Posts Tagged ‘Informed Consent’

Electroshock’s Serious Risks, Ineffectiveness Not Adequately Disclosed to Patients, Audit of Information Pamphlets Finds

Monday, August 14th, 2023

Patients are not given enough information about the drawbacks of electroshock to give true informed consent for the procedure, researcher says.

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, August 3, 2023 — While a million people – mostly women and the elderly, but even young children – receive electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or “electroshock”) each year, patients are not being given enough information about the serious risks and lack of effectiveness of the procedure to give true informed consent to receive it, according to professor of psychology John Read, Ph.D.

Writing in Psychology Today, Read reports on three audits of patient information leaflets about ECT in the U.K., which he conducted with colleagues over the past two years. They found that pertinent information about risks were omitted, such as the cardiovascular risks, the risk of death, the lack of evidence of long-term benefits, and the fact that it is not known how ECT is supposed to work. There is not even proof of any brain dysfunctions that ECT, by running strong electrical currents through brain tissue, could correct.

In some information pamphlets, the risk of memory loss was minimized, or effectiveness was asserted without mentioning that similar rates of recovery were achieved by people receiving sham (placebo) treatment.

“The minimisation of risks is not uncommon in ECT practice and research,” writes Read.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), electroshock can cause brain damage, cognitive impairment, permanent memory loss, prolonged or persistent seizures, worsening psychiatric symptoms, cardiovascular complications (including heart attacks), breathing complications and death.

Even psychiatrist Max Fink, considered “the grandfather of American ECT,” admitted that “the principal complications of ECT are death, brain damage, memory impairment and spontaneous seizures.”

ECT shoots up to 460 volts of electricity through brain tissue to induce a grand mal seizure that can last up to 30 minutes. A grand mal seizure is the most serious type of seizure, the kind usually caused by epilepsy. Emergency room doctors treat a grand mal seizure as a medical emergency. Psychiatrists performing the procedure call it “therapy.”

Read disputes any claim that electroshock is “highly effective,” writing that no proof of that exists.

“There have…been no placebo-controlled studies of ECT for depression since 1985, and all 11 studies prior to that date were very small, severely flawed and conducted on adults,” he pointed out in previous commentary, published in Brain and Behavior. “There have been no placebo-controlled studies on children or adolescents.” Despite that fact, statistics on electroshock usage in the U.S. for 2019 reveals ECT was administered to children 5 years of age or younger in at least four of 27 states reporting ECT use to Medicaid.

What’s more, there is no lasting benefit  to patients after a course of electroshock. “No studies have found any evidence that ECT is better than placebo beyond the end of treatment,” Read wrote for the MadInAmerica website.

Even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires ECT machines to have signs next to them stating, “The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment has not been demonstrated,” Read observed.

Read reports he was recently an expert witness in a trial in which the jury found that Somatics, a manufacturer of machines for administering ECT, failed to adequately warn about the risks associated with its device. In settling a prior lawsuit, the company had already added the risk of “permanent memory loss and brain damage” to the list of adverse effects it is disclosing about its machine.

The failure of the ECT to reduce the risk of death by suicide is the finding of other recent research. One study found that the odds of patients committing suicide in the year after receiving ECT were not statistically different from the odds of those who did not receive it.

Another study revealed that patients are 44 times more likely to die from suicide in the two years following ECT treatment than those who did not get the procedure and twice as likely to die from any cause.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) advocates a total ban on ECT and continues to raise public awareness about the brain damage it causes. More than 133,000 people have signed the CCHR online petition to ban ECT.

CCHR recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental or behavioral symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed as a psychiatric disorder and incorrectly treated.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

Primary Care Doctors Advised Not to Prescribe Antidepressants to Patients on First Visit for Mild to Moderate Depression

Monday, June 5th, 2023

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, May 25, 2023 — Researchers are advising primary care doctors not to prescribe antidepressants to patients with mild to moderate depression on their first visit because of the drugs’ limited effectiveness and risks of significant side effects. Their conclusion, based on reviews of the available evidence on antidepressants, was published in World Psychiatry, the journal of the World Psychiatric Association.

Noting that most depressed patients in primary care settings have mild to moderate depression, the researchers cite recent research that found the benefit of antidepressants for such patients is so small that it may not be clinically significant. Instead, the researchers suggest non-drug approaches for these patients.

“Antidepressants should not be prescribed at the first visit if the patient has mild to moderate depression, because they have a limited efficacy and may have significant side effects,” according to lead author Bruce Arroll, professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Even for a first visit to primary care by severely depressed patients, antidepressants may not be the best treatment, the researchers say. “The best strategy may be to reframe some of the negative cognitions of the patients and advise physical activity,” writes Arroll, with follow-up to track the patients’ results.

This advice is similar to guidance issued in 2021 by the organization that develops standards for health care practices in England. The London-based National Institute for Health and Care Excellence advised doctors not to routinely prescribe antidepressants as first-line treatment for people with less severe depression, but to offer a variety of non-drug treatment options and to respect the patients’ right to decline treatment.

Recent studies have found little, if any, benefit to antidepressants over placebos. Researchers led by Marc B. Stone of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research combined the results of 232 randomized controlled trials reported to the FDA from 1979 to 2016 that compared the effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants with placebos for patients with depression. Publishing their report in 2022 in the British Medical Journal, the researchers found that a benefit from antidepressants over placebos was limited to just 15% of the patients, while the other 85% experienced no benefit as compared to placebos. The placebo effect was powerful, with roughly two-thirds of the depressed patients given placebos getting better.

Another 2022 study found no clinically significant difference in measures of depression symptoms between adults treated with antidepressants and those taking placebos, whether over a shorter or longer time frame and regardless of the depression severity of the study participants.

Some 45 million Americans are currently taking one or more antidepressants, including 5.7 million children and young adults under the age of 25, for whom the FDA requires a warning on the drug’s prescribing information of the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions.

Other adverse effects of antidepressants include weight gain, nausea, insomnia, agitation, emotional blunting and sexual dysfunction. One recent study found that half of antidepressant users experience sexual problems that can strain their relationships and lead to a worsening of their depression.  In a survey of antidepressant users, 44% of respondents reported the drugs negatively impacted their sex lives, 27% their ability to work or study, and 21% their relationships with friends or family.

Those who used antidepressants any time during the 30-year period of another recent study had an 81% greater chance of having more severe depression symptoms at the end of the study.

Antidepressants may be prescribed to prevent suicides, but an examination of coroner inquests in which the decedents used antidepressants revealed that about half of the deaths were determined to be suicides.  One in eight of the deaths involved an overdose of antidepressants.

Discontinuing antidepressants can bring on serious symptoms during withdrawal, including electric shock-like sensations (“brain zaps” and “body zaps”), muscle spasms and tremors, hallucinations, confusion, irritability, and mania. One study found that more than half (56%) of people attempting to come off antidepressants experience withdrawal symptoms, with nearly half (46%) of them describing those symptoms as severe, and the symptoms can last for weeks or months.

More fundamentally, a landmark 2022 study questioned the prescribing of antidepressants at all, after finding the common reason for taking them – to correct a chemical imbalance in the brain – had no scientific basis. The study investigated whether evidence supported the theory that a low level of the brain chemical serotonin causes depression.

“The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression,” the researchers wrote. “Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.”

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and behavioral symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

1701 20th St. NW

Washington, DC 20009

(202) 349-9267

Mental Health Rights Policy To Prevent Patient Torture

Monday, January 31st, 2022

The word “compulsory” and the practice of coercion must be removed from any mental health policy. Effective mental healing should improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society, by restoring individuals to personal strength, ability, competence, responsibility, and spiritual wellbeing.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health industry watchdog, launched a policy for governments to adopt to prevent abuse and coercive psychiatric practices that constitute torture. This is based on reports and guidelines issued by the World Health Organization (WHO—guidance on community mental health services) and United Nations representatives for health and against torture. In 2020, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture presented a report on “psychological torture” to the UN Human Rights Council, with the strongest condemnation to date of involuntary psychiatric interventions.

Currently, New Zealand is in the process of transforming its mental health law away from coercive and compulsory incarceration and treatment and towards a human rights approach—something CCHR says is urgently needed throughout the United States and worldwide. Recently in the U.S., the mental health system has been rocked with allegations of staff physical, sexual and chemical assaults of patients, especially children and teens in for-profit behavioral facilities, including restraint use leading to death. In 2021, fourteen staff from behavioral hospitals faced criminal proceedings over patient abuse and deaths.

Yet, U.S. psychiatrists have called for the power to increase their rights to involuntarily detain and treat patients, based on the arbitrary argument that persons are a danger to themselves or others. Such arguments fly in the face of the March 2020 UN Special Rapporteur on Torture report on “psychological torture” presented to the UN Human Rights Council, berating involuntary psychiatric interventions based on the supposed “best interests” of a person or on “medical necessity.” Such interventions, the report says, “generally involve highly discriminatory and coercive attempts at controlling or ‘correcting’ the victim’s personality, behavior or choices and almost always inflict severe pain or suffering…such practices may well amount to torture.”

WHO states that forced treatment is not proven to prevent violent practices yet are relied upon “despite the lack of evidence that they offer any benefits, and the significant evidence that they lead to physical and psychological harm and even death.”

Psychiatrists and psychologists are unable to predict whether a person is a danger to oneself or others as this relies upon subjective opinion, not science. “Violence is not a diagnosis nor is it a disease. Potential to do harm is not a symptom or a sign of mental illness,” and cannot be scientifically assessed.

Recommendations

  • Prohibition of all ElectroConvulsive Therapy (ECT) and psychosurgery, with criminal penalties to those administering these in violation of the law.
  • Informed Consent must be obtained with all major treatment risks documented in writing; the person informed that there are diverse opinions and disagreements about the medical legitimacy of psychiatric diagnoses which cannot be determined with physical-medical tests; the patient has the right to refuse treatment and revoke consent at any time, as well has the right to all available alternatives.
  • Abolish mechanical and chemical restraints, with criminal penalties if used and resulting in harm or death of the patient.
  • Proper medical testing to be conducted as part of the patient assessment, ruling out underlying and undiagnosed physical conditions that may manifest in “psychiatric” symptoms.
  • Facilities established to safely withdraw patients from psychotropic drugs.
Forced Psychiatry is Legislated Violence

Mental Health vs Mental Illness

Monday, August 23rd, 2021

We’ve heard a lot recently about Mental Health. The Olympics have brought to light the stresses of competition, grueling routines and being under constant public pressure and expectations to win—and carping criticism from spectators if the athlete fails to meet those expectations. It stands to reason that having a solid mental health outlook is a vital part of such challenges. And that it can falter.

We applaud all the athletes for not just their dedication and courage but also their service to sport and their respective countries.

While CCHR exposes psychiatric abuse, ultimately this is so that people can achieve true mental health—a positive outlook both emotionally and in thoughts and actions that enables a better life, not hampered by physically damaging “treatments.”

“Mental health,” as viewed in the psychiatric industry is seen as mental “illness:” using descriptive names based on biased observation to redefine not doing well mentally as a physical disease—with not a single medical test to confirm this. This often leads to the use of physically damaging treatments, but no cures. It is important to differentiate between psychiatry’s definition of “mental disorder” and what is mental health, and not confuse the two.

Rest assured, psychiatrists and psychologists will abuse the current mental health awareness to slip in the need for biochemical “solutions.” Like a Johns Hopkins university psychologist who claims a “really well-structured psychedelic” drug session is “equal to several years of ordinary psychotherapy.”

CCHR has always warned that psychiatry’s power rests on force and that true informed consent does not exist in the mental health system when it fails to inform those needing help that a mental disorder diagnosis is not based on scientific tests and that drugs and electroshock given in the absence of fully informed consent constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Recent United Nations and World Health Organization (WHO) reports agree—vindicating what CCHR has been fighting for for over 50 years!

The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) issued a statement acknowledging the international outrage over psychiatric coercion and called for alternatives to psych drugs and restraint use.

A former United Nations Special Rapporteur on health, Dr. Dainius P?ras, recently was interviewed for Psychiatric Times in the U.S. and condemned coercive psychiatry. He said that psych diagnoses perpetuate discrimination; biological psychiatry hasn’t worked and equated it with “totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.” He called for the “elimination of all forced psychiatric confinement and treatment.”

Relevant to the recent awareness about mental health, Dr. P?ras also said: “There is now unequivocal evidence of the failures of a system that relies too heavily on the biomedical model,” including psychotropic drugs.

Then the WHO issued a new guideline for mental health treatment in July, attacking “coercive psychiatry” as “pervasive” and that it must change. It supported a ban on “forced hospitalization and forced treatment,” including drugs and electroshock.

It is important for people to know the differences between mental health and psychiatric “disease,” and to be informed of the failures of this profession in ensuring mental health is achieved as opposed to creating mental ill-health.

Failed Mental Health Programs

A new major resource from CCHR International answers questions about why is psychiatry so controversial? Why do critics think psychiatry creates unhappiness, rather than curing it? How is it that psychiatric treatment causes harm? Why is that other doctors don’t think psychiatrists are “real doctors”? Why are psychiatrists their own worst enemies, while blaming their failures on both their patients and an “anti-psychiatry” movement that they, in fact, started?

Download and read this new publication, “Why Psychiatry Sees Itself as a Dying Industry  A Resource on its Failures and Critics.”

Support CCHR

Your support in helping CCHR would mean a great deal. Your help, as always, is an integral part of our success in raising awareness and being able to deliver the facts. Please donate to support the cause.

Volunteer help is also appreciated.

Cap It Off With Caplyta

Monday, September 21st, 2020

Emerging from a cloud of regulatory questions and mixed clinical results, Caplyta (generic lumateperone) an atypical antipsychotic from Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. was given FDA approval 20 December 2019, and is now being heavily marketed. There are over a dozen of these second-generation antipsychotics, with varying activity at the brain receptors for various neurotransmitters.

It is hardly clear whether lumateperone has any advantages over other antipsychotic drugs. The primary reason for researching and releasing another atypical antipsychotic is to try to reduce the side effects, rather than to actually eliminate the symptoms, since no one really knows what causes these symptoms. The manipulation of neurotransmitters in the brain is just a guess, unfounded by any real understanding, just as the actual causes of so-called schizophrenia (psychiatry’s “For Profit Disease”) are not understood.

Side Effects of this dangerous drug include: stroke, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, tardive dyskinesia, diabetes, low white blood cell count, low blood pressure, falls, seizures, sleepiness, trouble concentrating, high temperature, difficulty swallowing, withdrawal symptoms in newborn babies exposed to Caplyta during the third trimester, pruritus (itchy skin), rash, urticaria (hives), increased mortality in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis.

Patients are urged to avoid Cytochrome P450 (CYP3A4) inducers or inhibitors, since these may exacerbate the adverse reactions, causing violence and suicide.

List Price: $44 per 42mg capsule, with a peak sales estimate of $60 million in 2020 and $400 million by 2024. There may be conditions for insurance approval; for example, UnitedHealthcare may require the failure, contraindication, or intolerance to three other atypical antipsychotics before giving approval to pay for the use of Caplyta.

The antipsychotic activity of Caplyta is thought to be mediated through a combination of antagonism of serotonin receptors and antagonism of dopamine receptors in the brain, however the actual mechanism of action of Caplyta in schizophrenia is unknown.

Clinical trial results were measured by the opinion of a clinician observing or asking the patient about their feelings. The results require cautious interpretation and could represent chance findings. One phase III trial showed some symptomatic improvement and another phase III trial failed to show any improvement over placebo.

Obviously use this drug at your own serious risk, and insist on Full Informed Consent.

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.

It is vital that patients 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.

Paxil, the Antidepressant from Hell

Monday, March 2nd, 2020
New research using a novel approach to test for harmful drug side effects is showing that the common antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil, Seroxat) interferes with the growth of brain synapses (connection points between neurons), and thus can cause developmental neurotoxicity — which means that it harms children’s developing brains.

Prior to this research the authors believe there were no studies that explored the consequences of long-term exposure of the developing brain to SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors).

As a result of this research the authors basically believe that paroxetine should not be given to pregnant women given the potential for damage to the developing brain of a fetus.

We think such damage extends far beyond the period of pregnancy, and this psychiatric drug should not be given to any child or adult.

Of course, such psychiatric drugs can only be prescribed after a diagnosis of some mental disorder. Unlike diagnoses for real medical conditions, psychiatrists do not have blood tests or any other clinical tests to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness — the diagnosis is purely an opinion. Thus, such diagnoses are fraudulent and abusive.

Anyone diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder has the right to full informed consent before any treatment is undertaken.

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

Safe and effective medical treatments for mental difficulties are often kept buried. The fact is, there are many medical conditions that when undetected and untreated can appear as “psychiatric symptoms.” The psychiatric pharmaceutical industry is making a killing — $84 billion per year — based on people being labeled with mental disorders that are not founded on science or medicine, but on marketing campaigns designed to sell drugs.

Because the general public has been so misled by the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries about the actual dangers of psychotropic drugs, CCHR has created the psychiatric drug side effects search engine.

We already know that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that antidepressants such as paroxetine can cause suicidal thinking and behavior in children and young adults. Overall the problems and risks associated with paroxetine appear to make it the least safe of all SSRIs.

This new research suggests it is even more harmful than originally thought. Contact your Federal and State Legislators and tell them what you think about this, and ask them to take steps to abolish government funding for psychiatric drugs.
Drug causes suicidal thoughts.

The psychiatric Rush to Market

Monday, February 17th, 2020
Psychiatry has always given the impression that cures were the rule, rather than the exception. However, the psychiatric industry itself admits it has no capacity to cure.

Psychotropic drugging is big business — a high-income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion industry in psychotropic drugs.

Psychiatrists tell us that the way to fix unwanted behavior is by altering brain chemistry with a pill. But unlike a mainstream medical drug like insulin, psychotropic medications have no measurable target illness to correct, and can upset the very delicate balance of chemical processes the body needs to run smoothly. Nevertheless, psychiatrists and drug companies have used these drugs to create a huge and lucrative market niche. And they’ve done this by naming more and more unwanted behaviors as “medical disorders” requiring psychiatric medication.

Thus there is a continuing need to find or create new patients to which to market new drugs, and a continuing rush to market for the latest drugs regardless of their harmful side effects.

The Risk of Side Effects

In a study of 68,730 individuals it was found that psychotropic drugs (SSRIs, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines) are independently associated with a significantly increased risk of hip fractures and other major osteoporotic fractures.

Lead author Dr. James Bolton at the University of Manitoba says, “So physicians need to think about fracture risk as they are prescribing these medications, especially in patients who are vulnerable to fracture.”

Psychiatric Marketing Campaigns

Almost a third of drugs cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration pose safety risks that are identified only after their approval. Thus we say “rush to market”; you can find hidden drug marketing campaigns practically everywhere.

Many of these marketing campaigns come from industry?funded front groups operated by psychiatrists but posing as compassionate patient support groups. Of all these programs, one of the most successful is the benevolent?sounding mental health screening campaign; it uses broad?based psychiatric screening questionnaires to diagnose common life situations such as sadness, nervousness and occasional loneliness.

Currently running is the “suicide prevention” campaign. But statistics show that there is no teenage suicide epidemic; and participants in these programs are more likely to consider suicide a solution to a problem after the screening program than before the program.

With a long and well-documented history of failure, psychiatrists and their drugs are under attack by government safety warnings, legislation, and tens of thousands of lawsuits.

Interestingly, underlying most psychiatric problems is an undiscovered and untreated physical illness. And when that is cured, so is the “mental problem.” But because of the powerful hold psychiatrists and drug companies exert over the rest of the medical field, this is rarely told to patients. To protect yourself and those you love, insist on a full and accurate consent: an accounting of all risks and benefits of the treatment recommended, of other treatments and of not doing anything at all.
Modern World

More About Psychiatric Drugs Causing Violence and Suicide

Monday, July 22nd, 2019

Reference:

Antidepressant-induced akathisia-related homicides associated with diminishing mutations in metabolizing genes of the CYP450 family
by Yolande Lucire and Christopher Crotty
Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine, 1 August 2011
[doi: 10.2147/PGPM.S17445]

This research paper details patients who had been referred to Dr. Lucire’s practice for expert opinion or treatment. More than 120 subjects were diagnosed with akathisia [a neurotoxic psychosis often characterized by a feeling of inner restlessness and inability to stay still] or serotonin toxicity [extremely high levels of serotonin causing toxic and potentially fatal effects] after taking psychiatric drugs that had been prescribed for psychosocial distress. Akathisia has been known to be associated with suicide since the 1950s and with homicide since 1985.

They were tested for variant alleles in cytochrome P450 (CYP450) genes, which play a major role in the metabolism of all antidepressant and many other drugs, indicating ultrarapid metabolism due to allele duplications. This seems to be strongly associated with a large number of deaths from intoxication and suicide. High or fast-changing levels of psychotropic substances can cause unpredictable toxicity leading to violent behavioral effects, including akathisia. [An allele is one of two or more alternative forms of a gene that arise by mutation and are found at the same place on a chromosome.]

Psychiatric drugs are metabolized in the liver by cytochrome P450 enzymes in order to be eliminated from the body. Abnormal CYP450 metabolism, either ultrarapid and/or diminished, can lead to the drug or its metabolites reaching a toxic level in hours or days, correlating with the onset of intense dysphoria [unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life] and akathisia. A person genetically deficient in these enzymes, or who has an ultrarapid drug metabolism, or who is taking other (legal or illegal) drugs that diminish CYP450 enzyme activity, is at risk of a toxic accumulation of the drug leading to more severe side effects.

Eight of these cases had committed homicide and many more became extremely violent or suicidal while on antidepressants. Ten representative case histories involving serious violence are presented in great detail in the paper. None of the ten subjects described had any history of mental illness; none had been violent before. All recovered from akathisia after stopping the medication without assistance or supervision and, frequently, against medical advice.

Akathisia suicides and homicides, particularly when they involved children, gave rise to the first antidepressant suicide advisories by the FDA in 2004.

Personal, medical, and legal problems can arise from using psychiatric drugs and experiencing the resulting toxicity from these metabolic effects. The results presented in this paper demonstrate the grave extent to which the psychiatric industry has expanded its influence beyond its ability to cure.

As the authors state, “In all of the cases presented here, the subjects were prescribed antidepressants that failed to mitigate distress emerging from their predicaments, which encompassed psychosocial stressors such as bereavement, marital and relationship difficulties, and work-related stress. Every subject’s emotional reaction worsened while their prescribing physicians continued the “trial and error” approach, increasing from standard to higher dose and/or switching to other antidepressants, with disastrous consequences. In some cases the violence ensued from changes occasioned by withdrawal and polypharmacy. In all of these cases, the subjects were put into a state of drug-induced toxicity manifesting as akathisia, which resolved only upon discontinuation of the antidepressant drugs.”

“It is the authors’ contention that prescribing antidepressants without knowing about CYP450 genotypes is like giving blood transfusions without matching for ABO groups [the classification of human blood].”

In general, the psychiatric industry pushes psychotropic drugs without regard to these CYP450 cautions, but this is the direct result of the unscientific psychiatric diagnoses perpetrated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) which fraudulently justifies prescribing these harmful drugs for profit in the first place.

Recommendations

1. Practice Full Informed Consent by asking your doctor for information about possible side effects and benefits, ways to treat side effects, and risks of other conditions, as well as information about alternative treatments.

2. If your doctor diagnoses a mental disorder and prescribes a psychiatric drug, ask to see the clinical lab tests proving the diagnosis. (There won’t be any.)

3. All treatment options should include checking for real underlying medical conditions that could cause a patient’s mental or emotional duress.

4. Write your state and federal legislators to establish rights for patients and their insurance companies to receive refunds for mental health treatment which did not achieve the promised result or improvement, or which resulted in proven harm to the individual, thereby ensuring that responsibility lies with the individual practitioner and psychiatric facility rather than the government or its agencies.

5. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), psychiatry’s billing manual for mental disorders, is the key to false escalating mental illness statistics and psychiatric drug prescriptions and usage worldwide. Untold harm and colossal waste of mental health funds occur because of it. It is imperative that the DSM diagnostic system be abandoned before real mental health reform can occur.

6. Patients, doctors and insurance companies should report all instances of adverse side effects from psychiatric drugs to the FDA.

7. The pernicious influence of psychiatry has wreaked havoc throughout society, especially in hospitals, educational systems and prisons. Citizens groups and responsible government officials should work together to expose and abolish psychiatry’s hidden manipulation of society for profit.

Is It a Drug Allergy or a Side Effect?

Monday, March 4th, 2019

We noticed that most drug advertisements now say something like “Do not take this drug if you are allergic to it or any of its ingredients.” We wondered when this caveat started.

We have repeatedly warned about the side effects of psychiatric drugs, also called adverse reactions. Side effects are the body’s natural response to having a chemical disrupt its normal functioning. One could also say that there are no drug side effects, these adverse reactions are actually the drug’s real effects; some of these effects just happen to be unwanted.

So we were curious about how warnings of drug side effects have apparently morphed into warnings about being allergic to drugs. Was this another example of the psycho-pharmaceutical industry redefining terms to downplay the adverse reactions?

Well, what is an allergy? Allergies occur when the immune system overreacts to a foreign substance by producing antibodies which identify the substance as harmful. The word itself comes from German allergie, from Greek allos “other” + Greek ergon “work” or “action”.

We often think of an allergic reaction as from something environmental, such as inhaling pollen, which causes the immune system to reject the substance.

The experts say that the difference between an allergy and a side effect is that an allergy generally results from the immune system rejecting the substance, and a non-allergic side effect is a predictable result from some particular chemical or biological property of the substance not involving the immune system.

We get the difference, but we still see the psycho-pharmaceutical industry starting to emphasize allergic reactions over side effects in their public relations campaigns, even though allergic reactions are rare compared to side effects, reported as less than 10% of the cases.

The implication seems to be that an allergic reaction is not the drug’s fault, it’s the body’s reaction, whereas a side effect is caused by the drug. We think the distinction is moot, but is being used to downplay drug side effects and transfer the attention and blame off the drugs.

One reference says this about it: “A drug allergy occurs when your immune system mistakenly identifies a drug as a harmful substance.” Aha, a deliberate attempt to cast drugs as non-harmful.

The literature shows discussions about the difference between allergy and side effect over many years, but it’s only recently that we’ve noticed the emphasis in advertisements on allergy instead of side effect.

There are also some genetic effects that confuse the issue. An adverse reaction can also be a reaction to drugs or toxins which cannot be metabolized due to a genetic lack of cytochrome P450 enzymes.

We also remind people that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases” so that they can prescribe drugs. 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.

We do suggest that people review the potential known side effects of any prescribed drugs; this is one of the cardinal precepts of Full Informed Consent.

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.