Citizens Commission on Human Rights International | Mental Health Watchdog

For some years now there has been a movement afoot in the mental health care field to include a diagnosis called "relational disorder" in the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), due out in 2013. DSM certification of RD could prove to be a cash cow for all of the professionals treating people from heartbroken marriages and feuding families. 800,000 U.S. couples a year visit offices for marital and family help. Do the math. Some people stand to make a lot of money. More »

For the past two years, US Senator Chuck Grassley has pressed all 50 states to provide data on doctors who write huge numbers of prescriptions for specific drugs that are paid for by Medicaid programs. Why? There were reports indicating certain meds - widely used antipsychotics and the OxyContin painkiller - have sometimes been prescribed at unusually high rates. The underlying concern over prescription drug abuse that leads to unnecessary costs and deaths. “Over prescription of these types of drugs strains the financial viability of the Medicaid and Medicare systems and threatens the health and well-being of the American people,” Grassley said last month at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee Health Care Subcommittee. More »

A few weeks ago, 30-year-old John F. Shick, a former mental health patient, went on a shooting rampage at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). And while law enforcement officials were searching Shick's apartment after the incident, they discovered a shocking 43 different medications in the man's apartment unit that appear to have played a direct role in triggering the tragic event. It is becoming an all-too-common occurrence, but one that deserves far more media attention than it is currently getting -- psychiatric drugs so severely altering the minds of patients that they end up going on violent rampages where people are left seriously injured or dead. And in the case of Shick, it appears as though both his prescribed psychiatric drugs and treatments sent him over the edge into a drug-induced killing spree that left one man dead and five others seriously wounded. More »

A new Scottish study hailing the wonders of electroshock treatment has provided yet another lame theory about how this violent therapy might “work.” And while the press seem content to robotically reiterate this bogus study, we'd like to point out the actual facts. Professor Ian Reid from the University of Aberdeen, and colleagues claim that ECT works by “turning down” an overactive connection between areas of the brain causing depression. Incredibly, the authors claim electric shock may restore the brain's natural chemical balance. This logic is so moronic we're not sure where to start. First consider the fact that there is no proof that mental distress is due to a "chemical imbalance." That theory was an invention of the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry and has never been proven. In fact, “leading” psychiatrists on National Public Radio recently admitted that the “chemical imbalance in the brain” theory is a fraud, and that pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists invented it to market Prozac. Another study that revealed that for 13 years media reported psychiatrists’ “discoveries” of a genetic/neurological cause of mental problems, none of which was subsequently proven. The Aberdeen findings are just more of the same hype: “emerging” theory, “may” constitute a biological marker, they’ve found a “potential” therapeutic target in the brain. And the all-telling: “It is tempting to speculate that ECT might act to rebalance” specific brain activity “but the data presented here cannot confirm or refute this notion.” [Emphasis added][3] Let’s look more closely at what doesn’t get reported in the media: More »

The state's response to Grassley was made public yesterday when the agency responded to a Right-to-Know Request filed by Ken Kramer, an investigator for Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a group that investigates and exposes psychiatric abuse. "The state's response to Grassley was made public yesterday when the agency responded to a Right-to-Know Request filed by Ken Kramer, an investigator for Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a group that investigates and exposes psychiatric abuse." More »

When Mark Twain’s hero Huckleberry Finn was forced to study spelling for an hour every day, he said, “I couldn’t stand it much longer. It was deadly dull, and I was fidgety.” His teacher, Miss Watson, threatened him with eternal damnation if he didn’t pay attention. Huck admits it didn’t seem like such a bad alternative. “But I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular.” If that had happened today, Huck would have been diagnosed as ADHD, put on Adderall, and forced to attend school, while the book about his adventures would never have been written. The American Psychiatric Association invented the term "ADHD" in 1980 to give kids with hyperactivity, impulsivity, short attention span and easy distractibility a diagnosis. Who would have thought that 28 years later, the National Center for Health Statistics would report that over 5 million American kids (8 percent) between the ages of 3-17 would receive this diagnosis? That’s 1 out of 12, with about half of those on medication. More »

Law enforcement authorities who searched John F. Shick's North Oakland apartment following his deadly shooting rampage Thursday found 43 medications ranging from psychotropic drugs to pain pills to erectile dysfunction tablets that had been prescribed by about a dozen different doctors, sources close to the probe said. Additionally, they found the address for Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC, the scene of the shootings, written on a piece of paper hanging from a wall in Mr. Shick's fourth-floor flat in the Royal York Apartments. Rambling messages were written on the walls themselves and in notebooks scattered throughout the apartment. And there were handwritten complaints about his medical treatment for a variety of physical ailments, sources reported. More »

Controversy continues to swell around the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, better known as DSM-5. A new study suggests the 900-page bible of mental health, scheduled for publication in May 2013, is ripe with financial conflicts of interest. The manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association, details the diagnostic criteria and recommended treatments -- many of which are pharmacological -- for each and every psychiatric disorder. After the 1994 release of DSM-4, the APA instituted a policy requiring expert advisors to disclose drug industry ties. But the move toward transparency did little to cut down on conflicts, with nearly 70 percent of DSM-5 task force members reporting financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies -- up from 57 percent for DSM-4. More »

The gunman in a fatal shooting rampage inside a Pittsburgh psychiatric clinic was previously committed to a mental health facility for treatment following an altercation with police in Oregon in 2009, a prosecutor said. Details of John Shick's previous involvement with mental health professionals come as investigators piece together a motive for last week's shooting that killed one person and wounded six others in the lobby of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh. More »

Is grief a disease? That is one of the crucial questions psychologists are asking as the American Psychiatric Association revamps its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), used by millions of mental health professionals to diagnose patients, for a fifth edition due out in 2013. A group of psychiatrists have spearheaded a movement to include ongoing grief as a disorder, to be labeled “complicated” or “prolonged grief.” Others have proposed, separately, that a mourner can be labeled clinically depressed only two weeks after the loss of a loved one. The problem with both potential changes is that more people’s grief will be diagnosed as abnormal or extreme, in a culture that already leads mourners to feel they need to just “get over it” and “heal.” More »