Posts Tagged ‘ADHD’

NaturalNews—Five lies psychiatry tells for power and profit

Monday, April 15th, 2013

Natural News -  April 15, 2013 by Mike Bundrant

The field of psychiatry has succeeded in branding some whoppers into the minds of millions, to the tune of billions, with no accountability.

You’d think the Federal Trade Commission would hold psychiatry accountable for blatantly misleading the public, but there is zero accountability.

You’d think people would take a second to think before putting their mental health into the hands of a psychiatrist – someone who has zero training in mental health.

You’d think people would ask for evidence that their poor moods are caused by these mysterious chemical imbalances, but there is zero logic.

Here are the five lies psychiatry tells for power and profit

1. Poor moods are caused by chemical imbalances

These chemical imbalances are profitable for doctors who tell you they have the antidote, the pill that will put your brain back in balance. The problem is, there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance that creates a poor mood. At least there is not one shred of evidence to back this idea.

Put it this way: You lose your job. You feel discouraged. Is the discouragement caused by a chemical imbalance or by your response to this unfortunate event and the perception of an uncertain future? Is the remedy a pill or a new job?

You get into a car wreck. You feel anxious while driving after that. Is the anxiety caused by a chemical imbalance? Is the remedy a pill, or to learn to reconcile the trauma that rests in your mind?

Where is the evidence that chemical imbalances cause poor moods?

2. Psychiatrists are trained in mental health

Mental health is a vast field, filled with models of human relations and subjective experience. In mental health, we create models of thinking and relating in order to improve the prospect of happiness.

Psychiatry is based on the medical model. The assumption is NOT that people need to learn skills, but take pills. There is no mental health in this. Psychiatrists have ZERO training in mental health.

3. Normal feelings are disorders

Psychiatry is succeeding on a large scale in convincing people that there normal human feelings are wrong – disorders. When you feel down, especially for more than two weeks, you must have major depressive disorder. If you child is super active and creative, he must be ADHD.

In fact, I challenge you to find any normal human emotional challenge that is not labeled as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the psychiatric bible.

4. Pills are the solution

If you listen to average people talk these days, you’ll hear it. When poor moods or misbehaved children are discussed, doctors and pills are discussed.

“I’ve been feeling down lately. I wonder if I have some sort of chemical imbalance. I should see if my doctor can give me something for it.”

5. Doctors are the ‘go to’ people for emotional angst

Family doctors and psychiatrists are branding themselves as the “go to” people for mental health concerns. A shocking number of non-psychiatric family doctors prescribe for mental health concerns – 59% of anti-depressants prescribed in the US are prescribed by family doctors, 75% with no formal diagnosis.

Want a pill? Here’s a pill. Make your co-pay on the way out. This is how we treat mental illness today.

Where psychiatry lacks in honesty, it makes up for in marketing. You’ve got to give that to them. They are succeeding in convincing the world that psychiatry is the solution to mental anguish.

I wonder what a psychiatric society would look like? If psychiatry ultimately gets what it wants – total domination over emotional life – what would that look like?

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WorldNetDaily—Radical Increase in Kids Prescribed Ritalin

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

CDC director: ‘Misuse appears to be growing at an alarming rate’

WorldNetDaily
By Garth Kant
April 2, 2013

“Those are astronomical numbers. I’m floored”“Those are astronomical numbers. I’m floored,” Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist, Professor at the Yale School of Medicine

More than a decade after a national scandal regarding the over-prescription of Ritalin and similar drugs to millions of American children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now reports a far highter rate of diagnosis than a decade ago.

An astounding 19 percent of high school-age boys – ages 14 to 17 – in the U.S. have been diagnosed with ADHD and about 10 percent are taking medication for it. Ten percent of high school-age girls have likewise been diagnosed.

Fifteen percent of all school-age boys have been diagnosed with ADHD and 7 percent of all school-age girls. That makes a total of 11 percent of all school-aged children in the U.S. diagnosed with ADHD.

The CDC survey completed last year found an estimated 6.4 million children ages 4 to 17 had been diagnosed at some point, a 53 percent increase over the past decade.

Approximately two-thirds of those currently diagnosed have been prescribed drugs such as Ritalin or Adderall. Those drugs can help patients with both mild and severe symptoms, but they can also cause addiction, anxiety and psychosis.

Previous studies have estimated 3 to 7 percent of children have ADHD. Although there is no defined test, it is usually diagnosed by consulting with patients, parents and teachers. The rapid increase in the number of diagnoses and the prescriptions has long caused concern among medical professionals, with the harshest critics alleging that children are being drugged to make them easier to teach in the public school system.

“Those are astronomical numbers. I’m floored,” Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist in New Haven and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, told the New York Times, “Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy.”

And while CDC director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden told the Times “the right medications for ADHD, given to the right people, can make a huge difference,” he added: “Unfortunately, misuse appears to be growing at an alarming rate.”

David Healy, M.D., is a former secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology and has authored 20 books, including “The Antidepressant Era” and “The Creation of Psychopharmacology.”

He told WND psychiatric meds, including psycho-stimulents like Ritalin, as well as SSRI antidepressants, are vastly over-prescribed. (See video below.)

Indeed, it’s not just misuse of ADHD drugs that’s causing concern for many. The CDC also reports 11 percent of Americans age 12 and older are taking antidepressant medication. And a stunning 23 percent of women ages 40-59 take antidepressants, more than in any other age-sex group.

Another concern is a growing link between antidepressant and antipsychotic medications and violence. Psychiatric drugs are controversial not just because of their over-prescription and their side effects, but because about 90 percent of school shooters, according to Healy, were users of antidepressants, which all carry an FDA “black-box” warning of “suicidality.”

 

Click image to read official request for psychiatric drug toxicology reports on Adam Lanza

After December’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn., WND Managing Editor David Kupelian laid out case after case of mass shooters on antidepressants,” noting that “when certain people living on the edge of sanity take psychiatric medications, those drugs can – and occasionally do – push them over the edge into violent madness.”

Sales of stimulants to treat ADHD more than doubled between 2007 and 2012, from $4 billion to $9 billion, according to the Times report.

The spike is stoking fears that the drugs are being prescribed not merely to treat ADHD, but to enhance performance in school, improve falling grades or just to keep fidgety kids from disturbing classrooms.

“There’s a tremendous push where if the kid’s behavior is thought to be quote-unquote abnormal – if they’re not sitting quietly at their desk – that’s pathological, instead of just childhood,” Dr. Jerome Groopman, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the author of “How Doctors Think,” told the Times.

The number of teenagers prescribed such medications is expected to rise again soon. The criteria defining ADHD in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will be changed specifically to allow even more adolescents and adults to qualify for a diagnosis, sources tell the Times.

 

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NY Post: A Disease Called ‘Childhood’

Monday, April 1st, 2013

Note from CCHR: When even psychiatrists start using our campaigns, i.e. ‘childhood is not a mental disorder’, particularly one who is the former head of the DSM task force, we know we are making progress (see videos below).

getty images

A Disease Called Childhood—New York Post,  March 31, 2013

by Allen Frances, Psychiatrist

Do 1 in 5 NYC preteens really suffer a mental woe? A psychiatry expert argues we’re overdiagnosing —and overmedicating — our kids

Last week, The Post reported that more than 145,000 city children struggle with mental illness or other emotional problems. That estimate, courtesy of New York’s Health Department, equals an amazing 1 in 5 kids. Could that possibly be true?

There is nothing tougher in psychiatry than accurately diagnosing a mental disorder in a pre-teenager. It is so easy to make mistakes both ways — to miss problems that desperately need attention and to attend to problems that are better left alone.

Getting the right diagnosis and predicting its future course is especially difficult in kids because their symptoms have such a short track record and are often heavily influenced by transient factors like developmental differences: family, school and peer stress; and the use of drugs.

It usually takes a while before an illness declares itself — and often, it turns out that no diagnosis is necessary because the symptoms go away without intervention.

That said, there’s been a massive mislabeling of psychiatric diagnosis among children because of recent medical fads.

In the last 20 years, rates of attention deficit disorder have tripled, while autistic disorder and childhood bipolar disorder have each increased by a remarkable 40-fold.

Human nature just doesn’t change that quickly, but the labels follow fashion and can escalate dramatically without there being an actual increase in symptoms. Our kids haven’t suddenly become sicker, it’s just that diagnoses are applied to them more loosely.

Some of the broadening usefully captures missed cases, but there has been a big overshoot because of aggressive drug-company advertising. Once the adult market was saturated, pharmaceutical manufacturers turned their greedy attention to kids and began a sometimes illegal campaign to convince doctors, parents and teachers that every childhood problem is a mental disorder, the result of a chemical imbalance that requires a pill solution.

Medication use in children has skyrocketed — great news for the shareholders, but potentially quite dangerous for the children.

The biggest offenders are antipsychotic drugs, which cause an average 12-pound weight gain in just 12 weeks in kids who started out weighing 110 pounds. Childhood obesity is a strong predictor of diabetes, heart disease, and perhaps a shortened lifespan. The companies have been fined billions of dollars for marketing practices that especially impacted the most economically disadvantaged and socially vulnerable children.

Also of concern is the dramatic increase in the use of stimulants for treating attention deficit disorder. In 20 years, this has grown from a $70 million to a $7 billion market. Four percent of children use prescribed drugs, while 30% of college and 10% of high school students use illegally acquired pills for performance enhancement and recreation.

The diagnosis of ADD is being made with a careless indifference to developmental factors and individual diversity. A study recently showed that the best predictor of ADD was a birthday in January rather than December because the cut-off for grade assignment was January 1. How ridiculous to diagnose a mental disorder in the youngest kids in the class just because they are the least mature.

Another problem with overdiagnosis is that it can rob resources from the students with the most severe psychiatric, social and economic problems. These are the children who are most under-served and most likely to benefit. The pay-off in caring for them properly will be less current psychiatric and social pathology and a reduction of the risk that the kids will wind up markedly impaired or in prison in the future.

Parents and clinicians need to accept that there is no evidence to support the effectiveness of preventive psychiatry for children with mild or equivocal symptoms. There is considerable risk that well meaning but premature interventions can cause stigma and excessive medication treatment. Watchful waiting, simple advice, and reduction in stress are better than jumping in with inaccurate diagnosis and excessive treatment, whenever a diagnosis is in doubt.

Perhaps most troubling about all this is how it is changing the definition of normal behavior. Is a kid who is more interested in playing outside than sitting in a classroom suffering from ADD — or simply 7 years old? Is a child who slams his bedroom door and refuses to come to supper suffering from depression — or having a tantrum?

We should not medicalize the aches and pains of normal childhood.

Allen Frances, MD, was the chairperson of the task force for the fourth edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” His new book, “Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life” (William Morrow) is out in May.

 http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/disease_called_childhood_2neQ7SB47IkYOdOeFCScjJ

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Selling Sickness—How Big Pharma “Sells” Diseases to Move Drugs

Monday, March 4th, 2013

Do You Have Back Pain? Hot Flashes? Big Pharma Hopes So!

OpEd News
By Martha Rosenberg
March 4, 2013

Recently some of the nation’s top researchers, clinicians and scientists convened in Washington D.C. for the first annual Selling Sickness conference–examining how Pharma “sells” diseases to move the medications intended to treat them.

Examples of Pharma’s disease-mongering business model abound, especially since direct-to-consumer advertising began in the late 1990′s. Depression, bipolar disorder, seasonal allergies, insomnia and gastro reflux disease (GERD) are just some of the “diseases” that tripled and quadrupled in the population thanks to TV advertising, sometimes accompanied by self-administered “quizzes.” Even more lucrative have been childhood and adult ADHD, assorted behavioral, mood and “spectrum” disorders, excessive sleepiness and “wakefulness” disorders and of course restless legs syndrome. Ka-ching.

Proof of Pharma’s disease-selling model is as close as investment reports which unabashedly gush about growing “markets” for fibromyalgia or depression. And 2013 reveals that a “market” for ankylosing spondylitis is unfolding now that Abbott has dedicated an entire company to sell its extreme drug Humira.

Do you have back pain? Are you dismissing it as resulting from “lifting too much” at the gym or “bad posture” ask Abbott radio ads. Instead of spending five dollars a month on aspirin or acetaminophen, you could be spending $20,000 a year on Humira and exposing yourself to tuberculosis (TB) and serious viruses, fungi, or bacterial infection!

Why would people voluntarily take a drug that “may increase the chance of getting lymphoma, including a rare kind, or other cancers” hepatitis B infection in carriers of the virus, allergic reactions, nervous system problems, blood problems, heart failure, certain immune reactions including a lupus-like syndrome, liver problems, and new or worsening psoriasis”?   Side effects that are worse than the conditions being treated?   (“Some people have died from these infections,” says the label) Because advertising works!

ADHD has been another lucrative disease for Pharma, though marketers worry about the five million kids at risk of going off their ADHD meds when they leave home. “I remember being the kid with ADHD. Truth is, I still have it,” said an ad from stimulant maker Shire with a photo of Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon 5, in the Northwestern University student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern. “It’s Your ADHD. Own It,” is the tagline. (Was “Stay Sick” the second choice?)

This week, a widely disseminated press release furthers the ADHD financial damage control by announcing research that reveals that “ADHD Can Often Persist Into Adulthood.” News outlets obediently headlined their articles “ADHD Doesn’t Go Away,” and “ADHD Can Often Persist Into Adulthood” (gee, thanks!) without even noting the financial partnership between Shire and the study’s lead organization, Boston Children’s Hospital, penned just four months ago. Oops.

Read full article here:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/Do-You-Have-Back-Pain-Hot-by-Martha-Rosenberg-130304-211.html

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Kick Starting a Worthy Film: ADDicted

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

By Kelly Patricia O’Meara
February 26, 2013

Dan Jenski, a thirty-something generation Yer or “millennial”, has issues with the mental health diagnosis of his generation and the use and abuse of prescription mind-altering drugs.

As part of the generation that grew up with easy access to computers, instant internet connections and smart phones, Jenski is utilizing those tech savvy skills to raise awareness thru film about the mental health abuse he personally witnessed and the toll it took on his generation.

Jenski has produced a short film titled “ADDicted,” which looks at the young life of Alex, a college-age student who was diagnosed with ADD and since the age of ten has been taking prescription mind-altering drugs.

While the film looks at many issues contributing to the pressures of his generation to succeed, the underlying theme is not whether the ADD/ADHD diagnosis is real or whether the drugs utilized to treat the alleged mental illness “work.”  Rather, Jenski, intends to show, based on personal experiences, how the diagnosis and prescription drugs have been abused.

In an effort to raise the funds needed to shoot the longer feature film, Jenski, has set up a kickstarter webpage to introduce his short and make his case to raise the needed funds to finance the full-length film (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/libproductions/addicted-feature-film?ref=live).

Jenski is aware that the mental health elements of the film and even the drugging may elicit a negative backlash but believes the story needs to be told. “Let the people who disagree be pissed off,” says Jenski.” “They cannot deny this (drugging) is happening,” explains Jenski, “and everything in this film is supported by the truth.”

Jenski’s short film has received positive reviews from several film Festivals, including Sonoma International Film Festival and the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival.

To date, the project has raised just a little over $11,000 of the $50,000 needed to begin shooting the feature film.  Contributions range from one dollar to pledges of more than $5,000 and, under the Kickstarter program, Jenski must raise the needed funds by March 14.

Time is of the essence for the future of the film and Jenski appreciates even the smallest donation as it gets him one step closer to bringing this important story to the public.

 

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How kids are getting hooked on pills for life

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Young children were once expected to outgrow their issues; now they’re diagnosed with lifelong psychiatric problems.

Evelyn Pringle & Martha Rosenberg
Alternet – October 2012

© Zurijeta/Shutterstock.com

Where do parents and teachers get the idea there’s something wrong with kids that only an expensive drug can fix? From Big Pharma’s seamless web of ads, subsidized doctors, journals, medical courses and conferences, paid “patient” groups, phony public services messages and reporters willing to serve as stenographers.

Free stenography for Pharma from sympathetic media includes articles like “One in 40 Infants Experience Baby Blues, Doctors Say,” on ABC News and “Preschool Depression: The Importance of Early Detection of Depression in Young Children,” on Science Daily.

For many, the face of the drugs-not-hugs message is Harold Koplewicz, author of the pop bestseller It’s Nobody’s Fault, and former head of NYU’s prestigious Child Study Center. In a 1999 Salon article, Koplewicz reiterated his “no-fault” statement, assuring parents that psychiatric illness is not caused by bad parenting. “It is not that your mother got divorced, or that your father didn’t wipe you the right way,” he said. “It really is DNA roulette: You got blue eyes, blond hair, sometimes a musical ear, but sometimes you get the predisposition for depression.”

Many regard the NYU Child Study Center, which Koplewicz founded and led before leaving in 2009 to start his own facility, as helping to usher in the world of brave new pediatric medicine in which children, toddlers and infants, once expected to outgrow their problems, are now diagnosed with lifelong psychiatric problems. The Child Study Center is “a threat to the health and welfare of children,” and its doctors are “hustlers working to increase their ‘client’ population and their commercial value to psychotropic drug manufacturers,” charged Vera Sharav, president of the watchdog group, Alliance for Human Research Protection.

A look at the center’s stated mission provides no reassurance. Its goal of “eliminating the stigma of being or having a child with a psychiatric disorder,” and “influencing child-related public policy,” sounds a lot like a Pharma sales plan. And its boast about having “a structure that allows recruitment of patients for research studies and then provides ‘real-world’ testing for successful controlled-environment findings,” could send chills down the backs of parents afraid their kids will be guinea pigs or money-making subjects.

In 2007, the fears of the Child Study Center’s skeptics were confirmed when it launched an aggressive, scare tactic marketing campaign called Ransom Notes in 2007. “We have your son,” said one ad, created with bits of disparate type like a ransom note from a kidnapper. “We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives. This is only the beginning…Autism.”

“We have your daughter. We are forcing her to throw up after every meal she eats. It’s only going to get worse,” said another ad signed “Bulimia.”

“We are in possession of your son. We are making him squirm and fidget until he is a detriment to himself and those around him. Ignore this and your kid will pay,” said another add from “ADHD.” Other ransom ads came from kidnappers named Depression, Asperger’s Syndrome and OCD.

Created pro bono by advertising giant BBDO, the ads were planned to run in New York magazine, Newsweek, Parents, Education Update, Mental Health News and other publications and on 11 billboards and 200 kiosks, according to the press release.

Immediate Outrage

The hostage campaign drew immediate public outrage and more than a dozen advocacy groups joined together in an online petition calling for an end to it. “This is a demonstration of the assaultive tactics used by psychiatry today – in particular, academic psychiatrists and university-based medical centers that are under the influence of their pharmaceutical partners,” Vera Sharav wrote in alerts to AHRP’s mailing list. “If Dr. Koplewicz et al. are not stopped, the campaign will be hitting the rest of the country,” she warned, and informed readers that the campaign was formulated by BBDO, “a major direct to consumer prescription drug advertising firm,” asking the New York State Attorney General’s office to investigate.

Days after the backlash, the center revoked the advertising campaign “after the effort drew a strongly negative reaction,” reported the New York Times. Koplewicz told the Times the decision was made by the center with no pressure from New York University and they planned to introduce a new campaign in the next three months. However, he left the Child Study Center at NYU in 2009 to start his own facility, initially called the Child Study Center Foundation, but changed to the Child Mind Institute, in 2010.

There was more controversy when Koplewicz left the center. When he announced his resignation, New York University “forbade him from entering his office and it pushed out professors who had said they wanted to join him at Child Mind Institute,” reported the New York Times. Twelve NYU professors nevertheless followed Koplewicz to the Child Mind Institute as well as most of the Child Study Center’s influential board of directors, which included Garber Neidich, a chairwoman at the Whitney Museum, the founders of the Tribeca Film Festival founders and some well known financiers. The toxic send-off was followed by the New York State Office of Mental Health firing Koplewicz from his job of nearly four years as director of the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, an affiliate of NYU School of Medicine.

Though Koplewicz’ Child Mind Institute is supposedly a non-profit, it is ensconced on Park Avenue in Manhattan and Koplewicz’ hourly rate “can be as high as $1,000 (three to four times that of the average Manhattan therapist),” says the Times. In a chilling interview on Education Update Online, Koplewicz says the reason his institute works closely with schools “is simply that’s where the kids are” (bringing to mind Willy Sutton, who robbed banks because “that’s where the money is”).

Last month in the Wall Street Journal, Koplewicz wrote that “no studies have examined the effect of long-term use” of ADHD meds, but they “have been in use for 70 years, and there is no evidence that suggests any adverse effects.” But there has been a large federal study of the long-term effects of the drugs and it shows they are “ineffective over longer periods,” and “that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children’s growth,” reported the Washington Post. Oops.

Read the rest of the article here http://www.sott.net/article/252567-How-kids-are-getting-hooked-on-pills-for-life

 

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Why are 5 million kids diagnosed ADHD? — $7.2 Billion a year in ADHD drug sales

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

by CCHR International

A recent article posted in the Wall Street Journal posed the question, “Are ADHD Medications Overprescribed?”

Is that a rhetorical question? 5 million children are currently taking ADHD drugs in the U.S. alone.

In fact the U.S. has the unfortunate distinction of being the world’s leader when it comes to child drugging—the top nation fueling the $7.2 billion-a-year ADHD drug industry.

The fact that parents are buying into the ADHD marketing campaign is in no small part due to the rampant disinformation being spread by some “leading” psychiatrists, many who have been exposed by federal lawmakers for receiving huge amounts of undisclosed Pharma funding.    In the Wall Street Journal article, “Are Children Being Over Medicated” we find one of the biggest proponents of child labeling and drugging, psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz.

We’re going to address Koplewicz’s gross downplaying of internationally documented ADHD drug risks first, and the validity of ADHD as a medical condition (used to justify drugging kids)  second.

Psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz

In the article, Koplewicz states, “ADHD is real, it is widespread, and the stimulants commonly prescribed for it are the most effective treatment, have few side effects and are nonaddictive. “

Wrong.

Let’s start with the “nonaddictive” statement:

Fact:  The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration classifies Ritalin and ADHD drugs  in the same class of highly addictive substances (Schedule ll) as cocaine, morphine and opium with the highest potential for abuse.   And from the DEA report on ADHD drugs, “Parents need to understand that we are talking about very potent, addictive and abusable substances.”

Secondly, Koplewicz’s comment that ADHD drugs have “few side effects”

Wrong again.

The Facts:

  • 20 studies on ADHD side effects have been published including  heart problems, depression, suicidal ideation, violence, hallucinations, mania, psychosis, homicidal ideation and death.

As far as ADHD drugs being “effective” — also false.  A long-term monitoring program involving 600 kids across the United States  found ADHD drugs ineffective in the long term.  Another February 2010 Australian study found “ADHD medications, at best, are unsuccessful and, at worst, harm class performance and step-up the risk of stroke and cardiovascular complications.”

Now onto the diagnosis. Koplewicz’s statement that  ADHD is “real.“  If he means real as in a real checklist of normal childhood behaviors which have been repackaged by psychiatrists and sold as a “disease”—then that’s the only qualification of “real”  that holds up under scrutiny.

Fact: There are no blood tests, brain scans, lab tests, genetic tests, MRIs or X-rays that can prove ADHD is a disease.  Period.   There is no medical justification for risking kids lives with drugs documented to be extremely dangerous by international drug regulatory agencies.   A National Institute of Health (NIH) statement from 1998 found   “an independent diagnostic test for ADHD does not exist.”    14 years after that consensus statement was issued, there is still no medical/scientific test to prove any child has a brain malfunction called ADHD,  yet 5 million children have been labeled and subjected to drugs the US DEA classifies in the same category of drugs as cocaine.

Fact: The only “test” for ADHD is a checklist of behaviors.  That’s it.  The ADHD checklist includes such things as:

  • “runs about or climbs excessively in situations when it is not appropriate”
  •  ”is often ‘on the go
  •  ”acts as if driven by a motor”
  •  ”blurts out answers”
  •  ”is easily distracted”
  • ” loses pencils or toys”
  • “often doesn’t seem to listen”

Now to be perfectly clear, kids can suffer from lead toxicity which manifests the exact same symptoms as the ADHD “checklist” but then they are suffering from lead toxicity—not “mental illness.”  The same can be said of allergies, toxins, an inability to read, poor diet,  but then they are suffering from allergies, toxins, an inability to read—not a “mental illness.”  ADHD is a psychiatric label.  It designates the child as mentally ill.  It stigmatizes the child as mentally ill for life.   It also prevents parents from seeking workable non-drug alternatives to handling problems of attention, mood and behavior.   What the ADHD label does do effectively is fuel a $7.2 billion dollar ADHD drug industry.   Because without the ADHD label, no drug prescription and no profit.

To quote psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM Task Force Chairman, “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.”  “There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bull—.”

We agree.

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Medical Cartel’s Open Secret—There are No Definitive Lab Tests for Any So-Called Mental Disorder

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

America’s Leading Psychiatrist Convicts Himself of Crimes Against Humanity

Natural News—September 3. 2012

by Jon Rappoport

The medical cartel, one of a handful of evolving super-cartels that strive for more power every day, is rife with so much fraud it’s astounding. In the psychiatric arena, for example, an open secret has been bleeding out into public consciousness for the past ten years.

THERE ARE NO DEFINITIVE LABORATORY TESTS FOR ANY SO-CALLED MENTAL DISORDER.

And along with that:

ALL SO-CALLED MENTAL DISORDERS ARE CONCOCTED, NAMED, LABELED, DESCRIBED, AND CATEGORIZED by a committee of psychiatrists, from menus of human behaviors.

Their findings are published in periodically updated editions of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), printed by the American Psychiatric Association.

For years, even psychiatrists have been blowing the whistle on this hazy crazy process of “research.”

Of course, pharmaceutical companies, who manufacture highly toxic drugs to treat every one of these “disorders,” are leading the charge to invent more and more mental-health categories, so they can sell more drugs and make more money.

But we have a mind-boggling twist. Under the radar, one of the great psychiatric stars, who has been out in front inventing mental disorders, went public. He blew the whistle on himself and his colleagues. And for 2 years, almost no one noticed.

“There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.” —Dr. Allen Frances, Psychiatrist, former Chairman, DSM task force

His name is Dr. Allen Frances, and he made VERY interesting statements to Gary Greenberg, author of a Wired article: “Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness.” (Dec.27, 2010).

Major media never picked up on the interview in any serious way. It never became a scandal.

Dr. Allen Frances is the man who, in 1994, headed up the project to write the latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the DSM-IV. This tome defines and labels and describes every official mental disorder. The DSM-IV eventually listed 297 of them.

In an April 19, 1994, New York Times piece, “Scientist At Work,” Daniel Goleman called Frances “Perhaps the most powerful psychiatrist in America at the moment…”

Well, sure. If you’re sculpting the entire canon of diagnosable mental disorders for your colleagues, for insurers, for the government, for Pharma (who will sell the drugs matched up to the 297 DSM-IV diagnoses), you’re right up there in the pantheon.

Long after the DSM-IV had been put into print, Dr. Frances talked to Wired’s Greenberg and said the following:

“There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.”

BANG.

That’s on the order of the designer of the Hindenburg, looking at the burned rubble on the ground, remarking, “Well, I knew there would be a problem.”

After a suitable pause, Dr. Frances remarked to Greenberg, “These concepts [of distinct mental disorders] are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the borders.”

Frances might have been referring to the fact that his baby, the DSM-IV, had rearranged earlier definitions of ADHD and Bipolar to permit many MORE diagnoses, leading to a vast acceleration of drug-dosing with highly powerful and toxic compounds.

Finally, at the end of the Wired interview, Frances flew off into a bizarre fantasy:

“Diagnosis [as spelled out in the DSM-IV] is part of the magic…you know those medieval maps? In the places where they didn’t know what was going on, they wrote ‘Dragons live here’…we have a dragon’s world here. But you wouldn’t want to be without the map.”

Translation: People need to hope for the healing of their troubles; so even if we psychiatrists are shooting blanks and pretending to know one kind of mental disorder from another, even if we’re inventing these mental-disorder definitions based on no biological or chemical diagnostic tests—it’s a good thing, because people will then believe there is hope for them; they’ll believe it because we place a name on their problems…

If this is medical science, a duck is a rocket ship.

If I were an editor at one of the big national newspapers, and one of my reporters walked in and told me, “The most powerful psychiatrist in America just said the DSM is sheer b.s. but it’s still important,” I think I’d make room on the front page.

If the reporter then added, “This shrink was in charge of creating the DSM-IV,” I’d clear more room above the fold.

If the reporter went on to explain that the whole profession of psychiatry would collapse overnight if the DSM was discredited, I’d call for a special section of the paper to be printed.

I’d tell the reporter to get ready to pound on this story day after day for months. I’d tell him to track down all the implications of Dr. Frances’ statements.

I’d open a bottle of champagne to toast the soon-to-be-soaring sales of my newspaper.

And then, of course, the next day I’d be fired.

Because there are powerful multi-billion-dollar interests at stake, and those people don’t like their deepest secrets exposed in the press.

And as I walked out of my job, I’d see a bevy of blank-eyed pharmaceutical executives marching into the office of the paper’s publisher, ready to read the riot act to him.

Keep in mind that Dr. Frances’ work on the DSM IV allowed for MORE toxic drugs to be prescribed, because the definition of Bipolar was expanded to include more people.

Adverse effects of Valproate (given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:

  • Acute, life-threatening, and even fatal liver toxicity;

 

  • life-threatening inflammation of the pancreas;

 

  • brain damage.

 

  • Adverse effects of Lithium (also given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:

 

  • intercranial pressure leading to blindness;

 

  • peripheral circulatory collapse;

 

  • stupor and coma.

 

  • Adverse effects of Risperdal (given for “Bipolar” and “irritability stemming from autism”) include:

 

  • serious impairment of cognitive function;

 

  • fainting;

 

  • restless muscles in neck or face, tremors (may be indicative of motor brain damage).

Dr. Frances self-admitted label-juggling act also permitted the definition of ADHD to expand, thereby opening the door for greater and greater use of Ritalin (and other similar compounds) as the treatment of choice.

So what about Ritalin?

In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a most important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)” [v.21(7), pp. 837-841].

Scarnati listed a large number of adverse affects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.

For every one of the following (selected and quoted verbatim) Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:

  • Paranoid delusions
  • Paranoid psychosis
  • Hypomanic and manic symptoms, amphetamine-like psychosis
  • Activation of psychotic symptoms
  • Toxic psychosis
  • Visual hallucinations
  • Auditory hallucinations
  • Can surpass LSD in producing bizarre experiences
  • Effects pathological thought processes
  • Extreme withdrawal
  • Terrified affect
  • Started screaming
  • Aggressiveness
  • Insomnia
  • Since Ritalin is considered an amphetamine-type drug, expect amphetamine-like effects
  • Psychic dependence
  • High-abuse potential DEA Schedule II Drug
  • Decreased REM sleep
  • When used with antidepressants one may see dangerous reactions including hypertension, seizures and hypothermia
  • Convulsions
  • Brain damage may be seen with amphetamine abuse.

A recent survey revealed that a high percentage of children diagnosed with bipolar had first received a diagnosis of ADHD. This is informative, because Ritalin and other speed-type drugs are given to kids who are slapped with the ADHD label. Speed, sooner or later, produces a crash. This is easy to call “clinical depression.” Then comes Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft. These drugs can produce temporary highs, followed by more crashes. The psychiatrist notices the up and down pattern – and then comes the diagnosis of Bipolar (manic-depression) and other drugs, including Valproate and Lithium.

In the US alone, there are at least 300,000 cases of motor brain damage incurred by people who have been prescribed so-called anti-psychotic drugs (aka “major tranquilizers”). Risperdal (mentioned above as a drug given to people diagnosed with Bipolar) is one of those major tranquilizers. (source: Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin, St. Martin’s Press, 1991)

This psychiatric drug plague is accelerating across the land.

Where are the mainstream reporters and editors and newspapers and TV anchors who should be breaking this story and mercilessly hammering on it week after week? They are in harness.

And Dr. Frances is somehow let off the hook. He’s admitted in print that the whole basis of his profession is throwing darts at labels on a wall, and implies the “effort” is rather heroic – when, in fact, the effort leads to more and more poisonous drugs being dispensed to adults and children, to say nothing of the effect of being diagnosed with “a mental disorder.” I’m not talking about “the mental-disease stigma,” the removal of which is one of Hillary Clinton’s missions in life. No, I’m talking about MOVING A HUMAN INTO THE SYSTEM, the medical apparatus, where the essence of the game is trapping that person to harvest his money, his time, his energy, and of course his health—as one new diagnosis follows on another, and one new toxic treatment after another is undertaken, from cradle to grave. The result is a severely debilitated human being (if he survives), whose major claim to fame is his list of diseases and disorders, which he learns to wear like badges of honor.

Thank you, Dr. Frances.

Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.
www.nomorefakenews.com

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Soaring Numbers of Children on Powerful Adult Psychiatric Drugs

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

Huffington Post

by Dr. Peter Breggin, reform Psychiatrist

A recent blog of mine described how unethical and illegal drug company activities have driven the prescription of toxic antipsychotic drugs to children. Now the “success” of this campaign has been documented in the Archives of General Psychiatry. In a comparison between the years 1993-1998 and 2005-2009, prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs for per 100 children (0-13 years old) rose from 0.24 to 1.83. That’s more than a sevenfold increase. Given that most of prescriptions are for the older children in this age range, the rate would be substantially higher among preteens and 13-year-olds. For adolescents (14-20 years old) the increase was nearly fivefold.

This report comes out at a poignant time for me. Right now one of my patients, a 7-year-old boy I will called “Joey,” has just returned from being psychiatrically hospitalized because he could not be withdrawn from the antipsychotic drug Risperdal as an outpatient. The family came to me for help in getting this child off the psychiatric drugs he’d been prescribed by another psychiatrist. A basically sweet and lovable boy, the withdrawal was such an agony for him that he became uncontrollably violent. Meanwhile, he already suffers from tardive dyskinesia, a persistent and commonly permanent movement disorder from antipsychotic drug exposure that causes abnormal movements, including deforming facial grimaces and disabling involuntary movements of the torso and limbs.

Joey is also a victim of precocious puberty, almost certainly caused by the Risperdal. Although largely ignored in the scientific literature, according to Philadelphia attorney Steve Sheller, many cases of Risperdal-induced premature puberty in boys are showing up as legal cases.

My patient Joey became dangerously violent for the first time after exposure to antipsychotic medication and then became even more violent during withdrawal. You can witness similar reactions in stunning footage from an ABC News documentary about U.S. foster children prescribed large quantities of psychiatric drugs, including Brooke, also age 7, who had been exposed to the drugs since the age of 4. When she was finally taken to a psychiatrist who recognized what was happening to her, the doctor observed, “The first thing we’ve got to think about: Is the medicine causing this? … There always has to be a high index of suspicion when we’re using these agents.”

Unlike the escalation in stimulant drugs prescribed to children for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is led by pediatricians and family doctors, psychiatrists are doing most of the prescribing of antipsychotic drugs to children. As reported earlier, the drugging of children with antipsychotic drugs is a direct result of off-label (unapproved) uses promoted by the drug companies in cooperation with unscrupulous psychiatrists and researchers in leadership roles in the profession. The new Archives of General Psychiatry study confirms that most of the prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs to children have indeed been off-label for disruptive behavioral disorders. Instead of helping parents and teachers to improve their methods of disciplining children, psychiatrists are suppressing the overall mental life and behavior of these youngsters with antipsychotic drugs.

Read the rest of the article here

 

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New Study: Psychiatrists Prescribing Powerful Antipsychotics to 1 in 3 Kids diagnosed “ADHD”

Friday, August 10th, 2012

Note from CCHR:  The fact that psychiatrists are prescribing antipsychotics to kids diagnosed “ADHD” is a clear example of the depths to which psychiatry will sink,  putting normal kids at risk.  Take aside the fact that an ADHD diagnoses is arrived at simply by ticking off a checklist of childhood behaviors, such as fidgets, stares out window,  acts on the go, loses pencils or toys,  Antipsychotics are the most powerful in psychiatry’s arsenal of mind-altering drugs. Warnings have been issued on their ability to cause brain damage and International Drug Regulatory Agencies warn antipsychotics cause diabetes, convulsions, seizures,  cognitive impairment, motor impairment, paralysis, blood clots, stroke and sudden death and they’re being prescribed for kids who “fidget.”  All of this information on antipsychotic drugs are  documented on CCHR’s psychiatric drug search engine here.

Antipsychotics Prescribed To Treat ADHD In More Children And Teens, New Study Finds

Huffington Post – August 10, 2012 by Catherine Pearson

The number of children and teens taking antipsychotic medications has skyrocketed in recent years, with psychiatrists prescribing the drugs in nearly one-in-three visits with youth, a new study found.

The drugs are not only being prescribed for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but also for the commonly diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Many mental health experts say that the powerful medications come with serious potential side effects and that their effectiveness has not been proven in treating the disorders for which they’re increasingly prescribed.

“The growth in antipsychotic treatment of children — roughly eight-fold in 17 years — is especially impressive,” said study author Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

“Practice has overstepped research,” he said. “These rapidly rising rates of antipsychotic treatment in young people should give physicians pause.”

For the new study, published online this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Olfson and colleagues categorized people into two groups: children for those up to 13 years old and teens for those aged 14-20. They looked at data from doctor’s office visits collected over several decades, and compared data from 1993 to 1998 with that from 2005-2009. The number of doctor’s visits in which an antipsychotic was prescribed jumped from 0.24 percent to 1.83 percent in children, and from 0.78 percent to 3.76 percent in teens.

“[That] is a pretty big leap — not huge, but substantial,” said Dr. Michael Houston, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the George Washington university medical center and a member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “Whether or not it is bad news is hard to determine,” added Houston, who was not involved with the study.

Doctors primarily prescribed the drugs because of behavior disorders and ADHD, the study found, which is considered “off-label” use. The Food and Drug Administration has approved use of antipsychotics in youth primarily for treating schizophrenia, bipolar mania, Tourette’s syndrome and irritability stemming from autism — but the study found that only a small proportion of treatment was for one of those approved uses.

Read the rest of the article here:

Get the facts about psychiatric disorders here

Search all psychiatric drug warnings, studies and side effects reported to the US FDA here

 

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