Archive for June, 2010
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
ABC News Nightline
By Katie Hinman and Kimberly Brown
June 30, 2010
It may look like any leafy New England campus, but inside one Massachusetts school for special needs children, the method of teaching at work is anything but ordinary.
The Boston-area’s Judge Rotenberg Center educates and treats enrollees ages 3 to adult, all of whom are struggling with severe emotional, behavior, and psychiatric problems, including autism-like disorders. And for about half of the 250 students here, undesirable behavior means getting hooked up to a special machine and administered an electric shock.
The skin shock treatment, used only after both a court and the student’s parents have approved, has drawn criticism for years. But after the release of a recent study by Mental Disability Rights International, Rotenberg has come under the scrutiny of no less than the United Nations, which is calling the school’s practices “torture.”
“To be frank, I was shocked when I was reading the report,” said Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture. “What I did, on the 11th of May, was to send an urgent appeal to the U.S. government asking them to investigate.”
Read entire article: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/shock-therapy-massachussetts-school/story?id=11047334
RELATED ARTICLE: Sue Clark-Wittenberg, director of the Wittenberg Center to End Electroshock in Ottawa, Canada is an electroshock survivor who is appealing to Amnesty International to deem electroshock (ECT) as torture.
http://babies.secretbest.com/19814/electroshock-is-torture/
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Tags: electric shock, Judge Rotenberg Center, Massachusetts, Mental Disability Rights International, New England, psychiatric problems, restraint, School, shock treatment, torture, UN, UN Convention against Torture, undesirable behavior, United Nations, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture
Posted in News | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
Comment from CCHR Int:
A few months ago, the FAA changed its rules and now allows pilots to fly planes under the influence of antidepressants (drugs documented to cause mania, psychosis, worsening depression, hallucinations, suicidal and even homicidal ideation—see this link for international studies and warnings http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/ ). Now a new report has just been released on the 2008 Mount Airy plane crash, and toxicology tests reveal the pilot had the antidepressant Zoloft in his system. Now pay attention to this particular line of the report, “Officials say the pilot ‘displayed non-professional behavior’ and that a cockpit voice recording showed that he began singing, [yes singing] “Save my life, I’m going down for the last time.”
And this, “The NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] says the pilot failed to maintain control of the plane during instrument flying and deliberately went below the minimum descent altitude.” Deliberately. Now look again at the documented side effects of these drugs cited above or see for yourself in the link to the psychiatric drug database. The FAA needs to reverse its ruling.
News 14 Carolina
June 30, 2010
The National Transportation Safety Board issued a report on the probably cause of a 2008 plane crash in Mount Airy that killed everyone on board. The plane stalled and crashed while circling after an aborted landing.
The NTSB says the pilot failed to maintain control of the plane during instrument flying conditions and deliberately went below the minimum descent altitude.
Officials say the pilot “displayed non-professional behavior” and that a cockpit voice recording showed that he began singing, “Save my life, I’m going down for the last time” after being cleared for approach.
Toxicology tests revealed that the pilot had the drug Zoloft in his system, and medical records revealed he had been treated for anxiety and depression. The report also said it’s not clear whether the medical conditions could account for the behavior or whether they contributed to the accident.
Read entire article: http://charlotte.news14.com/content/local_news/triad/627644/ntsb-releases-report-on-2008-mount-airy-plane-crash
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Tags: antidepressants, anxiety, CCHR, CCHRInt, depression, FAA, Federal Aviation Administration, hallucinations, Mount Airy, National Transportation Safety Board, pilots, plane crash, psychosis, suicidal ideation, Suicide, Toxicology tests, worsening depression, Zoloft
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Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
Pharmalot
By Ed Silverman
June 30, 2010
There have been numerous claims that a medication caused a suicide, but few lead to sweeping changes. In Canada, however, the suicide of 18-year-old Sarah Carlin, who had taken the Paxil antidepressant, is a clear exception. Following a coroner’s inquest, Canada’s provincial and federal governments were told to ensure patients are better informed about drug risks, tighten regulations on drugmakers and establish an independent agency to regulate medications.
“If these things had been in place at the time Sara was prescribed Paxil, she would be alive today,” her father, Neil Carlin, said outside court. “We consider this a great victory…We are truly confident that if these are acted upon there will be young lives saved down the road.”
For more than a year before her death, Sara had been taking Paxil, an anti-depressant, which Health Canada warns can increase the risk of suicidal events in children and adolescents under 18. The teenager hanged herself in her parents’ basement in May 2007. The inquest made numerous recommendations, which you can see if you keep reading…
Of the various recommendations, the one that is garnering the most discussion appears to be the creation of a Drug Safety Board to investigate the side effects and issue warnings to the public, doctors and hospitals. The inquest specifically recommended the new board not receive any funding from drugmakers. Drugmakers must also report all adverse events to Health Canada within 30 days.
A Glaxo spokeswoman writes to says the drugmaker “is supportive of appropriate recommendations designed to prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future, and will give the recommendations addressed to the broader pharmaceutical industry our full attention and consideration. Sara Carlin’s death was a tragedy and we continue to express our deepest sympathies to her family.”
1. The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) should develop a Drug Information System. This system would promote:
• Patient safety in the prescribing and dispensing of drugs.
• Collection and compilation of data in a single repository for all drugs dispensed for all Ontarians.
• Research into drug and patient safety.
2. The Drug Information System should track and monitor all drugs dispensed in Ontario regardless of who is paying for the prescription.
3. The Drug Information System should collect, compile and release data upon request to scientists such as those studying population-based health outcomes at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.
4. The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care should commit to developing a province-wide suicide prevention strategy as has occurred in other provinces such as Alberta.
5. The objectives of the province-wide suicide prevention strategy should include:
• Enhanced mental health and well being for Ontarians.
• The education of the public to de-stigmatize mental health disorders, including depression and substance abuse disorders.
• Improving intervention and support for Ontarians affected by depression and substance abuse.
• Improving intervention and treatment for those at risk of suicide.
• Increased efforts to reduce access to lethal means of suicide.
• Increased research activities in Ontario on suicide, suicidal behaviour and suicide prevention.
• Improved suicide and suicidal behaviour-related surveillance systems.
• Inform and educate the media into strategies when reporting deaths due to suicide to prevent ‘copy cat’ suicides from occurring.
6. Strategies in the province-wide suicide prevention strategy should be humane, effective and evidence based, respectful of community and culture-based knowledge, inclusive of research, surveillance, evaluation and reporting and reflective of evolving knowledge and practices.
7. The ministry of Health and Long-Term Care of Ontario and Government of Ontario should commit to supporting the development of a national suicide prevention strategy for all Canadians.
Read entire article: http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/06/sara-carlin-paxil-and-drug-safety-in-canada/
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Tags: adverse events, alternative treatments, Antidepressant, Canada, coroner’s inquest, death, depression, Drug Information System, drug risks, Drug Safety Board, drugmakers, Glaxo, hanged, Health Canada, inquest, intervention, mental health, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, Neil Carlin, Ontario, Ontario College of Family Physicians, Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, Patient safety, Paxil, pharmaceutical industry, practice guidelines, psychiatric drugs, risk of suicidal events in children, Sara Carlin, selected serotonin reuptake inhibitors, side effects, SSRIs, substance abuse, suicidal behaviour, Suicide, Warnings
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Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden
The One Click Group
By Janne Larsson
June 29, 2010
This unique report presents data about the preceding psychiatric drug treatment for all persons who committed suicide in Sweden 2007. The conclusion is that a large percentage of the persons who committed suicide had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of and close to the suicide.
Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden.
This is a report about suicides committed in Sweden (with around 9 million citizens) in 2007 and the psychiatric drug treatment that preceded these suicides.
The report has three main parts:
• It gives unique data about all suicides committed in 2007 and the psychiatric drugs that the persons received within a year of the suicide.
• It compares these data with autopsy reports about psychiatric drugs found in the blood (of 98%) of all the persons who committed suicide in 2007.
• It gives extensive information about the psychiatric drug treatment given within a year to the subgroup of persons who committed suicide in 2007 and then were reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare by reason of law 3 – one third of all suicides committed that year.
The data presented on these pages should have been published by the responsible national authorities.
A large percentage of the persons who committed suicide in Sweden in 2007 had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of their suicide.
The idea that persons who are depressed are suffering from “chemical imbalances” and are deficient in the substance serotonin has been marketed by the pharmaceutical companies selling antidepressants (in the class of antidepressant drugs called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, SSRIs, such as Prozac, Paxil/Seroxat, Zoloft) for more than a decade. The intensive marketing has led persons to believe that their low mood is a deficiency disease – and that it is vital to supply the substance that corrects this deficiency – the antidepressant drug.
But there is no scientific evidence that a low mood is caused by a ”chemical imbalance” in the brain. The hypothesis has been rejected with the following words by one of the most well known names in the field, Dr. David Healy,“The serotonin theory of depression is comparable to the masturbatory theory of insanity.”
The Swedish medical agencies and their psychiatric consultants have used old data from forensic toxicological screenings to mislead the public and to heavily increase the use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs.
The most important information in this area is the patients’ medical history; the treatment history. Antidepressants, neuroleptics and other psychiatric drugs may cause harmful changes in the brain and these brain dysfunctions do not vanish when the drugs are discontinued – in many cases they cause chronic dysfunction to the brain, exemplified by the known neurological harm caused by neuroleptics. Many patients also get serious withdrawal reactions; reactions that can be so severe that they can lead to suicide.
Better sources of information are the unpublished clinical trials of psychiatric drugs done by pharmaceutical companies, and the important studies done by independent researchers. A number of these studies show that antidepressants and neuroleptics increase the risk of suicidal behaviour and directly cause effects that lead to suicide.
Download and read the full report here; http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/ME-CFS_docs/Psychiatric%20Drugs%20&%20Suicide,%20Sweden%202007.pdf
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Tags: antidepressants, chemical imbalances, deaths, depressed, drug treatment, forensic toxicological screenings, Janne Larsson, Marketing, national authorities, National Board of Health and Welfare, Paxil, pharmaceutical companies, prozac, psychiatric consultants, psychiatric drugs, serotonin, Seroxat, ssri, Suicide, Sweden, Swedish medical agencies, Zoloft
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Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
By CCHR International
June 23, 2010
A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect “brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk” in infants just a few weeks old. We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or brain abnormality to start with. There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one. So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the “associated with schizophrenia risk” amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.
For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, “researchers now believe” they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or “new evidence suggests” evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease. But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of “belief” —no evidence to support the theory. One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains. They’ve spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the “belief” in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science. As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, “There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” —Allen Frances (And Frances isn’t the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.)
The logical question the press should be asking is what are the American Journal of Psychiatry and “the Director of UNC Schizophrenic Research” really after? What is their goal?
As we have exposed in the article “Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global” there is a concerted push being headed by Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry and other pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists for the global implementation of a new mental health paradigm; preventative mental health, i.e., pre-diagnosing (diagnosing children before they develop a “mental disorder”) and pre-drugging children ( before they show “signs” of the mental disorder). There is an obvious push for the same pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging agenda with this latest study, which claims ”major cases of schizophrenia are usually not diagnosed until a person begins witnessing its related symptoms like delusions and hallucinations as a teenager or adult . However, by that time, the disease [notice the term disease despite no medical evidence of disease] crosses the stage of preliminary treatment and is difficult to treat.” In other words, if we wait to administer drugs to them it may be too late. That along with Gilmore’s statement, “It allows us to start thinking about how we can identify kids at risk for schizophrenia very early and whether there are things that we can do very early on to lessen the risk.” This is the pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging agenda being pushed and the new “preventative” model of mental health that is more akin to a Brave New World than anything previously witnessed. And this latest “study” tells us infants are also on the agenda.
And finally, to psychiatrist and lead study author John H. Gilmore, we think you should take a lesson from the former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Chief of the Center for Studies in Schizophrenia, the late Loren R. Mosher, M.D. who stated in his letter of resignation to the American Psychiatric Association, “The fact that there is no evidence confirming the brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to continue to support my membership…After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this is my belief I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization’s true identify requires no change in the acronym…”
To read more from Loren Mosher, including his two-year outcome study treating patients diagnosed “schizophrenic” without the use of drugs, his vehement stance against the biological psychiatric model of “disease” and more, click here.
To read the latest bogus psychiatric study, click here.
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Tags: Allen Frances, American Journal of Psychiatry, antipsychotic drugs, Australian, brain abnormalities, brain atrophy, brain images, CCHR Int, delusions, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, Doublespeak, dsm, DSM-IV, George Orwell, hallucinations, infants, John H. Gilmore, mental disorder, Patrick McGorry, pharma, physical cause, physical disease, pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging, preventative mental health, psychiatrist, Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry, research funds, schizophrenia, schizophrenia risk, scientific test, UNC Schizophrenia Research, X-rays
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Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
June 29, 2010
In its never-ending attempt to fabricate “mental disorders” out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they’ve invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.
This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you’re “mentally diseased” and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, “Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder” and goes on to claim this “disease” is called orthorexia nervosa — which is basically just Latin for “nervous about correct eating.”
But they can’t just called it “nervous healthy eating disorder” because that doesn’t sound like they know what they’re talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn’t). That’s where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means “bones with holes in them”).
Getting back to this fabricated “orthorexia” disease, the Guardian goes on to report, “Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.”
Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there’s something wrong with you.
But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be “normal?” If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that’s okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.
Read entire article: http://www.naturalnews.com/029098_orthorexia_mental_disorder.html
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Tags: artificial additives, chemical treatment, chemicals, dairy, genetically modified ingredients, healthy eating, Healthy eating disorder, herbicides, mental disorders, mental health patient, mentally diseased, natural foods, normal, organic, orthorexia nervosa, Orthorexics, pesticides, psychiatric industry, psychological disorder, psychotropic drugs, soy, sugar pill
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Monday, June 28th, 2010
HealthJockey.com
June 28, 2010
Some psychotropic drugs may be recommended to treat depression as they are believed to affect the mind, emotions, and behavior of an individual. But these medications appear to elevate the risk for various birth defects. As a recent study initiated by the University of Copenhagen suggests, the consumption of psychotropic medication ought to be avoided during pregnancy.
Investigators observed the link of psychotropic medications with birth defects. They analyzed the data between 1998 and 2007 regarding Danish children under the age of 17. The study claims that the data highlighted 429 adverse drug reactions in these children. After thorough examinations the authors concluded that more than half of these cases indicated extreme birth defects including birth deformities and severe withdrawal syndromes.
Associate Professor Lisa Aagaard affirmed, “A range of serious side effects such as birth deformities, low birth weight, premature birth, and development of neonatal withdrawal syndrome were reported in children under two years of age, most likely because of the mother’s intake of psychotropic medication during pregnancy.”
In addition, the investigators inspected 4,500 pediatric adverse drug reaction reports and revealed a clear link between psychotropic medications and birth defects. It was ascertained that psychostimulants like Ritalin known to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD) was accountable in 42 percent of unfavorable reactions. And while antidepressants such as Prozac probably caused 31 percent reactions, 21 percent were contributed by antipsychotics similar to Haldol.
Read entire article: http://www.healthjockey.com/2010/06/28/birth-defects-appear-due-to-intake-of-psychotropic-medications-during-pregnancy/
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Tags: ADD, antidepressants, antipsychotics, attention deficit disorder, Behavior, birth defects, birth deformities, Danish children, depression, emotions, Haldol, Lisa Aagaard, low birth weight, Mind, mother, neonatal withdrawal syndrome, pediatric adverse drug reaction reports, Pregnancy, pregnant women, premature birth, prozac, psychostimulants, psychotropic drugs, Ritalin, University of Copenhagen
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Monday, June 28th, 2010
Loewak
By Martijn Benders
June 27, 2010
What is wrong with a psychiatric industry that is financed by drug companies? Well isn’t that very obvious: they will try and try to classify more and more mental conditions as ‘diseases’ simply because their financers want them to do so. Nowadays children can’t behave like children anymore or they are ‘hyperactive’ or diagnosed as ‘ADHD’ and pumped full of drugs of which no one knows what the long term consequences of their use are.
At the same time, digg this, there was a recent research into which jobs have the highest suicide rates. Guess what? Yes, doctors and Psychiatrists rank amongst the highest, the most number of suicides take place in that job catagory.
Ask yourself this: why do these rather suicidally depressed people want to drug everyone? Because that’s basically what the new ‘Psychiatric Manual’ named ‘the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
“With DSM-V, American psychiatry is headed in exactly the opposite direction: defining ever-widening circles of the population as mentally ill with vague and undifferentiated diagnoses and treating them with powerful drugs,” Professor Shorter of the University of Toronto writes in the Wall Street Journal.
New diseases in the thick manual include the ‘Psychosis Risk Syndrome’ which is a particular type of ‘disease’ that can be streched to encompass half the world population. Twitch your eye? Behave a little weird? Have a stutter? Well, those might be signs of you having PSR which basically means you have the potential to become psychotic and, according to the manual, must be treated with drugs.
Symptoms of “psychosis risk syndrome” include vague descriptors as “disorganized speech.”
“Minor neurocognitive disorder” describes a reduction in cognitive function over time, such as that normally experienced by people over the age of 50, while “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria” refers to children who suffer from outbursts of temper.
The psychiatric industry has become a drugdealer culture. All these drugs do not just effect the people that take them but dissapear and mix with the environment. So ALL OF US are effected by these billions of tuns of chemical drugs that are pumped into the various water systems.
Read entire article: http://www.loewak.nl/2010/06/27/new-psychiatry-manual-defines-almost-anyone-as-insane/
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Tags: ADHD, American Psychiatric Association, APA, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, chemical drugs, children, depressed, diagnosed, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, diseases, Drug companies, drugdealer, dsm, DSM-V, Edward Shorter, hyperactive, Insane, mental conditions, PSR, psychiatric drugs, psychiatric industry, psychiatrists, Psychiatry Manual, Psychosis Risk Syndrome, psychotic, Suicide, temper dysregulation disorder
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Sunday, June 27th, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
June 27, 2010
Modern psychiatry went wrong when it embraced the idea that the mind should be treated with drugs, says Edward Shorter of the University of Toronto, writing in the Wall Street Journal.
Shorter studies the history of psychiatry and medicine.
Modern U.S. psychiatry has adopted a philosophy that psychological diseases arise from chemical imbalances and therefore have a very specific cluster of symptoms, he says, in spite of evidence that the difference between many so-called disorders is minimal or nonexistent. These “disorders” are then treated with expensive drugs that are no more effective than a placebo.
“Psychiatry seems to have lost its way in a forest of poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications,” he writes.
Shorter calls for U.S. psychiatry to abandon its emphasis on “psychopathology” and instead adopt the European approach, which focuses on the symptoms and needs of people as individuals. Yet the draft of the latest edition of psychiatric diagnostic “Bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), shows that U.S. psychiatry has no intention of changing course.
“With DSM-V, American psychiatry is headed in exactly the opposite direction: defining ever-widening circles of the population as mentally ill with vague and undifferentiated diagnoses and treating them with powerful drugs,” Shorter writes.
U.S. psychiatry was not always obsessed with psychopharmacology, he notes. Its early years were marked by a psychoanalytic approach that categorized mental disorders in broad, fluid categories such as “nerves,” “melancholia” or “manic-depressive illness.” These categories sufficed because similar treatments would work for people suffering from any version thereof: lithium treated both mania and severe depression, for example, while the specific symptoms experienced by an anxious person had little influence on the therapies needed.
“Our psychopathological lingo today offers little improvement on these sturdy terms,” Shorter said. “A patient with the same symptoms today might be told he has ‘social anxiety disorder’ or ‘seasonal affective disorder.’ … The new disorders all respond to the same drugs, so in terms of treatment, the differentiation is meaningless and of benefit mainly to pharmaceutical companies that market drugs for these niches.”
In the 1950s and ’60s, a new wave of psychiatrists sought to turn away from psychoanalysis — perceiving it as focusing excessively on “unconscious psychic conflicts” — and toward a more “scientific” model instead. As a result, the DSM-III introduced the vague new categories of “major depression” and “bipolar disorder,” even though evidence suggests that there is no substantial difference between the two conditions. At the same time, “major depression” absorbed what Shorter calls two very different conditions, “neurotic depression” and “melancholia.”
“This would be like incorporating tuberculosis and mumps into the same diagnosis, simply because they are both infectious diseases,” he writes.
DSM-V only continues the trend of extending the disordered label to more and more normal people, Shorter warns: “To flip through the latest draft of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in the works for seven years now, is to see the discipline’s floundering writ large.”
For example, the new disorder of “psychosis risk syndrome” associates a whole new class of people with full-blown schizophrenia, under the logic, Shorter says, that “even if you aren’t floridly psychotic with hallucinations and delusions, eccentric behavior can nonetheless awaken the suspicion that you might someday become psychotic.” The implication, of course, is that such people should be treated with antipsychotics.
Symptoms of “psychosis risk syndrome” include such vague descriptors as “disorganized speech.”
Other new “disorders” include hoarding, mixed anxiety-depression and binge eating. “Minor neurocognitive disorder” describes a reduction in cognitive function over time, such as that normally experienced by people over the age of 50, while “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria” refers to children who suffer from outbursts of temper.
“DSM-V accelerates the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases,” Shorter says, “turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety, and boyishness into hyperactivity.”
Read entire article: http://www.naturalnews.com/029088_psychiatry_failure.htmll
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Tags: American Psychiatric Association, anxiety, APA, apprehension, boyishness, chemical imbalances, David Gutierrez, depression, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, disorders, dsm, DSM-V, DSM5, Edward Shorter, grief, hyperactivity, lithium, mania, manic-depressive illness, medications, melancholia, pharmaceutical companies, placebo, psychiatric drugs, psychiatrists, psychiatry, psychological diseases, psychopathological, psychopharmacology, Psychosis Risk Syndrome, psychotic, schizophrenia, seasonal affective disorder, social anxiety disorder, symptoms, temper dysregulation disorder, University of Toronto
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Friday, June 25th, 2010
Fair Warning
By Lea Yu
June 25, 2010
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has entered into confidential settlements with nearly 200 families who claimed that its antidepressant Paxil caused congenital birth defects.
Most of the claims alleged that babies born to mothers taking Paxil suffered heart defects. Last October, a suit filed on behalf of Lyam Kilker said he was born with three cardiac defects, including a hole between two chambers of his heart that disrupted the aorta.
Kilker’s case is the only one to have gone to trial, and a Philadelphia jury awarded Kilker’s family $2.5 million in compensatory damages. Plaintiffs argued that animal testing revealed potential problems with Paxil, but the company did not follow up with additional tests. A company memo introduced as evidence during the trial also revealed that Glaxo considered covering up any negative test results. “If neg, results can bury,” the 1997 memo said.
In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors about a 35,000-person study that found that pregnant women on Paxil were twice as likely to have a child with defects than women taking other antidepressants.
Read entire article: http://www.fairwarning.org/2010/06/glaxosmithkline-settles-200-birth-defects-cases-linked-to-antidepressant/
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Tags: Antidepressant, aorta, birth defects, cardiac defects, congenital birth defects, damages, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, Glaxo, GlaxoSmithKline, GSK, Lyam Kilker, Paxil, pharmaceutical, plaintiffs, pregnant women, settlements
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