ProPublica
By Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber
January 24, 2012

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• Once Again Psychiatrists Top the List of Top Prescribers—And Are Heavily Funded by Pharma (0)
• Top prescribers under Senate’s microscope (0)
• Prescription Pill-Popping By Far a Leading Killer as Florida’s Drug Deaths Spike 20% (1)
• U.S. to Force Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors (0)
• Pharmageddon: America’s bitter pill — U.S. is world’s biggest user of psychotropic drugs (0)

Big Pharma uses ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and sell diseases to adults and their children.

Alternet
By Martha Rosenberg
January 9, 2012

It’s no secret that advertising works. Big Pharma wouldn’t spend over $4 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising if it didn’t mean massive profits.

What is more unknown is why drug ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and “sell” diseases are often the most common–and effective–even when the drugs themselves are of questionable safety.

The nation’s fourth most frequent drug ads in 2009 for were Cymbalta, making Eli Lilly $3.1 billion in one year, despite the antidepressant’s links to liver problems and suicide. Pfizer spent $157 million advertising Lyrica for fibromyalgia in 2009, despite the seizure pill’s links to life-threatening allergic reactions. The same year, it spent $107 million advertising the antidepressant Pristiq, even though it also had links to liver problems.

So, how does Pharma dupe us into using unsafe drugs? Today’s drug ads, targeted directly to consumers since 1999, seem like they sell diseases and often cast women, children, the elderly and mentally ill in a bad light. But a quick look at ads before direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) in medical journals shows that drug ads have always done so. It’s just that patients didn’t used to see them.

Here are some of Pharma’s most offensive ad campaigns, then and now.

1. You’re Sicker Than You Think

When psychiatric drugs first became popular for use in the general population, in the late 1960s, everyday personality problems became imbued with psychiatric labels. “Lady, your anxiety is showing (over a coexisting depression),” says a 1970 ad, showing an older, wrinkly woman in a bouffant wig with gigantic sunglasses and garish jewelry. “On the visible level, this middle-aged patient dresses to look too young, exhibits a tense, continuous smile and may have bitten nails or overplucked eyebrows,” says the ad copy. “What doesn’t show as clearly is the coexisting depression.”

The ad, both sexist and ageist, suggests the woman needs the antidepressant and tranquillizer Triavil.

Another ad from 1968 shows a bored, upper-middle-class couple whose hauteur is also said to really be depression. “Do you have patients who try to hide frustration behind conformity?” says the ad for the antidepressant Aventyl HCl.

You’d think such demeaning ads would vanish with DTC advertising because people would be offended. But You’re Sicker-Than-You-Think ads are alive and well since DTC advertising and even flowering.

A three-page consumer ad in the late 2000s similarly conveys that everyday psychological traits could actually be dire mental problems that require medication. If you are “talking too fast,” “spending out of control,” “sleeping less,” “flying off the handle” and “buying things you don’t need,” you could be suffering from bipolar disorder said the ads, which appeared in magazines like People. And here you thought it was the coffee. Accompanying photos of a woman screaming into a phone and contorting her face are so extreme they could come out of the movie Halloween Part II, if the woman were holding a knife.

Click to enlarge image

Psychiatric drugs are not just advertised for everyday personality problems. Pharma is pushing them for everyday pain conditions. Eli Lilly’s original depression campaign for the antidepressant Cymbalta, “Depression Hurts,” seems to anticipate its subsequent approval for pain conditions including back problems. Now ads tout Cymbalta as a “non-narcotic, once daily analgesic FDA approved for three indications across four different chronic pain conditions,” as if it does not have severe controversial psychiatric risks including the suicide of volunteers who tested it.

And seizure and epilepsy drugs, known for major allergic and psychiatric reactions, are also becoming pain franchises. “What’s causing your chronic widespread muscle pain?” asks an ad for the seizure and epilepsy drug Lyrica. “The answer may be overactive nerves,” says the ad, even though “widespread muscle pain” and “over-active nerves,” are not mentioned in the approved labeling for Lyrica, says pharmaceutical reporter John Mack. The military spent $35 million on seizure and epilepsy drugs in 2009 alone, including for migraines, headaches and pain.

And speaking of overkill, ads for genetically engineered injected drugs like Humira, approved to treat serious diseases like Crohn’s disease, psoriatic arthritis and chronic plaque psoriasis look like they are designed to sell beer or beauty treatments, not immune suppressing drugs that invite cancers and lethal infections.

DTC ads don’t just escalate everyday problems into psychiatric problems, they also escalate real psychiatric problems into irresponsible, sensationalistic stereotypes. Ads for the best-selling antipsychotic Risperdal, widely used in children, and in soldiers with PTSD, suggest that people with mental illness have hallucinatory fears about “boiling rain” and “dog women.” The “dog woman” ad, showing a half-dog, half-woman crouched on her elbows, her eyes blackened, furthers the sensationalizing of mental illness with the tagline, “Because relapses are a living nightmare.”

2. Your Kid Is Sick 

DTC ads don’t just convince people they’re in need of new drugs, but also that their kids may be, too. And it’s been going on for decades.

Long before Pharma convinced parents, teachers and clinicians that millions of US kids had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), kids were said to suffer from “minimal brain dysfunction” (MBD) and “hyperkinesis,” two conditions that were essentially the same as ADHD. In fact, so many kids had MBD by 1976 that an ad for the drug Cylert hailed the “Importance of single daily dose to the child, the parents and the teacher,” because kids wouldn’t have to be singled out anymore at pill time at school. (ADHD has been so huckstered, a YMCA ad spoofs it with the headline, “Before video games, before Facebook, before Ritalin, there was basketball.”)

Yet neither Cylert–whose approval the FDA withdrew in 2005 because of liver failure and deaths–or the current ADHD drugs are safe. In 2009, researchers reported that kids are more likely to die sudden deaths while taking them and the American Heart Association recommends electrocardiograms (ECGs) before kids take them. And yet, combined sales of ADHD drugs continue to grow from $4.05 billion to $7.42 billion in 2010.

Thirty years ago, it certainly looked like kids were being overmedicated. They were given the antipsychotic Thorazine for their “hyperactivity,” “hostility,” sleep problems and even for vomiting. Picky eaters and kids who wet the bed were given tranquillizers. Kids with tics, stuttering and school phobia were given the tranquillizer Miltown.

Click to enlarge image

But today, ads promoting drugs for kids continue, and now they are aimed at parents. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between ads for drugs or ads for sugary cereals! Pharma tells moms to give their kids the bubble gum-flavored ADHD med, LiquADD and the grape-flavored ADHD med, Methylin. The latter campaign, to parents, is “Give ‘em the GRAPE!”

DTC advertising has also convinced parents their kids suffer from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) otherwise known as acid reflux disease, which was barely a disease in adults much less kids, before consumer advertising. “GERD Can Be a Big Problem for Little Kids,” say award-winning ads for Prevacid, which won a “RX Club” Silver award in 2004. In Europe, kids are treated for another “adult disease” and given chewable Liptitor to lower their cholesterol.

Some of Pharma’s most aggressive advertising has been designed to convince parents their children’s minor sniffles or wheezing are imminent asthma and require immediate and expensive drugs. To make the asthma drug Singulair (which also comes in a yummy chewable), the seventh most popular drug in 2010, Merck inked partnerships with the American Academy of Pediatrics and Scholastic, both of which parents consider neutral organizations and not Pharma mouthpieces. Merck also partnered with Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Peter Vanderkaay and NBA kid clubs to sell the asthma drug.

“A kid who’s got what your kid’s got is out doing what your kid’s not,” says one Singulair ad campaign. “Find out how you can help your child breathe a little easier.”

If Singulair were not harmful, the huckstering would simply be a case of wasting money and overmedicating kids. But Singulair has been linked to both pediatric suicide and to emotional, behavioral and ADHD-like symptoms in kids, the latter likely inspiring parents to give their kids “the grape.”

Of course, another kid-targeted campaign is for the vaccine against the sexually transmitted Papillomavirus or HPV, immortalized by Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann in hot exchanges this fall. Many object to the sexualizing of 9-year-olds, to government lining Pharma’s pockets by promoting the vaccine (including overseas) and to the risks of the vaccines themselves. But the ads for Gardasil and Cervarix are also offensive.

Last spring, poster-sized ads for Gardasil on Chicago’s commuter trains pretended to sell real estate in sought-after neighborhoods. A closer look revealed descriptions of women in those neighborhoods who thought they didn’t need the HPV vaccine but did, positioning HPV not only as a general risk to the population, like flu, rather than an STD but as “hip.”

HPV vaccine ads got even cooler when GSK rolled out Cervarix extravaganza TV ads and its “armed against cervical cancer” campaign with an Angelina Jolie-like model displaying a skinny arm with a Cervarix tattoo.

3. Be Like Me, and Can Your Beer Do This?

Click to enlarge image

Prescription drugs may affect health, but they are still consumer products sold with the same marketing principles as toothpaste or beer. In fact, the wacky, “Can Your Beer Do This?” Miller Lite campaign of the 1990s, came back to life to sell the antidepressant Wellbutrin XR. In a glossy, color magazine ad, a young man rows his girlfriend on a scenic lake and lists the benefits of his Wellbutrin XR. “Can your medicine do all that?” he asks.

What does it say about the success of DTC advertising that people are assumed to have an antidepressant?

Experiential ads also sell prescription drugs like vintage ads for the “Kodak Moment,” “Maalox Moment” and the old cigarette ads for the “L&M Moment” did. “Lunesta Sleep. Have You Tried it?” asks a 2007 ad in Parade magazine, elevating the experience to something akin to “designer sleep.”

Click to enlarge image

And just as celebrities move other consumer products, they have been deployed to sell prescription drugs. TV personality Joan Lunden and former baseball star Mike Piazza stumped for the allergy pill Claritin, ice skater Dorothy Hamill and track star Bruce Jenner for the pain pill Vioxx, and Sen. Bob Dole for Viagra. NASCAR figure Bobby Labonte also endorsed the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL in 2004. Yes, his medicine could “do all that.”

But there has been a problem with celebrity drug endorsements, unlike product endorsements in which a celebrity like Tiger Woods or Martha Stewart could taint a product, a prescription drug can taint a celebrity! Did Dorothy Hamill know that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks in users when she stumped for it? Did the model Lauren Hutton know that hormone replacement therapy causes a 26 percent higher incidence of breast cancer, a 29 percent increase in heart attacks, a 41 percent increase in strokes, and a doubling of the rate of blood clots when she shilled for it? Does actress Sally Field know that bone drugs like Boniva are linked to esophageal cancer, jaw bone death and the very fractures they are supposed to prevent as she pushes them?

Of course, good product marketing includes public relations. When Pharma sells a disease with no mention of the drug it is really selling, it’s called “unbranded” advertising. Since DTC advertising, Pharma has invaded public service announcements (PSAs) that TV and radio stations confer for free, pretending their take-a-drug messages serve the public good, like messages to change smoke detector batteries or put kids in car seats.

One such “educational” “awareness” campaign called “Depression Is Real” saturated the radio air waves in 2011, funded by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which was investigated by Congress for its Pharma funding from Wyeth, part of Pfizer, and other groups. The high-budget ads, running for free, compare depression to diabetes because it doesn’t go away and to cancer because it can be fatal.

4. One Kind of Ad You Won’t See Anymore

Animal research at drug companies and the National Institutes of Health is a great scientific iceberg of which people only see a tip. In drug development, millions of animals die to prove a drug’s “safety.” At academic and medical centers, animal study grants from NIH provide millions to researchers and labs.

As sentiment grows against animal experiments and the government’s gigantic National Primate Research Centers (new rules will limit the use of chimpanzees), the research is downplayed and even hidden. But there was a time when Pharma actually flaunted animal research.

Click to enlarge image

“More than a decade of animal research on various animal species has suggested that Librium (chlordiazepozxide HCI) exerts its principal effects on certain key areas of the limbic system,” says an ad from the 1970s, showing three monkeys crouching and dangling in cages as assorted experiments are conducted.

An ad for the diet pill Pre-Sate is even worse. It says, “one of the most sophisticated comparative animal studies ever conducted demonstrates direct action on the satiety centers,” and shows five photos of cats in experiments. One shows a life-size white cat looking at the camera with a chain around its neck and invasive instrumentation embedded in its skull.

Today’s consumers, it seems, wouldn’t tolerate ads like these. (Or the experiments behind them.) Why do they tolerate derisive ads about “dog women” and ploys to market pharmaceuticals to kids as if it were candy?

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/153677/4_creepy_ways_big_pharma_peddles_its_drugs?page=entire

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• Billion Dollar Drug Company Law Firm Restructures Connecticut Welfare System (0)
• Antipschotic Drugs—Side Effects May Include Lawsuits (0)
• Meet the Psychiatrist Pushing For A Brave New World of Pre-Drugging Kids—Patrick McGorry (4)
• Pharmageddon: America’s bitter pill — U.S. is world’s biggest user of psychotropic drugs (0)
• Time Magazine: Why Are So Many Foster Care Children Taking Antipsychotics? (1)

The Dallas Morning News
By Janet Elliott and Mark Curriden
January 8, 2012

AUSTIN — A routine inquiry a decade ago by an investigator for the Pennsylvania inspector general exposed a pattern in which pharmaceutical companies showered trips, meals and other perks on state officials in positions to influence which drugs would be used to treat patients under Medicaid.

The efforts appeared to have been particularly successful in Texas, which has one of the largest Medicaid populations.

In 2004, Allen Jones, a whistle-blower who worked with the Pennsylvania inspector general, filed suit alleging that pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson improperly marketed its antipsychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses while funneling money to members of a state panel charged with recommending drug treatments for those in state health programs.

Two years later, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott joined the lawsuit, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

The case has been described by lawyers as the biggest lawsuit in Texas since the tobacco litigation in the 1990s. It goes to trial Monday in state court in Austin.

The high-stakes lawsuit alleging Medicaid fraud seeks $579 million in damages from Janssen, a division of New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson, and penalties that could exceed an additional $500 million. The federal government will get half of any money recovered in the case, and Jones could receive between 10 and 25 percent.

The Texas case is separate from a reported $1 billion settlement reached just last week between Johnson & Johnson and others states over the marketing of Risperdal.

Risperdal was among antipsychotic drugs introduced in the 1990s. Initially approved for adults with schizophrenia, it soon became widely used in Texas mental hospitals and prisons for “off-label” uses, including for youths in the state’s foster care system.

“Not only was Risperdal not more effective, its risks were worse than its competitors and it was 45 times more expensive,” said Tom Melsheimer, a partner at Fish & Richardson in Dallas who represents the whistle-blower. “The company’s claim that its product was superior and its off-label promotional efforts were not supported by science.”

What did support Janssen’s promotional efforts were influential decision makers — including state employees, University of Texas faculty and mental health advocates — who received consulting fees, extravagant meals and travel accommodations, research funding and honoraria, according to the lawsuit.

Janssen denies that it misrepresented Risperdal and rejects allegations that its marketing efforts inflated the state’s spending on the drug. In court filings, the drug company points to the state’s continued use of Risperdal since joining the whistle-blower’s case in 2006.

Follow the money

In the 2010 fiscal year, Texas spent $15.016 million on Risperdal and $13.275 million on its generic equivalent for patients enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The drugs cost an average of $229 per prescription, a 2006 Texas comptroller’s report said.

The program known as the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, or TMAP, started in the mid-1990s when state mental health officials contracted with the University of Texas and some of its professors to evaluate medications for treating mental illnesses and disorders.

Jones and the state allege that a process designed to be based on independent experts was co-opted by Janssen using false and misleading information, including ghostwritten articles and industry-funded studies, while playing down side effects, including weight gain and diabetes.

“Defendants thus ‘seeded the literature’ and increased the ‘noise level’ in the Texas health care community, including the Texas Medicaid community, with their false and misleading tale of Risperdal’s superiority to other antipsychotics and suitability for off-label use on vulnerable populations,” the state says in its most recent filing in the case.

Janssen is prepared to vigorously defend itself against these claims, spokeswoman Teresa Mueller said in emailed statement.

“We are committed to ethical business practices, and have policies in place to ensure that our products are only promoted for their FDA-approved indication,” Mueller said. “If questions are raised about adherence to our marketing and promotion policies, we act quickly to investigate the situation and take appropriate disciplinary action.”

Before the marketing blitz, the market was limited for Risperdal, Melsheimer said.

“Janssen determined in 1993 that the market for this drug was the 1 percent of adults with diagnosed schizophrenia, which was a $1 billion market,” he said. “So, the company created a new market for the drug. They created the perception that the drug was a breakthrough for expanded off-label treatments. As a result, the revenue generated by the sale of Risperdal jumped to $34 billion between 1997 and 2010.”

Fees, meals and trips

The most sensational allegations involve Janssen’s use of inducements, including consulting fees, meals, travel accommodations, research funding and honorariums. A key target was Dr. Steven Shon, medical director of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. Records filed in the case show that Shon received $30,000 in fees and honoraria as a frequent speaker at Johnson & Johnson-sponsored events around the U.S.

David Rothman, a Columbia University professor who studies relations between medicine and the pharmaceutical industry, said in a report that Shon’s conduct was an “acute conflict of interest.” Shon, who resigned in October 2006, said in a deposition that he did not believe he influenced the placement of drugs on TMAP because he was an administrator and not a decision maker in the TMAP process.

Another potential witness in the case is M. Lynn Crismon, dean of the University of Texas College of Pharmacy. Crismon was a professor and member of the TMAP advisory panel in the mid-1990s when he “cultivated a financial relationship with J&J, accepting substantial fees and honoraria and soliciting research grants from the company,” according to Rothman’s report. “As a result, Dr. Crismon subverted the scientific integrity of his research and educational presentations, and biased his decision-making capacity as a member of TMAP.”

Crismon did not respond to a request for comment.

Jury selection is expected to take one day, with opening statements starting Tuesday. The trial could last four weeks.

Read article here:  http://www.dallasnews.com/business/health-care/20120108-texas-ag-suit-over-the-drug-risperdal-goes-to-trial-monday.ece

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• J&J Paid Texas Official to Speak Around the U.S., Jury Told (0)
• Drug firms paid ‘independent’ experts (0)
• J&J drug protocols cost taxpayers millions—Lawsuit claims Investigator fired after going public on J&J’s anti-psychotic drug campaign (0)
• People & Power—Drug Money (0)
• Whistleblower says antipsychotic drug maker subverted science & induced others to betray patients (1)

Drug industry corruption, scientifically unreliable diagnoses and pseudoscientific research have compromised the values of the psychiatric profession.

Alternet
By Bruce E. Levine
January 6, 2012

Why do some of us become dissident mental health professionals?

The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals “go along to get along” and maintain a status quo that includes drug company corruption, pseudoscientific research and a “standard of care” that is routinely damaging and occasionally kills young children. If that sounds hyperbolic, then you probably have not heard of Rebecca Riley, and how the highest levels of psychiatry described her treatment as “appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”

When Rebecca Riley was 28 months old, based primarily on the complaints of her mother that she was “hyper” and had difficulty sleeping, psychiatrist Kayoko Kifuji, at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, diagnosed Rebecca with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Kifuji prescribed clonidine, a hypertensive drug with significant sedating properties, a drug Kifuji also prescribed to Rebecca’s older sister and brother. The goal of the Riley parents—obvious to many in their community and later to juries—was to attain psychiatric diagnoses for their children that would qualify them for disability payments and to sedate their children making them easy to manage.

By the time Rebecca was three years old, again based mainly on parental complaints, Kifuji had given Rebecca an additional diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed two additional heavily sedating drugs, the antipsychotic Seroquel and the anticonvulsant Depakote.

At the age of four, Rebecca was dead.

At the time of her death, Rebecca had a life-threatening amount of clonidine—enough to kill her—in her body, according to the former director of the Massachusetts toxicology lab and the medical director of a regional poison control center. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy concluded that Rebecca died from intoxication of clonidine, Depakote and two over-the-counter cold and cough medicines that led to heart failure, lungs filled with bloody fluid, coma, and then death. Rebecca’s abusive parents went to prison for the over-drugging that led to their daughter’s death.

Kifuji’s fate? The psychiatric establishment rallied around Kifuji, enabling her to return to Tufts Medical Center practicing child psychiatry without any restrictions, penalties or supervision. After Rebecca’s death, Tufts-New England Medical Center defended Kifuji. A Tufts spokesperson told “60 Minutes” in 2009, “The care we provided was appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”

Apparently, psychiatric care that is considered appropriate and within responsible professional standards includes diagnoses of ADHD for a two-year-old and bipolar disorder for a three-year-old when the symptoms of those disorders are normal behaviors for those ages; prescribing three heavily sedating drugs that have not been approved by the FDA for child psychiatric treatment; ignoring the warnings from a school nurse about over-dosages for Rebecca; and making diagnoses based almost entirely on the reports of Rebecca’s mother, who herself was diagnosed with mental illness and heavily medicated to the point of falling asleep in Kifuji’s office.

Long before the Rebecca Riley tragedy hit the headlines, I was embarrassed by the mental health profession for seven major reasons:

1. Corruption by Big Pharma

How did it become within responsible professional standards for a two-year-old to get an ADHD diagnosis, for a three-year-old to get a bipolar diagnosis, and for toddlers to be prescribed multiple heavily sedating drugs? The short answer is drug company corruption of the mental health profession.

Congressional hearings in 2008 revealed that psychiatry’s “thought leaders” and major institutions are on the take from drug companies.

On June 8, 2008, the New York Times reported about psychiatrist Joseph Biederman: “A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007.”

Due in large part to Biederman’s influence, the number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003. Pediatrician and author Lawrence Diller notes about Biederman, “He single-handedly put pediatric bipolar disorder on the map.” In addition to his popularization of bipolar disorder for children, Biederman is one of the most significant forces behind the expanding numbers diagnosed with ADHD; and congressional investigators also discovered that Biederman conducted studies of Eli Lilly’s ADHD drug Strattera that were funded by National Institute of Health at the same time he was receiving money from Lilly.

Not only does the drug industry have influential psychiatrists such as Biederman in their pocket, virtually every major mental health institution is financially interconnected with Big Pharma. Congressional hearings also exposed the American Psychiatric Association psychiatry’s premier professional organization, as being on the take from drug companies. In 2006, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the APA’s $62.5 million in financing. Most relevant here, the APA is the publisher of the psychiatric diagnostic bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and thus the APA is the institution responsible for creating mental illnesses and disorders.

2. Invalid Illnesses and Disorders

Psychiatry’s first DSM (1952) and its DSM-II (1968) listed homosexuality as a mental illness. Only because of a fierce political fight waged in the 1970s by gay activists did the APA abolish homosexuality as an illness and eliminate it from its DSM-III (1980). Gay activists’ fight was not only a victory for themselves but a service for everyone else, as it made public the important scientific problem of psychiatric disorder invalidity. Specifically, are psychiatric disorders scientifically valid illnesses, or are they simply behaviors that create discomfort for some authorities at a given moment in time?

While psychiatry lost homosexuality as a mental illness in the 1980 DSM-III, the APA found other groups it could pathologize, groups that could not mobilize and resist, most notably children, who are now routinely given psychiatric diagnoses for behaviors that many of us view as normal for their ages.

Psychiatry sees it as within responsible professional standards to diagnose three-year-olds such as Rebecca Riley with bipolar disorder. The symptoms of bipolar disorder include irritable and rapidly changing moods, severe temper tantrums, defiance of authority, agitation and distractibility, sleeping too little or too much, poor judgment, impulsivity and grandiose beliefs.

Psychiatry also sees it as within responsible professional standards for Rebecca Riley to have been diagnosed at 28 months old with ADHD. The symptoms of ADHD are inattention (easily distracted and bored, difficulty organizing and completing tasks, losing things, not seeming to listen, not following instructions); hyperactivity (fidgeting, talking nonstop, having trouble sitting still, difficulty with quiet tasks), and impulsivity (impatience, blurting out inappropriate comments, interrupting conversations).

Today, children and teens are also diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), the symptoms of which include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” and “often argues with adults.”

The standard for a medical disorder should not be whether or not an individual causes friction.

3. Scientifically Unreliable Diagnoses

Even if you believe that bipolar disorder for three-year-olds, ADHD for two-year-olds, ODD for teenagers, and all the other DSM diagnoses are valid disorders, there is still the scientific issue of diagnostic unreliability—the lack of diagnostic agreement among professionals examining the same person.

A generation ago, psychiatrists admitted that their diagnoses were unreliable and agreed that this was a major scientific problem. So in 1980, in an attempt to eliminate this embarrassment, they created the DSM-III with concrete behavioral checklists and formal decision-making rules, but they failed to correct the problem. Psychiatric diagnoses remain unreliable, but now psychiatry no longer talks about the unreliability problem.

If a measurement is a reliable one, then clinicians trained with it should be in high agreement on the diagnosis. A major 1992 study, conducted at six sites with 600 prospective patients, was done to examine the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses. Experienced mental health professionals were given extensive training in how to make accurate DSM diagnoses. Because of the extensive training, one would expect that diagnostic agreement would be much higher than in typical clinical settings. Herb Kutchins and Stuart Kirk summarize the study in Making Us Crazy (1997):

What this study demonstrated was that even when experienced clinicians with special training and supervision are asked to use DSM and make a diagnosis, they frequently disagree, even though the standards for defining agreement are very generous. . . . [For example,] if one of the two therapists made a diagnosis of Schizoid Personality Disorder and the other therapist selected Avoidant Personality Disorder, the therapists were judged to be in complete agreement of the diagnosis because they both found a personality disorder—even though they disagreed completely on which one! So even with this liberal definition of agreement, reliability using DSM is not very good.

Kutchins and Kirk conclude: “Mental health clinicians independently interviewing the same person in the community are as likely to agree as disagree that the person has a mental disorder and are as likely to agree as disagree on which of the over 300 DSM disorders is present.”

4. Biochemical Imbalance Mumbo Jumbo

Just as nothing was more important in selling the Iraq war in 2003 than the Bush administration’s certainty that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, nothing has been more important in selling psychiatric drugs than psychiatry’s certainty of biochemical brain imbalances as the cause for mental illnesses.

Prior to psychiatry’s proclamation that depression was caused by too little of the neurotransmitter serotonin, few Americans were taking antidepressants. But by declaring that depression was caused by a serotonin imbalance analogous to diabetes and an insulin imbalance, depressed Americans became far more receptive to serotonin-enhancing drugs such as the “selective-serotonin-reuptake inhibitors” (SSRIs) Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft.

SSRIs can make some depressed people feel better; however, alcohol makes some shy people less shy, but that’s not enough evidence to say that shyness is caused by an alcohol imbalance. The truth is—and scientists have known this for quite some time—that serotonin levels are not associated with depression.

Researchers have used a variety of methods to test the serotonin imbalance theory of depression, including comparing serotonin metabolites in depressed and nondepressed people, and depleting serotonin levels through a variety of means and then observing whether this resulted in depression. Elliot Valenstein, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, reviewed the research in his book Blaming the Brain (1998) and reported that it is just as likely for people with normal serotonin levels to feel depressed as it is for people with abnormal serotonin levels, and that it is just as likely for people with abnormally high serotonin levels to feel depressed as it is for people with abnormally low serotonin levels. Valenstein concluded, “Furthermore, there is no convincing evidence that depressed people have a serotonin or norepinephrine deficiency.”

In 2002, the New York Times reported: “Researchers knew that antidepressants seemed to raise the brain’s levels of messenger chemicals called neurotransmitters, so they theorized that depression must result from a deficiency of these chemicals. Yet a multitude of studies failed to prove this precept.”

Yet even now, many psychiatrists and other mental health professionals continue to promulgate the serotonin imbalance theory of depression, and polls show that the majority of Americans continue to believe it.

5. Pseudoscientific Drug Effectiveness Research

There are multiple tricks that psychiatric drug manufacturers and their researcher psychiatrists and psychologists use to make their drugs look more effective than they really are. One of the most common depression measurements used by researchers paid by drug companies is the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. In the HRSD, researchers rate subjects, and the higher the point total, the more one is deemed to be suffering from depression. On the HRSD, there are three separate items about insomnia (early, middle and late) and one can receive up to six points for difficulty either falling or remaining asleep; however, there is only one suicide item, in which one is awarded only two points for wishing to be dead. The HRSD is heavily loaded with items that are most affected by drugs, and it is therefore especially damning for antidepressants that even with such measurement dice-loading, these drugs routinely fail to outperform placebos—even dice-loaded placebos.

Proper drug research requires that neither subject nor experimenter knows who is getting the drug and who is getting the placebo (a true double-blind control). Drug company antidepressant researchers use inactive placebos such as sugar pills (which don’t create side effects). Independent research on inactive placebos show that many subjects in antidepressant and other studies can guess if they are getting the actual drug or not, which changes their expectations and subverts the double-blind control. In order to make it more difficult to guess correctly, an active placebo (which creates side effects) should be used. In 2000, a Psychiatric Times article concluded: “In fact, when antidepressants are compared with active placebos, there appear to be no differences in clinical effectiveness.”

Dice-loading depression measurements and placebos are just two of many techniques drug company researchers use to make antidepressants look more effective than they really are. But even with such dice-loading, antidepressants have not fared well, at least when one examines all the studies.

Drug companies try to ensure that those studies showing antidepressants to be no more effective than placebos are not published; however, all studies must be submitted to the FDA. So independent researcher Irving Kirsch and his research team at the University of Connecticut used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to all data, and analyzed 47 studies that had been sponsored by drug companies on Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and Serzone. Kirsch discovered that in the majority of the trials, the antidepressant failed to outperform a sugar pill placebo (and in the trials where the antidepressant did outperform the placebo, the advantage was slight).

6. Psychotropic Drug Hypocrisy

Chemists consider psychiatric prescription drugs and illegal mood-altering drugs all to be psychotropic or psychoactive drugs. Cocaine and ADHD drugs such as Adderall and other amphetamines affect the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine; and antidepressants used in combination also affect the same neurotransmitters. Not only are prescription psychotropics and illegal psychotropics chemically similar, they are used by people for similar reasons, including taking the edge off their discomfort so they can function. The hypocrisy surrounding illegal and prescription psychotropic drugs is harmful to society in at least two ways.

At one level, because people are being misinformed about the realities of prescription psychotropic drugs, they are more likely to gulp them down and to give them to their children. This has helped create a tragic phenomenon detailed by investigative reporter Robert Whitaker in his book Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010). Psychiatric drug use turning mild and episodic conditions into severe and chronic ones has helped create a huge increase of Americans with severe mental illness, especially among children.

At a second level, this psychiatric-illegal psychotropic drug hypocrisy allows for unfair criminalizing and incarceration of people using illegal psychotropics.

7. Diversion from Societal, Cultural and Political Sources of Misery

When we hear the words disorder, disease or illness, we think of an individual in need of treatment, not of a troubled society in need of transformation. Mental illness expansionism diverts us from examining a dehumanizing society.

In addition to pathologizing normal behavior, the mental health profession also diverts us from examining a society that creates the ingredients—helplessness, hopelessness, passivity, boredom, fear, and isolation—that cause emotional difficulties. We are diverted from the reality that many emotional problems are natural human reactions to loss in our society of autonomy and community. Thus, the mental health profession not only has financial value for drug companies but it has political value for those at the top of societal hierarchies who want to retain the status quo.

Today, a handful of dissident mental health professionals do challenge and resist their profession’s dehumanizing standard practices. I know several of these dissidents, and they are the only psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health professionals that I have any respect for.

Read article here:  http://www.alternet.org/story/153634/7_reasons_america%27s_mental_health_industry_is_a_threat_to_our_sanity/

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• Harvard Expert Ties Mental Illness “Epidemic” to Big Pharma’s Agenda (0)
• The business of ADHD (0)
• Seriously great article: “New Psychiatry Manual Defines Almost Anyone as Insane” (3)
• At annual convention, psychiatrists collaborate on mental disease mongering to boost profits (1)
• The Total Failure of Modern Psychiatry (0)

Russia Today – December 27, 2011

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• Antipschotic Drugs—Side Effects May Include Lawsuits (0)
• 4 Creepy Ways Big Pharma Peddles its Drugs (0)
• Grassley & Senate Watchdog Target Doctors Prescribing Mass Amounts of Dangerous Drugs (0)
• Time Magazine: Why Are So Many Foster Care Children Taking Antipsychotics? (1)
• 1 out of every 7 Elderly Nursing Home Residents on Antipsychotics—Despite Risk of Death (0)

The Huffington Post
By Anthony Turner
December 3, 2011

This is a teen-written article from Represent Magazine, a platform for and by young people in foster care.

It all started when I said something stupid in school. A girl was ignoring me, and I got mad and said, “F-ck this sh-t. I’m gonna do some Virginia Tech sh-t.” I only said it so the girl would pay attention to me. But I shocked all my classmates and teachers, and the school said I’d made a “terrorist threat.”

I was in the 9th grade, and I had recently moved out of an abusive situation with my mom and into a foster home I knew nothing about. I needed someone to listen so I could get my feelings out. But there was no one I could really trust.

My caseworker came to my foster mom’s house and told me that he would take me to KFC and then to a “nice place to get help.” I thought, “OK, that sounds cool. I get my favorite food and I go to a center to feel better.”

The next stop we made was a psychiatric hospital for kids. We went through door after door, and it dawned on me that every door had a lock. Once the door shut you couldn’t open it. The doors locked you in. They intended to keep me here. That realization gave me a panic attack. I started running and the security tackled me. I was forcibly dragged in.

What Was I Signing?

When I got inside, the kids peeked out of their rooms to see who was coming. I was so scared I thought I would pee on myself. I had never been to a place like this. When I entered a dayroom, a place where the kids hang out, they slowly introduced themselves. I shook my head in fright. I wasn’t like these kids. Some were twitching and others drooled. I kept to myself and didn’t speak a word to anyone.

I felt forced into signing a bunch of papers. I didn’t realize I was signing consent to take medication.

The first things they prescribed were Depakote and Risperdal. I didn’t get a say in what I wanted, and that made me feel powerless.

At the hospital, staff joked about it in a perverse way. “Hey kids, come and get your happy pills!” “Come right up for your Skittles, it makes the world a better place!” I was disgusted that the staff were making light of my situation. I wondered how they’d feel if they were forced to take pills in a lockdown facility.

The meds made me feel bad. Sometimes I over-ate, ate too little, or had trouble sleeping. I hated the fake smile the nurses gave me after I took my medication.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially my therapist, because I believed that my depressing stories about my mom’s abuse might make the doctors prescribe more medication.

I was afraid if I kept taking medication I would be just like every kid in the hospital. I wanted to be the kid who stood out, the kid who didn’t take medication. There were kids already looking up to me but I wanted them to think, “Wow, Anthony doesn’t take medication. I want to follow his lead.”

I tried hiding the pills in my hand. I learned how to put pills deep in my throat and spit them out later. It worked for a while but then one pill got stuck there. The staff helped get it out. After that they checked me carefully.

Another way I avoided pills was simply putting them under my tongue. I would hide them in a soap bar box until my roommate saw it and told the nurse. Then I was forced to take liquid medication, which was disgusting.

A Target

The Depakote was supposed to make me feel “calmer” and “happy.” Instead I gained over 30 pounds, and that brought my self-esteem down. I felt fat and I wasn’t comfortable with myself. Some of the kids and even staff called me names like fat ass or b-tch tits. I went off on one staff once because he said, “I know the perfect birthday present for you—a training bra!”

I really wanted to do well, and I tried to behave and present myself in a mature manner. But it didn’t seem to make a difference. And the uncontrollable and unpredictable behavior around me started to affect me.

The one and only time I truly flipped out, though, was when the whole unit tried to jump me. “Yo, let’s f-ck up this p-ssy n-gga Anthony,” said one kid. Suddenly everyone turned to me grinning sinisterly, like they’d just found their new target.

“Nah, come on guys, let’s play some board games or something,” I suggested.

“You ain’t gonna get out this, b-tch,” said a fat kid with squinty eyes. “You think you Mr. Goody Two Shoes. We gonna straighten you out.”

I ended up getting chased down by 12 guys. One person caught me and then they stomped me out. I thought I would beg for them to leave me alone, but suddenly I felt myself becoming so enraged that I no longer felt the pain. I got up and screamed, “LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”

I was surprised at my sudden outburst, but most of the guys just laughed. Then everything turned red and my surroundings became a blur. I didn’t gain full consciousness until I was near the dayroom area. I noticed some of the guys holding their lip or arm. “Did I do this?” was the only thought that came to mind.

I was shocked that I’d stood up to them, much less beaten them up. A weird feeling came over me then. I wondered for the first time in the hospital if I was losing my sanity and just becoming one of maybe thousands of nut jobs who end up staying in hospitals.

Suppressing My Feelings

But most of the time I was quick to disengage and try to find ways to occupy myself when I saw these kinds of incidents starting. I tried reading, writing, talking with a staff I could trust, or daydreaming. These were ways to block out any negativity that surrounded me. Although these strategies were very helpful, I was still suppressing my feelings because there were overwhelming situations I wasn’t familiar with and didn’t know how to deal with emotionally.

While I was in the hospital, I saw two people commit suicide, including my roommate. They said I was “further traumatized” by that and put me in a state hospital, which was even more restrictive.

Looking at it now, I can see that the suicides did really impact me. However, I felt outpatient therapy (therapy where you see your therapist but you’re not confined to a psychiatric unit) could’ve been more effective. I didn’t see how living in the state hospital was going to help. I just wanted to be back in the community where I’d be able to interact more freely, go out, and feel more like a normal kid.

I was glad to leave the first hospital, but this was no better. I wanted to get off medication completely. Some doctors finally decided I was stable enough to behave without meds. They started to take me off a little at a time. I was happy to be off the medication, but if I messed up or acted out one bit, like by cursing, I was back on it.

For example, once a staff ticked me off by yelling at me for not doing my laundry. I cursed at him because he kept pressuring me. The doctors and staff said the fact that I cursed meant I was too unstable to stay off medication. But wouldn’t anyone curse if they felt pressured or nervous that a staff he hardly knew started yelling at him?

I had seen some staff do terrible, abusive things to the kids, like getting them to fight each other in exchange for Chinese food (a special treat). Of course I was on edge around some of the staff. The doctors didn’t know that, though.

Can’t We Talk About This?

I felt trapped. Some doctors said, “Well, Anthony, it’s possible to get off medication, but will it benefit you in the long run?” What were they trying to say? That I couldn’t function properly without the use of a drug?

I didn’t question it further because the mental health system had trained my brain to think that meds were my solution to everything. If I felt angry the doctor would say, “Maybe it’s time for Abilify, a drug that stabilizes your mood swings.” If I felt anxious the doctor would try to prescribe Zoloft, a pill that helps with some types of anxiety. I thought, “Have you guys ever heard of talking your feelings out? NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE SOLVED WITH THE USE OF A DRUG!”

I was receiving therapy at the time, and I felt it helped more than the meds. I had a really good therapist, and it was such a physical release to be able to express my feelings. I’m sure the meds did improve my moods somewhat; I was less likely to curse and talk back. But what helped the most was having a direct connection with a trusted adult like I got in therapy.

I sat down one day and wrote how I felt the pills were helping me—pros—and how they weren’t—the cons. I wanted time to reflect on where I was going in life, to feel some control. The cons on my list—the physical side effects, and the depressing feeling I got from taking meds—outnumbered the pros. I wasn’t going to tell the doctor that everything I was taking was all right with me. It wasn’t and I had to put a stop to it.

I was tired of taking meds and then being taken off just to get back on again. No one even gave me a real explanation. Their excuse was usually, “We’re putting you back on because we feel you could be in a more stable condition.” Being on and off meds made me really jumpy. My eyes would twitch sometimes.

I also felt mentally tired because I’d been on drugs for over a year and I wasn’t getting better. I was constantly sleeping and I couldn’t focus. Emotionally, I was tired of the need to even be on meds in the first place.

I believed that in order for me to be better I had to be exposed to the community because then I could feel how a teenage life is supposed to be. To me this meant a cell phone so I could communicate with friends, my own room, decent curfews, a real home, and to be around my family. It wasn’t pills I needed; it was the chance to feel like a normal teenager after years of abuse and being institutionalized.

Love Is the Best Medicine

After eight months at the second hospital, I was sent to a group home at a Residential Treatment Facility (RTF), where I continued to take medication. I began to wonder when I would ever get back in the community. I had just started going on visits with my aunt and I had decided that I would like to go live there. I just wanted to stay somewhere permanently and feel cared for. Thinking about all this moving made me as depressed as when I first came into the hospital.

Finally, they let me go live at my aunt’s house. I think the reason why the RTF agreed to it was because I kept advocating for myself. I felt excited and at peace. I felt that I had achieved the impossible and that I deserved to be with my aunt and my family who would love me for me, instead of living with the institution’s idea of “support.” I had worked two and a half years to get to this point. I would not let it go to waste.

Alone in my room at my aunt’s house, I thought quietly. I looked to the left. There was no nurse ready to give me a cup full of meds. I looked to my right. There was no doctor trying to switch my meds or giving me higher doses. It dawned on me then. There were obviously rules and expectations, but ultimately I could make my own decisions now. I didn’t have to continue the medication. So I made an appointment with the doctor and said, “I no longer feel like I need medication.”

The doctor seemed a little concerned that I was in a rush. She said, “Anthony, you’re a very bright kid, but are you sure that you want to get off? I want you to perform at your highest and do well.” I told her I was sure of my choice and that I wouldn’t regret it. And I don’t.

The Community Transformed Me

Now that I don’t take medication I feel a lot happier, more powerful, and in control. Yeah, I had to get adjusted to living back in Brooklyn, but I adapted quickly. It felt good to see my neighborhood friends and the employees I always talked to at the Burger King across the street. I never ever felt this happy when I was on medication. I always felt drugged or out of it. I’m not always happy, but when I do feel bad I talk my feelings out with people I trust, and I write. Writing allows me to get overwhelming or negative things off my mind onto paper.

Being in the community is what I’ve always wanted. Now I have a sense of freedom. I go to regular school, I have easy access to friends, and I socialize on my time. I’m not on someone else’s schedule and I don’t have to be cooped up inside all day feeling anxious. The community has transformed me.

Read the rest of the article here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/foster-teens-i-needed-emo_n_1126659.html?page=1

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• 52% of foster kids are prescribed psych drugs—One of them is fighting back (1)
• Dosed in juvie jail: Troubled doctors hired to treat kids in state custody (0)
• Billion Dollar Drug Company Law Firm Restructures Connecticut Welfare System (0)
• The New Child Abuse: The Psychiatric Diagnosing and Drugging of Our Children (0)
• Psychiatric Meds 101: A Surprising Discovery – Your Own Personal Hell (15)

By Daily Mail Reporter
December 2, 2011

A 12-year-old boy has bravely told how he was medicated into a near-stupor as he was passed between foster care homes.

The seventh grader, known only as Ke’onte, told Congress that being given the mind-altering drugs was ‘the worst thing anyone could do to foster kids’.

He revealed that he could barely eat while on the medication and was so exhausted ‘it felt like I would collapse wherever I was in the house’.

Ke'onte, 12, tells Congress that he was wrongly diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD and given four different medications that left him in a 'stupor'

‘I think putting me on all these stupid meds was the stupidest thing I’ve ever experienced in foster care,’ he said.

Ke’onte’s plight came to light as a Government Accountability Office report was released that found the federal government had not done enough to oversee the treatment of foster children with powerful drugs.

The study found cared-for children were up to 13 times more likely to be prescribed anti-psychotics and anti-depressants than other children.

Ke’onte, who was adopted in 2009, said he had tantrums as a foster child and was inaccurately diagnosed as bipolar and having ADHD.

‘I’ve been in the mental hospital three times during foster care, and every time I had to get on more meds or new meds to add to the ones I was already taking,’ he said.

Medicated: The Government study found children in foster care were 13 times more likely to be on anti-pyschotics and anti-depressants than other children

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• 52% of foster kids are prescribed psych drugs—One of them is fighting back (1)
• The New Child Abuse: The Psychiatric Diagnosing and Drugging of Our Children (0)
• Psychiatric Drug Abuse of Foster Care Kids Costs Government Billions; Feds now investigating potentially massive fraud (3)
• The Portland Press Herald: Psychiatric Drugging of American Children is Cause for Alarm (4)
• Huffington Post – “Foster Teen: I Was Put In A Psych Ward. I Wasn’t Crazy” (0)

December 1, 2011
by BRINDA ADHIKARI, JOAN MARTELLI and SARAH KOCH

Across America, doctors are putting foster children on powerful, mind-altering drugs at rates up to 13 times that of children in the general population. What’s more, doctors are prescribing foster children drugs at doses beyond what the Food and Drug Administration has approved, sometimes in potentially dangerous combinations, according to a new report by the federal Government Accountability Office.

“It’s just almost beyond comprehension,” said Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., who asked for the GAO investigation. “We want the doctors and nurses that are prescribing these medicines to look at their behavior and think and ask this question. Are we doing something wrong here?”

In Florida, regulator Gabriel Myers, killed himself in 2009 after being prescribed a powerful mix of psychotropic medication.

In Florida, regulators have been grappling with that question since a 7-year-old boy, Gabriel Myers, killed himself in 2009 after being prescribed a powerful mix of psychotropic medication.

His psychiatrist, Dr. Sohail Punjwani, had, at different times, prescribed two drugs that carry black box labels — warning of the need to carefully monitor patients because of the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in children, which call for careful monitoring. However, even though Gabriel visited Punjwani’s office seven times, his foster father said Gabriel usually only spent about five minutes talking to the doctor.

Gabriel’s death was ruled an accident, but investigators pointed to the possibility that the medication may have contributed to his death. The tragedy triggered a storm of outrage across the state.

The boy’s doctor settled a lawsuit in 2010 accusing him of prescribing a toxic cocktail of psychotropic drugs to a 16-year-old patient, who suffered a sudden heart attack and died. Punjwani settled that case but admitted no wrongdoing.

Additionally, Punjwani was arrested for driving under the influence and cocaine possession. He pleaded not guilty to those charges but went through a court-ordered rehabilitation program.

When ABC News caught up with Dr. Punjwani, he told us, “Sad stories happen but that does not mean that everything else the doctor is responsible for it because we are in the business of taking care of these children,” he said.

Antipsychotic medication, which can cause a litany of health problems such as severe weight gain, an increased risk of diabetes and irreversible movement disorders, is among the top-selling drugs in America.

Four drug makers have paid a total of more than $2 billion to settle claims they illegally marketed antipsychotics to children. All deny wrongdoing.

“How do antipsychotics, drugs supposedly for people who have lost touch with reality, how do they develop such a wide market?” said neuropsychiatrist Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, who won millions of dollars as a key whistleblower against drug companies.

There have been very limited long-term studies on antipsychotics in children. And for drugs already on the market, the duration of the studies that were used to get FDA approval for children have been as short as three to six weeks.

ABC News interviewed a social worker now working in a state foster care system, who asked not to be identified.

“Every child that I saw was basically on some type of psychotropic medication,” the social worker told ABC News. “It’s much easier to medicate a child than it is to physically restrain them, than it is to pay $200 an hour to a therapist to talk through their problems with them.”

Read the reset of the article here

Watch the year-long investigation tonight on “World News with Diane Sawyer” at 6:30 p.m. ET and then see more on “20/20,” Friday at 10 p.m. ET.

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• Psychiatrists with corrupt pasts found working in juvenile justice facilities and doping children (0)
• Americas Mental Illness Epidemic (0)
• Following 7-year-old’s psychiatric drug-induced suicide—Florida bans foster children from clinical drug trials (0)
• Incredibly, FDA urged Florida not to bar foster kids from drug trials, arguing “benefits” can outweigh risks. (0)
• 42 percent of all kids in foster care are taking three or more mood-altering drugs (2)

11/29/2011 by Maia Szalavitz

More than 8% of children in foster care have received antipsychotic medication, and just over one quarter of those in foster care who also receive disability benefits take these drugs, according to a recent studyin the journal Pediatrics.

The question is why? Children in foster care have typically been neglected or abused — indeed, simply removing a young child from his or her parents, even abusive ones, is in itself traumatic — so, not surprisingly, kids in foster care are more likely to suffer from psychiatric and behavioral problems than those who have stable families. Previous data suggest that foster-care children are about twice as likely as those outside the system to receive psychiatric medications.

Whether these problems are leading to higher rates of antipsychotic use, however, is not clear. “I think we have clinicians facing some very challenging situations,” says Susan dosReis, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and lead author of the study. “But we don’t have information as to why the prescribers decided on these medications for [these particular] youths.”

The numbers suggest that the influence of pharmaceutical company marketing cannot be overlooked. Ninety-nine percent of youth receiving antipsychotic medications in the study were given atypical antipsychotics — the newer generation of these drugs, which are expensive and mostly unavailable in generic form and have been heavily advertised.

All of the major manufacturers of these drugs have been fined by the Food and Drug Administration for illegal marketing practices — in part, for marketing the drugs for unapproved use in children — with some convicted of criminal charges.

Eli Lilly, which manufactures the atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa, paid out $1.42 billion in 2009 — $615 million of that to settle criminal charges. The charges against Lilly involved selling Zyprexa to doctors for use in children, despite the fact that it was not approved for this age group.

Bristol Myers Squibb paid $515 million in 2007 to settle charges that it also illegally pushed its antipsychotic Abilify to child psychiatrists. Pfizer paid out $301 million in a similar case related to its drug Geodon. AstraZeneca paid out $520 million to settle charges over the drug Seroquel. In all of these cases, the drugs were sold for unapproved use in youth.

Read the rest of the article here

Watch one foster kid’s story:

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• 1 out of every 7 Elderly Nursing Home Residents on Antipsychotics—Despite Risk of Death (0)
• Pfizer ends trial after widespread overdosing of children with psych drug (0)
• Antipschotic Drugs—Side Effects May Include Lawsuits (0)
• One Million Kids on Anti-Psychotics (0)
• Bad Side-Effects Ahead For Pharma? (0)

NewsWithViews.com – 11/28/2011
by Jonathan Emord, Constitutional Attorney and Author

Psychiatric drugs are big sellers. They are among the best selling drugs made. In 2010, Americans or their insurers doled out some $16.1 billion for anti-psychotics; $11.6 billion for anti-depressants; and $7.2 billion for ADHD treatments.

Within the last two decades the field of psychiatry has mushroomed from a fringe body of Sigmund Freud admirers to a mainstream player in the field of medical pharmacology, largely because of an unseemly union between that profession and the drug industry, leading to the creation of many never before known disease states and profitable ways to exploit those alleged diseases with psychiatric services and drugs.

The field of psychiatry has persistent and well-informed critics who point to the excessive drugging of institutionalized patients, of children commonly misdiagnosed as suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and of the elderly misdiagnosed with treatable dementia, among others. The drugs given these patients have their own side-effects, including increased risk of depression, suicidal thoughts, birth defects, and even death. Because of the movement of psychiatry from the fringe of medicine to its heart, a majority of Americans are likely to come into contact with psychiatric drugs, either recommended for use by their children or for use by them at some point in their lives. Indeed, presently some 1 in 5 adults take anti-depressants, anti-psychotic, or anti-anxiety drugs.

The next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5), the profession’s so-called diagnostic bible, will soon be published in 2013. It comntinues the trend of identifying as “diseases” conditions that have previously been considered within the normal range. It adds to the list of “disease” states “apathy syndrome” (i.e., not caring enough); “internet addiction disorder” (i.e., liking the web too much); “parental alienation syndrome” (i.e., not liking your parents enough); “mild neurocognitive disorder” (i.e., age-related decline in mental function); “absexual” disorder (i.e., disliking sex); and “sluggish cognitive tempo” (i.e., daydreaming too much). Characteristics that we all used to think within the realm of normal brain function (such as teenage angst at parental rules; parental angst at teenage rebellion; a loss of quick wittedness in the elderly; youthful exuberance or youthful preoccupation with daydreams beyond the confines of academia) are all fast becoming “diseases.” The APA’s overall movement has been one of calling into question characteristics of eccentricity, leading to an unscientific conclusion that anything different may be rightly called a disease and rightly prescribed a treatment.

Every newly identified psychiatric disorder begets a new slate of psychiatric drugs for their treatment, giving leading pharmaceutical companies new opportunities to profit from the expansion of psychiatric diagnoses.

Psychiatric drugs are big sellers. They are among the best selling drugs made.

In 2010, Americans or their insurers doled out some $16.1 billion for anti-psychotics;

$11.6 billion for anti-depressants;

and $7.2 billion for ADHD treatments.

Profit lies in designing drugs for the treatment of these conditions. As the drug industry continues to pump out new elixirs that, in turn, leads to more reliance on psychologists and psychiatrists, which leads them in turn to prefer identifying more conditions as disease. The perverse incentives abound, and the FDA is pleased to approve the drugs at the behest of the drug company sponsors.
Everyone standing to profit from the sale of these agents wins at the expense of patients.

The drugging of America is an enormous problem, having spill-over effects that include drug addiction and destruction of the family, productivity, even national security. With an ever rising population taking these drugs which alter cognitive function, it becomes ever more apparent that the very fabric of our society, its common commitment to stable family life, self-sacrifice for the greater good, and adherence to laws that protect life, liberty, and property are all imperiled. As the drug industry and psychiatric profession profits enormously with each new declared disease state, there is a loss of free agency in the population, a movement that saps self-control from the individual in favor of control by the medical community over basic life-affecting decisions. Patients become dependent, event addicted, to drugs, and ever more dependent on their medical counselors to cope with life.

Whatever may be said for use of psychiatric drugs in those who cannot function in society, the expansion of those drugs to embrace those who can, including those with virtually any characteristic that exceeds the norm, represents a horrific sacrifice of the very promise of life that lies in those eccentricities. It is particularly horrific to watch beautiful, energetic children with all their great promise become addicted to drugs that alter brain chemistry in ways that yield drug dependency and lessen their perception of and enthusiasm for life and their ability to achieve. A majority of children prescribed anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs are wrongly prescribed those drugs, even by accepted psychiatric standards. That misguided course is itself a form of deviant behavior by this profession, calling into question the mental stability of those who would profit off of misdiagnosis and mistreatment.

The psychiatric drugging of America is bearing and will continue to bear for generations to come toxic consequences, whether in the form of the destruction of the family, increases in crime, or decreases in productivity and inventiveness. It’s high time for a rebellion against this drugging for the sake of sanity.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Emord/jonathan220.htm

Jonathan W. Emord is an attorney who practices constitutional and administrative law before the federal courts and agencies. Congressman Ron Paul calls Jonathan “a hero of the health freedom revolution” and says “all freedom-loving Americans are in [his] debt . . . for his courtroom [victories] on behalf of health freedom.” He has defeated the FDA in federal court a remarkable eight times, six on First Amendment grounds, and is the author of Amazon bestsellers The Rise of Tyranny, and Global Censorship of Health Information. He is also the American Justice columnist for U.S.A. Today Magazine. For more info visit Emord.com.

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• Psychiatric Meds 101: A Surprising Discovery – Your Own Personal Hell (15)
• 7 Reasons America’s Mental Health Industry Is a Threat to Our Sanity (0)
• Can Prozac Cause Kids to Kill? A Canadian Judge Has Ruled it Can (2)
• Psychotropic Drugs, Our Children and Our Pill-Crazed Society (1)
• Seriously great article: “New Psychiatry Manual Defines Almost Anyone as Insane” (3)