Archive for March, 2011

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False peace of mind – Antidepressant Placebos

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

Antidepressant placebos remain a steady presence in clinical experiments, but not in public knowledge

The McGill Daily
Debbie Wang
March 10, 2011

Victor Tangermann | The McGill Daily

It’s the classic situation: with an imminent exam and a carefully planned cramming schedule, you awake one morning with the all too familiar symptoms of a common cold. Feeling sorry for yourself between sniffles and coughs, you self-medicate with the usual blend of OJ, vitamins and copious amounts of water, fervently hoping for a rapid recovery.

Most of us who catch a cold end up taking desperate measures to fix the situation, regardless of whether such measures are founded on scientific truth. Increased vitamin C intake? Not only is there zero proof that it prevents colds, there’s also none that it expedites recovery, according to a paper in Evidence-Based Child Health. Herbal remedies like echinacea? Hot liquids? Beyond the latter’s ability to provide temporary relief, neither will provide much help.

Indeed, the most powerful panacea of them all is our own gullible mind. Once convinced of the effectiveness of a cold cure through a lifetime of anecdotal accounts and lore, many of us will start feeling better after a day of downing orange juice even though it serves as much of a medical purpose as twiddling your thumbs. And while juice manufacturers don’t proclaim cold-fighting abilities on every carton, another highly lucrative industry relying heavily on the placebo effect does assert a claim: that antidepressants cure depression.

Beginning in 1998, a series of studies have repeatedly questioned the difference in efficacies between antidepressant drugs and placebos. Pioneering analysis work done by University of Connecticut researchers Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein confirmed the effectiveness of antidepressants – but also their inert counterparts. In 38 studies conducted with over 3,000 depressed patients, placebos improved symptoms 75 per cent as much as legitimate medications.

“We wondered, what’s going on?” said Kirsch in a 2010 interview with Newsweek. The medical community, skeptical of his analysis, asked him to instigate a more comprehensive study with the results of all clinical trials conducted by antidepressant manufacturers, including those unpublished – 47 studies in total.

Over half of the studies showed no significant difference in the depression-alleviating effects of a medicated versus non-medicated pill. With this more thorough analysis, which now included strategically unpublished studies from pharmaceutical companies, placebos were shown to improve symptoms 82 per cent as much as the real pill.

Now also consider that any apparent advantage of the genuine medication might be more the mind’s handiwork than chemical effect. Patients in double blind clinical trials, where neither experimenter nor patient know if a placebo or real drug has been taken, may easily determine which is the placebo. The obvious side effects of the genuine pill, such as headaches or nausea, may alert the patient to which study group they’ve been placed in, and the knowledge that their pill is medicated may be enough to alleviate their depression.

Are antidepressant drugs really “a triumph of marketing over science,” as researchers have claimed? Kirsch and other experts are convinced that antidepressants do not chemically cure depression. A British agency charged with determining which treatments are effective enough for government funding has stopped endorsing antidepressants as the default treatment for anything but the most severe forms of depression. And drug manufacturers themselves don’t deny Kirch’s data. A spokesperson for Pfizer, producer of  Zoloft, has alluded to the existence of a “wealth of scientific evidence documenting [antidepressants’] effects,” yet the fact that treatment “commonly fail[s] to separate from placebo” is “well known by the FDA, academia, and industry.”

However, if experts and antidepressant manufacturers are aware of this, the general public certainly isn’t. Which is precisely why antidepressants work. Without the knowledge that even manufacturers of medications aren’t completely convinced of their product’s superiority, antidepressants will continue to be effective. This not a recommendation for current users to halt taking the pills; abrupt withdrawal is extremely dangerous, and there is still a range of perspectives on the topic of antidepressants versus sugar pills.

But you have it. Millions of people every year feel better, simply because they believe they’ll feel better. We’ve recovered from colds, headaches, pain, and depression, courtesy of the placebo effect. After all, there’s something to be said for feeling better.

http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/03/false-peace-of-mind/

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Billion Dollar Drug Company Law Firm Restructures Connecticut Welfare System

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

By Bob Fiddaman and Shelia Matthews
March 10, 2011

For some time now, Sheila Matthews has been suspicious about her home state of Connecticut’s treatment of its most vulnerable children. As a mother of two children and co-founder of Ablechild, her instincts led her to scrutinize the dubious relationships among Connecticut’s Department of Children and Family Services [DCF], the pharmaceutical industry and a billion dollar law firm who has defended the likes of Pfizer Inc and Merck & Co., among others.

Sheila’s investigation has led her on a journey that links a non-profit children’s advocacy group, with assets over $15 million [2009] with nationally-renowned mass tort and class action defense law firms, to the Connecticut DCF – an $865 million bureaucracy, as described by the Connecticut Mirror.

The Connecticut DCF serves approximately 36,000 children and 16,000 families across its four Mandate Areas:

1. Child welfare;
2. Children’s behavioral health;
3. Juvenile Services; and
4. Prevention.

Sheila’s Ablechild has been questioning the Connecticut DCF since 2003, when Ablechild demanded that the Connecticut DCF immediately ban the use of the antidepressant Paxil in its treatment of mental disorders after multiple studies confirmed Paxil increased the risk of suicide in children and adolescents. This was more than a year prior to America’s Food & Drug Association (FDA) announcement that all antidepressants, including Paxil, should bear a black box warning regarding this suicide risk. Ablechild was disturbed that children in state custody were being prescribed this dangerous psychotropic medication. Ablechild’s public pressure paid off, and the Connecticut DCF deemed Paxil unsafe for children and adolescents, and according to the DCF drug approval list, Paxil has not been approved for use in over eight (8) years.

In August 2003, less than one month later, Ablechild reported that the commissioner of the Connecticut DCF held a ‘behind closed doors‘ meeting with Glaxo officials. This meeting was reported by the Associated Press, who wrote:

The maker of the anti-depressant Paxil plans to meet this week with Connecticut officials, weeks after the State stopped using the drug to treat young people in its care.

GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical company, is sending its regional medical director and a medical team to meet with officials from the Department of Children and Families. [Source]

Despite repeated requests from Ablechild, the Connecticut DCF refused to inform the public what was discussed at this secret meeting.

Eight years later, Sheila and Ablechild continue to raise concerns and investigate potential wrongdoings and conflicts within the Connecticut DCF. Last month, in February 2011, Sheila attended a meeting sponsored by the Connecticut Behavioral Health Partnership [CBHP], where its medical director, Dr Steven Kant, presented the Husky Behavioral Pharmacy Data. The CBHP is a state vendor that provides mental health services to DCF children. These services are paid, in part, by the State-run insurance program, HUSKY. Incredibly the pharmacy data presentation showed that dangerous psychotropic drugs, like Paxil, are still being prescribed to thousands of children and adolescents. In fact, the Pharmacy Data presentation showed that the HUSKY program, financed by taxpayer dollars, paid drug companies over $60 million for psychotropic drugs for Connecticut’s children and adolescents in 2009 alone – many of which are not approved by the FDA for use in the pediatric population and all of which carry the most serious warning possible regarding the risk of suicide.

According to the pharmacy data presentation: [Which can be downloaded as a Powerpoint presentation HERE]

More than 50% of HUSKY Youth Behavioral med utilizers are on stimulants.
Close to 30% of HUSKY Youth Behavioral med utilizers are on antipsychotics.

The pharmacy data also revealed the following:

Most Frequently Used Behavioral Meds for DCF-Involved Youth

Medications for ADHD

Ritalin (10%)
Adderall (5%)
Vyvanse (4%)
Strattera (3%)

Atypical Antipsychotics

Abilify (11%)
Risperdol (10%)
Seroquel (8%)

Anti-anxiety

Hydroxyzine (2.5%)

Antidepressants

Prozac (4.5%)
Zoloft (4%)
Zyban (3%)
Desyrel (2.5%)
Celexa (2%)

Mood Stabilizers

Lithum (3%)
Depakote (3%)
Lamictal (2.5%)

Curiously, none of the above medications are on the Connecticut DCF list of approved/unapproved drugs listed in its DCF PMAC document.

With this in mind, Sheila Matthews contacted Dr Steven Kant and inquired as to whether any of the above drugs were approved by the Connecticut DCF for use in children.

Dr Kant replied:

… the answer to your question is not that straight forward.. . . Medications may be indicated by age and/or by specific treatment needs so it is not either a simply “yes” or “no”. Also, some medications may have the age indication but for a totally different condition, such as anti epileptic condition. . .Also FDA indications are static, they do not change over time though medical practice is constantly evolving…

Contradicting the very document that lists Connecticut’s approved and unapproved drugs, a “check-off” list that verifies the status of medications, Dr Kant replied, “I don’t think a “check off” for each medication would work in terms of verifying their status.”

With such an ambiguous response from Dr. Kant, we found the DCF Approved Medication List on the Internet. This particular version was revised in 2009.

It appears that the DCF has approved drugs in children that have not been approved for children by the FDA. In fact, the FDA has issued multiple advisories and alerts since 2004 about the increased risk of suicide in children, adolescents and young adults up to age 25 who are treated with psychotropic medications.

And while Fluoxetine (Prozac) is the only medication approved by the FDA for use in treating depression in children ages 8 and older, it still carries a black box warning regarding the risk of suicide.

In contrast, the DCF seems to be ignoring the conclusions of the FDA. Its list of approved medication in children and adolescents include every single antidepressant except paroxetine [Paxil] and venlafaxine [Effexor].

Forest Lab’s citalopram [Celexa] – APPROVED

Forest Lab’s escitalopram [Lexapro] – APPROVED

Solvay Pharmaceuticals’ fluvoxamine [Luvox] – APPROVED

Pfizer’s sertraline [Zoloft] – APPROVED

GlaxoSmithKline’s bupropion [Wellbutrin -also marketed as an anti-smoking cessation drug under the name of Zyban] – APPROVED [1]

Alarmingly, the DCF has produced a guide entitled, “MEDICATIONS USED FOR BEHAVIORAL & EMOTIONAL DISORDERS – A GUIDE FOR PARENTS, FOSTER PARENTS, FAMILIES, YOUTH, CAREGIVERS, GUARDIANS, AND SOCIAL WORKERS” where it writes, “Most of the side effects from the medications are mild and will lessen or go away after the first few weeks of treatment.” The guide also points out possible side effects of SSRI’s/SNRI’s:

SSRIs and SNRIs:

Headache
Nervousness
Nausea
Insomnia
Weight Loss

One of the most dangerous side effects of these medications, suicidal thoughts/ideation, doesn’t even make the 5 bullet-pointed list. The Guide does, however, add the following: “Watch for worsening of depression and thoughts about suicide.”

The DCF Approved Medication List writes:

“The DCF Approved Medication List is a list of psychotropic medications that has been carefully established by the Psychotropic Medication Advisory Committee, a group of DCF and community professionals.”

Sheila has since investigated other advocacy groups that were concerned about the off-label prescribing of psychiatric medications to youths in state custody. This is where she stumbled upon Children’s Rights, a non-profit charity based in New York City.

In 2005, Children’s Rights employed ten (10) attorneys and a staff of 31. It claims to use its expertise to change child welfare red tape and scrutinize failing systems. If the child welfare system fails to respond, Children’s Rights files a lawsuit. If successful, it enforces reform and then monitors its implementation.

In 1989, Children’s Rights had in fact filed a suit against William O’Neill and the Connecticut state Department of Children and Youth Services [DCYS].

The suit charged that an overworked and underfunded DCYS failed to provide services including abuse and neglect investigations, adoption, foster care, mental health care, caseloads and staffing. The case has been pending for over twenty (20) years, and while there have been numerous arguments that DCYS should be more inclusive or has failed to provide certain services, the issue of massive off-label prescription of psychotropic medications has never been brought to the court’s attention.

Children’s Rights is chaired by Alan C Myers, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, a billion dollar law firm which represents the pharmaceutical industry in mass torts and class actions. Myers is also co-head of the firm’s REIT Group [Real Estate Investment Trust].

Also, listed on the Children’s Rights website are individuals and law firms that have served as co-counsel on Children’s Rights’ legal campaigns to reform America’s failing child welfare systems, including:

Missouri - Shook Hardy & Bacon – Eli Lilly Co. and Forest Labs, defended the original Wesbeker Prozac trial in Kentucky and still defend Prozac, Celexa and Lexapro.

New Jersey – Drinker Biddle & Reath – GlaxoSmithKline attorneys – defended Paxil as local counsel in Philadelphia cases.

Oklahoma – Kaye Scholer LLP – provides work in Pharmaceutical Products Liability defense and employs an attorney who was former General Counsel of Pfizer, Inc.

A particular success for Skadden Arps occurred in 2010 when it secured a summary judgement ruling for Pfizer Inc. in a suit filed by two insurance companies who sought $200 million in damages for Pfizer’s predecessors alleged “off-label” marketing of its epilepsy drug, Neurontin.

Furthermore, in February 2011, Skadden Arps secured the dismissal of over 200 cases in a multi-district litigation pending against their client, Pfizer Inc. The plaintiffs had alleged injuries related to the use of Pfizer’s anti-epilepsy drug, Neurontin.

Neurontin, the generic version is called gabapentin, is prescribed by psychiatrists for a variety of “off-label” indications. It is often tried as an alternative treatment, when patients are unable to tolerate the side effect of more proven mood stabilizers such as lithium. [2]

Gabapentin has also been associated with an increased risk of suicidal acts or violent deaths.

This is a drug that has been known to cause behavioral problems, which include unstable emotions, hostility, aggression, hyperactivity or lack of concentration.

Children dependent on child welfare systems have rights and, according to its web page, Children’s Rights is dedicated to protecting them.

It should come as no surprise that the site fails to discuss the off-label prescription of non-approved psychotropic medications to children and adolescents, unless this falls under the ‘abuse and neglect’ category?

If Children’s Rights’ motive was to accomplish fixing the child welfare system then why hasn’t it investigated why thousands of children under state care are prescribed “off-label” psychiatric drugs? With a partner in a billion dollar pro-pharmaceutical law firm as its Chair, and supporters who also defend pharmaceutical products, is it safe to assume that its stance on the drugging of children is one that is being ignored?

Children’s Rights push to remove abused and neglected children into safety.

The basic question always comes down to trust. When power, money and a good cause is mixed, it is imperative to check motives. We would be less of a society if we didn’t check out all the facts. Abuse and neglect exist, always has and always will, but society is obligated to ensure those victims are not transformed into “good cause victims” and expensed out. There is no doubt we have a right to question the system and those who claim to promote change for the good of the children within it.

Children’s Rights Chairman, Alan C. Myers, Medical Director of Connecticut Behavioral Health Partnership, Steven Kant and the Connecticut Department of Children and Families may get their knickers in a twist with regard to an advocate of Ablechild and a blogger from Birmingham, UK questioning their motives but hey, what’s the downside of shinning a light on all these players, be they good or bad players?

Sheila’s concern is that Children’s Rights with its multi-million dollar budget and with the help of its billion dollar law firms, will continue to ignore the risks of these unapproved and dangerous medications, under the guise of helping our nation’s most vulnerable children. The question remains: how can the lawyers who defend psychotropic drugs also be the same lawyers who advocate for abused and neglected children to get into state welfare programs which place these children on the same drugs? The conflict is clear and obvious – and it poses an unmistakable danger to children who truly need our help.

[1] Bupropion [also known as Wellbutrin, Zyban] is a non-tricyclic antidepressant.
[2] Gabapentin

Bob Fiddaman is the author of the Seroxat Sufferers blog and the book, “The evidence, however, is clear… the Seroxat scandal.” Chipmunka Publishing.

Sheila Matthews is the co-founder of Ablechild and a mother of two children.

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A sugared pill

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Financial Times
By Andrew Jack
March 8, 2011

Stefan Kruszewski, a US psychiatrist who has been a whistleblower against pharma companies in three recent cases that resulted in settlements, warns that the legacy of the past will generate yet more pain. “Some companies have got better,” he says. “But there is more to come out.”

When Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist in Massachusetts, was flown to New York with his wife by Wyeth, the “training” weekend he attended in a luxury hotel was topped off with a Broadway show. It was early 2001 and he had just agreed to the US pharmaceuticals company’s proposal that he give talks to doctors about its antidepressant Effexor.

During the following year, he was regularly paid fees of $750 a time to drive to “lunch and learn” sessions where he would speak for 10 minutes to emphasise the drug’s advantages to fellow doctors, using slides prepared by the company. “It seemed like a win-win,” he recalls. “I was prescribing it, educating doctors and making some money.”

But within a few months, he became disillusioned with his co-option as a marketing representative. He was selectively presenting clinical data that put the drug in a positive light to physicians who had been targeted by the company through “data mining” techniques that identified their individual prescription patterns.

Dr Carlat has spoken out as part of a growing backlash against such aggressive marketing tactics, which are leading to significant changes in the relationship between doctors and drug companies. But even as pharmaceuticals executives argue that such problems belong to the past and were always exaggerated, they are bracing for both intensifying penalties and calls for further reform.

“In some ways, our industry lost its way and failed to fully appreciate the evolving expectations of our stakeholders,” Deirdre Connelly, head of North American operations at GlaxoSmithKline, told a conference in January. While playing down the extent of the problem, she conceded: “No matter the reasons, at the end of the day, we must regain the public’s trust.”

Her comments came as the UK-based company put aside provisions of £2.2bn ($3.6bn), largely to cover a settlement under negotiation with the US district attorney’s office for Colorado over sales and promotional practices between 1997 and 2004 for drugs including its antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin. A report in January by Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, predicted a surge in litigation, including against GSK, as still undisclosed “whistleblower” lawsuits and regulatory settlements translate into claims totalling billions of dollars for the industry in the coming months.

At the heart of the problem is a wide-ranging, cosy and opaque relationship between companies and physicians – one that often includes money or other benefits changing hands. For most in the industry, such links are essential to understanding diseases and patient needs, developing effective medicines and providing education on them to prescribers.

US authorities have taken the lead, investigating practices used in other countries as well as at home. Authorities elsewhere, including in the UK, France and Italy, have also been scrutinising arrangements.

Chris Viehbacher, head of Sanofi-Aventis, the French drugmaker, rejects the suggestion that payments need cause insuperable problems. “Doctors are professionals and I have every confidence in their judgment,” he says, arguing that payments from companies need not undermine the integrity of prescribers.

Yet others argue that payments to doctors have at times resulted in the prescription of medicines to patients who do not stand to benefit, risking suboptimal or even dangerous treatment and substantial and unnecessary costs to health systems.

“The industry has made important steps to clean up its act, but more needs to be done,” says Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, the medical journal. He chaired a working party at the UK’s Royal College of Physicians two years ago that launched recommendations to rebalance the relationship between the industry, academia and the taxpayer-funded National Health Service. In the face of a lack of consensus and practical difficulties, many have yet to be implemented.

He and others say questionable links between doctors and industry reached their apogee in the US at the start of the millennium, when fierce competition among companies at a time of slowing innovation resulted in the creation of a slew of “me too” drugs, often with little advantage over existing treatments. Pressure from increasingly aggressive makers of low-cost generic versions of out-of-patent proprietary products heightened the urgency of maximising sales. Companies were spending heavily on media advertisements – often including celebrity endorsements – to persuade patients to lobby doctors for prescriptions of their products.

Above all, a wave of takeovers spurred by falling productivity left newly expanded groups such as Pfizer with thousands of sales “reps”, often recruited more for their charm than their medical expertise, charged with visiting doctors to persuade them to prescribe their drugs. This created an “arms race” among leading companies, often with barely distinguishable products.

One tool used in the US was “sampling”, whereby reps would leave free supplies of their often costly drugs with doctors, who were able to hand them out to patients without medical insurance. They also paid for physicians’ meals and even petrol.

In Europe and most other industrialised regions, direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines is typically banned or tightly controlled, and free samples are less relevant in markets where drugs are largely paid for by governments.

Yet close links between sales reps and doctors have been widespread – and not always limited to small gifts such as pens, notepads and coffee mugs. There have also been allegations of significant payments, some of which are under scrutiny by federal investigators focusing on the overseas activities of companies operating in the US.

In the UK, US-based Abbott Laboratories was severely reprimanded by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry in 2006 after reps took doctors to Wimbledon matches, greyhound races and a lap-dancing club. Two years later, Swiss-based Roche suffered the same fate after encouraging the sale of weight-loss pills to individuals in private slimming clinics not qualified to prescribe.

. . .

Practising doctors are required by their own professional bodies to participate in “continuing medical education” sessions to keep up to date. But speakers and themes can be influenced by drugmakers. Often flown business class with their spouses to resorts in exotic locations, doctors around the world attend scientific conferences where companies hold “satellite” sessions presenting their products in a favourable light.

While Dr Carlat participated in such “speaker bureaus”, other “key opinion leaders” were paid as consultants for a variety of services. Those inc­luded advice on the design and writing up of clinical drug trials and adding their names and credibility to articles ghost-written by specialist authors hired by the companies.

A series of studies has demonstrated that industry-sponsored trials published in medical journals – a cornerstone of marketing to doctors – generally favour their drugs. Trials with less promising results are not generally published. This can distort the true picture of risks and benefits of medicines.

The full extent of such marketing activities and any distortion of prescribing practices is unclear. But “sunshine” legislation introduced as part of US President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms is beginning to reveal the amount companies have been willing to spend. According to an analysis by ProPublica, an investigative journalism agency, the first eight companies to disclose their spending paid a total of $320m in 2009-10 to 18,000 doctors, the top 10 of whom received more than $250,000 each.

Such transparency is itself accelerating reform. Companies – some forced by legal settlements, others persuaded by the requirements of government funders and medical journals – are making details of their clinical studies available on public websites, allowing scrutiny by independent researchers. GSK this year changed its payment system for reps, hiring and assessing them based on medical expertise and removing commissions linked directly to sales.

Organisations including Britain’s ABPI, its Swedish counterpart Lif, and Efpia, the European Union-wide trade body for the sector, have introduced ever tougher codes of conduct that have restricted gifts, drug samples, entertainment and travel. In the US, the independent Institute of Medicine has called for far more aggressive measures to control continuing medical education, in order to put content at arm’s length from drug companies. The National Institutes of Health, the US federal research funder, is revising its conflict of interest codes for grant recipients, and many medical schools have taken similar steps to clamp down on industry influence on faculty members.

But such measures have proved partial. Disclosure of clinical trial results remains patchy, and pledges to publish payments to doctors in Europe are less comprehensive than those in the US. The ethics code of Phrma, the US trade grouping, has no enforcement mechanism. Ifpma, the international body, has only ever considered – and then rejected – four complaints against companies.

Susan Chimonas, of New York’s Columbia University, says the medical profession must take more responsibility. She highlights a recent study that found the majority of US medical schools had weak or non-existent conflict of interest guidelines on payments to their faculty. “It takes two to tango,” she argues. “Industry is behaving the way industry is expected to in a capitalist system, but the medical profession has lost its way. Prescribers are willing partners.”

In the UK Des Spence, a Glasgow doctor who founded a national chapter of the No Free Lunch movement, which rejects drug company hospitality, points out that the NHS is supposed to provide registers of payments to doctors, but few disclosures have been made. The General Medical Council, the profession’s regulator, has shown little interest.

. . .

The greatest pressure for reform has come from governments and health insurers. A growing trend towards rigorous and continuing comparative data on drugs’ safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness is shifting prescription powers from individual doctors to technical organisations such as the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

The result has been a cull in tens of thousands of drug reps in the industrialised world in the past few years, although their numbers have been growing in the less-regulated emerging markets to which the pharmaceuticals companies are increasingly turning. If some of the more egregious payments to doctors are on the wane, that leaves more subtle issues such as the independence of continuing medical education. If the drug industry pulls back, either individual doctors or their employers will have to provide funding instead.

With austerity measures squeezing government health spending in many countries, and UK changes giving more powers to family doctors, the solution will not be easy. Stefan Kruszewski, a US psychiatrist who has been a whistleblower against pharma companies in three recent cases that resulted in settlements, warns that the legacy of the past will generate yet more pain. “Some companies have got better,” he says. “But there is more to come out.”

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ae7099a0-49bc-11e0-acf0-00144feab49a.html#axzz1G80Pn69u

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Psychiatry has devolved from personalized therapy to shameless drug dealing

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

NaturalNews.com March 9, 2011
by Jonathan Benson

Back in the day, psychiatrists used to actually consult intimately with their patients and provide some type of personalized, talk-based therapy as part of their practice. The modern-day approach to psychiatry, however, has become more like a series of drug dealing sessions in which psychiatrists will briefly consult with their patients and prescribe them drugs for their problems.

A recent report at Ocala.com explains that over the past several decades, many psychiatrists have abandoned the personalized approach to therapy partly because insurance companies will often not pay for it, and thus it is not worth their time. But another likely reason for the switch to drug vending is that it simply pays better than actually having to deal with patients and try to help them in a non-drug way.

The Ocala.com report mentions a psychiatrist who has been practicing for nearly 40 years. In his early days, he consulted with and treated, at most, 60 patients once- or twice-weekly, which included a 45-minute talk therapy session. Today, he sees roughly 1,200 people every week for quick 15-minute sessions, and sends them on their way with drugs. This approach has become the norm, not the exception. And this particular psychiatrist is even quoted as saying that he has had to train himself out of actually caring about people’s problems, and instead focus on basically getting them out the door and on their way.

“It’s a practice that’s very reminiscent of primary care,” said Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, former president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the president and chief executive of Sheppard Pratt Health System, to Ocala.com. “They check up on people; they pull out the prescription pad; they order tests.”

The entire field of psychiatry has been on a downward spiral for years, though, as the “Disease Mongering Engine” literally invents new diseases every year — which are really just normal, everyday human behaviors that vary based on personality, by the way — and comes up with drug interventions to treat them. It is a highly lucrative drug dealing business that profits at the expense of human health (http://www.naturalnews.com/028280_p…).

To see a psychiatrist in today’s environment is like playing Russian Roulette with your health. If able to evaluate every person on the planet, the average psychiatrist would surely find a problem or two with each one. And within five-to-ten minutes, he or she would be able to prescribe a laundry list of medications to treat those alleged disorders. So in other words, if you value your health, stay far, far away from modern-day psychiatrists.

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Dealing With Depression Naturally

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

FOX News, March 8, 2011
by Chris Kilham

If your life is making you unhappy, then making positive changes may be the very best prescription of all

According to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, approximately 10 percent of Americans are taking antidepressant medications.

This means that over 31 million Americans are gobbling Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Elavil, Norpramin, Luvox, Paxil, Wellbutrin and other antidepressant psychiatric drugs like M & M’s. This drug use accounts for billions of dollars in pharmaceutical sales annually (9.6 U.S. billion in 2008).

Yet according to a landmark study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, antidepressant medications work – as well as placebos and not more. In other words, people in depression studies who are given sugar pills instead of antidepressant drugs do as well as the group who gets the drugs.

Before you ask yourself whether you should simply take a Tic Tac instead of a Paxil, there is more disheartening news about these drugs. Many Americans are taking antidepressant medications instead of changing their own behavior or life circumstances. According to Maryland medical doctor Ronald Dworkin, “Doctors are now medicating unhappiness. Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives.” If you are beating your nose with a hammer, do you stop hitting yourself, or do you continue, and take a pain pill?

Digging more deeply into the mystery of antidepressants, George Washington University health analyst Thomas Moore examined unpublished studies conducted by drug companies  with various antidepressants. Approximately 40 percent of the studies conducted on this class of drugs have never been published — because in those 40 percent of studies, antidepressants do not demonstrate effectiveness. In other words, in the unpublished studies, they didn’t work. In even further research, Irving Kirsch of the University of Connecticut looked at results from varying doses of antidepressants. The difference in effectiveness between small doses and large doses was virtually non-existent.

It gets even gloomier. A U.S. government study released in 2006 showed that fewer than 50 percent of people become symptom-free on antidepressants, even after trying two different medications. Many who do respond to medication slip back into major depression within a short while, despite sticking with drug treatment. And then there are the “side effects,” which are really effects pure and simple. The most common effects of antidepressant drugs include nausea, insomnia, anxiety, restlessness, loss of sex drive, dizziness, weight gain, tremors, sweating, sleepiness, fatigue, dry mouth,  diarrhea, constipation and headaches. People over 65 are at extra risk of falls, fractures and bone loss, newborns of mothers on SSRI antidepressants can go through drug withdrawal, and among teens, the use of antidepressants can increase suicidal tendencies. Any sober assessment of these effects points to the fact that there is something terribly wrong with this entire class of drugs. Remember what Hippocrates said “First of all, do no harm.”

Many intangibles add up to either a happy life or a sad one. Do you spend enough time with your family? Your friends? Do you relax? Do you do things you love? Do you enjoy your work? If you answer no to these questions, you probably have good cause to feel depressed. But popping a pill won’t help if you are not living in a fulfilled way.

What about natural approaches to depression? A number of doctors believe that nutritional deficiencies play a key role in many cases of depression. After all, brain chemistry depends on nutrient intake for proper balance. Really, it’s no surprise that a junk food-eating culture would be increasingly mentally out of sorts. No brain food means poor brain function. This is where omega 3 fatty acids come in, notably DHA, which is essential for proper brain function. These essential fats greatly enhance brain health and mood. The best way to get them is to eat fresh seafood, especially wild salmon. But omega 3 fatty acid supplements from fish oil are also available.

According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, anxiety and depression often go hand in hand. Many people find that they can relieve or reduce anxiety by meditating. There are many ways to meditate. By setting aside time every day, you can calm your body and mind, change your brainwaves, and alter your mood for the better.

Regular exercise is also associated with improved mood. Exercise enhances circulation, modifies brain chemistry for the better, enhances overall energy, improves vitality and contributes greatly to well being. You don’t need to go to a gym, either. Just get outside and walk. Do so briskly for at least half an hour each day, and notice how much better you feel.

On the herbal side, Rhodiola rosea is the big antidepressant. Many forward-thinking psychiatrists have turned to Rhodiola as a first line of treatment, instead of pharmaceuticals. Psychiatrists Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg in New York are ardent advocates of Rhodiola for depression and mood enhancement, and have written profusely about it. Dr Hyla Cass of UCLA also is an advocate. Meanwhile, dozens of studies demonstrate significant improvement in all parameters of mental function with Rhodiola rosea. My favorite brands? Rhodiola Energy by Enzymatic Therapy, and Rapid Rhodiola by EuroPharma.

If your life is making you unhappy, then making positive changes may be the very best prescription of all. Many people are so buried by work and stress that they forget to take time to live, to enjoy themselves and to savor life itself. I remember once meeting a psychiatrist at one of my talks. He was retired, and I was deeply impressed by what he shared.

“I practiced psychiatry for twenty-eight years,” he said. “And I never once gave anybody a prescription.” I asked him what he did for his patients instead.

“I talked with them,” he replied. As Rabbi Earl Grollman, author of several books on grief says, “the mentionable is manageable.” Maybe talking is a good place to start.

Chris Kilham is a medicine hunter who researches natural remedies all over the world, from the Amazon to Siberia. He teaches ethnobotany at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is Explorer In Residence. Chris advises herbal, cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies and is a regular guest on radio and TV programs worldwide. His field research is largely sponsored by Naturex of Avignon, France. Read more at www.MedicineHunter.com

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The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

The Washington Post, March 7, 2011

The idea of a chemical imbalance in the brain is pure myth

In “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth,” just released in paperback, psychology professor Irving Kirsch argues that antidepressant drugs are not effective and that the idea of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is pure myth. Kirsch provides what he says is evidence that antidepressants are no better than placebo pills. So should millions of Americans flush their pills down the toilet? It’s a dangerous thought, but, if Kirsch is right, so is the idea of people needlessly taking expensive medications with potentially serious side effects. Kirsch’s “black-box warning” that patients should not discontinue taking antidepressants without first consulting with a doctor is, unfortunately, tucked away on Page 152.

Irving Kirsch is Professor of Psychology at the University of Hull in the UK and author of “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/07/AR2011030704079.html

Read more about the book here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irving-kirsch-phd/antidepressants-the-emper_b_442205.html

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Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Note from CCHR:  One of the most common misconceptions about psychiatry is that they help patients navigate through life’s problems with conversation or  dialogue.   While that may make for interesting drama on  The Soprano’s —its a far cry from real life psychiatry.   Psychiatrists are drug pushers.   They diagnose and drug, plain and simple.  And they diagnose patients without the aid of any medical tests  for the simple reason, there aren’t any.  Psychiatry as a profession  must maintain that all life’s problems are the result of brain malfunction, otherwise known as the biological model of mental disorders as “disease” in order to maintain their partnership with Big Pharma that garners billions in government funding and convinces the public to take drugs.   And what a brilliant marketing campaign it has been;  the public, legislators, governments and the press have all been convinced that mental disorders are medical conditions, requiring drugs to “treat” them, despite the fact there is not one chemical imbalance or blood test, MRI or X-ray to prove this theory.  Now that, is what billions of dollars spent on lobbyists, pharmaceutical front groups like the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) and paid psychiatric experts can buy you.    However, it also stands to reason that the psychiatric industry cannot really employ or endorse talk therapy, because they would be admitting that life’s problems are not the result of chemically imbalanced or faulty brains,  that people can get better without the use of mind-altering and life-threatening drugs.     So while the article below has some good points, it misses a big one— the psychiatric industry is the one that sold insurance companies, governments and the general public  on the fraudulent “mental disorders are biological/medical conditions” marketing campaign that is the foundation upon which their $82 billion-dollar-a-year drug industry rests.  For more information watch Dr. Niall McLaren, a practicing psychiatrist for 22 years, explaining how psychiatry’s reliance on the biological model of mental disorder as disease and how the facts could unravel the entire profession

Or read Psychiatric Disorders

Talk Therapy Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy

New York Times
by Gardiner Harris, March 5, 2011

DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — Alone with his psychiatrist, the patient confided that his newborn had serious health problems, his distraught wife was screaming at him and he had started drinking again. With his life and second marriage falling apart, the man said he needed help.

But the psychiatrist, Dr. Donald Levin, stopped him and said: “Hold it. I’m not your therapist. I could adjust your medications, but I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Like many of the nation’s 48,000 psychiatrists, Dr. Levin, in large part because of changes in how much insurance will pay, no longer provides talk therapy, the form of psychiatry popularized by Sigmund Freud that dominated the profession for decades. Instead, he prescribes medication, usually after a brief consultation with each patient. So Dr. Levin sent the man away with a referral to a less costly therapist and a personal crisis unexplored and unresolved.

Medicine is rapidly changing in the United States from a cottage industry to one dominated by large hospital groups and corporations, but the new efficiencies can be accompanied by a telling loss of intimacy between doctors and patients. And no specialty has suffered this loss more profoundly than psychiatry.

Trained as a traditional psychiatrist at Michael Reese Hospital, a sprawling Chicago medical center that has since closed, Dr. Levin, 68, first established a private practice in 1972, when talk therapy was in its heyday.

Then, like many psychiatrists, he treated 50 to 60 patients in once- or twice-weekly talk-therapy sessions of 45 minutes each. Now, like many of his peers, he treats 1,200 people in mostly 15-minute visits for prescription adjustments that are sometimes months apart. Then, he knew his patients’ inner lives better than he knew his wife’s; now, he often cannot remember their names. Then, his goal was to help his patients become happy and fulfilled; now, it is just to keep them functional.

Dr. Levin has found the transition difficult. He now resists helping patients to manage their lives better. “I had to train myself not to get too interested in their problems,” he said, “and not to get sidetracked trying to be a semi-therapist.”

Brief consultations have become common in psychiatry, said Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association and the president and chief executive of Sheppard Pratt Health System, Maryland’s largest behavioral health system.

“It’s a practice that’s very reminiscent of primary care,” Dr. Sharfstein said. “They check up on people; they pull out the prescription pad; they order tests.”

With thinning hair, a gray beard and rimless glasses, Dr. Levin looks every bit the psychiatrist pictured for decades in New Yorker cartoons. His office, just above Dog Daze Canine Hair Designs in this suburb of Philadelphia, has matching leather chairs, and African masks and a moose head on the wall. But there is no couch or daybed; Dr. Levin has neither the time nor the space for patients to lie down anymore.

On a recent day, a 50-year-old man visited Dr. Levin to get his prescriptions renewed, an encounter that took about 12 minutes.

Two years ago, the man developed rheumatoid arthritis and became severely depressed. His family doctor prescribed an antidepressant, to no effect. He went on medical leave from his job at an insurance company, withdrew to his basement and rarely ventured out.

“I became like a bear hibernating,” he said.

Missing the Intrigue

He looked for a psychiatrist who would provide talk therapy, write prescriptions if needed and accept his insurance. He found none. He settled on Dr. Levin, who persuaded him to get talk therapy from a psychologist and spent months adjusting a mix of medications that now includes different antidepressants and an antipsychotic. The man eventually returned to work and now goes out to movies and friends’ houses.

The man’s recovery has been gratifying for Dr. Levin, but the brevity of his appointments — like those of all of his patients — leaves him unfulfilled.

“I miss the mystery and intrigue of psychotherapy,” he said. “Now I feel like a good Volkswagen mechanic.”

“I’m good at it,” Dr. Levin went on, “but there’s not a lot to master in medications. It’s like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ where you had Hal the supercomputer juxtaposed with the ape with the bone. I feel like I’m the ape with the bone now.”

The switch from talk therapy to medications has swept psychiatric practices and hospitals, leaving many older psychiatrists feeling unhappy and inadequate. A 2005 government survey found that just 11 percent of psychiatrists provided talk therapy to all patients, a share that had been falling for years and has most likely fallen more since. Psychiatric hospitals that once offered patients months of talk therapy now discharge them within days with only pills.

Recent studies suggest that talk therapy may be as good as or better than drugs in the treatment of depression, but fewer than half of depressed patients now get such therapy compared with the vast majority 20 years ago. Insurance company reimbursement rates and policies that discourage talk therapy are part of the reason. A psychiatrist can earn $150 for three 15-minute medication visits compared with $90 for a 45-minute talk therapy session.

Competition from psychologists and social workers — who unlike psychiatrists do not attend medical school, so they can often afford to charge less — is the reason that talk therapy is priced at a lower rate. There is no evidence that psychiatrists provide higher quality talk therapy than psychologists or social workers.

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Court Ruling Clears Way for Jury Trial in $1 Billion Texas Medicaid Whistleblower Lawsuit

Friday, March 4th, 2011

AUSTIN, TX, Mar 04, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX News Network)

A recent state district court ruling has cleared the way for a jury to hear claims filed by the State of  Texas and plaintiff Allen Jones based on allegations that pharmaceutical manufacturer Janssen L.P. used false marketing tactics to convince state officials to spend millions on a schizophrenia drug.

The ruling was issued late Thursday, March 3, 2011, in Judge John Dietz’ 250th District Court in Travis County following summary judgment motions filed by both the State of Texas and Janssen, a division of New Brunswick, N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ).

The original complaint was filed in 2004 based on evidence uncovered by Mr. Jones during his work as an investigator with the Pennsylvania Inspector General’s Office. The lawsuit says Janssen engaged in a systematic and wide-ranging scheme to convince state Medicaid officials to give preferential treatment to the company’s Risperdal schizophrenia medication.

The drug was no better and no safer despite being substantially more expensive than older medications that treat the same illness, the lawsuit alleges. Janssen worked to build revenue by actively and purposefully marketing the powerful antipsychotic drug for use in children, the lawsuit says, even though the medication was approved only for the very narrow purpose of treating adult schizophrenia. In the years since Risperdal was first introduced, Texas has paid more than $500 million for the drug.

“We are very pleased that a Texas jury finally will be able to scrutinize Janssen’s actions, which we allege have unfairly cost the state’s taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars for a drug that was no better than older, cheaper medicines,” says Dallas attorney Tom Melsheimer, who represents Mr. Jones with Austin attorney Tommy Jacks. “The defendants fought tooth-and-nail to keep this case from a jury, and that effort has failed.”

The defendants’ total exposure in the anticipated jury trial, currently set for June 21 in Austin, exceeds $1 billion, including damages, penalties, and other potential liabilities, Mr. Melsheimer says.

http://www.stockhouse.com/News/USReleasesDetail.aspx?n=8081412

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The hidden tyranny: children diagnosed and drugged for profit

Friday, March 4th, 2011

NaturalNews.com  March 4, 2011

by Monica G. Young

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” —Thomas Jefferson

Not everyone has fallen for the grand hoax: 20 million kids worldwide diagnosed with mental disorders, necessitating psychiatric drugs for years or life. Some individuals are speaking out. Yet so many parents, kids and schools have fallen prey to one of the most insidious yet most profitable misinformation campaigns of modern society.

Kids who fidget, get distracted or bored easily, talk too much (or too little), defy rules, are not as obedient as some adults may like or have mood swings, are liable to be tagged with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder or other such ills. In short, what used to be known as typical child and adolescent behavior has been redefined as mental illness.

ADHD is the disorder most commonly assigned to kids (over five million in the U.S.). Statistical studies in the U.S. and other nations show boys are far more likely than girls to be branded with ADHD and prescribed stimulants.

A recent article entitled “Sedation nation: The cost of taking boisterous out of boys,” reports five times as many Australian boys being medicated with Ritalin than girls. The author asks, “Are we in danger of seeing boyhood itself as a disorder?” She cites an example of a 10-year old very bright and sporty boy who got into a skirmish on a cramped school playground. No damage occurred, no blood, yet this led at once to a referral for psychiatric treatment.

This situation can be worse for African-American males. Umar R. Abdullah-Johnson, a psychologist and activist for the educational rights of black boys, has traveled to schools across the country. In a recent article headed “Psycho-Slavery,” he writes, “It has become a travesty of epic proportions; black boys are being sent in record numbers to the psychiatrist for mind-altering medications that come with a plethora of side effects.” He reports that in many classrooms, 50 percent of the black male students are being referred for medication. Some children are evaluated, diagnosed and prescribed in less than five minutes.

Abdulla-Johnson points out the hypocrisy of a society that has declared a War on Drugs yet is so busily drugging a generation of black boys on substances which often lead to illegal drugs later in their lives. “They claim to LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND,” he writes, “but are totally content leaving our boys with side effects from these drugs years after they have graduated from school, if they ever graduate at all.”

This system coerces youth into obedient conformity with a psychiatric standard of normality. Kids are also left with a message that they can’t cope with school or life without drugs.

But let’s look at history:

Thomas Edison, one of the world’s most prolific inventors, was kicked out of school at an early age as his teacher lost patience with his persistent questions and wandering mind. Where would we be now if his creative spirit had been numbed by prescription drugs?

Albert Einstein, father of modern physics, was a quiet child who kept his distance from his peers. He resented the rote learning methods enforced in school and was labeled a foolish day dreamer. Imagine if he had been medicated into conformity.

Winston Churchill, the great statesman and orator, had an independent and rebellious nature as a youth and was often in trouble. Surely he would have been deemed ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) by today’s psychiatric standards.

Frederick Douglass, one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement (and a blood relative of Umar R. Abdullah-Johnson, quoted above) began defying the rules for blacks when he was a child. And the list goes on.

The massive propaganda asserting the validity of these disorders and efficacy of these medications is staggering. However a 731-page report from the Drug Effectiveness Review Project of Oregon State University in 2005 – analyzing 2,287 separate studies around the world – found inadequate evidence to show that drugs used to treat ADHD are safe in the long term or help school performance. (http://psychrights.org/articles/Tac…).html)

No medical tests are used for diagnoses. Yet most diagnosed youths are put onto highly toxic drugs which have been shown to cause insomnia, stunted growth, hallucinations, anxiety, heart attacks, psychosis, violence, suicide and sudden death.

Peter Breggin MD, a leader in psychiatric reform, stated in the Huffington Post, “Our society’s particular form of child abuse is the psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of our children.” And, “all psychoactive substances from alcohol and marijuana to psychiatric drugs reduce and compromise the function of brain and mind, and none improve it.” Even toddlers are being assigned mental disorders and prescribed such drugs.

Many clinicians fear that prescribing stimulants to children may foster a drug habit and lead them later to illegal stimulants, such as cocaine and crystal meth. A recent UCLA research project confirms this concern. They analyzed 27 long-term studies that followed 4,100 children diagnosed with ADHD and 6800 without ADHD into adolescence and young adulthood. The ADHD-diagnosed kids were two to three times more likely than other children to develop serious substance abuse problems. (Per a Consumer Reports survey, 84 percent of ADHD-labeled children are treated with medications.)

So if these drugs are so harmful, why do drug companies market them so heavily for kids?

“Children are known to be compliant patients and that makes them a highly desirable market for drugs,” says former drug company sales rep Gwen Olsen, author of Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher. “Children are forced by school personnel to take their drugs, they are forced by their parents to take their drugs, and they are forced by their doctors to take their drugs. So, children are the ideal patient-type because they represent refilled prescription compliance and ‘longevity.’ In other words, they will be lifelong patients and repeat customers for Pharma.”

ADHD, ODD, Bipolar and the others were voted into existence by APA committees and made official by issuance in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. A 2006 investigation by the University of Massachusetts and Tufts University disclosed that the majority of the committee members had financial ties to drug companies. (www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PDF/DSM%20C…)

The psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries admittedly do not cure anything, but only claim to manage symptoms with their psychoactive drugs.

Vice president of drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb recently announced FDA approval for an expanded use of their bipolar blockbuster. He states, “Because bipolar disorder is a lifelong and recurrent illness, this labelling update provides physicians with the option to prescribe Abilify as an add-on to either lithium or valproate as a long-term treatment to help manage symptoms of Bipolar I Disorder.” Translation for bipolars: “You’ll be hooked on our medications for life.”

Psychiatric drugging of children is big, big money, raking in billions a year.

But it’s also a form of tyrannical social control. By classifying out-of-the-box, divergent behavior as “mental disorders” that must be subdued with medication, our next generation is conditioned into being good robots who know not to deviate from the status quo.

It seems we better pay more heed to Thomas Jefferson’s warning: “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

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Teacher sacked for refusing to remove ‘have you drugged your kids today’ bumper sticker

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

The Daily Mail- March 1, 2011

by Daniel Bates
March 1, 2011

Defiant: When asked, Ms Ausburn refused to take the sticker off or park the car outside so they sacked her

A teacher has been fired over her bumper sticker which mocked parents who mollycoddle their children.

Tarah Ausburn put the ‘Have you drugged your kid today?’ sticker on her Toyota Prius in protest at what she claims is the overmedication of today’s children.

She has 60 other such stickers on the car including ‘Recycle or die’
and ‘A clear conscience is a sign of a bad memory’.

Five parents at Imagine Prep High School in Surprise, Arizona, objected to the suggestion that their children were on drugs and when they complained Ms Ausburn was asked to remove it or park her car off school grounds.

She refused and was fired.

The incident has sparked a huge row over first Amendment rights with Ms Ausburn refusing to back down.

She told Arizona’s KPHO TV: ‘It’s kind of a criticism of us tending to over-medicate hyperactive kids who might not need those medications.’

She added that she ‘just likes the ability to take a controversial topic and sum it up in one clever line. I’m an English teacher, that’s what I do’.

Ms Ausburn claimed she did not share the opinions expressed on the stickers with her pupils inside the classroom and whenever a child inquired she replied that she likes to ‘express my opinions’.

Culprit: The sticker, against over medicating children, was met with backlash from parents who objected to it being in the school parking lot

Prius: Ms Ausburn's car has 60 different bumper stickers expressing several points of view but it was one sticker in particular that got her fired

She said: ‘You have to remain true to your beliefs, you have to stand up for what you believe is right and I don’t believe it’s right to censor people just because your opinion doesn’t agree with theirs.’

The story has created a huge row with many of Ms Ausburn’s students leaving comments on websites in support.

Other commentators attacked the school for clamping down on freedom of speech.

Fireofgrace wrote: ‘It’s very sad that even in our “enlightened” society, our rights can still be flagrantly violated.

‘Tarah was not teaching her beliefs in her classroom, but rather voicing them aloud on her automobile. I mistakenly believed that we were allowed to do that in this country.’

Jennifer Pashelk added: ‘What is freedom of speech if you’re not allowed to express it anywhere without consequences?

‘It’s a lie.  It was a right given to us by our founding father’s, but it was also a right that is being taken away from us by stupid people that don’t know one flipping iota about respecting the rights of others to have that freedom of self-expression.’

But among those backing the decision to fire Ms Ausburn was iflyfir who said: ‘Sorry kids, but I would have fired her too. You can’t tell me that a teacher who plasters her Prius with left-wing, socialistic propaganda, won’t express their ideologically progressive views in the classroom.’

One parent also suggested that the problems with Ms Ausburn extended beyond just the stickers.

Pamiam wrote on the KPHO website that the teacher had a ‘laundry list’
of grievances against her including insisting on being called ‘Instructor Ausburn’ instead of ‘Ms Ausburn’.

School: Officials at Imagine Prep refused to comment on accusations that sacking Ms Ausburn over the sticker was a violation of the first amendment

She also claimed that she ripped up a test and gave the student a failing grade after the student said ‘God bless you’ to her when she sneezed.

Officials at Imagine Prep High School declined to comment.
Read article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361834/Teacher-Tarah-Ausburn-sacked-drugged-kids-today-bumper-sticker.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

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