prime undesirable antisocial people on the planet telling you what they think is undesirable!

Find out more about the fake “disease” called depression and the harm that anti-depressive drugs do.

Watch the documentary exposing the truth behind the slick marketing schemes and scientific deceit that conceal a dangerous and often deadly sales campaign.

The Marketing of Madness Education Package is the ultimate resource for educating others on the dangerous effects of psychotropic drugs, and the multi-billion-dollar psychiatric-pharmaceutical partnership now dominating the field of mental health. CCHR is offering this kit for free to educators and lecturers to assist them in educating others about the risks of these mind-altering drugs, and to furnish information that is generally not told to patients or physicians. Arm yourself with the facts about psychiatry.

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Orilissa May Cause Suicidal Ideation

Monday, February 18th, 2019

Orilissa (generic elagolix) is a drug from AbbVie Inc. and Neurocrine Biosciences, approved by the FDA in the summer of 2018, and prescribed for women with moderate to severe endometriosis pain. Endometriosis is a chronic disease in which uterine lining tissue grows outside the uterus. The drug shuts down the hormonal cycle, stopping the monthly menstrual period. It is currently being heavily advertised, with a list price of approximately $850 per month.

It caught our attention because some of the serious side effects are suicidal thoughts, actions, or behavior, and worsening of mood.

The prescribing information advises that patients with new or worsening depression, anxiety or other mood changes should be referred to a mental health professional. We urge caution, because a psychiatrist may misdiagnose such symptoms as a mental disorder rather than a drug side effect, and prescribe harmful psychotropic drugs instead of properly handling the side effects.

Suicidal ideation and behavior, including one completed suicide, occurred in subjects treated with Orilissa in the endometriosis clinical trials. Users had a higher incidence of depression and mood changes compared to placebo. Some of the most common adverse reactions in clinical trials included anxiety, depression and mood changes.

The drug is a gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist, which means it blocks the receptors of certain hormones in the brain’s pituitary gland, leading to the suppression of luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, estradiol, and progesterone. Patients are advised to limit the duration of use because of bone loss; bone mineral density loss is greater with increasing duration of use and may not be completely reversible.

The drug is metabolized in the liver by cytochrome P450 enzymes, so a person genetically deficient in these enzymes, or who is taking other drugs that inhibit CYP450 enzymes, is at risk of a toxic accumulation of the drug leading to more severe side effects.

There does not appear to be any scientific data about exactly why suicidality and behavior changes are potential adverse reactions, but we might surmise that messing with hormones in the brain is not exactly a well-known precision science.

The major issue we see is that mood changes as a side effect from Orilissa are likely to be misdiagnosed. Since psychiatrists do not perform clinical tests and are wont to prescribe an antidepressant rather than get to the root of the problem, we want to be sure every candidate for this drug understands the issue and practices full informed consent to any psychiatric treatment.

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1 in 4 Elderly Americans Hooked on Xanax

Saturday, February 9th, 2019

One in four older Americans who use prescribed benzodiazepine drugs such as Xanax (generic alprazolam) for sleep issues, anxiety and depression end up becoming addicted, according to a recent study.

The study, published 10 September 2018 in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that for every 10 additional days of prescribed drugs, the patient’s risk for long-term usage nearly doubled over the next year.
[doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.2413]

This abusive assault on the elderly is the result of psychiatry maneuvering itself into an authoritative position over aged care. From there, psychiatry has broadly perpetrated the tragic but lucrative hoax that aging is a mental disorder requiring extensive and expensive psychiatric services.

Long-term benzodiazepine users are more likely to develop anxiety or have sleep problems, the very things the drug was supposed to treat. The FDA recommends reporting adverse psychiatric drug reactions to the MedWatch program. It could be dangerous to immediately cease taking psychiatric drugs because of potential significant withdrawal side effects. No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and assistance of a competent medical doctor.

The exact mechanism of action of benzodiazepines is not known, but they play Russian Roulette with neurotransmitters in the brain.

Daily use of benzodiazepines has always been associated with physical dependence. Addiction can occur after just 14 days of regular use. Withdrawal and addiction to benzodiazepines can be as traumatic as with heroin.

The typical consequences of withdrawal are anxiety, depression, sweating, cramps, nausea, psychotic reactions and seizures. There is also a “rebound effect” where the individual experiences even worse symptoms than they started with as a result of this chemical dependency.

Xanax is particularly obnoxious. After a patient stops taking Xanax, it takes the brain six to eighteen months to recover. Extreme anger, hostile behavior, violence and suicide are potential side effects.

Once they are taking the drug and have side effects they can be diagnosed with a fraudulent mental illness called “Sedative-, hypnotic-, or anxiolytic-induced anxiety disorder” and prescribed additional psychiatric drugs for the side effects. [Anxiolytic just means anti-anxiety drug.]

Then, once they are addicted and try to withdraw from the drug, they can be diagnosed with a fraudulent mental illness called “Sedative, hypnotic, or anxiolytic withdrawal” and prescribed additional psychiatric drugs for the withdrawal symptoms.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior as  “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful.

CCHR recommends that everyone watch the video documentary “Making A Killing – The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging“. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of psychiatric abuse victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore. Watch the video online here.

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Rexulti Fails to Get Results

Monday, November 26th, 2018

REXULTI (generic brexpiprazole) is a prescription psychiatric drug from Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company and Lundbeck pharmaceutical company. Although it failed Phase II clinical trials for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2015 as an atypical antipsychotic and prescribed for the fake “disease” schizophrenia.

Then in 2018 the FDA approved it to treat symptoms of depression when antidepressants alone do not relieve symptoms.

The cost for Rexulti oral tablet 0.25 mg is around $1,166 for a supply of 30 tablets. It has similarities to Abilify, and apparently it was developed to replace Abilify when that drug’s patent expired in 2014.

Brexpiprazole affects the levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin in the brain. It is thought to reduce dopamine output when dopamine concentrations are high and increase dopamine output when dopamine concentrations are low. It also activates serotonin receptors to increase serotonin levels in a manner thought to reduce hallucinogenic effects, which is a problem with all drugs that mess with serotonin in the brain.

The metabolism of the drug — that is, the mechanism which eventually eliminates it from the body — is mediated by Cytochrome P450 enzymes; people who are known poor metabolizers, i.e. those with a genetic lack of these enzymes, should be instructed to take half the usual dose, although this is rarely done, since the patient must first be tested for this genetic condition. It is estimated that 10% of Caucasians and 7% of African Americans are Cytochrome P450 deficient. The consequences for someone with this deficiency who takes this drug are an increased risk for the accumulation of the non-metabolized drug in the body and the resultant increase in adverse side effects such as depression, violence and suicide.

Drugs like Rexulti can raise the risk of death in the elderly, and it is not approved for the treatment of patients with dementia-related psychosis. This drug may also increase suicidal thoughts or actions in some children, teenagers, or young adults within the first few months of treatment. It is not approved for the treatment of people younger than 18 years of age.

Rexulti may cause other serious side effects, including: compulsive, uncontrollable behaviors such as gambling, shopping, binge eating and sex (the same as with Abilify); stroke in elderly people; Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome; high fever; stiff muscles; confusion; sweating; changes in pulse, heart rate, or blood pressure; high blood sugar (hyperglycemia); weight gain; seizures; difficulty swallowing; uncontrolled body movements known as tardive dyskinesia. Tardive dyskinesia may not go away, even after one stops taking the drug, and tardive dyskinesia may also start some time after one stops taking the drug.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous. Find Out! Fight Back!

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More About Serotonin

Saturday, October 13th, 2018

We often remark on serotonin when discussing psychiatric drugs, so we thought we’d describe it in more depth.

The word comes from the combination of sero- (serum) + tonic (from Greek tonos string or stretching) + -in (from Latin -ina a term used to form words). It was first named in 1948, although its effects had likely been observed since 1868.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter hormone synthesized in the adrenal glands and elsewhere in the body from the essential amino acid tryptophan (chemical formula C10H12N2O, also called 5-hydroxytryptamine), found in the brain, blood, and mostly the digestive tract, which allows nerve cells throughout the body to communicate and interact with each other.

Some of its effects include:
— helping smooth muscles to contract, such as the abdominal muscles that aid digestion,
— helping to regulate expansion and contraction of blood vessels,
— assisting the clotting of blood to close a wound,
— helping to regulate mood, aggression, appetite, and sleep.

It helps to create a sense of well-being or comfort in the body, which is the starting point for the theory of using it as an antidepressant.

Since serotonin impacts every part of your body, messing with it can cause unwanted and dangerous side effects. Obviously, the body must closely regulate and balance the level of serotonin, since both a deficiency or an excess can be harmful.

It is mainly metabolized in the liver and the resulting products are excreted by the kidneys.

It is also found in animals, insects, fungi and plants.

Extremely high levels of serotonin can cause a condition known as serotonin syndrome, with toxic and potentially fatal effects. It can be caused by an overdose of drugs or interactions between drugs which increase the concentration of serotonin in the central nervous system, the most common of which are the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), whose purpose is to raise the level of serotonin in the brain.

A toxic level of serotonin can occur by taking two or more of these types of drugs, even if each is only a normal therapeutic dose. Many drugs, both legal and illegal, influence the level of serotonin in the brain — including some antidepressants, appetite suppressants, analgesics (pain drugs), sedatives, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, antimigraine drugs, antiemetics (for relief of nausea and vomiting), antiepileptics, cannabis (marijuana), LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy), psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), and cannabidiol (CBD).

There aren’t any tests that can diagnose serotonin syndrome. Instead, one has to observe the extent and severity of the various adverse reactions. Some side effects of serotonin syndrome can be altered mental status, muscle twitching, confusion, high blood pressure, fever, restlessness, sweating, tremors, shivering, or death.

Some people have a genetic defect with cytochrome P450 enzymes which influences serotonin metabolism. Some research also suggests that the interactions of psychotropic drugs with cytochrome P450 in the brain may also influence serotonin metabolism. Basically, these interactions can be extremely complex, and the results are unpredictable — meaning that wild variations in serotonin concentration, both lower and higher than optimum, may occur, with the attendant adverse reactions.

The proponents of all these drugs basically ignore the fact that they mess with serotonin when making claims for safety and usefulness. Messing with neurotransmitters in the brain without totally understanding how they work is serious business. Researchers know that 60 to 70 percent of patients diagnosed with depression continue to feel depressed even while taking such drugs. There is still a lot unknown about such interactions and long term safety, so caution is definitely advised.

An article in the October, 2018 print issue of Scientific American (“Postpartum Relief” on page 22) makes an interesting point, saying, “Many women who suffer from postpartum depression receive standard antidepressants, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac. It is unclear how well these drugs work, however, because the neurotransmitter serotonin may play only a secondary role in the condition or may not be involved at all.” (Emphasis ours.)

Researchers still only conjecture about any relationship between depression and serotonin, and they are coming to understand that the results do not support the hype.

Psychiatrists have known since the beginning of psychopharmacology that their drugs do not cure any disease. Further, there is no credible evidence that depression is genetic or linked to serotonin transport; these are just public relations theories to support the marketing and sale of drugs. The manufacturers of every such drug state in the fine print that they don’t really understand how it works. Psychiatric drugs are fraudulently marketed as safe and effective for the sole purpose of earning billions for the psycho-pharmaceutical industry.

These drugs mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future. This is the real reason why psychiatry is a violation of human rights. Psychiatric treatment is not just a failure — it is routinely destructive to the individual and one’s mental health.

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Guilty of Bad Taste

Thursday, September 20th, 2018

And we don’t mean the “Bad Taste” 1987 science-fiction comedy horror splatter film about aliens harvesting humans for their intergalactic fast food franchise.

We mean that something is in bad or poor taste when it exhibits poor judgment by being tasteless, unsuitable, unseemly, improper, inappropriate, politically incorrect, impolite, lewd, offensive, insensitive, vulgar, crude, rude, obscene, meanspirited, or uncalled for. It is not a morally wrong action, but the reporting of current events often hypes what is essentially just bad taste by elevating it to a crime or a mental illness.

It should be obvious that the judgment of what is in good or bad taste is pretty subjective, socially entangled, and can be described by hoards of synonymous words.

Of course, we all know what good taste is. It’s what we have, and other people don’t.

Then again, bad taste could just be a failure to police oneself due to some extremely distracting condition, such as intoxication.

It occurred to us, reviewing some of the recent “news” in main stream media, that psychiatry has been (horrors) guilty of labeling bad taste as mental disorders.

Here are some examples of what could be just incidents of bad taste, or related to incidents of bad taste, from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). These are the fraudulent psychiatric diagnoses for which harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs can be prescribed, and for which insurance will pay the cost.

Adult antisocial behavior
Alcohol intoxication
Caffeine intoxication
Caffeine withdrawal
Cannabis intoxication
Cannabis withdrawal
Child or adolescent antisocial behavior
Cocaine intoxication
Cocaine withdrawal
Conduct disorder
Discord with neighbor, lodger, or landlord
Disinhibited social engagement disorder
Exhibitionistic disorder
Histrionic personality disorder
Insomnia disorder
Intermittent explosive disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder
Opioid intoxication
Opioid withdrawal
Personal history of military deployment
Phase of life problem
Relationship distress with spouse or intimate partner
Sibling relational problem
Social exclusion or rejection
Target of (perceived) adverse discrimination or persecution
Tobacco withdrawal

There are undoubtedly more diagnoses that could fit this categorization.

In other words, by exhibiting bad taste one could be diagnosed with a mental disorder and prescribed harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs. And who among us has not slipped up and said something they later regret? The point is, bad taste is not a mental illness, but it has been used by the psychiatric industry as a money-maker and a control mechanism by psychiatrists who assert that they know how you should behave in every circumstance.

With the DSM, psychiatry has taken countless aspects of human behavior and reclassified them as a “mental illness” simply by adding the term “disorder” onto them. While even key DSM contributors admit that there is no scientific or medical validity to the “disorders,” the DSM nonetheless serves as a diagnostic tool, not only for individual treatment, but also for child custody disputes, discrimination cases, court testimony, education, immigration, and more. As the diagnoses completely lack scientific criteria, anyone can be labeled mentally ill, and subjected to dangerous and life threatening “treatments” based solely on opinion.

It used to be that the term “mentally ill” was limited to mean crazy people like those talking to themselves in the streets and those acting irrationally, oblivious to the world around them. However, the symptoms of mental illness, today, have been re-defined and broadened by psychiatry to fit under the umbrella of any non-optimum behavior, including what is considered normal for that age. Basically, “mentally ill” now is just an opinion about something that a psychiatrist doesn’t like.

Since there is no laboratory test that can identify mental illness or suicide risk, the diagnosis of a mental disorder or of a suicide risk is entirely subjective. Basically, it is the opinion of a psychiatrist who has decided he does not like what a person is thinking or feeling. This is what we mean when we say that psychiatry is being used as a social control mechanism.

The psychiatricizing of normal everyday behavior by including personality quirks and traits is a lucrative business for the American Psychiatric Association because by expanding the number of “mental illnesses” even ordinary people can become patients and added to the psychiatric marketing pool.

People can and do experience depression, anxiety and sadness, children (and adults) do act out or misbehave, and some people can indeed become irrational or psychotic, or be guilty of bad taste. This does not make them “diseased.” There are non–psychiatric, non–drug solutions for people experiencing mental difficulty, there are non–harmful alternatives.

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Now They Are Arguing About Exercise

Thursday, September 13th, 2018

Psychiatric researchers from Yale University and other brain research institutions have analyzed 1.2 million people to see how exercise affects a person’s mental health.

The results and subsequent discussions have been blasted across all news media, and are proliferating rapidly.

Anyone with an exercise bike has been chiming in; some say their depression didn’t go away with exercise, some say it did. With glee, many reporters emphasize one particular result of the study, that “there is such a thing as too much exercise.”

The researchers measured “self-reported mental health.” Naturally, they also reported that more study was needed; needing more study (i.e. needing more research funds) is a standard result of many self-perpetuating studies. One could say they are exercising their right to continue working.

For this study, the only mental health disorder that the researchers took into account was “depression,” using something called the “Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System,” with questions such as “Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?”

We’re incredulous that this ridiculous research is given so many column inches of press, and that it took 1.2 million people to decide that sometimes exercise helps one feel better and sometimes it doesn’t.

If exercising sarcasm were a disease, we’d probably be dead by now.

OK, let’s look at this from another point of view. First, what do people actually mean by “good mental health?” We often say that psychiatry produces no cures, and for good reason. But what would a mental health cure look like? We’d probably call that “good mental health.” Here’s what we think:

We generally take cure to mean the elimination of some unwanted condition with some effective treatment. The primary purpose of any mental health treatment must be the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance. The only effective measure of this treatment must be “patients recovering and being sent, sane, back into society as productive individuals.” This, we would call a cure.

So, good mental health must then be “operating sanely in society as productive individuals.”

Second, what do people actually mean by “depression?” We often say that there is no such disease as depression, since there are no clinical tests for it. There are two main possibilities — one is an undiagnosed and untreated medical condition; the other is the opposite of good mental health, which would be “operating insanely in society as non-productive individuals.”

So what is the cure? In the first case, using standard clinical tests (blood tests, urine tests, x-rays, DNA tests, MRI, ultrasound, etc.) find and treat the actual medical condition. In the second case, get busy being productive; and hence we get the occasional benefits of exercise as it relates to the productivity of one taking some responsibility for one’s own health.

We might say that depression could actually be low morale; and since morale is based on production, find something useful to do and hop to it!

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Psychiatric Drugs, School Violence, and Big Pharma Cover-Up

Monday, July 2nd, 2018

A study published June 12, 2018 from the University of Illinois at Chicago suggests that more than one-third (37.2%) of U.S. adults may be using prescription drugs that have the potential to cause depression or increase the risk of suicide.
[JAMA. 2018;319(22);2289-2298. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.6741]

Information about more than 26,000 adults from 2005 to 2014 was analyzed, along with more than 200 commonly prescribed drugs. However, many of these drugs are also available over the counter, so these results may underestimate the true prevalence of drugs having side effects of depression.

In other words, the use of prescription drugs, not just psychiatric drugs, that have depression or suicide as a potential adverse reaction is fairly common, and the more drugs one takes (called polypharmacy), the greater the likelihood of depression occurring as a side effect. “The likelihood of concurrent depression was most pronounced among adults concurrently using 3 or more medications with depression as a potential adverse effect, including among adults treated with antidepressants.”

Approximately 15% of adults who used three or more of these drugs concurrently experienced symptoms of depression or suicidal thoughts, compared with just 5% for those not using any of these drugs. Roughly 7.6% of adults using just one of these drugs reported a side effect of depression or suicidal thoughts during the study period, and 9% for those using two of these drugs. These results were the same whether the drugs were psychotropic or not. Depression was determined by asking nine questions related to the symptoms defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

“Commonly used depression screening instruments, however, do not incorporate evaluations of prescribed medications that have depression as a potential adverse effect.” In other words, so-called depression screening tests can register false positives when the person is taking one or more of roughly 200 prescription drugs.

We thought we should dig a little deeper into this phenomenon.

First, understand that there is no depression “disease”. A person can certainly have symptoms of feeling depressed, but this is not a medical condition in itself. An example of a medical condition with a symptom of depression would be a vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency. You don’t fix it with an antidepressant; you fix it with vitamin B1. There are hundreds of medical conditions that may have mental symptoms, just as there are hundreds of drugs that can cause or worsen these symptoms. Finding the actual causes with appropriate clinical tests and then fixing what is found is the correct way to proceed.

This leads to a topic known as CYP450, which stands for Cytochrome P450 enzymes. Cytochrome means “cellular pigment” and is a protein found in blood cells. Scientists understand these enzymes to be responsible for metabolizing almost half of all drugs currently on the market, including psychiatric drugs.

These are the major enzymes involved in drug metabolism, which is the breakdown of drugs in the liver or other organs so that they can be eliminated from the body once they have performed their function.

If these drugs are not metabolized and eliminated once they have done their work, they build up and become concentrated in the body, and then act as toxins. The possibility of harmful side effects, or adverse reactions, increases as the toxic concentration increases. The ballpark estimate is that each year 2.2 million Americans are hospitalized for adverse reactions and over 100,000 die from them.

Some people are deficient in CYP450 or have diminished capacity to metabolize these drugs, which may be a genetic or other issue. Individuals with no or poorly performing CYP450 enzymes are much more likely to suffer the side effects of prescription drugs, particularly psychiatric drugs known to have side effects of depression, violence and suicide.

These metabolic processes are immature at birth and up to three years old, and this may result in an increased risk for drug toxicity in infants and young children. Furthermore, certain drugs or certain excipients in vaccines may inhibit activation of CYP450 enzymes, again resulting in an increased risk for the accumulation of non-metabolized drugs and the resultant increase in adverse side effects such as depression, violence and suicide.

The side effects caused by a CYP450 deficiency and its subsequent failure to metabolize any one of hundreds of drugs can then be misdiagnosed as a mental illness, the patient then being prescribed more psychiatric drugs in a mistaken attempt to treat those side effects, further complicating the problems.

It is estimated that 10% of Caucasians and 7% of African Americans are Cytochrome P450 deficient.

The psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries have been aware of this phenomenon for some time, yet they have continued to push psychiatric drugs at an ever increasing rate, and the dramatic increase in symptoms of depression, suicide, and school violence is a direct result.

No one should be prescribed these types of drugs without adequate testing for a CYP450 deficiency, in order to determine their risk potential for adverse reactions. The test is not “standard of care” so one has to ask for it; but beware, they will still recommend an alternative drug if the original one cannot be easily metabolized. Better yet, stop prescribing all psychiatric drugs and find out with proper medical, clinical tests what the real problems are and treat those. Full informed consent is always indicated.

Any psychiatrist or pharmaceutical company that has knowingly withheld evidence about the relationship between CYP450 enzymes and drug side effects should be subject to both prosecution and litigation.

Medical students should be educated about these relationships.

For more information click on any of the links in this newsletter.

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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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