Monthly Archives: May 2011

Cause for alarm: Antipsychotic drugs for nursing home patients

When a loved one moves into a nursing home, the support of family and friends is particularly important. This is especially true when the nursing home patient has dementia and can’t adequately advocate on his or her own behalf.

A newly released report from my office — the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services — makes clear just how crucial it is for families to monitor and ask questions about medications that such patients receive. The report found that too often, elderly residents are prescribed antipsychotic drugs in ways that violate government standards for unnecessary drug use.

In shift, feds target top execs for health fraud

It’s getting personal now. In a shift still evolving, federal enforcers are targeting individual executives in health care fraud cases that used to be aimed at impersonal corporations.

The new tactic is raising the anxiety level — and risks — for corporate honchos at drug companies, medical device manufacturers, nursing home chains and other major health care enterprises that deal with Medicare and Medicaid.

Psychiatrists Push to Gain Support for Electroshocking Kids

The audacity of psychiatry never ceases to amaze us. Take the issue of electroshock ‘treatment’,
a brutal procedure born out of an Italian slaughterhouse when psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti saw how pigs were easier to slaughter after being electroshocked, and decided to try it on humans. For decades psychiatrists have attempted to prove the efficacy of sending up to 450 volts of electricity searing through the brain, and for decades they have failed. The entire premise is so moronic it’s hard for any rational human being to comprehend how any ‘medical professional’ could justify it as “treatment.” In fact, this is probably the reason that the public, having a natural and rational abhorrence for electroshock, often don’t believe psychiatrists still shock people. But they do. In fact, millions are electroshocked each year, including the ‘ elderly, pregnant women and children.

Hickierie Dickory Doc – McGorry Turns Back the Clock

McGorry’s Delorean continues on it’s trip back to the future in Australia, it’s new passenger, Prof Ian Hickie.

I say new, Hickie has been around for years.

Judging by an article in today’s Australian Telegraph, there seems to be questions being asked regarding the number of Australian children being prescribed antidepressant medication.

Drugging our Kids on Antidepressants

Australia – THE number of children aged six and under being prescribed anti-depressants has soared by almost 50 per cent since the federal government pledged to investigate the issue, new figures show.

Federal health department data reveals prescribing rates of the controversial drugs have risen from 852 in 2007-08 to 1264 in 2009-10.

But despite Health Minister Nicola Roxon ordering an investigation three years ago, a Freedom of Information request shows the government held just two meetings.

Australian Childhood Foundation chief executive Dr Joe Tucci said he would have expected the government to act by now. “I cannot think of a good reason why any six-year-old, or younger, should be treated with antidepressants,” he said. “I think it’s gone up because medication is being used to treat the symptoms and not the cause.”