Posts Tagged ‘FDA’

What is Myfembree and Why Should I Care?

Monday, December 19th, 2022

We are going to discuss a non-psychiatric prescription drug because its use can have a psychiatric side effect.

Myfembree is a combination of three separate hormone-affecting drugs. It is prescribed to reduce heavy menstrual bleeding due to uterine fibroids in premenopausal women, or for management of moderate to severe pain associated with endometriosis.

Its list price (without insurance coverage) is over $1,000 per month, and it can have some rather severe side effects.

The most common side effects include uterine bleeding (for which the drug was supposed to reduce.) Serious side effects were reported in 3.1% of the patients during clinical trials, and about 4% of women in clinical trials stopped taking the drug because of the side effects.

Serious side effects include suicidal thoughts, attempts to commit suicide, new or worsening depression or anxiety, and other unusual changes in behavior or mood. The psychiatric connection here is that the manufacturer recommends that women experiencing these adverse side effects should be referred to a mental health professional instead of just stopping the drug.

Why are such dangerous drugs being allowed on the market? One reason might be that the side effects funnel more patients into the mental health system.

The drug industry now spends $22 billion a year marketing to doctors to increase prescriptions—an astonishing 90% of its marketing budget. In the United States, drug advertising on television accounts for fifty-five percent of the pharmaceutical industry’s Direct to Consumer advertising budget. So we have medical drugs generating enough mental side effects to drive consumers into the mental health system who are then prescribed psychiatric drugs with their own devastating side effects, creating patients for life.

If you think you or someone in your family has experienced a serious reaction to a drug, you should file a report with MedWatch, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program.

More About the ADHD Hoax

Monday, October 10th, 2022

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 fraudulent “disease”.

Sarah Durston, Professor of Developmental Disorders of the Brain at the University Medical Center Utrecht in Utrecht, Netherlands, spent 13 years (between 2003-2018) and over 2.5 million euros searching for the source of ADHD in the brain, and did not find it.

She concluded in a 2021 article about ADHD in Scientific American that, “Calling the condition a disorder falsely implies we know of a cause located in the brains of people diagnosed with it—and we don’t.” She says, “The most common psychiatric handbooks (DSM-5 and ICD-11) are clear on the status of their classifications: they are purely descriptive and are not based on underlying causes” and that “ADHD does not cause attention problems any more than low socioeconomic status causes poverty.”

Trying in vain to find a biological cause is not unique to ADHD; this deficiency exists for virtually all 541 disorders in DSM-5. The DSM says, “in the absence of clear biological markers or clinically useful measurements of severity for many mental disorders it has not been possible to completely separate normal and pathological.”

Moreover, the symptoms used to “diagnose” ADHD are typical of the side effects of central nervous system stimulants (such as methylphenidate [e.g. Ritalin, Concerta]) used to “treat” ADHD. This confusion is not so surprising because much ADHD research is done on children who are already taking stimulants.

All stimulants work by increasing levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. The body must strictly regulate dopamine levels since both an excess and a deficiency can be very problematic. Thus drugs which mess with dopamine play Russian Roulette with your brain.

Methylphenidate is often referred to as “amphetamine-like” or “cocaine-like.” It has hallucinogenic properties as well as being a stimulant. It binds to the same sites in the brain as cocaine, thus producing effects that are indistinguishable from cocaine; in fact, it is more potent than cocaine. For this reason it is also called “kiddie cocaine.”

Why do people who take amphetamine-like drugs such as methylphenidate say that their attention and concentration improves? One explanation is that this drug can cause psychosis, and compulsive-psychotic behavior may make the person less likely to be distracted by external stimuli. This is called “tunnel-focus”, and prompts the additional moniker of “chemical straightjacket.” Long-term use increases the likelihood of addiction and psychosis.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has this to say about methylphenidate: “There is neither specific evidence which clearly establishes the mechanism whereby Ritalin produces its mental and behavioral effects in children, nor conclusive evidence regarding how these effects relate to the condition of the central nervous system;” and “Treatment emergent psychotic or manic symptoms, e. g., hallucinations, delusional thinking, or mania in children and adolescents without a prior history of psychotic illness or mania can be caused by stimulants at usual doses.”

Furthermore, there is no evidence that stimulants result in any long-term improvement in either behavior or academic achievement.

The ADHD diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis is simply a list of behaviors that may appear unwanted, disruptive or inappropriate.

Meanwhile, a former nurse practitioner who ran psychiatric clinics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, admitted October 4, 2022 to writing illegal Adderall prescriptions while suspended for other drug charges. He continued to prescribe Adderall despite his suspension and submitted claims to Medicare for office visits under a co-worker’s license. Adderall is another habit-forming stimulant amphetamine drug prescribed for ADHD.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a child or adult exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist calls ADHD can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled with so-called ADHD 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.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, inattention, 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 diagnosis, drugs and other psychiatric treatments are not workable.

Reference
The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry by C.F. van der Horst (Per Veritatem Vis Foundation, 2022)

The Hoax of Antidepressants

Monday, July 4th, 2022

Over time, using antidepressants is not associated with significantly better health-related quality of life (HRQoL), compared to people with depression who do not take the drugs.

These are the findings of a study published April 20, 2022 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The study included all noninstitutionalized U.S. adults (?18 years) who had depression documented in their medical condition files during the first year of the two-year follow-up. Over the duration of the study (2005–2016), on average there were 17.47 million adult patients diagnosed with depression disorder every year with two-year follow up. About 57.6% of these patients received treatment with antidepressant drugs.

The researchers recommend that “Physicians, mainly primary care providers who are caring for most of these patients, may need to reconsider referring patients with depression to receive some kind of non-pharmacological therapy.”

The research study concludes with this quote:
“The ultimate goal of using antidepressant medications or psychotherapy is to improve patients’ important outcomes, such as HRQoL. The real-world effect of using antidepressant medications does not continue to improve patients’ HRQoL over time, as the change in HRQoL was comparable to patients who did not use any antidepressant medications.”

This is not even to mention the potentially horrific side effects of antidepressant use. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has this to say about antidepressant side effects: “Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children and adolescents with MDD [major depressive disorder] and other psychiatric disorders.”

Recognize that 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.

If you are taking any of these drugs, do not stop taking them based on what you read here. You could suffer serious withdrawal symptoms. Click here for more information about harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.

Psychiatrists euphemistically call withdrawal side effects “discontinuation symptoms” to disguise the addictive nature of these drugs.

You should seek the advice and help of a competent non-psychiatric medical doctor or practitioner before trying to come off any psychiatric drug.

Contact your local, state and federal officials and let them know your viewpoints about harmful psychiatric treatments.

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.

As Nation Reels From Mass Violence, CCHR Calls For Mandatory Toxicology Tests

Monday, June 6th, 2022

Mental health watchdog joins others in wanting answers to what drives individuals to commit horrific, senseless acts of violence; toxicology tests should be part of every investigation into such acts.

By CCHR International 

[References are provided in the CCHR INT publication.]

The Mental Health Industry Watchdog

May 30, 2022

As the country reels in the wake of another tragic shooting, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International joins in sending condolences to the families of lost children and teachers. And, like many others, it questions what could have triggered the mindset of the alleged killer, an issue that needs responding to if we are to truly face preventing more tragedies like this and provide grieving families and the nation with answers.

Media quote experts saying that such individuals are “mentally disturbed,” or have “untreated mental illness,” but that doesn’t explain the level of violence we are seeing or what drives a person to pull a trigger. At the very minimum, CCHR says, mandatory toxicology tests should be required in each deadly incident to determine any prescription or illicit drug use, especially as today, most psychotropic drugs can be purchased from rogue online pharmacies, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Students abuse prescription drugs, with some 2.8 million teen students engaging in illicit drug use. Estimates are that up to 20% of college students abuse prescription stimulants alone.

A review of scientific literature published in Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry regarding the “astonishing rate” of mental illness over the past 50 years revealed that it’s not “mental illness” linked to increased acts of violence, but, rather, the psychiatric drugs prescribed to treat it.

“There is no evidence the shooter is mentally ill, just angry and hateful,” said Lori Post, director of the Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics at the Northwestern University School of Medicine. “While it is understandable that most people cannot fathom slaughtering small children and want to attribute it to mental health, it is very rare for a mass shooter to have a diagnosed mental health condition.”

One thing is for sure, the country’s mental health system has been an abject failure and investing more in it is not prevention but part of the problem. Listing 20 high profile mass killings since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, or 19 since 2007, including two mass shootings in May this year, in 85% of the cases (17 of 20) or 89% since 2007, there was a potential history of mental health services or current taking of, or withdrawal from, prescription psychotropic drugs involved. In only several of the cases was a toxicology report mentioned.

The FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System reports that at least 31 out of 484 medications are disproportionately associated with violence, which includes 25 psychotropic drugs. This includes eleven antidepressants, six sedative/hypnotics and three drugs for treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The specific cases of violence included: homicide, physical assaults, physical abuse, homicidal ideation, and cases described as violence-related symptoms.

Experts have consistently raised concerns about this:

“The irritability and impulsivity” from antidepressants, for example, “can make people suicidal or homicidal.” – Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen

“The link between antidepressants and violence, including suicide and homicide, is well established.” – Patrick D. Hahn, affiliate professor of biology at Loyola University Maryland

“Violence and other potentially criminal behavior caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret.” – Professor David Healy, leading psychopharmacology expert and professor of psychiatry in Wales 

In a study published in the British Medical Journal, in January 2016, Prof. Peter C. Gøtzsche and other researchers reported: “Perpetrators of school shootings and similar events have often been reported to be users of antidepressants….” Antidepressants, including the use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) and Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (SNRIs), put at risk the lives of individuals prescribed them. Reviewing numerous studies of five different antidepressants, they found there was a doubling of the risk for both aggressive behavior and suicidality for children and adolescents.

The use of psychotropic drugs in schools is so rife in the U.S. that in 2004, a Prohibition of Mandatory Medication Amendment was necessary when it was discovered that, astoundingly, parents were being threatened with criminal child abuse charges if they refused to put their school-aged child on a psychotropic drug as a requisite for their education, or took them off it.

It is the sudden change in behavior that prompts questions in potential drug-taking. Salvador Romas, responsible for the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas raises questions on why Ramos, experienced sudden behavior changes. Authorities have said Ramos had no known criminal or mental health history. But no toxicology test has been done to determine if he’d acquired or had taken any psychotropic substance—licit or illicit.

Ramos had been a student at Uvalde High School but he dropped out of school and was not on track to graduate this year.  It is unclear what social services he may have undergone given the number of police visits to his home.  He apparently had a history of being “the nicest kid, the shyest kid,” according to a friend, but was bullied for stuttering. “He would get bullied hard, like bullied by a lot of people,” a school friend, Mr. Stephen Garcia said. “Over social media, over gaming, over everything.”

His behavior had apparently recently begun to deteriorate, with him admitting to cutting his face with a knife over and over for fun. About a year ago, Ramos posted on social media photos of automatic rifles he would have on his wish list. The teen had hinted on social media that an attack could be coming, one state senator told reporters. “He suggested the kids should watch out,” a lawmaker said.

In the wake of the Sante Fe High School shooting in 2018 that left eight students and two teachers dead, the Texas Senate approved a school safety bill to prevent another such tragedy from happening. It established threat assessment teams to help implement safe ways to identify dangerous students. Every Texas district is required to have a behavioral threat assessment team tasked with preventing horrific acts like the Uvalde shooting at local schools. Of the 1,022 total districts – 80% (818) reported their board of trustees established a team. Of the 818 districts that reported establishing a behavioral threat assessment team, over 90% reported members appointed to their behavioral threat assessment team and were expert in behavior management (793), special education (n = 790), counseling (n = 783), and mental health/substance use (n = 746).

Unfortunately, like mental health services, behavioral threat assessment is not based on science, but mostly conjecture and such an inexact “science” means prediction can be futile. In the sample of 20 cases cited here, it was unclear how many may have been involved in social media well in advance of the act of mass violence. One “Big Brother” program in the U.S. scans billions of social media posts for indications of harm and violence, and relays messages in near-real time to safety and security professionals. It uses a software program that can examine language written on posts. It reaps the company up to $5 million a year in revenue.

Even an article on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Psychiatry Online pointed out that “Computer-generated recommendations may carry a false authority that would override expert human judgment” and “raises false hopes that machines will explain the mysteries of mental health and mental illness.” However, the real point is that psychiatry and psychology’s ability to diagnose any mental disorder is not based on science but on arbitrary whims that AI can only exacerbate this.

The use of AI and acceptance of AI and Applications (Apps) in mental health could contribute to the problem. AI is now marketed as a means to “prevent” or quickly identify the “growing” numbers of people, including children and youths, said to be mentally ill. Add to this, surging digitalization and growing smartphone & internet use increase the use of mental health apps. Peter Foltz, a research professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science stated: “Language is a critical pathway to detecting patient mental states,” says Foltz. “Using mobile devices and AI, we are able to track patients daily and monitor these subtle changes.”

AI identifies and diagnoses from speech patterns of young children and says it can monitor everything from their googling, texting, Facebook use and Twitter. One system asserts it can detect cyber-bullying, self-harm and grief sentiments in students’ emails and in Google/OneDrive. There is no standardized process for evaluating the validity of such research.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” said Ann Cavoukian, the distinguished expert-in-residence leading the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence at Ryerson University in Toronto. “I say that as a psychologist. The feeling of constantly being watched or monitored is the last thing you want.”

No amount of money expended on mental health services could have prevented what occurred in Texas. In 2021, Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) received more than $210 million in federal emergency grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for mental health and substance use disorder services. For the 2022 fiscal year, Texas Community Mental Health Grant programs saw increased funding of $2,910,409. For the same budget period, federal funding increased by $41,103,876. The 2022-23 budget has a projected $8.1 billion for mental health services.

Mental health screening and surveys in schools have notoriously been criticized for lack of science and validity. The late Karen Effrem, M.D., a renowned pediatrician and researcher, found that increased screening results in “the increased psychiatric drugging of children and adolescents,” with significant evidence of “harmful, if not fatal side effects, including suicide, violence, psychosis, hallucinations, diabetes, and movement disorders.”

Drug proponents argue that there are many shootings and acts of violence that have not been correlated to psychiatric drugs, but that is exactly the point. It has neither been confirmed nor refuted, as law enforcement is not required to investigate or report on prescribed drugs linked to violence, and media rarely pose the question. This is one reason why compulsory toxicology testing should occur and record of any drugs found added to all databases on acts of mass violence.

Read CCHR’s comprehensive report, Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide.

Is That Adderall There Is?

Monday, May 9th, 2022

The Wall Street Journal (April 28, 2022) wrote “Some of the nation’s largest pharmacies have blocked or delayed prescriptions over the last year from clinicians working for telehealth startups that have sprung up to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder,” over concerns that too many prescriptions are being written for Adderall and other stimulants and benzodiazepines, suggesting that the drugs are being abused or being fraudulently prescribed from a 30-minute telephone or online interview. Adderall is classified as a Schedule II controlled substance due to its potential for abuse.

Adderall is a psychostimulant of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine that has been linked to suicide and violent behavior and can be habit-forming. The FDA requires stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall to carry a boxed warning that states the drug is “a federally controlled substance because it can be abused or lead to dependence.”

Approximately 15 million Americans are getting high on prescription drugs, painkillers and psychiatric drugs such as Xanax and the stimulants Ritalin and Adderall. A growing number of teens and young adults are overdosing on the abuse of these “mental health” drugs.

Adderall and other psychostimulants generally increase dopamine levels in the brain by a variety of mechanisms. The body must strictly regulate dopamine levels since both an excess and a deficiency can be problematic. Thus drugs which mess with dopamine are playing Russian Roulette with your brain.

Psychiatrists have known since the beginning of psychopharmacology that their drugs do not cure any disease. Further, there is no credible evidence that mental health is linked to dopamine transport; this is just a public relations theory 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. These drugs are fraudulently marketed as safe and effective for the sole purpose of earning billions for the psychiatric 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.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable. 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. Psychiatry is not workable.

Alien Mind Wipe

Tranquility or Agitation? There’s a drug for that!

Monday, April 25th, 2022

Agitation, as with many English words, has multiple definitions. Here are a few:
1. moving back and forth with an irregular, rapid, or violent action
2. a feeling of being restless
3. a state of excessive tension and irritability
4. a state of anxiety, emotional disturbance, worry, upset, or nervous excitement
[From Latin agitare, put into motion]

Agitation is a side effect of various psychotropic drugs, such as psychostimulants given to children for so-called ADHD; newer antidepressants such as SSRIs; antipsychotics often called major tranquilizers; anti-anxiety drugs often called minor tranquilizers.

So, pretty much all psychiatric drugs, often prescribed to reduce agitation, have a side effect of agitation. Counter-productive, wouldn’t you say?

The psychiatric billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), specifies some diagnoses related to agitation:

 — Restless legs syndrome
 — 54 individual diagnoses using the word “anxiety”
 — High expressed emotion level within family
 — Adjustment disorder, With mixed disturbance of emotions and conduct

Pretty much anybody, then, can be diagnosed with some form of agitation or anxiety and prescribed one or more psychiatric drugs which have the potential to exacerbate the agitation.

The Latest Agitation Drug

On April 6, 2022 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved BioXcel Therapeutics dexmedetomidine (Igalmi™) sublingual film for the acute treatment of agitation associated with schizophrenia or bipolar I or II disorder in adults.

Dexmedetomidine is a sedative whose safety and effectiveness cannot be established beyond 24 hours from the first dose, usually used to anesthetize a patient or animal before surgery. It inhibits the release of norepinephrine in the brain, stopping propagation of pain signals. They don’t really know how it “works” for agitation, other than the obvious fact that it knocks you out. It’s mostly eliminated from the body within hours. It’s metabolized in the liver by Cytochrome P450 (CYP450) enzymes, so the side effects can be exacerbated by abnormal CYP450 metabolism which can lead to a toxic level causing acute agitation.

The most common side effects (incidence ?5% and at least twice the rate of placebo) were sleepiness, burning or prickling sensations, oral numbness, dizziness, dry mouth, and low blood pressure.

Since it is self-administered by placing the film under the tongue, it’s used by an individual to knock themselves out when they are having an anxiety attack.

Psychiatrists promoting this “treatment” are ecstatic about it, since the patients can knock themselves out whenever they feel the need.

If you feel the need, please contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know what you think about this.

Nursing Home Psychiatric Abuse of the Elderly

Monday, December 13th, 2021

Almost 300,000 nursing home residents are given harmful antipsychotic drugs each week, even though most have no psychosis to justify it. In 2019 only about 2% had qualifying conditions for such drugs.

The FDA only approves antipsychotics for people who have serious mental diagnoses, such as so-called schizophrenia. The danger of these drugs to older adults can be profound. They come with black box warnings from the FDA, saying they can increase the risk of death in older people, especially those with dementia.

“The high rate of antipsychotics use across our nation’s nursing homes shows that many facilities continue to resort to the use of these potentially dangerous drugs as a chemical restraint — in lieu of proper staffing — which has the potential to harm hundreds of thousands of patients.”

The extensive off-label use of antipsychotics in nursing homes was found in one study to be associated with a 50% increased risk of experiencing a serious fall-related bone fracture.

Some evidence suggests that some nursing homes may be falsifying psychosis diagnoses to avoid citations for inappropriate antipsychotic prescriptions. In 2018 in Missouri, data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show there were 108 citations for unnecessary use of antipsychotics in skilled nursing facilities (SNF). This involved 20% of all SNFs in Missouri which received at least one citation; and this had been increasing for at least four years.

“It is reasonable to conclude that the overuse and misuse of antipsychotics is pervasive and continues to occur at unacceptably high rates.”

Such extensive abuse of the elderly is not the result of medical incompetence. The abuse 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.

Recommendation

Insist that any nursing home where an elderly person is to be admitted has a policy of respecting the resident’s wishes not to undergo any form of psychiatric treatment, including psychoactive drugs. Sign a “Psychiatric Living Will” to prepare for this and give a copy to the nursing home staff.

Chantix is in Trouble Again

Wednesday, September 29th, 2021

We’ve been regularly warning about the dangers of Chantix since 2009, and now it’s causing trouble again.

The FDA warned in 2009 that Chantix (generic Varenicline), a psychiatric drug made by Pfizer, can have serious side effects, namely suicide.

Chantix is a benzodiazepine-based anti-anxiety drug promoted for smoking cessation. Benzodiazepines are prescribed to treat anxiety, insomnia or panic attacks, typically for a few weeks to six months; an estimated 50% of patients take them for two months or longer. These drugs have significant risks, because they are highly addictive and can have severe side effects, including heart problems, violence and suicide.

However, in 2016 the FDA removed the Black Box warning, after heavy lobbying from Pfizer claiming that additional data showed that the benefits of Chantix outweighed its adverse side effects (oh, and since its sales had significantly dropped.)

But the adverse side effects did not go away; only the Black Box warning went away.

Chantix Recall

Now (9/17/2021), Pfizer has issued a voluntary recall for all lots of Chantix 0.5mg and 1mg tablets due to the presence of unacceptable N-nitroso-varenicline levels, a suspected cancer-causing agent.

If you smoke, you are susceptible to cancer. If you take anti-smoking drugs, you are susceptible to cancer. But what’s the real danger here?

Chantix was developed to specifically affect nicotinic receptors in the brain, under the unproven theory that this would reduce nicotine craving and block the rewarding effects of smoking. As we’ve warned before, messing with neurotransmitters in the brain is playing Russian Roulette with your mind.

The psychiatric industry considers that smoking cessation therapies are their territory, however this drug masks the real cause of problems in life and debilitates the individual, thus denying one the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future.

Recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems, apparently such as smoking, as a “mental illness”, and stigmatize this unwanted behavior as a “disease.” 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.

Antipsychotic Antics

Wednesday, September 15th, 2021

Paliperidone, sold under the trade name Invega among others, is an atypical antipsychotic. Paliperidone is the primary active metabolite of the older antipsychotic risperidone, although its specific mechanism of action with respect to any psychiatric diagnosis is unknown. It blocks the action of dopamine and serotonin in the brain, which as we’ve previously observed is playing Russian Roulette with the brain.

On September 1, 2021 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a 6-month injection form of the long-acting atypical antipsychotic paliperidone palmitate (Invega Hafyera, manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceuticals) for the treatment of what is fraudulently diagnosed as schizophrenia in adults.

Adverse reactions, or side effects, can include upper respiratory tract infection, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, seizures, high blood sugar, diabetes, decreased blood pressure, fainting, falls, low white blood cell count, headache, tachycardia, somnolence, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, cough, dystonia, akathisia, muscle rigidity, parkinsonism, weight gain, anxiety, indigestion, constipation, and an increased risk of death in elderly people with dementia-related psychosis.

It can be addictive and have acute withdrawal symptoms (euphemistically called “discontinuation syndrome”), including rapid relapse, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, restlessness, increased sweating, trouble sleeping, a feeling of the world spinning, numbness, muscle pains, tardive dyskinesia, and psychosis.

The primary reason for prescribing a drug that has only two doses per year is to handle the situation where a patient stops taking their daily prescribed drugs because of their unpleasant side effects.

Psychiatric Fraud

Psychiatrists remain committed to calling “schizophrenia” a mental disorder despite, after a century of research, the complete absence of objective proof that it exists as a physical brain abnormality.

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.

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.

Bear in mind that the drug “treatments” being prescribed are for “disorders” that are not physical illnesses—essentially, they are being prescribed for something that does not exist.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a child or adult 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 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.

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.