Posts Tagged ‘Schools’

« Older Entries

New Study Finds Troubling Mental and Physical Side Effects Are Main Reason Patients Stop Taking Antidepressants

Monday, July 31st, 2023

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, July 19, 2023 — A new study investigating why patients stop taking antidepressants found the most common reason given was the adverse physical and mental side effects experienced. The findings add to prior research revealing the troubling, and even dangerous side effects of these mind-altering psychotropic drugs.

Researchers in the U.S. and U.K. analyzed 667 reviews posted on the online health forum WebMD by users of seven common selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants. The most common reason users gave for discontinuing antidepressants was the negative side effects they experienced.

Mental side effects were the adverse events most mentioned in the reviews, including apathy, anxiety, insomnia, loss of sexual drive, and suicidal ideation. These side effects were reported more often in the online posts than in the formal reporting systems set up by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, leading the researchers to note that the online comments provide valuable, additional information for government drug regulatory agencies about the adverse effects of SSRIs.

“It is not merely feasible to collect data from online comments and reviews regarding SSRI medication changes, but…doing so can provide important supplementary information to reporting systems,” wrote lead author Su Golder, PhD, of the University of York in the U.K., reporting in JAMA Network Open.

Other top adverse events reported by SSRI users as reasons for discontinuing antidepressants were physical side effects, such as dizziness, drowsiness, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, weight gain, itchiness, excessive sweating, and sexual dysfunction.

“These results suggest that reasons for changes in SSRI use can be identified in online drug reviews and that adverse events mentioned may reflect those more salient to patients for discontinuing their medication,” according to Golder.

Though the study was intended to discover why SSRI users discontinue antidepressants so that ways to keep them on the drugs could be developed, the study provides additional evidence of the harm from the drugs that users contend with. Other recent research findings on the negative effects of antidepressants are much more disturbing.

A 2019 study indicated that the rate of attempted suicide was about 2.5 times higher in those taking antidepressants as compared to placebo. Those results were similar to a 2016 study that found antidepressants, given to healthy adult volunteers with no signs of depression, doubled their risk of suicidality and violence.

Antidepressant use has risen significantly over the past 15 years – and so have suicides and senseless acts of violence like mass shootings. In 2020, some 45 million Americans, or roughly one in seven, were taking antidepressants, up from 34 million in 2006. This 32% increase in users parallels the 35% increase in suicides in the U.S. over the same period. During the same time, many school shootings and other acts of senseless violence were committed by individuals taking antidepressants or in withdrawal from them.

A 2020 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 2017 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.

For all the risk of serious side effects, recent research has found little, if any, benefit to antidepressants over placebos.  A 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.

Another study in 2018 found that those who used antidepressants any time during the 30-year period of the study had an 81% greater chance of having more severe depression symptoms at the end of that time.

More fundamentally, a landmark 2022 study questioned the prescribing of antidepressants at all, after finding the common reason for taking them – to correct a supposed 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 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

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

Wasted Billion$ Spent On Violence Prevention

Monday, January 23rd, 2023

Ignores How Psychotropic Drugs Cause Hostility, And Their Role In Mass Shootings & Stabbings

Although there are numerous reasons for acts of mass violence, funding poured into violence prevention mental health programs has ignored a potential pivotal source, especially in schools: the treatment.

By Jan Eastgate
President, CCHR International
July 11, 2022

Mental health professionals suggest that the latest spate of mass killings require more psychiatric services and stronger involuntary commitment laws to prevent future violence. However, this would most likely increase acts of violence because psychiatric drugs are usually the first line of treatment and carry a risk of inducing suicide and hostility in a percent of those taking them. Taxpayer appropriations have been funneled into everything related to prevention except investigating psychotropic drug links to acts of violence. A financial audit of violence prevention mental health programs should be conducted to show accountability for results.

Since the Columbine high school massacre in 1999 where two students—the ringleader on an antidepressant—killed 13 and injured 24, national violence prevention programs in schools have been implemented, with billions of dollars invested in this.

Another $1 billion of federal funds was recently allocated for community violence intervention (CVI), which includes mental health services.[1]

Funding has been a bottomless pit without a commensurate decline in mass violence. The Safe Schools Act of 1994 had a goal that by the year 2000, every school in America would be free of violence.[2] The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) passed in 2015 allocated more federal funds for school-based violence prevention programs.[3]

Yet school shootings increased by 37% between the 1990s and 2013 and continued unabated.[4] This figure doesn’t factor in acts of school violence that do not involve guns.

Since 2000, there have been at least 27 acts of mass violence in schools committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs or having undergone unnamed mental health treatment, resulting in 33 deaths and 83 wounded. At least seven of the killings involved stabbings.[5] Something drove them to kill.

Some 76 million Americans take psychotropic drugs, of which over 2.1 million are children and adolescents taking antidepressants despite a Food and Drug Administration suicide black box warning for teens and young adults. Between 1999 and 2014, there was a 64% increase in the percentage of people of all ages using antidepressants.[6]

Increased mental and/or physical agitation has caused about 5% of subjects taking antidepressants to drop out of clinical trials. When that percentage is applied to the 41 million individuals in the U.S. taking antidepressants, it begs the question how many of that 2.05 million could potentially become so agitated that they would kill?[7]

The antidepressant market is a highly lucrative one that would be protected at any cost. The global market was estimated at $5.2 billion in 2019 and over $80 billion is spent in a year worldwide in psychiatric drug sales. The Central Nervous System drugs (including ADHD drugs) market is expected to reach $131 billion by 2025.[8]

Psychiatrists, often backed by Big Pharma, misdirect policymakers by saying there is no “scientific” evidence of psychiatric drugs causing violence, even though violent behavior, including homicide are reported side effects.

“Most people who commit these kinds of acts of severe violence are only prescribed medication because of their horrible thoughts, moods, and ideas,” Dr. Gwen Adshead, a forensic psychotherapist stated.[9]

But that’s the point: having been prescribed the drugs, they acted on those thoughts and killed.

“Violence and other potentially criminal behavior caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret,” international psychopharmacology expert Prof. David Healy says.[10]

What role such drugs may have had on San Antonio, Texas teen Rodolfo Aceves (19) who was arrested on June 27th, 2022, for planning a mass shooting at an Amazon Delivery Station where he worked in unknown. He has a history of mental health treatment and was institutionalized at age 16.[11]

Robert Crimo III, 21, the July 4th Illinois parade shooter was reported to have experienced personality changes a few years ago when he and his girlfriend broke up. He started taking psychedelic drugs, seemingly illicitly.[12] While not confirmed which hallucinogens he took, as an example, psilocybin adverse effects include: Impaired judgment and feelings of detachment, psychosis, anxiety and panic attacks.[13] In April 2019, police went to the family home after receiving a report Crimo had tried to take his own life a week earlier. They were told mental health professionals were handling the matter!

Psychiatrists are currently trying to have psychedelics re-introduced as mainstream mental health treatment after being banned in the 1970s.

Missing the Mark

The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been collecting data on school-associated violent deaths since 1992, defined as a fatal injury (e.g., homicide, suicide, or legal intervention). Only violent deaths associated with U.S. elementary and secondary schools, both public and private, are included.[14] CDC uses the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System that monitors “health-risk behaviors of students.” The high school survey, for example, is 21 pages of questions, none of which identify if the student is taking prescription psychotropic medications or abusing them—missing the mark entirely on a potential source of violent and suicidal behavior.[15]

Blaming the “Illness,” Not the Drug

Many psychiatrists deflect legislators’ attention away from iatrogenic drug-induced violence by arguing that no studies have been done on the association between the risk of committing homicide and the use of psychotropic drugs.[16] That’s also the point. It’s a safe bet that they won’t because, how could a legitimate study be ethically approved to deliberately induce violent behavior using a prescription drug?

Until now, this seems only to have been done clandestinely in the 1970s under the CIA’s MK-Ultra program when psychiatrists carried out experiments to search for a mind control drug that could be weaponized against enemies.[17] CCHR has copies of CIA documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing psychotropic drugs were tested to see if a subject could be chemically induced to assassinate.[18]

While not excusing the crime, today, courts recognize the “overwhelming probable” relationship between antidepressant and murder, “treatment-induced psychosis” and, in one case a jury determined that the antidepressant paroxetine “can cause some people to become homicidal and/or suicidal” and that the drug was 80% responsible for a normally calm and caring father to kill his family.[19]

Drug Withdrawal Creates Violence (Not Mental Illness)

Another key point ignored is the debilitating withdrawal effects some people taking prescription psychotropic drugs can experience which are documented to include violent and suicidal behavior. Many of the studies on withdrawal effects are published in CCHR’s report Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide.

Psychiatrists obfuscate withdrawal effects by blaming the person’s “untreated” mental illness. By involuntarily committing prospective aggressive individuals and keeping people incarcerated for longer periods (usually on psychotropics) they argue the person can get the treatment he or she needs.

But close inspection shows that not to be true. Consider the history of Brandon Scott Hole, 19, who shot and killed eight people and injured seven others at a FedEx building, before committing suicide in April of 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana.[20] From age 10, he’d received psychiatric treatment. In September 2011, his agitated behavior spurred his mother to take him to a center where he was given anxiety medication. A year later, after starting 5th grade, he was still aggressive and prescribed more of the same medication, with records showing only “mild benefit.” Yet another drug was added, and he also underwent behavioral therapy. In 2013, he spent a period in juvenile detention and put on probation for several months, then released. By 2020, he was suicidal. Medical records indicated that he suffered from six different disorders. The teen originated: “I can get very, very angry. I have very little control over myself when that happens” to which records say he will benefit from medication for psychiatric symptoms. On March 31, 2022, he meets a social worker for therapy. On April 15, he murdered eight innocent people described as an act of “suicidal murder.”[21] Hole had suicidal thoughts “almost daily” in the months prior to the attack and attempted suicide on “more than one occasion,” according to an FBI special agent.[22]  Clearly, the six different mental disorders he’d been given during his short life were not effectively treated and the medication may have exacerbated his thoughts.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) stresses, “It is important to note that the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent.”[23] But as one online writer puts it: Psychiatrists argue that “mental illness does not cause violence…. Why, then, do we think that expanding access to mental health services will reduce mass violence?”[24]

A man who allegedly attacked the Cuban Embassy, firing at it 32 times in April 2020, had been evaluated at a psychiatric hospital and prescribed an antipsychotic in March. Although he may not have been compliant in taking it daily, antipsychotic withdrawal effects include hostility. The drug remains in the system, potentially impacting upon mental faculties and emotional behavior.[25]

On July 3rd in Denmark, a suspected gunman, Noah Essenes, 22, said his antipsychotic drugs weren’t working before a shooting spree in a Danish shopping center that left 3 dead and 27 injured.  He was remanded into psychiatric “care”—which clearly had previously failed him—and charged with murder and attempted murder.[26]

John Read, Ph.D.’s article “The experiences of 585 people when they tried to withdraw from antipsychotic drugs,” published in the June 2022 edition of Addictive Behaviors Reports reported that in an online survey of 585 antipsychotic users from 29 countries, who had tried to stop taking the drugs, 72% reported classical withdrawal effects, including anxiety and agitation; 52% of these categorized those effects as “severe,” 18% reported psychosis as a withdrawal effect and 23% took at least one year to successfully withdraw completely.[27]

When an antipsychotic, and thereby the dopamine neurotransmitter blockade, are removed, or reduced, “the brain is overwhelmed with dopamine…. This can result in a withdrawal psychosis,” Read said.[28]

Antidepressants also have serious withdrawal effects that can last years.

In 2012, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics Journal published a study about persistent withdrawal effects six weeks after cessation of taking SSRI antidepressants. Researchers reviewed self-reporting adverse events and found post-withdrawal symptoms “may last several months to years.” Symptoms included disturbed mood, emotional liability, irritability, and poor stress tolerance.[29]
As Healy and others wrote in Children of the Cure: Missing Data, Lost Lives and Antidepressants, an antidepressant manufacturer that recognized the withdrawal effect, held a meeting of “opinion leaders” and invented the term “antidepressant discontinuation syndrome” to deflect from dependence problems.[30]

From the 14 studies that provided usable data, researchers calculated that 56% of antidepressant users experienced withdrawal symptoms when they discontinued the drug. The duration of symptoms varied widely, but some patients reported problems lasting up to 79 weeks after stopping the antidepressant.[31] 

Time magazine once listed the top 10 prescribed drugs linked to violence, of which eight were psychotropic drugs—five which were antidepressants.[32]

Finnish researchers published the findings in a 2015 study that determined benzodiazepines could increase the risk of a consumer committing a homicide by 45% and antidepressant by 31%. A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology also found that “…benzodiazepines and [SSRI antidepressants] are the main pharmacological classes able to induce aggressive behavior.”[33]

Funding Violence-Causation?

It seems that in the U.S. with the spate of mass killings involving teens, and with massive funding of violence-prevention programs in schools is not decreasing.

Funding continues to be invested in programs without ever looking at the potential psychotropic drug link to violence.

In the wake of Columbine, the School Emergency Response to Violence was Created, where “Project SERV” funds were used for a variety of activities, including mental health assessments, referrals, and services for victims and witnesses of violence. and more.[34]

In December 2012, the Attorney General’s Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence developed “Project Prevent” to provide grants for mental health services. Laudably, counseling was to be provided to help students cope with the effects of violence. But also funded was conflict resolution programs and other school-based violence prevention strategies, which have also been implicated in some of the cases of mass violence in schools. [35]

As of 2019, 15 states require character development or social and emotional learning in schools.[36]
CVI programs employ “violence interrupters” or “neighborhood change agents” who are skilled in intervention.[37]

Forced Treatment: The Wrong Way to Go

As for increasing involuntary commitment laws to lock up and maintain individuals on psychiatric drugs, an estimated 54% of admissions to psychiatric facilities in the U.S. are involuntary.[38]

Recent United Nations Agency and World Health Organization reports condemn coercive-forced psychiatric treatment, especially because there is an overreliance on mental health drugs, as a February-April 2022 Annual Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, points out.[39]
The Commissioner’s 2018 report noted that “forced medication, and other forced measures” should be repealed. “States should reframe and recognize these practices as constituting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.[40]

An Alaska Supreme Court decision in 2006 was pivotal in protecting patients from forced “medication,” because of their risks. Represented by attorney Jim Gottstein Esq., Faith Myers challenged the constitutionality of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute (API) to force her to take psychotropic drugs when she was involuntarily committed to the facility on February 3, 2003. The court found in her favor because of “the nature and potentially devastating impact of psychotropic medications….” Further, “Psychotropic drugs ‘affect the mind, behavior, intellectual functions, perception, moods, and emotion’ and are known to cause a number of potentially devastating side effects…Courts have observed that ‘the likelihood [that psychotropic drugs will cause] at least some temporary side effects appears to be undisputed.’”[41]

WHO said that countries must ensure that patients have “the right to refuse admission and treatment is also respected.”[42] Importantly, “People wishing to come off psychotropic drugs should also be actively supported to do so, and several recent resources have been developed to support people to achieve this.”[43]

For good reason. No one should suddenly stop taking a psychotropic drug without medical approval and supervision.

Acts of Violence During Withdrawal

Of nearly 410 drug regulatory agency psychiatric drug warnings, 17 were for addiction or withdrawal effects.[44]

A small example of cases of killers going through withdrawal includes:

2008: DeKalb, Illinois: 27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking prescribed drugs Prozac (antidepressant), and anti-anxiety/sedative-hypnotics, Xanax (alprazolam) and Ambien but had stopped taking Prozac three weeks before the shooting. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amount of Xanax in his system.[45]

December 2006: North Vernon, Indiana: 16-year-old Travis Roberson stabbed a Jennings County High School student in the neck, nearly severing an artery. Roberson was in withdrawal from the antidepressant Wellbutrin, which he had stopped taking days before the attack.[46]

April 2006: Chapel Hill, North Carolina: 17-year-old William Barrett Foster took a shotgun to East Chapel Hill High School, where he took a teacher and a fellow student hostage. After being talked out of shooting the hostages, Foster fired two shots through a classroom window before fleeing the school on foot. Foster’s father testified that his son had stopped taking his antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs without telling him (which can cause severe withdrawal effects).[47] 

Acts of Violence Involving Antipsychotics

January 2019 – Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Dakota Theriot, 21, was accused of killing five people in Louisiana. The victims included his parents and three members of a family with whom he’d been living for a short time. Investigators said he smoked weed and drank alcohol that mixed poorly with the antipsychotic drugs he’d been prescribed.[48]

June 2018 – Westminster, Colorado: Jeremy Webster, 23, killed a 13-year-old and injured the boy’s mother and brother in a road rage shooting. A man in another car was also shot. Webster had a psychiatric history and had changed medication that day. He had been prescribed an antidepressant and an antipsychotic.[49]

December 2014 – Montgomery County, Pennsylvania: Iraq War veteran Bradley Stone, 35, killed his ex-wife, her mother, grandmother and sister, and the sister’s husband and 14-year-old daughter and then committed suicide. According to the Medical Examiner, he had both the antidepressant trazodone and the antipsychotic risperidone in his system at the time of his death. Just one week prior to the murders, he had seen his Veterans Affairs psychiatrist, whose evaluation stated Stone had no suicidal or homicidal ideation.[50]

November 2014 – Tallahassee, Florida: Myron May, 31, entered a library where hundreds of students were studying, began shooting and, wounding three before he was shot and killed by police. He had checked himself into a psychiatric center about three months prior. Shortly after this, his friends discovered a new pill bottle among his prescriptions, the antipsychotic Seroquel (quetiapine).[51]

June 2014 – Seattle, Washington: 26-year-old Aaron Ybarra opened fire at Seattle Pacific University, killing one student and wounding two others. Ybarra planned to kill as many people as possible before killing himself. In 2012, he reported that he had been prescribed the antidepressant Prozac and antipsychotic Risperdal (risperidone). A report from his counselor in December of 2013 said that he was taking Prozac at the time and planned to continue to meet with his psychiatrist and therapist as needed. His lawyer said Ybarra had a long history of mental health issues for which he was taking Prozac at the time of the shooting.[52]

February 2013 – Chalk Mountain, Texas: Eddie Ray Routh, 28, shot and killed Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was the subject of the movie, American Sniper, and Kyle’s friend, Chad Littlefield, at a firing range. He had been prescribed the antipsychotic risperidone and the antidepressant, Zoloft, the latter not recommended for anyone aged younger than 25 because of the risk that it may cause suicide. Routh’s father would later report that the cocktail of pharmaceuticals “made Eddie worse,” adding, “I ain’t no doctor. I ain’t no rocket scientist or nothing, but I could tell a difference in him.” He had various hospitalizations over the next few years and was said to be “paranoid and impulsively violent” and was prescribed a cocktail of psychotropic drugs that included two powerful antipsychotics, Haldol and Seroquel and the antidepressant Paxil. He was also mixing prescription drugs known to cause aggressive and psychotic behavior with alcohol and marijuana.[53]

Recommendation: A financial audit on all government funding of violence-prevention mental health/behavioral programs should be conducted with outcome evaluation to show accountability for results.

Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide is a compelling resource detailing more than 30 studies and over sixty cases of mass shootings and acts of violence committed by those taking or withdrawing from prescribed psychotropic drugs. 

References:
[1] https://bja.ojp.gov/program/community-violence-intervention/overview; “APA Statement on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” Psychiatric Times, 24 June 2022, https://www.psychiatry.org/News-room/News-Releases/APA-Statement-on-the-Bipartisan-Safer-Communities

[2] “School Safety Policies and Programs Administered by the U.S. Federal Government: 1990–2016,” A Report Prepared by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress under an Interagency Agreement with the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice

[3] Ibid.

[4] Allison Paolini, “School Shootings and Student Mental Health: Role of the School Counselor in Mitigating Violence,” ACA (American Counseling Assoc.) Knowledge Center, Vistas, 2015

[5] https://www.cchrint.org/school-shooters

[6] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/people-taking-psychiatric-drugs/; “By the numbers: Antidepressant use on the rise,” American Psychological Assoc., Nov. 2017, citing Pratt L.A., Brody D.J., & Gu Q. Antidepressant use among persons aged 12 and over: United States, 2011–14. NCHS Data Brief, No. 283. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2017, https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/11/numbers

[7] Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide, CCHR International, 2018, p. 3

[8] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/11/08/psychiatrists-and-the-hallucinogenic-drug-industry-are-seeking-to-replace-failed-antidepressants/; “A view into the central nervous system disorders market,” Nature, 1 Sept. 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/d43747-020-01119-8

[9] https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/aug/16/whats-behind-dubious-claim-psychiatric-drugs-fuel-/

[10] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/06/01/drug-induced-acts-of-senseless-violence-need-investigation/

[11] Snejana Farberov, “Texas teen arrested for plotting mass shooting at Amazon warehouse: cops,” New York Post, 5 July 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/07/05/texas-teen-accused-of-plotting-mass-shooting-at-amazon-warehouse/

[12] Safia Samee Ali, Natasha Korecki and Corky Siemaszko, “Highland Park shooting suspect’s past littered with ‘red flags,” NBC News, 5 July 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/highland-park-shooting-suspects-littered-red-flags-rcna36766

[13] https://www.cchrint.org/2022/01/09/cchr-warns-against-psychedelic-trips-potentially-planned-for-55m-americans/;https://drugabuse.com/drugs/hallucinogens/psilocybin-mushrooms/effects-use/

[14] Op. cit., “School Safety Policies and Programs Administered by the U.S. Federal Government: 1990–2016”

[15] https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/questionnaires.htm

[16] “Psychotropic drugs and homicide: A prospective cohort study from Finland,” World Psychiatry. June 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471985/

[17] “The CIA’s Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A ‘Poisoner In Chief,’” NPR, 9 Sept. 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief

[18] Project Artichoke Document, on file at CCHR

[19] Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide, CCHR International, 2018, pp. 3-4

[20] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/04/20/cchr-renews-calls-for-investigation-into-psychiatric-drug-induced-mass-killings/; “Suspect in Indianapolis mass shooting was former FedEx employee, known to law enforcement,” Fox 59 News, 17 Apr. 2021, https://fox59.com/news/indianapolis-fedex-shooting/ap-officials-identify-suspect-in-mass-shooting-at-indianapolis-fedex-facility/

[21] Tony Cook and Johnny Magdaleno, “Timeline: FedEx shooter had over a dozen mental health care, law enforcement encounters,” Indianapolis Star; Yahoo! News, 16 Nov. 21, 2022, https://news.yahoo.com/timeline-fedex-shooter-had-over-155332886.html

[22] “Indianapolis FedEx Shooter Who Killed 4 Sikhs Was Not Racially Motivated, Police Say,” NPR, 28 Jul. 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/07/28/1021935687/indianapolis-fedex-shooting-sikhs-not-racially-motivated-police-say

[23] https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/apa-statement-on-firearm-violence

[24] Megan Wildhood, “Expanded Mental Health Services Won’t Stop Mass Shootings,” Mad in America, 24 June 2022, https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/06/mental-health-services-mass-shootings/

[25] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/06/01/drug-induced-acts-of-senseless-violence-need-investigation/;https://web.archive.org/web/20220221184646/http://cubamoneyproject.com/2020/05/03/shooter-trump/

[26] James Crip, “Pictured: ‘Gunman’ charged with killing three in Copenhagen shopping mall attack,” Daily Telegraph (UK), 5 July 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/07/05/pictured-gunman-charged-killing-three-copenhagen-shopping-mall/

[27] John Read, Ph.D., “The experiences of 585 people when they tried to withdraw from antipsychotic drugs,” Addictive Behaviors Reports, 15 June 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9006667/

[28] Ibid.

[29] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/side-effects-can-persist/

[30] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/08/25/new-study-further-confirms-severe-withdrawal-effects-of-antidepressants/, citing: David Healy, M.D., Joanna Le Noury, Julie Wood, Children of the Cure: Missing Data, Lost Lives and Antidepressants, (Samizdat Health Writer’s Co-operative Inc., 2020), pp. 43-44

[31] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/04/06/antidepressant-withdrawal-warning-vital/; “How Hard is it to Stop Antidepressants?” American Psychological Assoc., 1 Apr. 2020; https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/04/stop-antidepressants

[32] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/04/06/antidepressant-withdrawal-warning-vital/, citing: Maia Szalavitz, “Top Ten Legal Drugs Linked to Violence,” TIME Magazine, 7 Jan. 2011, https://healthland.time.com/2011/01/07/top-ten-legal-drugs-linked-to-violence/

[33] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/06/01/drug-induced-acts-of-senseless-violence-need-investigation/, citing: David DiSalvo, “Common Painkillers And Sedatives Linked To Increased Risk Of Homicide, According To Study,” Forbes, 4 June 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2015/06/04/common-pain-killers-and-sedatives-linked-to-increased-risk-of-homicide-according-to-study/#1083a9581aef and Nadege Rouve, Haleh Bagheri, et al., “Prescribed drugs and violence: a case/noncase study in the French PharmacoVigilance Database,” European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 7 June, 2011, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21655992

[34] Op. cit., “School Safety Policies and Programs Administered by the U.S. Federal Government: 1990–2016”

[35] Ibid.

[36] https://www.childtrends.org/blog/state-laws-promoting-social-emotional-and-academic-development-leave-room-for-improvement

[37] https://www.vera.org/community-violence-intervention-programs-explained

[38] https://www.cchrint.org/2022/06/29/us-could-learn-from-reform-of-coercive-mental-health-practices/; “Involuntary Commitments: Billing Patients for Forced Psychiatric Care,” The American Journ. of Psychiatry, 1 Dec. 2020, https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20030319

[39] Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General, 49th session, Human Rights Council, “Summary of the outcome of the consultation on ways to harmonize laws, policies and practices relating to mental health with the norms of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and on how to implement them,” 28 Feb.–1 Apr. 2022

[40] Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mental health and human rights, 24 July 2018, A/HRC/39/36.

[41] Faith Myers vs. Alaska Psychiatric Institute, Supreme Court, 2-11021, Superior Court No. 3AN-03-00277, Opinion, No. 6021, 30 June 2006, https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ak-supreme-court/1004032.html

[42] “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services: Promoting Person-Centered and Rights-Based Approaches,” World Health Organization, 10 June 2021, p. 6, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240025707 (to download report)

[43] Ibid., p. 201

[44] Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide, CCHR International, 2018, p. 3

[45] “Report of the February 14, 2008 Shootings at Northern Illinois University,” NIU, https://www.niu.edu/forward/_pdfs/archives/feb14report.pdf; “Girlfriend: Shooter was taking cocktail of 3 drugs,” CNN, 20 Feb. 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/20/shooter.girlfriend/index.html; Dave Newbart, “NIU shooter had trace amounts of drugs in system,” The Chicago Sun-Times, 15 Mar. 2008, http://schoolshooters.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/41/

[46]  https://www.cchrint.org/school-shooters/; “Authorities: Teen’s Knife Attack At School Was Planned,” The Indy Channel, December 5, 2006, https://ssristories.org/teen-knife-attacks-fellow-student/

[47]  https://www.cchrint.org/school-shooters/; Meiling Arounnarath, “Forum to ponder school gun incidents, Fraser will discuss the situation nationally and locally,” NewsObserver.com, posted November 28, 2006, http://ssristories.com/show.php?item=1310; Leah Friedman, “Police keep tabs on teen suspect,” NewsObserver.com, February 24, 2007, http://sip-trunking.tmcnet.com/news/2007/02/24/2367179.htm; “Student Charged In April Hostage Incident At Chapel Hill School,” WRAL.com, June 19, 2006, http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1055759/

[48] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/drug_warnings_on_violence/recent-murdersmurder-suicides/, citing: Emma Kennedy, “Sheriff: Dakota Theriot case is ‘extremely horrific example’ of failed mental health system,” The Advocate, 3 Feb. 2019, https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/article_bef1127c-25c4-11e9-a111-8b4106437e1b.html; Emma Kennedy, “Dakota Theriot, accused of killing five, faces the death penalty. Coronavirus may delay his trial,” The Advocate, 8 July 2020, https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/communities/livingston_tangipahoa/article_a6b433fe-c151-11ea-a3da-5f0c20c13ed4.html

[49] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/drug_warnings_on_violence/recent-murdersmurder-suicides/ citing: Janet Oravets, “Judge enters not guilty plea, sets trial date for Westminster road rage suspect,” 9News.com, 7 Jan. 2019, https://www.9news.com/article/news/crime/judge-enters-not-guilty-plea-sets-trial-date-for-westminster-road-rage-suspect/73-fc8c9737-e6a7-4fd4-b80e-9ee7e8c458bc

[50] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/drug_warnings_on_violence/recent-murdersmurder-suicides/, citing, Ralph Ellis, Susan Candiotti and Ashely Fantz, “Police in Pa. search for man suspected of killing ex-wife, 5 former in-laws,” CNN, 15 Dec 2014, https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/us/pennsylvania-shootings/; Jacqueline Klimas, “Bradley Stone cleared by Veterans Affairs doctor one week before murders, suicide,” Washington Times, 17 Dec 2014, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/17/bradley-stone-cleared-veterans-affairs-doctor-one-/; Dan Stamm and Vince Lattanzio, “Montgomery County Spree Killer Bradley Stone Dies of Drug Overdose: ME,” NBC 10 Philadelphia, 24 Dec 2014, https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/national-international/bradley-stone-death-overdose-report/159969/

[51] https://www.cchrint.org/school-shooters/ Michael Laforgia, “FSU shooter’s friends tried to get help for him months before the shooting,” Miami Herald, 22 Nov 2014, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article4064977.html; Jordan Culver, et al., “Shooter identified as Florida State alum Myron May,” Tallahassee Democrat, 21 Nov 2014, http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/fsu-news/2014/11/20/shooter-identified-fsu-alum-myron-may/70007494/

[52] https://www.cchrint.org/school-shooters/; “Seattle Pacific University shooting: Gunman says he “wanted to kill many more,” The Independent, 9 Jun 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/seattle-pacific-university-shooting-gunman-says-he-wanted-to-kill-many-more-9505394.html; “Suspect in Seattle Pacific killing had well-documented demons,” The Seattle Times, 6 Jun 2014, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/suspect-in-seattle-pacific-killing-had-well-documented-demons/; Steve Miletich, et al., “Report: SPU suspect ‘wanted to hurt himself and others’ in 2010,” The Seattle Times, 6 Jun 2014, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/report-spu-suspect-wanted-to-hurt-himself-and-others-in-2010/

[53] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/drug_warnings_on_violence/recent-murdersmurder-suicides/, citing, Rick Jervis, “‘American Sniper’ killer found guilty in murders,” USA Today, 24 Feb. 2015, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/24/american-sniper-murder-trial-verdict/23896859; Nicholas Schmidle, “In the Crosshairs,” The New Yorker, 3 Jun. 2013, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/03/in-the-crosshairs; Mike Spies, “Inside the Tortured Mind of Eddie Ray Routh, the Man Who Killed American Sniper Chris Kyle,” Newsweek, 23 Nov. 2015, https://www.newsweek.com/2016/01/08/inside-tortured-mind-man-who-killed-american-sniper-chris-kyle-397299.html

Psychotropic Drugs' Role In Mass Shootings

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

Prevalent Proliferation of Pandemic Panic

Monday, August 24th, 2020

Following the lockdown of many schools due to Covid-19, we are seeing reports that teachers are being instructed to emphasize emotional and stress-related curricula instead of academics. We are also seeing increasing reports of emotional and stress related issues with the teachers themselves.

Prestigious universities and foundations are devoting considerable resources to “research” the emotional and stress-related issues of both teachers and students due to panic over Covid-19 and lockdowns. Such research continually demands more funds from both governments and private sources, making funds less available for urgently needed research with a better return on investment.

We predict a renewed effort by the psychopharmaceutical industry to put more “mental health screening” into schools countrywide. This is a very bad idea.

A “screen” is a test for some condition, in this case a test for mental illness. A person who is screened and found to exhibit so-called symptoms of mental illness can then be diagnosed with a mental “disease” or “disorder” and referred to a psychiatrist or psychiatric facility (or even to a General Practitioner) to be prescribed psychiatric drugs. Typical screens are usually nothing more than a few questions about one’s level of stress or anxiety, since there are no clinical tests for mental disorders.

Mental health screening aims to get whole populations on drugs and thus under control. The kinds of drugs used create further medical and social problems due to their adverse side effects, and these subsequent complications require additional taxes and laws such as the expansion of Medicaid to handle them. The net result is a sick and fearful population dependent on the government to “solve” all their problems. The pandemic is the perfect foil.

We remind people that resilience and unity have kept us all on track before without resorting to mind-altering drugs to get through. Epidemics do take a significant toll, also creating uncertainties and worries about the future. But we also want to ensure that one of the legacies of the Coronavirus is not minds damaged by psychotropic drugs and other harmful psychiatric interventions that can carry with them long-term risks and harm.

CCHR encourages anyone who is being advised that they or a loved one should take psychiatric drugs to demand a “differential diagnosis” where the doctor obtains a thorough history and conducts a complete physical exam, ruling out all the possible problems that might cause a set of symptoms and explains any possible side effects of the recommended treatments with Full Informed Consent.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

Psychiatry Profiting from Community Tragedy and Racism

Monday, June 22nd, 2020

In 2010 a 16-year-old African-American foster child died after being injected with two psychiatric drugs and restrained in SSM DePaul Health Center, a St. Louis company-owned psychiatric ward, and ruled a homicide. Less than two years earlier, a death at the same hospital in the Bridgeton suburb of St. Louis had led to a state inquiry that uncovered instances of improperly secluding and restraining patients and failing to report deaths to authorities.

Before she died, the foster child was held down and injected with Geodon (ziprasidone, a psychiatric antipsychotic drug) and Ativan (lorazepam, a psychiatric anti-anxiety drug).

It wasn’t until 2017 that a lawsuit was filed against the Children’s Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services for overdrugging foster children with harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs, for which a settlement was reached in 2019.

Some of the behavioral hospital chains that have come under scrutiny for patient abuse include six facilities operating in Missouri.

And now today the abuse continues, with African-Americans over-represented in restraint-related deaths of children and adults with disabilities, accounting for 22% of the deaths studied while representing only 13% of the total U.S. population. African-Americans are dying from COVID-19 at almost three times the rate of whites.

As a human rights organization, exposing racism and restraint abuse in the mental health system has been a pivotal campaign since the inception in 1969 of Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). This also included exposing psychosurgery experiments on African-American prisoners and a 1994 booklet on psychiatry creating racism. CCHR has successfully worked with the NAACP since 2003, exposing the stigmatizing labeling and drugging of African-American children to obtain three national NAACP resolutions against the forced drugging and also electroshocking of children and teens.

CCHR’s co-founder, Dr. Thomas Szasz, a professor of psychiatry, exposed that while Dr. Benjamin Rush, the “Father of American Psychiatry” asserted he was anti-slavery in the late 1700s and signed the Declaration of Independence, he purchased a child slave that he later freed for compensation. He provided a medical model we still see the impact of today that was used to justify segregation and modern racism. Rush claimed that Blacks suffered from a “medical” disease called “negritude” derived from leprosy. Therefore, he asserted that freed Blacks should be segregated and prevented from inter-racial marriage so as to not spread the disease. Rush believed the “cure” was when their skin turned white.

A seal of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that features Rush, a racist and slave owner, is still used for ceremonial purposes and internal documents. There’s also an annual award the APA gives in his name. How appallingly hypocritical, then, that within days of the recent racial protest marches starting, the APA issued a press statement, saying, it “will not stand for racism against Black Americans,” when history shows otherwise. APA urged anyone suffering from the recent trauma or civil unrest to, “seek psychiatric treatment.”

This comes from a group whose members invented the term “protest psychosis” in the 1960s to describe Blacks participating in the Civil Rights movement. Advertisements placed in psychiatric journals for powerful antipsychotic drugs used angry black men or African tribal symbols to influence the prescriptions of antipsychotics to African-Americans. Today, there is still an over-representation of antipsychotic use among African-Americans and harmful psychotropic drugs are prescribed to African-American children as young as 18 months.

African-American students also receive disproportionate discipline in schools. Representing about 15% of the total enrollment, African-American students accounted for 27% of restraints and 23% of seclusion in schools.

CCHR can access over 50 years of research that documents the horrible betrayal of African-American and other groups by a eugenics-based, racist psychiatric-psychological model that has caused immeasurable harm and suffering.

Click here for more information on how psychiatry creates racism.

Reverend Fred Shaw has worked alongside the NAACP in getting 3 national resolutions passed.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

Crime and Mental Distress

Saturday, July 7th, 2018

A recent news report suggests that “Having a mental illness makes people more vulnerable to becoming the victims of a crime.”

We wondered about this, because it sounds just like the incessant and inane psychobabble coming out of the “psychology today” brain mill.

These results are suspicious because the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) lists “Victim of crime” as a mental disorder. So it’s hard to imagine that both “mental illness causes being a victim of crime” and “being a victim of crime causes mental illness.” It’s a no-win situation, and the fact that the DSM is a fraudulent machine used to sell psychiatric drugs does not make it more palatable.

The DSM-5 also has fourteen other diagnoses about being a victim in various abusive situations, and thirteen diagnoses about being the perpetrator of abuse or violence. It would seem that both victims and perpetrators are the focus of a lot of attention; so many ways to prescribe psychiatric drugs known to cause violence.

The study authors are using these questionable results to assert that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of crime, giving the benefit of doubt to those who commit violence and further contributing to the perception of the “dangerous environment” so necessary to the existence of coercive psychiatry.

They are trying to prove that school shooters are not mentally ill, because this taint goes against the massive psychiatric public relations campaign to “stop the stigma of mental illness,” which is really a campaign underwritten by pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs.

The fact is, the real criminals here are psychiatrists and psychologists.

The soaring crime rate began to rise when psychiatrists and psychologists infiltrated the fields of education and law. When you put criminals in charge of crime, the crime rate rises.

If psychiatrists and psychologists actually knew what they were doing, the crime rate would drop. Instead, they conduct sham research about the relationship between crime and mental illness, instead of actually curing people and cementing the safety and security of society.

Real criminals would want to obfuscate the issues and point the finger away from themselves. Guess what? When the criminal mind accuses others, he is likely disclosing his own type of crime. And the fact is, psychiatric drugs cause violence, proven again and again as psych-drug-addled school shooters rage on.

Criminals think everyone else is a criminal, since they cannot envision people being decent. Psychiatrists and psychologists, focusing their attention on crime and illness, fail to observe human decency, and think there is nothing else but crime, deceit, and violence — all to be suppressed with harmful and addictive drugs, electroshock, psycho-surgery, involuntary incarceration, and restraints.

Recommendations

1. Legislative hearings should be held to fully investigate the correlation between psychiatric treatment and violence and suicide.

2. Toxicology testing for psychiatric and even illicit drugs should be mandatory in cases where someone has committed a mass shooting or other serious violent crime.

3. Train law enforcement officers, school security and teachers in the adverse effects of psychotropic drugs in order to recognize that irrational, violent and suicidal behavior in persons they may face could be influenced by these drugs.

4. No student shall be forced to take any psychotropic drug as a requisite of their education, in alignment with Title 20 of United States Code: Chapter 33, “Education of Individuals with Disabilities,” Subchapter II, (25) “Prohibition on mandatory medication.”

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

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

Monday, July 2nd, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Medical students should be educated about these relationships.

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

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

“Shoot ’em up” Is No Longer Just for Westerns

Monday, March 12th, 2018

“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
[with thanks to Charles Stross in The Apocalypse Codex.]

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog that has investigated school and other mass shootings since the Columbine High School Shooting in 1999, warns about pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into more mental health services in response to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Valentine’s Day.

An investigation into the shooting must include what psychotropic drugs the alleged shooter, Nikolas Cruz, has been prescribed and the fact that he had apparently undergone “behavioral health” treatment which did nothing to prevent the murderous outcome. A 2016 Florida Department of Children and Family Services report indicated that he was regularly taking “medication” for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); these types of psychotropic drugs are known to have violence and suicide as potential side effects.

CCHR International’s investigation into school violence reveals that at least 36 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence have been committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 172 wounded and 80 killed.

At least 27 international drug regulatory agency warnings have been issued on psychiatric drugs being linked to mania, violence, hostility, aggression, psychosis, and homicidal ideation (thoughts or fantasies of homicide that can be planned).

Cruz, 19, charged over the Parkland, Florida shooting, is a prime example of the failure of the mental health system. Expecting better mental health treatment to solve these problems is a forlorn hope, since it promises something that has not and cannot be delivered.

Pouring more funds into a mental health system that keeps failing and continues to use “treatments” that may induce violent and suicidal behavior in a percentage of those taking them, is a recipe for future disaster. Recognize that the repeated violence caused by psychiatric drugging of school children is neither happenstance nor coincidence, and is in fact an enemy action, and the enemy is psychiatry.

The survivors of the Parkland shooting, the families of those killed and the community at large deserves answers and accountability. CCHR is calling on families with knowledge of a loved one who has experienced treatment abuse and for whistleblowers who have concerns about any behavioral facility to contact CCHR by reporting the abuse here.

For more information read this news release.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

The Radical Permissiveness of Psychiatry

Saturday, January 13th, 2018

Permissiveness: Allowing or characterized by great or excessive freedom of behavior. A permissive person, society, or way of behaving allows or tolerates things of which other people disapprove.

Apparently the quote “DO AS THOU WILT because men that are free, of gentle birth, well bred and at home in civilized company possess a natural instinct that inclines them to virtue and saves them from vice. This instinct they name their honor.” [François Rabelais, 1534] has been shortened by the psychological and psychiatric industries to the first four words.

From where does this radical permissiveness come?

“The biomedical model [the biological underpinnings of mental disorders] currently dominates psychiatric clinical practice and research.”
“Psychiatry’s growth and power during the twentieth century also can be traced in part to its alliance with Western science’s goals of control and domination of nature. … For example, during this century, capitalism has simultaneously needed to increase consumption and the technical control of social reality in order to maximize profits. This creates a paradox in which morality is slackened to increase permissiveness, and consequently, consumption.”
“Biological psychiatry’s rush to transmogrify much of human life into clinical or biological entities has become increasingly suspect on scientific as well as sociopolitical grounds.”
[“The Biomedicalization of Psychiatry: A Critical Overview“, Carl I. Cohen, M.D., Community Mental Health Journal, Vol. 29, No. 6, December 1993]

The problem with the biomedical model is that psychiatrists attempt to explain environmental, behavioral, social and spiritual phenomena with strictly biological factors. This is called “biological reductionism.” It places a heavy emphasis on the chemistry of the brain instead of searching for root causes of mental distress in areas that have more effective treatments. This leads to dependence on psychotropic drugs which have been shown to be addictive and harmful.

The transformation of psychiatry into a purely medical model was driven primarily by third-party reimbursement (insurance), the pharmaceutical industry, and government funding.

Freudian theory developed in the 1890’s called for radical permissiveness in sexual mores and child rearing, and left parents in constant worry of unwittingly perpetrating untold psychological harm upon their children.
[Chapter 3, Psychiatry The Ultimate Betrayal, Bruce Wiseman, Freedom Publishing, 1995]

To this day, thanks to the large-scale Freudian indoctrination of teachers, doctors, social workers, and others, many a mother and father is filled with dread, fearing irreparable mental damage, whenever some minor or major trauma strikes their child.

When lawyers turn to “childhood trauma” as a defense for criminality, it is assumed that the jury and the public will understand this: “everybody knows” that psychological damage comes from one’s childhood.

“The indiscriminate, ‘nonjudgmental’ approach, of dubious value with neurotics, amounts to a frank condoning of crime when applied to offenders and threatens to undermine and eradicate social and moral attitudes. This is the more serious, since this psychiatric-social work approach combines with the ‘permissive’ or ‘progressive’ upbringing of the home and school and a very lax enforcement of justice by the police and the courts.” The statement was made in 1962 by psychiatrist Melitta Schmideberg, president of the Association for the Psychiatric Treatment of Offenders.
[ibid. Chapter 8]

In 1966, schools began to be used as an ideological platform for the abandonment of self-discipline and morality. The assault on social values came with the textbook called Values Clarification: A Handbook of Practical Strategies for Teachers and Students. Children were asked to abandon values instilled through family, home and church, and substitute new values which they were free to make up.

This “therapeutic education,” or “behavior modification,” gradually replaced academics in favor of feelings and emotions, eroding discipline and promoting permissiveness, redefining and replacing earned self-esteem with psychological doubletalk like “anger management” and “mental health.”

The undermining of traditional education and values can be traced to a German psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig University, who founded “experimental psychology” in 1879. Declaring that man is an animal with no soul, he claimed that thought was merely the result of brain activity — a false premise that has remained the basis of psychiatry until this day.

Wundt was a strong advocate of Gottlieb Fichte, head of psychology at the University of Berlin in 1810, who believed that “Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished.”

Influential educational psychologist Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm Meumann, professor of philosophy and education at Leipzig University and student and assistant of Wundt, sought to radically change schools by the “oppression of the children’s natural inclinations.” His book discussing Mental Hygiene in the Schools became required reading for several generations of education students in Germany and he propagated the idea that schools should be used for “preventative mental health functions.”

For more information download and read the CCHR report Harming Youth — Psychiatry Destroys Young Minds — Report and recommendations on harmful mental health assessments, evaluations, and programs within our schools.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

What Makes Special Education Special?

Sunday, July 16th, 2017

The Special School District in St. Louis County, Missouri has an annual budget over $400 Million for 7 schools, over 2600 teachers, and over 24,000 students.

The July 2002 President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education revealed the source of a deeply troubled Special Education system: 40 percent of kids are being labeled with “learning disorders” simply because they have not been taught to read. This finding leaves no doubt that the subjectivity of the term “learning disorder” must be a central point of Special Education reform.

Eighty percent of children (or 2.4 million) labeled as having a “specific learning disability” could be taught in a normal school setting but with greater emphasis on phonics and academic basics. We suspect that all children, not just special school district children, could benefit from this.

State and federal governments are already wasting $28 billion per year due to unscientific categories in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). This money would be better channeled into providing more teachers and workable educational methods that get actual results.

The DSM-5 lists these ridiculous items of “mental illness”:

  • “Academic or educational problem”
  • “Specific learning disorder”
  • “Specific learning disorder, With impairment in mathematics”
  • “Specific learning disorder, With impairment in reading”
  • “Specific learning disorder, With impairment in written expression”

The primary purpose of Congress’ original IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act) law in 1975 was to provide a free and appropriate education for children with hearing, sight, speech and other physical handicaps. When the term “handicapped” was changed to “learning disabled,” children who fidget, interrupt their teachers, or simply fall behind academically were suddenly considered “disabled.”

Over the ensuing years, the funding has been largely funneled, instead, to children with “learning disorders,” a term so subjective that children who fidget, butt into line or interrupt their teachers are so labeled. In most cases the children were subsequently prescribed cocaine-like, mind-altering drugs. Many of these children simply have never been taught to read. Clearly, there is a critical need to provide an objective, scientifically based definition of “learning disability,” and this must be the central point of reforming IDEA.

Labeling a child with these “disorders” led to school personnel threatening parents to place their child on a psychiatric drug as a requisite to remaining in class, or face the child being dismissed from school.

Due to the hazards of these drugs, in order to receive federal funds under the IDEA, the “Prohibition on Mandatory Medication Amendment” (H.R.1350) was signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 3, 2004 and requires schools to implement policies that prohibit schoolchildren being forced onto psychiatric drugs as a requisite for their education. The law states, “The psychological/psychiatric system should not be able to abuse Special Education by diagnosing childhood and educational problems and failure as ‘mental disorders.'”

Email Special School District Superintendent Don Bohannon at dbohannon@ssdmo.org and let him know what you think about this.

Click here for more information about mental health screening in schools.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

Doctors in Schools

Monday, July 10th, 2017

Through psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, false explanations, easy-seizure commitment laws and often brutal, depersonalizing “treatments” and deadening, mind-altering drugs, thousands needlessly fall into psychiatry’s coercive system every day all over the world. It is a system which exemplifies human rights abuse.

“In the Australian state of Victoria, a state program kicked in at the beginning of 2017 to mandate that children as young as 12 should see a doctor in school at least once a week, to receive drugs and medical treatment without parental consent.”

“Select Victorian Government secondary schools will work together with local general practices to enable primary health care services to be delivered on school premises.”

One suspects that this “Doctors in Schools” program is actually intended to consolidate government control over children and line the pockets of pharmaceutical corporations. You know that these doctors will be prescribing psychiatric drugs to these schoolchildren.

In his 1932 novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley depicts a “utopian” but totalitarian society, one that is insane and bent on control. It is a controlled civilization, using, as Huxley stated, the “technique of suggestion – through infant conditioning and, later, with the aid of drugs.”

In 2003 the release of the U.S. New Freedom Commission on Mental Health Report recommended that all 52 million American schoolchildren be “screened” for “mental illness,” claiming – without proof – that “early detection, assessment, and links with “treatment” could “prevent mental health problems from worsening.” “Treatment” ultimately means drugs – usually the most expensive ones that effectively create lifetime mental health patients – for which the government and insurance agencies can be billed.

Children worldwide are under extremely dangerous assault. Today, parents and teachers are also deceived in the name of improved mental health and better education.

In the U.S. alone, 1.5 million children and adolescents on antidepressants are at risk of known, drug-induced violent or suicidal side effects.

In Missouri, Medicaid spends $16 Million per year on psychiatric drugs for roughly 20,000 children in state foster care. Foster care babies less than a year old are being given barbiturates to make them sleep. The side effects of barbiturates include addiction, depression, disorientation, hallucinations, kidney disease, and liver disease.

This information is not easy, comfortable reading. Ultimately the harshest reality you will have to face is that children urgently need our help and protection. Without that, the future for one and all is at serious risk.

For more information on harmful mental health screening, assessments, evaluations and programs within our schools, go to http://www.cchrstl.org/screening.shtml.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

« Older Entries