Russia Today – December 27, 2011

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Note from CCHR Int:  We’re happy to see more and more press running stories containing the facts about psychiatric diagnoses, that mental disorders are not diseases on par with real medical diseases as the psychiatric/pharmaceutical marketing teams would have you believe, but lists of behaviors and emotions repackaged as disease in order to sell billions of dollars worth of pharmaceutical ‘solutions.’   CCHR was the first organization to point out that psychiatric disorders were not medical conditions discovered in labs, but disorders invented in committee by pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists.  We’re very pleased we’re no longer the only ones reporting the facts about psychiatry and its marketing campaigns.  Get the facts here

Do we really need more mental disorder diagnoses creating the need for more drugs in a society that some would say is already over-medicated?

The Fog City Journal – 11/29/2011
by Ralph E. Stone

“The critics — and the public too — have a stake in the proposed DSM-V. More mental disorders may mean just more drugs in our over-medicated society.”

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders, which is used in the United States and to some extent internationally, by clinicians, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and policy makers. The DSM is produced by a panel of psychiatrists, many of whom have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. It is considered the “bible” of American psychiatry. The latest edition — DSM-IV — was published in 1994.

In 1952, the DSM was a small, spiral-bound handbook (DSM-I), but the latest edition (DSM-IV), is a 943-page magnum opus. Over time, psychiatric diagnoses have increased in the American population and in turn, drugs that affect mental states are then used to treat them. The theory that psychiatric conditions are caused by a biochemical imbalance is often used as a justification for their widespread use, even though the theory in unproven. Since there are no objective tests for mental illness and what is normal and abnormal is often unclear, psychiatry is a particularly fertile field for creating new diagnoses or broadening old ones.

Medications are widely used to treat the symptoms of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Sometimes medications are used with other treatments such as psychotherapy.

While I am sure research in mental disorders account for some of this increase, I cannot help but believe that there is a certain amount of disease-peddling going on. That is, instead of promoting drugs to treat diseases, diseases are promoted to fit the drugs. For example, shyness as a psychiatric illness made its debut as “social phobia” in DSM-III in 1980, but was said to be rare. By 1994, when DSM-IV was published, it had become “social anxiety disorder,” now said to be extremely common, thus, boosting sales of antidepressants. Now, social anxiety disorder is “a severe medical condition.” In 1999, the FDA approved a drug for social anxiety disorder. After a successful marketing campaign, the sales of Paxil soared.

Presently, a revised version of the DSM is set for publication in 2013. The proposed revision has proven quite controversial. A group of psychologists with the Society for Humanistic Psychology, for examle, has filed a petition objecting to many of the revisions, arguing that they broaden the definition of mental health disorders, which, in turn, could lead to over treatment with drugs. Some, but not all, of the objections of the Society — along with the British Psychological Society and the American Counseling Association — to the proposed DSM-V include:

- The proposed DSM “fails to explicitly state that deviant behavior and primary conflicts between the individual and society are not mental disorders. Given lack of consensus as to the ‘primary’ causes of mental distress, this proposed change may result in the labeling of sociopolitical deviance as mental disorder.”

- “Several new proposals with little empirical basis also warrant hesitation: For example, ‘Apathy Syndrome,’ ‘Internet Addiction Disorder,’ and ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome’ have virtually no basis in the empirical literature.”

- “…clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalization of their natural and normal responses to their experiences; responses which undoubtedly have distressing consequences which demand helping responses, but which do not reflect illnesses so much as normal individual variation.”

Do we really need more mental disorder diagnoses creating the need for more drugs in a society that some would say is already over-medicated? Let’s look at some statistics. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the percentage of Americans who took at least one prescription drug in the past month increased from 44 percent to 48 percent over the past ten years. The use of two or more drugs increased from 25 percent to 31 percent. The use of five or more drugs increased from 6 percent to 11 percent. And in 2007-2008, 1 out of every 5 children and 9 out of 10 older Americans reported using at least one prescription drug in the past month.

And Americans are spending more on drugs. According to the CDC, spending for prescription drugs in the U.S. was $234.1 billion in 2008, which was more than double what was spent in 1999.

And the pharmaceutical industry is profiting. According to Fortune 500 (May 3, 2010 issue date), the profits for the twelve largest pharmaceutical companies was almost $64 billion in 2010. Clearly, Pharma has a financial interest in a DSM with more mental disorders because it will mean a demand for more drugs to treat them.

The critics — and the public too — have a stake in the proposed DSM-V. More mental disorders may mean just more drugs in our over-medicated society.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once quipped, “If all the drugs were thrown in the ocean, everyone would be better-off . . . except for the fish.” While this is a an overstatement, it does contain a grain of truth.

http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/3217/is-the-american-psychiatric-association-in-bed-with-big-pharma/

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The Australian – 11/26/2011

by Frank Furedi

As far as the American Academy of Pediatrics is concerned you can never drug children early enough.

It is important to realise that what drives the steady expansion of the diagnosis of ADHD among children is not the discovery of a hitherto unknown medical condition, but the cultural redefinition of some of the normal existential problems of childhood

In their recently published guidelines they recommend that children as young as four can be treated with the psycho-stimulant drug Ritalin.

These new guidelines issued by the academy at its annual conference in Boston proposed that preschool children who show symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity should be evaluated for pharmacological intervention. “Treating children at a young age is important, because when we can identify them earlier and provide appropriate treatment, we can increase their chances of succeeding in school,” was how Mark Wolraich, one of the authors of the guidelines, justified this proposal.

The targeting of preschoolers by the academy is an integral part of a disturbing tendency to advocate medical and pharmaceutical intervention as a legitimate option for the management of childhood behaviour. The campaign, which has as its premise the conviction that children’s behavioural problems represent a marker for mental illness, implicitly assumed a coercive and intrusive form. In Australia, draft guidelines being considered by the National Health and Medical Research Council threaten parents who refuse to medicate children diagnosed with ADHD with being referred to child protection authorities. The proposed guidelines assert that “as with any medical intervention” the “inability of parents to implement strategies may raise child protection issues”.

Regardless of whether these authoritarian draft guidelines will be accepted by the NHMRC, they demonstrate a dangerous tendency to transform child-rearing into a form of professionally dominated behaviour management. The guidelines should not be seen as simply the work of a handful of insensitive and zealous Ritalin promoters. Parents throughout the Anglo-American world face considerable pressure to medicate their children. In the US and Britain, numerous parents have been given an ultimatum by their children’s school either to start giving their child Ritalin or leave. Consequently the number of children diagnosed as suffering from ADHD is continually on the increase. According to the academy, one in 12 children suffer from this condition.

It is important to realise that what drives the steady expansion of the diagnosis of ADHD among children is not the discovery of a hitherto unknown medical condition, but the cultural redefinition of some of the normal existential problems of childhood. In the eyes of the supporters of early-years medicalisation, virtually every manifestation of a child’s behaviour can be diagnosed as a medical issue. That is why they argue that doctors should evaluate children from four onwards for signs such as fidgeting, excessive talking, reluctance to concentrate and abandoning homework or chores. Apparently such normal forms of misbehaviour are symptoms of ADHD. So according to these experts, ADHD is characterised by many of the traits that would, in the absence of a medical definition, be frowned on as bad behaviour: inability to concentrate, lack of application, unruliness.

Although most sensible people are likely to be appalled by the proposal to drug preschool children, it is likely that the medicalisation of childhood will continue to gain institutional support. The main reason why children’s behaviour has become a target for pharmacological intervention is because of the difficulty that adults have in exercising authority over the life of young people. Parents have always found it difficult to deal with their toddler’s defiance and with adolescent discipline. Today, however, this age-old problem has become far more difficult to manage because of the tendency to devalue adult and parental authority.

Read the rest of the article here

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The Mark – November 14, 2011

Kids as young as six are being prescribed powerful antipsychotic drugs

The number of prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs for kids in Canada more than doubled between 2005 and 2010. A study in the journal Pediatrics & Child Health shows that the number of prescriptions jumped 114 per cent across those years, despite most antipsychotics not being cleared for use in Canada among people younger than 17. The drugs are used to offset the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactive disorder, autism, mood disorders, and all manner of behavioural problems in kids as young as six. According to Postmedia‘s Sharon Kirkey and Pamela Fayerman:

Once reserved for schizophrenia and mania in adults, one antipsychotic alone, risperidone, was recommended by Canadian-office-based doctors for children 17 and younger a total of 340,670 times in 2010 – a near-doubling since 2006 – according to data provided to Postmedia News from prescription-drug tracking firm IMS Brogan.

Not too surprisingly, the level of prescriptions has some doctors wondering if these drugs are being overprescribed. Complicating matters are the side effects of the drugs, which can lead to rapid weight gain, pre-diabetes, obesity, tremors, and more. Likewise, long-term studies on the drugs’ effects on kids’ health aren’t readily available.

Get the facts about antipsychotic drugs here

http://www.themarknews.com/news/?open=7441

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Juvenile Justice Information Exchange
By James Swift
October 28, 2011

Giovan Bazan, 21, speaks at the 11th annual CHRIS KIDS fundraiser in September, 2011. Atlanta, Ga.

Alongside photographs of rocker Jon Bon Jovi and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Giovan Bazan looks downright blithe. Although they tower over him, the tuxedo-clad Bazan wearing a slight smirk, his gelled hair and pierced ears sharply contrasting his suit-and-tie apparel.

With his cheery disposition, you wouldn’t suspect Bazan had a troubled childhood. In reality, the 21-year-old has spent a majority of his life in foster homes, and for most of his childhood, he was prescribed anti-depressants and behavioral disorder drugs.

“I went into foster care at 11 months old,” the Los Angeles native said. “When I was six, they put me on medication.”

By many accounts Bazan has come a long way since his days in foster care. In September he spoke at Atlanta-based CHRIS KIDS‘ 11th annual fundraiser alongside towering protraits of celebrities. He has adressed state legislature multiple times about issues pressing foster youth in the state. He has managed to turn his troubled childhood into a stepping stone, not a crux.

Kathy Colbenson, CEO of CHRIS KIDS and co-organizer of the fundraiser, said Bazan’s combination of determination, will and outlook has set a tremendous example for children around the nation facing similar circumstances.

“I think what he’s doing is awesome,” she said.

Today Bazan holds a number of titles. He is the JUSTGeorgia project coordinator for EmpowerMEnt, an initiative of Multi-Agency Alliance for Children, Inc. that is designed to help at-risk youth within the state. He also serves as a Youth Support Specialist Georgia Department of Family and Children Services, a liaison for the White House Council for Community Solutions, and as owner and CEO of the National Executive Protection Agency.

“It’s a travesty how frequently kids in the foster care system are medicated, and I feel like my foster mom wanted to keep me medicated,” Bazan said. “When they put me on medication, when they started to sedate me, it abused my emotions and controlled my mind to the point where I went from being a child to being nothing short of a vegetable.”

Click image to watch video with Giovan Bazan

Bazan started receiving psychotropic medication following the death of one of his foster mothers, he said.

“Mommy Karen was very caring, she was very supportive, very loving,” he said, recalling her life. “If I scratched a knee, she would be there to hold me.”

Bazan remembered taking cross-country road trips from California to South Carolina. But he didn’t know the “vacations” were actually for his foster mother to receive chemotherapy treatments. She died of cancer when he was just four-years-old, he said.

After her death, Bazan was taken in by a foster mother that he claimed was vindictive and hostile toward him.

“She was always angry about something that I did,” Bazan said. “I always felt that, for some reason, she always resented me.”

Bazan began receiving behavioral treatment drugs shortly after, he said.

“It started with Ritalin,” Bazan said. Soon after he was prescribed, what he called, a “cocktail of medication” by psychiatrists – primarily anti-depressant drugs.

“That little childhood personality that kids have was void,” Bazan said about his experiences in elementary school. “I would come to class and just put my head down and not talk to my classmates. I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t know what was going on.”

Originally he was medicated for displaying symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder, he said.

“When I was medicated, it was to eradicate a specific problem, which was [being] overactive and hyper,” Bazan said. “In other words, being a child. They medicated me to prevent me from being a child.”

Bazan said it was too much, considering himself overmedicated as a child.

“As time progressed, the dosage of the medication would have to increase because my body would adjust to the medication,” he said. “This medication that they would give me had so many side effects that they would have to counter those side effects with more medication.”

As a child, Bazan said, he was given experimental dosages of psychotropic medication. In elementary school, he said, he received treatment doses that were equivalent to those given to teenagers and young adults.

“Ultimately, that’s what they were doing … they were testing on me,” he said. “I was having seizures, I would have horrendous nosebleeds. It was more detrimental than it was helpful.”

In 2010, the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute released a report showing that overmedication within the foster care system was indeed a problem. About 52 percent of kids in the system had been prescribed psychotropic medication. Bazan found the findings both alarming and horrifying.

“One of the biggest changes that we’re looking to in the future deals with regulating psychotropic medication being administered to foster care children,” he said. “They’re being medicated because they’re coming from abusive homes, when what really happens is the system tends to look at a case and say ‘oh, well they’re having trouble paying attention.’ Well, yeah, they’re having trouble paying attention in school because they’re getting beat up at home and they’re being abused at home. Whatever stress a normal kid has, theirs is exponentially multiplied.”

In 2011, Georgia legislators introduced House Bill 23 (HB 23), a bill aimed at regulating and monitoring psychotropic drug prescriptions within the foster care system. But the bill, also known as the ”Foster Children’s Psychotropic Medication Monitoring Act,” never made it into law.

Bazan said anyone that doesn’t see the dangers of overprescribing psychiatric drugs, to kids or to anyone, should try taking them for themselves.

“Take it for a couple of years,” he said. “That’s what happens to the foster kids. They’re not given medication for a couple of months, and bam, the problem’s solved. Psychotropic medication isn’t designed to be taken like antibiotics, where you can take them for a certain amount of time and the problem is eliminated. You have to take a higher dosage, and you have to take a higher dosage and when it no longer affects you, you have to switch to a more powerful medication.”

According to Bazan, behavioral drugs and other forms of psychiatric medicine pose an imminent threat to kids in Georgia foster care and throughout the nation.

“If you can find valid proof that [discredits] what evidence has shown over and over again that it is harmful to youth, then by all means, let me know,” he said. “But you won’t find that evidence outside of pharmaceutical companies, who push that kind of information out there.”

Read article here:  http://jjie.org/georgia-advocate-speaks-out-against-psychiatric-medication-use-nations-foster-care-system/52283

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New York Times – October 13, 2011

by Dr. Peter Breggin

click image to read Psychiatric Disorders - The Facts Behind the Billion Dollar Marketing Campaign

The drugging of children for A.D.H.D. has become an epidemic. More than 5 million U.S. children, or 9.5 percent, were diagnosed with A.D.H.D. as of 2007. About 2.8 million had received a prescription for a stimulant medication in 2008.

The A.D.H.D. diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis, from the 2000 edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” is simply a list of behaviors that require attention in a classroom: hyperactivity (“fidgets,” “leaves seat,” “talks excessively”); impulsivity (“blurts out answers,” “interrupts”); and inattention (“careless mistakes,” “easily distractible,” “forgetful”). These are the spontaneous behaviors of normal children. When these behaviors become age-inappropriate, excessive or disruptive, the potential causes are limitless, including: boredom, poor teaching, inconsistent discipline at home, tiredness and underlying physical illness. Children who are suffering from bullying, abuse or stress may also display these behaviors in excess. By making an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, we ignore and stop looking for what is really going on with the child. A.D.H.D. is almost always either Teacher Attention Disorder (TAD) or Parent Attention Disorder (PAD). These children need the adults in their lives to give them improved attention.

Stimulant drugs “work” by suppressing all spontaneous behavior in normal children — and even in chimpanzees and other animals. This suppression of behavior and production of compulsive activities looks like an improvement in a classroom or home where the child has seemed uncontrollable and required a great deal of attention. The drugs do nothing to improve learning or psychosocial development. I document these observations in many scientific articles and books, most recently in the second edition of my medical textbook “Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry.”

Why are the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and the use of stimulants so prevalent in America? The idea that American children are somehow genetically or even culturally predisposed has no scientific or common sense basis. For several decades, starting in the 1970s, drug-company marketing has focused on selling the diagnosis and the drugs to American parents and teachers. As I first documented in my book “Toxic Psychiatry” in 1971, “Astroturf” organizations like Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and National Alliance on Mental Illness masquerade as representing families while taking millions of dollars from drug companies in support of their promotion of psychiatric medication for children. The National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychiatric Association and even the American Neurological Association have promoted the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and stimulant medication, which leads to considerable business for mental health clinicians.

As the American market gets saturated, promotional efforts are increasing in other countries, like Canada, Britain, Australia and Germany, which are also experiencing increased rates of diagnosing and drugging children. In Australia, the controversy has been especially heated in recent years. Everywhere that A.D.H.D. and stimulants are promoted, they substitute for needed modern reforms in education and family life.

In all cases of so-called A.D.H.D., the diagnosis is harmful. The child instead needs a real medical and psychosocial educational evaluation, and usually the child will quickly respond to improved teaching and parenting. We are diagnosing and drugging millions of our children instead of providing them the improved educational and family life that they truly need.

Peter R. Breggin, a psychiatrist in Ithaca, N.Y., is the author of more than 20 books

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/12/are-americans-more-prone-to-adhd/adhd-is-a-misdiagnosis

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NaturalNews
By Elizabeth Walling
October 5, 2011

(NaturalNews) New guidelines for mental illness turn shyness in children from a personality trait into a mental disorder that warrants drug treatment. Drug companies already target children, who fidget too much in class or have trouble concentrating on their homework, with stimulant drugs for treating attention deficit disorder. Now children who sit too quietly or are more withdrawn than their peers will also be targeted with medication for social anxiety disorder or depression.

These new guidelines increase the likelihood that children, who tend to be quiet or sad, will be diagnosed with depression. And children who talk back to adults or lose their temper frequently may be diagnosed with what is called oppositional defiant disorder. A diagnose in either case will likely lead to treatment with powerful psychotropic drugs.

Serious Risks for Children who take Psychiatric Drugs

The idea of turning every spectrum of human emotion into some kind of mental disorder is not only absurd, but it also threatens the long-term mental and physical health of our children.

Millions of children are currently taking one or more behavior-altering medications, despite the fact that these drugs carry the risk of serious side effects. Some of these side effects include suicidal thinking, loss of appetite, nausea, insomnia, sedation, seizures, insulin resistance, acne, tremors, muscle stiffness and more.

Some psychologists also point out that simply drugging children for behaving out of the norm could actually be masking very serious underlying problems. Children, who are the victims of mental, physical or sexual abuse, will often exhibit behaviors such as shyness, sadness or being more withdrawn. These experts warn that trying to seek a quick-fix for negative emotions denies children what they truly need: long-term care and guidance.

Who stands to profit from expanding the guidelines for diagnosable mental disorders? The answer is quite simple: the pharmaceutical companies which manufacture the drugs for treating these conditions. However, when we start labeling children as disordered for simply being quieter than their peers or having an occasional angry outburst, we are stepping into dangerous territory that threatens the future of an entire generation and beyond.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h…

http://www.sciencedaily.com/release…

http://www.aboutourkids.org/article…

About the author:

Elizabeth Walling is a freelance writer specializing in health and family nutrition. She is a strong believer in natural living as a way to improve health and prevent modern disease. She enjoys thinking outside of the box and challenging common myths about health and wellness. You can visit her blog to learn more:
www.livingthenourishedlife.com/2009…

Read the article here:  http://www.naturalnews.com/033778_shy_children_psychiatric_drugs.html

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Note from CCHR:  While the FDA and its Pediatric advisory panel sit around pondering if one antipsychotic drug is more likely to cause diabetes in children than another while continuing their stall tactic of  “let’s study it some more ” routine, we’d like to point out the simple solution:  Considering that  antipsychotic drugs are already documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause not only diabetes but obesity, psychosis, blood clots, heart problems, cardiac events, seizures, toxicity, confusion, coma and stroke (and that’s just in kids) as well as brain atrophy (meaning they actually shrink brains); considering there is no medical test to prove any child has a brain malfunction, chemical imbalance or any physical condition requiring the administration of these lethal drugs—and considering these drugs are literally killing kids that have nothing medically wrong with them in the first place— Do the job you are paid by U.S. Taxpayers to do and BAN their use on children.   Period.

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland (Reuters) – U.S. pediatric health advisers on Thursday urged drug regulators to continue studying weight gain and other side-effects of antipsychotic drugs as they are increasingly taken by children.

Significant numbers of U.S. children are receiving drugs to tame aggression, attention deficit disorder and other mental problems, even though there is little conclusive data to show exactly how the medications work or whether they damage kids’ health.

Similar to the recommendations the panel has made in previous years, it voted 16-1 to support the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s routine safety monitoring of the new generation of antipsychotics.

But the panel did so with a caveat that the agency specifically look at how to clarify the drugs’ labels to highlight concerns about their impact on children, namely the risks of weight gain and diabetes.

“There is serious concern that children may be at a higher risk for serious adverse effects and we just don’t have sufficient data to answer that question,” said Dr. Jonathan Mink, a child neurology expert from the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Dr. Jeffrey Wagener, a pediatric pulmonologist from the University of Colorado Medical School, was the one adviser to vote “no” out of concern that wouldn’t get regulators closer to dealing with the risks of using antipsychotics in children.

“I don’t see how the FDA is responding to the December 8, 2009 request by this committee in a thorough fashion,” he said. “It’s taken them two years to not respond to that that we need to be more than in the observational role.”

The FDA in the next month to six weeks will release a revised label for Abilify, a drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Otsuka Pharmaceutical and approved to treat schizophrenia in adolescents, bipolar disorder in children 10 to 17 years old and irritability associated with autism in those as young as six.

“We ask that with this upcoming revision that you carefully consider the language around pediatric use and adverse events,” said Dr. Geoffrey Rosenthal, the committee’s chair and director of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Abilify’s new label will detail the drug’s latest clinical trials, warn of metabolic concerns and remind doctors to monitor weight and symptoms of diabetes in all patients, said Dr. Thomas Laughren, FDA’s psychiatry products chief. The pediatric section of the label would contain a reference to those warnings, he said..

Such revisions, which are already incorporated into Johnson & Johnson’s antipsychotic medication Invega Sustenna, are being considered for other similar drugs on a case by case basis, Laughren said.

The new generation of antipsychotic medications has raised a wave of concerns as they are increasingly being prescribed for a host of uses and for younger and younger patients, with little conclusive research addressing their impact on children and sometimes with little evidence they work.

Newer antipsychotics include J&J’s Risperdal, known generically as risperidone; Eli Lilly & Co’s Zyprexa or olanzapine; AstraZeneca’s Seroquel or quetiapine; and Abilify, known generically as aripiprazole.

U.S. researchers have found that the drugs’ use in children increased by 65 percent from 2002 to 2009, primarily through prescriptions for teenagers.

From fall 2009 to spring of this year, 1.9 million prescriptions of Abilify alone were dispensed to patients under 18, including even 875 prescriptions for toddlers younger than 2, according to FDA research.

Most commonly, the prescriptions were for bipolar disorder in teenagers and preschoolers, and for affective psychoses in children between the ages of seven and 12.

Advisers also voted unanimously to require the FDA to show them label revisions and report back in the next year or 18 months on progress in designing more studies of the drugs in children.

http://www.fox43.com/lifestyle/sns-rt-us-usa-fda-antipsychotictre78l77l-20110922,0,216106.story

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“83,776 tons of legal speed were approved for production in 2010 equaling more than half a pound for every man, woman and child in America.”

The Huffington Post – September 9, 2011
by Lawrence Diller, MD

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released analysis of data revealing a major increase in the incidence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among children in the United States. The number of children between the ages of five and 17 reported by their parents to “have” ADHD or the non-hyperactive form of the disorder (ADD) had risen from 7 to 9 percent over a decade ending in 2009. Nine percent translates to 4,858,210 children according to 2010 U.S. Census data.

In actuality, the researchers do not know for certain whether these children actually meet criteria for ADHD/ADD. The data is culled from a national telephone survey which asks parents the question, “whether or not a doctor or other health-care provider had ever told them that their child had attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactive disorder, that is, ADD or ADHD.’”

Since there is no biological or psychometric test for ADHD/ADD no one can be certain these children have a definitive neurological condition.

In its extreme form the hyperactivity and impulsivity of ADHD are easy to recognize. But most children are commonly diagnosed with the mild variety which blends seamlessly into the behavior of normal but active or lively children. It is with this mild form where opinions vary widely between professionals. This survey then only measured what parents had been told.

Still the continued rise in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD/ADD in children is unmistakable. As a long time observer and participant (I prescribe drugs like Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta every day) of this trend, I have watched the 20-year growth of this condition with curiosity and some consternation. I have also been involved in what has been colloquially called “The Ritalin Wars” — an often polemical debate conducted in the media as to whether the widespread use of prescription stimulant drugs (essentially amphetamine) is good or bad for the children of this country.

The upward trend continues. Given the current CDC data, one can safely estimate (based on previously detailed distribution curves) that one of six 11-year-old white boys with medical insurance currently take a stimulant drug at least during the school week. Is this over medication or simply good medical care for children with a previously undiagnosed and untreated condition? What I do know is that we are the only society currently managing our under performing/misbehaving children with drugs to this degree.

While the diagnosis of ADHD/ADD can seem ephemeral, the production of prescription stimulants, whose use is closely tied to the diagnosis, is monitored by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Since 1996 the annual amount of Ritalin type drugs approved for production by the DEA multiplied 4000 times to 50 million kilograms, and for Adderall 10000 times to 26 million kilograms. In more common terms, 83,776 tons of legal speed were approved for production in 2010 equaling more than half a pound for every man, woman and child in America.

The U.S. is a signatory to a 1972 United Nations treaty monitoring the production and sale of potentially addicting substances. The U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) based in Vienna, monitors the production of legal stimulants worldwide. INCB data shows that in 2009 the U.S., representing 4 percent of the world’s population, produced 88 percent of the world’s legal Ritalin type drugs. Canada uses a third per capita of prescription stimulants compared to the U.S. — Germany, one eighth, the U.K. one twelfth, Japan, one fiftieth.

Read the rest of the article here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-diller/overuse-of-prescription-drugs_b_950802.html

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The Bottom Line -- ADHD is bogus. An invention of the Psychiatric/Pharmaceutical industries, and a $4 billion dollar a year industry.

Note from CCHR: A new study shows nearly 1 out of every 10 kids in the US is diagnosed with ADHD and there is speculation as to what’s behind the increase. OK. We’re going to make this real simple. The reason so many kids are labeled with ADHD is simple.  ADHD drugging in the United States alone is a $4 billion dollar a year industry. Millions of kids are labeled “ADHD” despite the fact there are no lab tests, brain scans or chemical imbalance tests to prove there is anything medically wrong with these kids, yet they are placed on ADHD drugs that can cause drug dependence, mania, psychosis, hallucinations, heart attack, stroke and sudden death. Why? $4 billion a year, like we said.

Health Day – August 19, 2011

Over the last decade, an increasing number of American children have been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a new government survey reveals.

Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 2007 and 2009, an average of 9 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 17 were diagnosed with the disorder. This compared with just under 7 percent between 1998 and 2000.

The survey also indicated that previously notable racial differences in ADHD incidence rates have narrowed considerably since the turn of the millennium, with prevalence now comparable among whites, blacks and some Hispanic groups.

“We don’t have the data to say for certain what explains these patterns, but I would caution against concluding that what we have here is a real increase in the occurrence of this condition,” stressed study author Dr. Lara J. Akinbami, a medical officer with the National Center for Health Statistics. The findings appear in an Aug. 18 report from the agency.

“In fact, it would be hard for me to argue that what we see here is a true change in prevalence,” Akinbami added. “Instead, I would say that most probably what we found has a lot to do with better access to health care among a broader group of children, and doctors who have become more and more familiar with this condition and now have better tools to screen for it. So, this is probably about better screening, rather than a real increase, and that means we may continue to see this pattern unfold.”

According to the National Institute of Health,  ADHD is the most common behavioral disorder among children.

Children with ADHD are apt to have problems staying focused, and often suffer learning and behavioral problems as a result of a tendency to engage in hyperactive and/or impulsive behaviors.

The new survey was conducted by interviewers from the U.S. Census Bureau through face-to-face and telephone interviews involving a nationally representative group of parents. Basic family demographic information was collected, along with the ADHD status of each household’s children.

Although rates rose among both boys and girls, a greater percentage of boys were diagnosed with ADHD overall, rising from roughly 10 percent in 1998-2000 to more than 12 percent between 2007 and 2009. Across the same time frame, the prevalence rate among girls rose from just below 4 percent to between 5 percent and 6 percent.

http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/special-needs/story/2011/08/Study-Nearly-1-in-10-US-kids-diagnosed-with-ADHD/50057050/1

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