Archive for April, 2010
Friday, April 30th, 2010
Spero News
By Asia News
April 30, 2010
Four officials of the district government of Luohe (Henan) were removed for having interned a petitioner in a psychiatric hospital for over 6 years. Protests are growing in the country over local authorities systematic abuse of protesters.
Xu Lindong, the author of a petitioner from Daliu city has been interned in two psychiatric hospitals since October 2003. Xu began presenting petitions in 1997, both to local and central authorities. In 2003, dissatisfied with the response of local authorities, he decided to go to Beijing to petition. In response, local authorities had him forcibly repatriated, first sent him Zhumadian psychiatric hospital and later Luohe Psychiatric hospital, where was diagnosed with obsessive-ompulsive disorder and was subjected to 54 electroshock treatments.
Shi Hongtai and Yang Yaoqin, then secretary and deputy secretary of the Communist Party of Daliu, later promoted to higher positions, have been charged with his internment. It appears that they used false documents to have Xu interned.
The news has caused widespread protests and a campaign of online subscriptions, denouncing “the growing trend of regional authorities to restrict the freedom of citizens through similar measures [internment in psychiatric hospitals].”
Now the lawyer Boyang Chang, co-organizer of the signature campaign and family lawyer for Xu, has announced legal action against the Communist officials and hospital responsible for the illegal internment and is demanding compensation.
Read entire article: http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=128&id=31951&t=China%3A+++Interned+in+psychiatric+hospital+for+6+%BD+years+for+presenting+petitions
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Tags: China, Communist, ECT, electroshock treatment, Falun Gong, forced drugging, human rights violations, obsessive-compulsive disorder, psychiatric drugs, psychiatric hospital, psychiatric torture, torture
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Friday, April 30th, 2010
ABC News 27
WHTM.com
By Myles Snyder
April 29, 2010
Harrisburg psychiatrist Stefan Kruszewski offers no pain relief for pharmaceutical companies. He testifies against them when they make false claims about their drugs, and he’s good at it.
The AstraZeneca drug Seroquel is for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but the company marketed it to seniors and kids for other things and wooed doctors into over-prescribing it. Kruszewski blew the whistle on AstraZeneca and it was ordered to pay a half-billion dollars in fines to the government.
As a scientist, Kruszewski was angry that the company exaggerated the benefits and suppressed evidence about the drug’s negative side effects in the name of profit.
“Doctors need to be more aware and need to make decisions, not based upon what pharmaceutical companies are telling them, but based upon unbiased information,” he said.
As a whistle blower, Kruszewski gets a piece of that half billion dollar settlement worth tens of millions of dollars. It’s not the first big money case he’s won, but there’s also a cost.
Read entire article: http://www.whtm.com/news/stories/0410/731076.html
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Tags: AstraZeneca, Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, illegal marketing of drugs, over-prescribing, pharmaceutical companies, psychiatrist, Seroquel, whistleblower
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Friday, April 30th, 2010
The Gazette
By Sharon Kirkey
April 26, 2010
As Dr. Allen Frances read through the list of proposed changes to psychiatry’s bible of mental sickness, alarms started ringing in his own mind.
“I was surprised,” the renowned U.S. psychiatrist says, “that the proposals managed to be much worse than my most pessimistic expectations.”
By the time he was finished reading, Frances had calculated that the recommendations contained within the first draft for the fifth and latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – a hugely influential book used daily by doctors worldwide, psychiatry’s official classification of all the ways humanity can go “mad” – could unnecessarily trigger wholesale “epidemics” of mental illness and expose millions more adults and children to potentially harmful psychiatric drugs.
Frances, more than most, knows the kind of surprises that may be lurking.
He chaired the task force that wrote the current edition of the manual – referred to as DSM-IV – which Frances says is a book that unintentionally contributed to vast and sudden increases in the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder (manic depression), after it made changes in those definitions.
Rates of bipolar disorder alone jumped 40-fold in the U.S. after the definition was broadened to suggest that children don’t have to experience the typical manic symptoms seen in adults to be diagnosed bipolar – and that depression in kids can be a persistent irritable mood.
Read entire article: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/canada/Psychiatry+bible+could+roll+whole+list+disorders/2951855/story.html#ixzz0mbCzBKaU
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Tags: Allen Frances, bipolar, depression, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, dsm, DSM-IV, Major Depressive Disorder, mental disorders, mental illness, pharmaceutical companies, prescriptions, psychiatric drugs, psychiatry, psychiatry's bible, psychoactive drugs
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Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Lawyers & Settlements
By Heidi Turner
April 28, 2010
London, England: The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the government agency in the UK responsible for medicines and medical devices, has issued a warning about potential SSRI birth defects related to the use of fluoxetine (Prozac).
The MHRA issued the warning in its monthly drug safety update. The agency warns that there is a small risk of congenital cardiac defects in infants of mothers who took fluoxetine during the first trimester of pregnancy. According to the safety update, the risk is similar to that posed by paroxetine (Paxil/Seroxat).
The MHRA notes that an analysis of data from seven cohort studies found a slightly increased risk of congenital cardiac defects when fluoxetine was taken early in pregnancy. Those cardiac defects reportedly varied and ranged in severity from reversible ventricular septal defects to transposition of the great vessels. The safety update notes that the increased absolute risk is less than two per 100 pregnancies.
Prozac is an antidepressant classed as a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). The MHRA says that there is not enough data to conclude that other SSRIs carry the same risk, but it is unwilling to rule out the possibility of a “class effect,” meaning other drugs in the same class may carry the same risks.
The agency also says that the risk of giving birth to an infant with congenital cardiac defects should be weighed against the risks of having untreated depression during pregnancy, which carries its own risks, including low birth weight, preterm delivery and lower Apgar scores.
Read entire article: http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/14025/interview-ssri-birth-defects-side-effects-pphn.html
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Tags: Antidepressant, birth defects, congenital cardiac defects, first trimester, fluoxetine, low birth weight, lower Apgar scores, Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, MHRA, mothers, paroxetine, Paxil, Pregnancy, preterm delivery, prozac, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, Seroxat, side effects, ssri, ventricular septal defects
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Thursday, April 29th, 2010
InjuryBoard.com
By Jane Akre
April 28, 2010
Pharmaceutical Giant, AstraZeneca LP and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP will pay $520 million after being fined by the federal government for illegally marketing the anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel.
Seroquel, also known as quetiapine fumarate, was approved by the FDA in 1997 to treat psychotic disorders. By October 2006, its use had expanded for use for bipolar depression and mania.
The Department of Justice alleges AstraZeneca illegally marketed Seroquel for uses other than those approved by the FDA such as Alzheimer’s disease, anger management, anxiety, ADD, dementia, depression, PTSD, mood disorders, among other uses considered “off-label.”
In 2008, Bloomberg reported that teenagers and the elderly were increasingly being given a class of anti-psychotic drugs not cleared by regulators. In adolescents, the medications are given for depression, autism and hyperactivity, and in the elderly for dementia and insomnia.
Half of Seroquel sales in 2006 were reportedly for off-label use.
In doing so, the company submitted false claims for payments from federal insurance programs including Medicaid, Medicare and TRICARE programs, Veterans Affairs, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.
Read entire article: http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/astrazeneca-fined-520-million-over-illegal-seroquel-marketing.aspx?googleid=280742
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Tags: ADD, Alzheimer’s disease, anger management, antipsychotic drug, anxiety, AstraZeneca, bipolar, depression and mania, elderly, FDA, illegally marketing, mood disorders, off-label, psychiatric drugs, PTSD, quetiapine, Seroquel
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Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
National Post
By John Baglow
April 27, 2010
Some time back I remarked on a new childhood “affliction” to be dealt with by the judicious use of drugs and psychiatrists: “Oppositional Defiant Disorder.” If you had four or more of the following as a child, you were ODD, and I guess I was, too:
1. often loses temper [check]
2. often argues with adults [check]
3. often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules [check]
4. often deliberately annoys people [check]
5. often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
6. is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
7. is often angry and resentful
8. is often spiteful or vindictive
To qualify as ODD, those “disturbances” must cause “clinically significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.” But of course that can mean almost anything. Talking back. Fighting back. Asking a lot of questions. Standing up for yourself in a hostile environment.
In those days teachers and jocks simply bullied you into submission. Now it’s all white coats and Ritalin.
Creativity? Lateral thinking? Oddball hypotheses? Questioning authority? For goodness sake, tell your kids to leave it at home, for their own good. That’s what the Internet is for.
In any case, it looks as though I was onto something. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is going through another update. The first version of the DSM, published in 1952, listed 128 disorders (including homosexuality, delisted in 1973). DSM-IV, appearing in 1994, listed 357–almost three times the original number. And DSM-5, scheduled for publication in 2013, may swell the list even more.
Dr. Allen Frances chaired the committee that wrote DSM-IV. He has, to put it mildly, had a change of heart, after having had more than a quarter-century to observe the human tragedies that resulted:
Frances says [DSM-IV] unintentionally contributed to vast and sudden increases in the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder (manic depression), after it made changes in those definitions.
Rates of bipolar disorder alone jumped 40-fold in the U.S. after the definition was broadened to suggest that children don’t have to experience the typical manic symptoms seen in adults to be diagnosed bipolar — and that depression in kids can be a persistent irritable mood.
Read entire article: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/04/27/john-baglow-message-to-disease-industry-that-s-why-they-call-it-acting-like-a-child.aspx
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Tags: ADHD, Allen Frances, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar, child drugging, depression, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, dsm, DSM-5, manic symptoms, ODD, oppositional defiant disorder, psychiatric drugs, psychiatrists, Ritalin, stimulants, temper
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Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
Not to mention nonconformity and quirkiness — the definition of mental illness changes
Canada.com
By Sharon Kirkey
April 27, 2010
Since 1950, man has landed on the moon, made computers commonplace and harnessed nuclear power.
We’re obviously using our minds to the fullest. Yet the number of ways we can go officially crazy has nearly tripled.
The hugely influential reference book used by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals the world over to diagnose mental illness — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — currently lists 357 types of psychiatric afflictions, up from 128 when the first volume was published in 1952.
The psychiatric establishment says it has learned to detect more mental illness in the population than was possible a half-century ago, and that science has advanced to the point that the broadly defined disorders of the past are now seen with much greater resolution, yielding many more specific conditions.
We’re not expanding the domain, they argue, as much as we’re refining it.
But skeptics say it is less about advances in brain science and more about psychiatry shuffling more and more behaviours and reactions to life’s letdowns into boxes of mental dysfunction and assigning them codes, and that we risk becoming so overdiagnosed and overmedicated, we’ll be like the patient in The New Yorker cartoon, who asks his psychiatrist: “Could we up the dosage? I still have feelings.”
“The unavoidable conclusion is that we’ve narrowed healthy behaviour so dramatically that our quirks and eccentricities — the normal emotional range of adolescence and adulthood — have become problems we fear and expect drugs to fix,” says Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.
It’s not enough that people sometimes want to be alone, Lane says. Solitude? According to the DSM, including its criteria for “avoidant” and “schizoid”personality disorders, that could be viewed as a sign of mild psychosis, he warns. Feeling restless, keyed up or on edge could be markers of generalized anxiety disorder, and trouble sleeping a symptom of a major depressive disorder.
The more diagnostic categories added to the DSM, the more broadly they’re defined, the bigger the market of potential new drug customers grows, says Stuart Kirk, professor of social welfare at the University of California Los Angeles School of Public Affairs. Within each revision of psychiatry’s bible, pharmaceutical companies see a “bonanza” of marketing possibilities, he says.
Read entire article: http://www.canada.com/life/Creativity+There+pill+that/2955948/story.html
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Tags: Christopher Lane, Creativity, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, dsm, Major Depressive Disorder, Marketing, mental disorders, mental dysfunction, mental illness, pharmaceutical companies, psychiatry, psychiatry's bible, quirkiness, Stuart Kirk
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Monday, April 26th, 2010
EmaxHealth
By Deborah Mitchell
April 26, 2010
Adderall and Adderall XR, schedule II controlled substances composed of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine, have several Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved uses. However, both prescribed and recreational use of these drugs, especially among young people, is associated with serious, life-threatening side effects.
The FDA requires that all amphetamines, including Adderall and Adderall XR (the long-acting version of Adderall), carry a black box warning, which means that medical research has demonstrated that these drugs carry a significant risk of serious, or even life-threatening, adverse effects. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, both of these drugs have a “high potential for abuse” that “may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence.” In an attempt to stem such abuse, the federal government limits the amount of these amphetamine drugs that can be manufactured each year.
Adderall is a central nervous system stimulate approved by the FDA to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy. Studies show that the side effects associated with Adderall XR include abdominal pain, anorexia (loss of appetite), asthenia (feeling of weakness), diarrhea, dizziness, dry mouth,elevated blood pressure, fever, headache, heartburn, infection, (including urinary tract infection), insomnia, nausea, tachycardia (rapid heartbeat), and weight loss.
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders notes that “Amphetamine, as with cocaine, can induce symptoms similar to those seen in obsessive disorder, panic disorder, and phobic disorders.” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual notes that “high doses and long-term use of amphetamines are associated with erectile disorder and other sexual dysfunction. Use of Adderall can also induce schizophrenic-like states in children who are taking prescribed doses, according to The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Read entire article: http://www.emaxhealth.com/1275/adderall-associated-serious-life-threatening-side-effects.html
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Tags: abdominal pain, Adderall, ADHD, American Psychiatric Association, amphetamine, anorexia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, cocaine, dextroamphetamine, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, diarrhea, dizziness, dry mouth, elevated blood pressure, FDA, fever, Food and Drug Administration, headache, heartburn, infection, insomnia, nausea, side effects, tachycardia, weight loss
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Monday, April 26th, 2010
The Huffington Post
By Mark Hyman, MD
April 24, 2010
Here’s some depressing recent medical news: Antidepressants don’t work. What’s even more depressing is that the pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have deliberately deceived us into believing that they DO work. As a physician, this is frightening to me. Depression is among the most common problems seen in primary-care medicine and soon will be the second leading cause of disability in this country.
The study I’m talking about was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found that drug companies selectively publish studies on antidepressants. They have published nearly all the studies that show benefit — but almost none of the studies that show these drugs are ineffective. (1)
That warps our view of antidepressants, leading us to think that they do work. And it has fueled the tremendous growth in the use of psychiatric medications, which are now the second leading class of drugs sold, after cholesterol-lowering drugs.
The problem is even worse than it sounds, because the positive studies hardly showed benefit in the first place. For example, 40 percent of people taking a placebo (sugar pill) got better, while only 60 percent taking the actual drug had improvement in their symptoms. Looking at it another way, 80 percent of people get better with just a placebo.
That leaves us with a big problem — millions of depressed people with no effective treatments being offered by most conventional practitioners. However, there are treatments available. Functional medicine provides a unique and effective way to treat depression and other psychological problems. Today I will review seven steps you can take to work through your depression without drugs. But before we get to that, let’s take a closer look at depression.
Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/depression-medication-why_b_550098.html?ref=email_share
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Tags: alternatives, antidepressants, depression, Drug companies, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, pharmaceutical industry, placebo, primary-care medicine, psychiatric drugs, psychological problems, studies, sugar pill, The New England Journal of Medicine
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Monday, April 26th, 2010
New York Magazine
By Jennifer Senior
April 25, 2010
Two Jews may, as the saying goes, have three opinions, but that appears to be a fairly modest ratio when compared with psychiatrists. It was inevitable that revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders would invite controversy—it’s the classic reference work for mental-health professionals, and a convenient field guide to understanding crazy exes for the rest of us—but even the American Psychiatric Association, which first appointed the work groups to update the text two years ago, couldn’t have predicted the squabbles now under way. Dr. Allen Frances, the man who chaired the task force that created the current edition (the DSM-IV), has today emerged as the most trenchant, and relentless, critic of the proposed revisions to the upcoming edition (the DSM-5; among the changes is a transition to Arabic numerals). Last Tuesday was the final day those revisions were open to public comment. “And hopefully,” Frances says, “most of them will drop out.”
Basically, Frances believes that the first draft of the DSM-5 is too promiscuous with its labels, both by loosening diagnostic criteria and by introducing a host of new and, to his mind, problematic maladies—like Binge Eating Disorder (more or less defined as gorging on massive amounts at least once a week for three months). By the estimate of one DSM-5 task-force member, Frances says, this disorder already afflicts 6 percent of the population. “And that,” he notes, “is before drug companies start marketing something for it.”
As Frances pointed out in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, such taxonomic adjustments only seem to further shrink “the ever-shrinking domain of the normal.” Take another DSM-5 proposed addition: Temper Dysregulation Disorder With Dysphoria. Frances fears this may be deployed for kids who have typical temper problems. Or Major Depressive Episode: As it’s redefined, it could now be used to describe someone who’s spent two weeks grieving over a lost spouse, he contends. But the worst offender, in Frances’s view, is Psychosis Risk Syndrome, which attempts to identify and treat youngsters before they become psychotic. In his view, there isn’t any evidence that early intervention with medication helps, while there’s plenty to suggest that many teens could be misidentified. “And that I saw as a public-health danger,” he says, “because there are real drawbacks to being on antipsychotics.” Like weight gain and diabetes. “Those children are also disproportionately on Medicaid,” he adds.
Read entire article: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/65632/
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Tags: Allen Frances, American Psychiatric Association, antipsychotics, APA, Binge Eating Disorder, diabetes, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, Drug companies, dsm, DSM-5, DSM-IV, Major Depressive Episode, Marketing, Medicaid, psychiatric drugs, psychiatrist, Psychosis Risk Syndrome, Temper Dysregulation Disorder With Dysphoria, weight gain
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