Posts Tagged ‘PTSD’

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PTSD Awareness Month

Monday, June 19th, 2023

Psychiatric Drugs Prescribed for PTSD Linked to Stubbornly High Rates of Veteran Suicides

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, June 8, 2023/ — During PTSD Awareness Month, attention turns to the aftermath of traumatic events, which have always been part of the human experience. But so-called post-traumatic stress disorder is being applied more broadly these days to a wide range of stressful events, turning them into psychiatric disorders for which the prescription is typically mind-altering psychotropic drugs – drugs which carry the risk of suicidal thoughts and actions. This risk is especially relevant to former service members, in light of the stubbornly high rates of veteran suicides.

The rate of suicides by former service members is a matter of some debate. The 2022 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), reported an average of 17 veteran suicides per day during 2020, the most recent year for which national death certificate data is available. The rate of veteran suicides per 100,000 population was 57% higher than the rate of non-veteran adult suicides.

The VA’s suicide rate per day has been challenged in a study underway by a veteran suicide prevention organization, America’s Warrior Partnership, which is using state mortality data gathered by the University of Alabama and analyzed at Duke University in coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). So far, five years of death data from eight states has been analyzed, with corrections made to the states’ data reporting. An interim report on the study says that if these eight states are representative of the rest of the nation, the veteran suicide rate would be at least 44 per day, which is 2.4 times higher than the VA’s reported rate.

Whatever the rate, it is completely unacceptable. The VA further reported that 40% of the suicides were committed by veterans who had used the VA health care system in the year prior to their death. This reflects a 43% increase in suicides by VA health services users since 2005.

What accounts for this continuing high number of suicides, especially among veterans who utilized VA health services?

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in 2021 by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), the Veterans Health Administration revealed that in 2019, 4.2 million veterans were taking psychiatric drugs, including antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, antianxiety drugs, and mood stabilizers. These drugs have the known side effects of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, and completed suicides – adverse events reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in drug studies and by consumers.

Of the 4.2 million former service members prescribed psychiatric drugs, 1.75 million (41%) of them were prescribed antidepressants, which is typical treatment for PTSD, as well as depression. The VA website’s information on PTSD lists antidepressants as the only medications for treatment.

The FDA has required a black box warning, its most stringent warning, on antidepressant labels to alert users to the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions in those under the age of 25, an age range that includes many of active service members and veterans who have taken their own lives.

CCHR has long advocated for the warning to be expanded to include all adults, based on empirical evidence. Researchers who conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials in which SSRI and SNRI antidepressants were given to healthy adult volunteers with no signs of depression found that antidepressants double the risk of suicidality and violence.

Another study re-analyzed data submitted to the FDA for approval of antidepressants and found that the rate of suicide attempts in drug trials was about 2.5 times higher in patients using antidepressants as compared to those taking placebos.

The prescriptions for psychiatric drugs for military personnel soared from 2005 to 2011, increasing sevenfold over the period, according to the DOD – more than 30 times the rate among the civilian population. Already by 2013, the Military Times reported that one in six American service members was taking at least one psychiatric drug. At the same time, military suicides were rising dramatically.

And the suicides continue. Brown University’s Costs of War Project reported that an estimated 30,177 active-duty service members and war veterans of the post 9/11 wars have died by suicide, more than four times as many as the 7,057 killed in military operations. “The suicide rate of veterans overall and adjusted for age and sex is 1.5 times that of the general population,” according to the report. “Moreover, the current suicide rate of 45.9 [per 100,000 population] among veterans [ages] 18-34 is about 2.5 times the suicide rate of that of the adjusted general population (18 per 100,000).”

To address the risks of psychiatric drugs as mental health treatment given to our active-duty military and veterans, CCHR produced its acclaimed documentary, Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda. It features interviews with more than 80 experts, soldiers, and veterans and presents evidence linking the rising number of psychiatric drug prescriptions with military suicides and sudden deaths.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights 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 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 emotional symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed as a psychiatric disorder and incorrectly treated.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of a 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 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

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People’s Resilience in Times of Disasters

Monday, June 29th, 2020

We must be witnessing a societal aberration something like “effective communication must be in person,” since so many people seem to experience anxiety from the social isolation imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

The psychiatric industry is heavily pushing the fraudulent idea that loneliness is a mental illness, in order to sell more drugs.

Loneliness is quite simply a lack of communication, not a lack of personal contact; and it is not a mental illness, as the psychiatric industry would have you believe. But we see daily reports all over the media from psychiatrists and psychiatric facilities claiming that loneliness and anxiety are mental illnesses needing anti-anxiety drugs. Such anxiety can be cured by more communication, which is basically free; drugs can only suppress anxiety, not cure it, but they provide massive profit for the mental health industry.

Reliable reports are showing that psychotropic drug prescriptions have significantly increased since the start of the pandemic lockdowns. Prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs rose 34.1% in February and March; and there were 86% more prescriptions for other psychiatric drugs, primarily  antidepressants. Evidently many people are being fooled by the psychiatric propaganda machine.

A tolerance to these highly addictive drugs can build up, leading to people taking higher dosages, and subsequent severe withdrawal effects when stopped. These drugs are not benign, they have serious adverse side effects.

The history of the mental health industry shows them using epidemics, Spanish Flu, Hong Kong Flu, and much more, to push for increased mental health treatment with commensurate increases in funding, but showing no effective results. Psychiatry and psychiatric drugs thrive under such conditions.

Psychotropic drugs Prozac and Luvox, known to cause violence and suicide, are now being tested to treat Covid-19. Two antipsychotics, Haldol and Thorazine are also being tested. Thorazine, known as a “chemical lobotomy,” has killed 100,000 Americans due to its toxic side effects. This practice of using existing drugs is called “repurposing,” using them for new indications and expanding their reach into new patient populations.

On May 8, the next stage of a clinical trial using LSD to treat adult “ADHD” was also announced. Repurposing psychotropic drugs during a global epidemic puts the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry back on track for greater profits.

There are already “mental health” apps for your smartphone using artificial intelligence algorithms to predict suicide risk. We can see in your future compulsory psychiatric treatment if these trends persist.

Resilience

One definition of resilience is “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties,” from the Latin word resiliens “rebounding”. In the most basic sense, resiliency has been defined as the ability to adapt and cope successfully despite threatening or challenging situations. Thus, competency in relevant areas is a strong supporter of resiliency.

CCHR’s research has found that people’s resilience in times of disasters such as pandemics, wars and terrorism, has often been the people’s best treatment, and that the sources of predictions about so-called “mental health epidemics” often have conflicts of interest with manufacturers of psychotropic drugs.

Psychiatry’s billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is ultimately an instrument for weakening human resilience, making people prey to entrepreneurs of human misery. Existing evidence indicates that prior psychiatric treatment is associated with increased (rather than decreased) rates of future suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

CCHR is fully aware of the country’s challenging times (with its own staff part of the stay-at-home restrictions) and how, generally at a societal level, this can impact mental and physical health. But psychiatric and other mental disorder groups making claims that high percentages of people will be anxious, depressed or have PTSD (based largely on surveys of a small number of people, and often with a Public Relations firm spin) is totally self-serving to rake in future profits with no cures.

Find out what the real crisis in mental health care is today. It isn’t the pandemic — it’s the lack of science and results within the mental health industry!

Anatomy of an Epidemic

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Neurodiversity – The Latest Psychiatric Disability Trend

Wednesday, October 31st, 2018

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

People With Disabilities

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

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

Neurodiversity

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

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

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

Psychiatry

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

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

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

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

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

Our Point

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

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

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

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

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Trauma Informed Therapy is the Newest Psych Buzzword

Monday, April 9th, 2018

“Trauma Informed Therapy is centered on the understanding of the emotional, neurological, psychological, social, and biological effects of trauma,” in the misleading idea that trauma experienced when young affects the mental well-being of individuals throughout life.

We call it misleading because while it is certainly true that trauma can affect one’s outlook on life, it is a mistake to think that this is a ripe field for psychiatric treatment just because psychiatrists and psychologists think there is no other treatment for it, when in fact the hardy resilience of children, and of adults, is often overlooked. Psychiatrists and psychologists think they have uncovered something new by focusing on the relationship between trauma and present-time adverse behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. The unfortunate aspect of this is that their “treatments” only make the matter worse.

Trauma focused therapy is a branch of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which as we’ve said before is a form of psychotherapy that attempts to modify dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts — by evaluating for the person, challenging the person’s behaviors, and getting the person to change those behaviors, often in combination with psychiatric drugs.

Trauma therapy is a direct result of the alarming spread of the fraudulent diagnosis of PTSD – so-called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Originally applied to soldiers suffering from battlefield exhaustion, PTSD has become blurred as a catch-all diagnosis for some 175 combinations of symptoms, becoming the label for identifying the impact of adverse events (trauma) on ordinary people. This means that normal responses to catastrophic events have often been interpreted as mental disorders, leading directly to calling “trauma” the new “black,” and spawning an entirely new opportunity to expand psychiatric “treatment” to a broader patient population.

Why is this bad?

Psychiatric trauma treatment at best is useless, and at worst highly destructive to victims seeking help. By medicalizing what is a non-medical condition and introducing harmful drugs as a therapy, victims have been denied effective treatment options.

There is no better example of tyranny over the minds of men than what is being given to children and adults in the name of “help” through behaviorist programs such as CBT and Trauma therapy. The entirety of these psychological and psychiatric programs are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve lives beyond the understanding and capability of everyone else in society.

The reality is that all these mental health programs are designed to control people towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of the person’s sanity and well-being. Do we really want to institutionalize mandatory psychiatric counseling and screening, which is where all this is heading?

Claiming that even normal behavior is a mental disorder and that drugs are the solution, psychiatrists and psychologists have insinuated themselves into positions of authority. If someone is exhibiting behavioral problems, there are many things that can be done besides the exclusive drug- and behavior modification-based options that are the backbone of mental health services today.

In fact, studies have indicated that many mental health consumers, that is people under the supposed care of some mental health provider, program or institution, have experienced traumatic, frightening, humiliating, or distressing events during their treatment or hospitalization. This is why CCHR encourages victims of psychiatric fraud or abuse to report these events.

Legal protections should be put in place to ensure that psychiatrists and psychologists are prohibited from violating the right of every person to exercise all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in other relevant instruments.

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The White House Taking Action on Veteran Suicides

Saturday, February 10th, 2018

Presidential Executive Order on Supporting Our Veterans During Their Transition From Uniformed Service to Civilian Life (January 9, 2018)

Relevant quotes from the Presidential Executive Order:

“It is the policy of the United States to support the health and well-being of uniformed service members and veterans. … our Government must improve mental healthcare and access to suicide prevention resources available to veterans … Veterans, in their first year of separation from uniformed service, experience suicide rates approximately two times higher than the overall veteran suicide rate. To help prevent these tragedies, all veterans should have seamless access to high-quality mental healthcare and suicide prevention resources as they transition, with an emphasis on the 1-year period following separation.”

Mr. Trump’s order makes a wide range of mental health services available to all veterans as they transition back to civilian society.

It sounds nice; it sounds appropriate; it sounds like everyone would support it. What’s the “but?”

But, in this society at this time, “mental health services” generally means psychotropic drugs. “Psychotropic” means “acting on the mind; affecting the mental state,” meaning that that the drugs change brain function and result in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness or behavior. They don’t actually fix anything, they just suppress both good and bad feelings.

There is another “but” — these drugs also have serious adverse side effects, and three of the most troubling of these are addiction, violence and suicide.

So the preferred “treatment” for veterans’ mental health and suicide are drugs which have suicide as a side effect. Which came first? The drugs, of course.

The psychiatric industry protests that they have many services available, not just drugs. Well, let’s see —

  1. They can talk about it, which they call “cognitive-behavioral therapy” — which is when a therapist evaluates for the patient and tells them what behaviors they need to change.
  2. They can cut out part of the brain with surgery; like you’re going to let them do that to you.
  3. They can shock the brain with high-voltage electricity; and if you believe that is going to help, we’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn we know you’ll be eager to buy; and once you’ve had a course of electroshock treatments you won’t remember we told you so.
  4. They can wire your vagus nerve, which controls such things as heart rate, to send short bursts of electricity directly into the brain. Uh-huh.
  5. They can wrap a huge magnet around your head, called transcranial magnetic stimulation, and zap the brain with induced electric currents. You might as well just shoot yourself. Whoops, many veterans are already doing that.
And then there are all the other efforts to prescribe “breakthrough” drugs, since the normal psychotropic ones are so damaging — drugs like marijuana, magic mushrooms, MDMA (Ecstasy), Ketamine, etc. Talk about desperation!

What are the alternatives? What can the White House and the Veterans Administration do that would actually be effective help for veterans? If enough people tell the White House and the VA about the horrors of psychiatric treatments and the availability of workable alternatives, they might start to listen. Can you call the White House and make a comment about this?

Contact the White House at https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ and/or leave your comments at 202-456-1111. Contact the various key White House personnel mentioned in the President’s Executive Order as well, but WH musical chairs may make it difficult to nail down their names and contact information. Last we knew, here are some of the names:

Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council- Andrew Bremberg
Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council – either Paul Winfree or Lance Leggitt
Healthcare Policy- Katy Talento
Secretary of Defense – Gen. James Mattis, USMC
Secretary of Homeland Security – Kirstjen Nielsen
Secretary of Veterans Affairs – Dr. David J. Shulkin

You can reference the CCHR STL blog here for more information.

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Holiday Stress

Sunday, December 24th, 2017

We see a lot of news articles cropping up warning about stress during holidays.

Elf On A Shelf

Personally, we think a lot of it is motivated by some marketer’s bright idea, no doubt under the guidance of an “expert” psychologist or psychiatrist, about how to drum up business for the mental health industry.

Of course, you know what an “expert” is? An “ex” is a has-been; and a “spurt” is a drip under pressure.

Sometimes the advice given is just common sense; but other times the advice is dangerous. Beware, judgment may be in short supply when under a lot of stress.

The Missouri Magazine thinks it is essential to let us know this holiday season how to manage stress. Its advice is mostly common sense.

Medical News Today wants us to manage stress, also, but they recommend you “seek help from a healthcare professional.” Naturally; the marketer in action.

One psychologist recommends you seek help from the American Psychological Association. Naturally.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services even has a full-color brochure on how to handle holiday stress. They recommend, surprise, that you call the Missouri Department of Mental Health’s Crisis Intervention line.

Oh, and then there’s all the “research” about holiday stress. The Mayo Clinic thinks women tend to get more stressed during the holiday season. We’re pretty sure that a comprehensive search will find that some scientist, somewhere has reached pretty much any conclusion you care to name about this condition.

We wrote a whole blog previously about stress, you can review it here.

The DSM-V has several entries for stress:
– Acute stress disorder
– Unspecified trauma- and stressor-related disorder
– Other specified trauma- and stressor-related disorder
– Posttraumatic stress disorder
We’re pretty sure you already know our opinion about the DSM.

There are even articles about “stress-free recipes for the holidays”.

Our advice? Read what we have to say about stress, pass this along to your family, friends and associates, let us know what you think about this, and then have a happy, safe, stress-free holiday!

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Psychs Poo-Poo Intelligence

Friday, December 15th, 2017

deja poo

A study published 8 October 2017 by three psychologists and a neuroscientist surveyed 3,715 members of American Mensa (persons whose IQ score is ostensibly within the upper 2% of the general population), who were asked to self-report diagnosed and/or suspected mood and anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism spectrum disorder. There was no actual control group; instead they manipulated statistical data to simulate a control group.

[High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities, Ruth I. Karpinski (Pitzer College) et al. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2017.09.001]

Diagnostic criteria were taken from DSM-IV, a fraudulent list of so-called “mental disorders.” The main thrust of the survey was to try to link intelligence in some way with something they called the theory of “psychological overexcitability,” which has no basis in actual fact. Then they massaged the data with extensive statistical analyses in order to come up with the conclusion they favored, which was, “Those with high IQ had higher risk for psychological disorders.”

The basic flawed assumption of this piece of poo-poo is their statement that, “those with a high intellectual capacity (hyper brain) possess overexcitabilities in various domains that may predispose them to certain psychological disorders.” The implication being that a “treatment” for psychological disorders might be something that lowers a person’s IQ.

Then they quoted 160 references in order to overwhelm any readers of the study with its bona fides — it must be right because look how many references can be quoted.

Naturally, due to the inherent flakiness of the research, they concluded that further research was needed; and because of the particular methodology of this study, the results conveniently cannot be compared with any other studies about intelligence and health. The authors also recommended further studies with mice instead of people, as if those results could yield any useful information about human intelligence.

There are a number of limitations which cast doubt on the study results. The raw data was self-reported, so it is subject to interpretation, bad memory and bias. There are over 200 different IQ tests which applicants can use to apply for membership in Mensa, so IQ itself is subject to interpretation. All of the participants were American, which may or may not be a limitation depending on other demographic or environmental factors. The simulated control group statistics made exact comparisons challenging, to say the least.

Without an actual, clear-cut definition of intelligence, this kind of research is hopelessly convoluted and clueless; but nevertheless representative of what many psychologists think about the rest of us intelligent beings.

Consider this interesting quote from another source: “We would do well to recollect the early days of applied clinical psychology when culturally biased IQ testing of immigrants, African Americans and Native Americans was used to bolster conclusions regarding the genetic inheritance of ‘feeble-mindedness’ on behalf of the American eugenics social movement.”

Not to be outdone by psychologists, the psychiatric industry has a history of deliberately reducing their patient’s intelligence, evidenced by this 1942 quote from psychiatrist Abraham Myerson: “The reduction of intelligence is an important factor in the curative process. … The fact is that some of the very best cures that one gets are in those individuals whom one reduces almost to amentia [feeble-mindedness].”

Evidence that electroshock lowers IQ is certainly available. Also, psychiatrists have notoriously and falsely “diagnosed” the creative mind as a “mental disorder,” invalidating an artist’s abilities as “neurosis.” There is certainly evidence that marijuana lowers IQ (no flames from the 420 crowd, please) — and marijuana is currently being promoted by the psychiatric industry to treat so-called PTSD.

Psychotropic drugs may also be implicated in the reduction of IQ; what do you think? These side effects from various psychotropic drugs sure sound like they could influence the results when someone takes an IQ test while on these drugs: agitation, depression, hallucinations, irritability, insomnia, mania, mood changes, suicidal thoughts, confusion, forgetfulness, difficulty thinking, hyperactivity, poor concentration, tiredness, disorientation, sluggishness.

If you Google “Can IQ change?” you’ll find about 265 million results; so this topic has its conflicting opinions. And as in any subject where there are so many conflicting opinions, there is a lot of false information. Unfortunately the “research” cited above just adds more poo-poo to the pile.

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Psychiatric Drugs Putting Veterans at Risk of Dementia

Monday, November 20th, 2017

Almost a third of drugs cleared by the Food and Drug Administration pose safety risks that are identified only after their approval.

A research study published in January, 2017 set out to determine the impact of psychotropic medication use on the association between PTSD and the risk for dementia in a nationally representative sample of US veterans aged 56 years and older.

PTSD has become blurred as a catch-all diagnosis for some 175 combinations of symptoms, becoming the label for identifying the impact of adverse events on ordinary people. This means that normal responses to catastrophic events have often been fraudulently interpreted as mental disorders. The favored “treatment” for PTSD is psychotropic drugs known to cause violence and suicide.

In their study, researchers examined information from 3,139,780 veterans aged 56 and older.

“Researchers discovered that taking certain antidepressants, tranquilizers, sedatives, or antipsychotic medications significantly increased veterans’ risks for developing dementia compared to the risks for veterans who didn’t take such medications.”

The increase in the risk of dementia for veterans taking the drugs was the same whether or not they were diagnosed with PTSD.

Stated another way, patients diagnosed with PTSD using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, novel antidepressants, or antipsychotics were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with dementia compared to both those with and without a PTSD diagnosis but without any identified psychotropic medication use; and patients using benzodiazepines or serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors appear to have an elevated risk for dementia diagnosis regardless of a PTSD diagnosis.

The bottom line seems to be that using psychiatric drugs increases one’s chance to develop dementia — one more reason that the first alternative to taking psychiatric drugs is just not taking them.

Click here for more information about the harm caused by psychiatric drugs.

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GAO Will Review PTSD Treatment in the VA

Monday, October 16th, 2017

U.S. Representatives Mike Coffman (R-CO) and Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH) requested the Government Accountability Office to study how heavily the Veterans Administration relies upon psychotropic drugs to treat their patients for so-called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The GAO agreed September 27, 2017 to conduct the review.

Many people are concerned that the use of psychotropic drugs is a contributing factor to the alarming rate of suicides among veterans.

Express your concern about this by contacting:
Rep. Mike Coffman – https://coffman.house.gov/contact/ and jeremy.lippert@mail.house.gov
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster – https://kuster.house.gov/contact/email-me and lisbeth.zeggane@mail.house.gov
GAO – contact@gao.gov; youngc1@gao.gov; congrel@gao.gov; spel@gao.gov

Today, PTSD has become blurred as a catch-all diagnosis for some 175 combinations of symptoms, becoming the label for identifying the impact of adverse events on ordinary people. This means that normal responses to catastrophic events have often been interpreted as mental disorders when they are not.

The favored “treatment” for PTSD is psychotropic drugs known to cause violence and suicide.

According to the CCHR documentary The Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda, all evidence points in one direction: the soaring rates of psychiatric drug prescribing since 2003. Known drug side effects of these drugs such as increased aggression and suicidal thinking are reflected in similar uptrends in the rates of military domestic violence, child abuse and sex crimes, as well as self-harm.

Pull the string further and you’ll find psychiatrists ever widening the definitions of what it means to be “mentally ill,” especially when it comes to PTSD in soldiers and veterans. In psychiatry, diagnoses of psychological disorders such as PTSD, personality disorder and social anxiety disorder are almost inevitably followed by the prescription of at least one harmful and addictive psychiatric drug.

Psychiatrists know that their drugs do not actually cure anything, but merely mask symptoms. They are well aware of their many dangerous side effects, including possible addiction. If you are in the military, a veteran, a member of a military or veteran support group, or family or associate of a member of the military or a veteran, you quality for a free Hidden Enemy DVD.

Also watch the documentary online here.

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Psychiatry Ecstatic About PTSD

Tuesday, September 5th, 2017

The FDA just approved MDMA as a “breakthrough” drug for so-called PTSD and given the OK for clinical trials.

The FDA says that the “Breakthrough Therapy” designation expedites the development of drugs intended to treat a serious condition where preliminary clinical evidence indicates the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement over available therapies. The agency behind this effort to promote MDMA is called the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (www.maps.org), which was founded in 1986 by Rick Doblin specifically to promote marijuana and psychedelics as “medicines,” after his experiments using psychedelic drugs to catalyze religious experiences.

The randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 3 clinical trials are intended to assess the efficacy and safety of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in a group of 200 to 300 participants diagnosed with PTSD aged 18+ at sites in the U.S., Canada, and Israel, pending the raising of $25 Million in private funds to pay for the trials.

MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, generic midomafetamine), a synthetic drug which is the primary ingredient in Ecstasy, is emotionally damaging and users often suffer depression, confusion, severe anxiety, paranoia, psychotic behavior and other psychological problems. It is chemically similar to the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline, and 92% of those who begin using Ecstasy later turn to other drugs including marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine and heroin.

Once MDMA gets into the bloodstream, it prompts a massive release of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. The collective efforts of all three neurotransmitters make the user feel euphoric. MDMA also damages brain serotonin neurons. High doses of MDMA can affect the body’s ability to regulate temperature. This can lead to a spike in body temperature that can occasionally result in liver, kidney, or heart failure or even death.

One has to continually increase the amount of the drug one takes in order to feel the same effects; some people report signs of addiction, including the following withdrawal symptoms: fatigue, loss of appetite, depression, and trouble concentrating. MDMA was first synthesized by a German company (Merck) in 1912 and has been available as a street drug since the 1980s. MDMA was first used in the 1970s as an unapproved aid in psychotherapy. In 1985, The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration labeled MDMA as an illegal drug with no recognized medicinal use. In 2016, the White House found more than 22,000 people were hospitalized due to symptoms related to MDMA in 2011.

To put overall MDMA use in perspective, in 2010 the illicit drug category with the largest number of current users among persons aged 12 or older was marijuana use (2.4 million), followed by abuse of pain relievers (2 million), tranquilizers (1.2 million), Ecstasy (0.9 million), inhalants (0.8 million), and cocaine and stimulants (0.6 million each).

Not to bandy words, the psychiatric movement to promote MDMA as a treatment for anything, let alone for the fraudulent diagnosis of PTSD, is outright unethical and abusive, and can only be motivated by a perverse desire to harm in the name of help and profit.

Click here for more information about why psychiatric drugs do not help.

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