Monthly Archives: February 2011

Scientific Proof: Antipsychotics Shrink Brains

A long-awaited, 14 year magnetic imaging (MRI) follow-up study by Dr. Nancy Andreasen, involving 211 patients, documents progressive shrinkage of brain
tissue volume in patients prescribed antipsychotics when they first experienced an episode of psychosis.
“The big finding is that people with schizophrenia are losing brain tissue at a more rapid rate than healthy people of comparable age. Some are losing as much as 1 percent per year. That’s an awful lot over an 18-year period…Another thing we’ve discovered is that the more drugs you’ve been given, the more brain tissue you lose.”

Psychiatrist & President of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry Busted for Lewd Facebook Photos

A prominent Beverly Hills psychiatrist who has helped decide hundreds of child-custody disputes was thrown off one recent case and has been challenged in at least two others after posting lewd photos of himself on Facebook and allegedly promoting illegal drug use, unprotected sex and male prostitution. Dr. Joseph Kenan, president of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, is also being investigated by the Medical Board of California on at least four complaints by parents who hired him to do custody evaluations, according to records and correspondence reviewed by The Times. Among the postings on Facebook and other websites under the slightly different names of “Joe Kegan” and “Joe Keegan” were photos showing Kenan baring his buttocks to the camera in public and another of him posing with a friend holding a cake that explicitly depicted a sexual act, court records state.

Dangerous doctors slipping through the cracks

It took the discovery of guns and grenades to suspend the license of a psychiatrist who some say should have come under scrutiny years earlier. One night a Crestwood police sergeant doing a routine building check noticed an open door to the office of psychiatrist Joel Carroll. Stepping inside the cluttered office, he discovered roaming cats, a Colt AR-15 assault rifle and other guns, ammunition, military-grade smoke grenades, sex toys, and pornography. “Well, for the lack of better terminology, we considered it a pigsty,” Sgt. Thomas Kaniewski testified about his April 2009 discovery. “It looked in complete disarray. We couldn’t believe that someone could actually conduct business in an office like that because of the conditions it was in.”

When ‘Medicine’ Makes Things Worse

by Stefan Kruszewski, Psychiatrist —In the past, psychiatric physicians have diagnosed homosexuality, paraphrenia, paranoia, narcissism, neuroses, combat fatigue and other entities, treating those “disorders” with a variety of therapies, including pills. More recently, psychiatrists diagnose bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (NOS), adult attention deficit disorder and pre-psychotic conditions, for which they may prescribe pills. The problem is that some of those earlier diagnoses like (homosexuality, neuroses, combat fatigue, paranoia and paraphrenia) no longer exist as entities recognized by the DSM-IV-TR — the most current compendium of mental conditions and disorders.

Virtually anyone at any given time can meet the criteria for bipolar disorder NOS or ADD. Anyone. And the problem is everyone diagnosed with even one of these illnesses triggers the pill dispenser. Taking stimulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics or off-label use of anti-convulsants often obscures the real problem and instead adds a new layer of unintended adverse events that only make conditions worse.