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.

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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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Natural News – September 15, 2011

by M.K. Tyler

(NaturalNews) If you have ever seen a commercial for a pharmaceutical drug, you are probably familiar with the long list of dangerous side effects that are rattled off in the last five seconds of the advertisement, just after viewers are told how Drug “X” is going to save their lives, improve their memories or give them unlimited energy. What was that? Did he just say that pill might cause bleeding out of my eyes?

Drug companies do a great job – and spend a lot of money – to ensure that most consumers aren’t aware of the harmful side effects of common drugs prescribed for conditions like depression, heart disease, arthritis, ADHD or high blood pressure. Unfortunately, the result of this has created a society where the average person with a health problem is captivated by the promises delivered in clever advertising. There is a drug for everything? All I have to do is talk to my doctor? How convenient.

But what if there was a way to take back control of our lives and our health? What if, despite talking to your doctor, you still have questions or concerns about the safety of a drug?

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) has a database that allows you to do just that. It’s called the Psychiatric Drug Database, and it allows consumers to research the potential side effects of common psychiatric drugs, such as Ritalin or Wellbutrin.

While the database is limited to psychiatric drugs, this type of public information portal represents a significant step in the right direction to help patients find unbiased information and make informed decisions about their health.

The database allows you to search by drug and will retrieve information about adverse reactions reported by patients who have taken the drug, international warnings and studies that have been done on the drug and what side effects different age groups or genders have experienced. For example, a search of the effects of Ritalin on 18-30 year old women retrieved 89 reported cases of adverse side effects.

These effects including anxiety, fatigue, hypertension, tremors, chest discomfort, nausea, panic attacks, cardiac murmurs, aggression, suicide attempts and completed suicides. The results are broken down by case and list specific symptoms and reactions caused by the drug in each reported case.

Another search of Zoloft and its effects on young children included cases of cerebral disorders, upper respiratory tract infections, sleep disorders, vertigo, hallucinations, psychomotor hyperactivity and suicidal ideation.

The database only includes information on cases that were actually reported to the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System between 2004 and 2008. Based on the FDA’s own estimates, only about 1 to 10 percent of adverse drug side effects are even reported to the FDA. The CCHR’s database, therefore, represents only a small margin of the population that has been affected by adverse side effects of pharmaceutical psychiatric drugs.

Visitors to the site will also notice an interesting anecdote that describes how the definition of poison – a substance that causes death or harm when consumed by a living organism – clearly characterizes the drugs listed in the database. Consumers are encouraged to research potential problems of a drug before agreeing with their doctors to start a course of therapy.

To find more information about a particular drug, visit www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers

Sources for this article include

http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdan…

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Note from CCHR: Several  years ago, NBC interviewed a group of high school kids that were recreationally using drugs like Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta. They asked the kids why they would risk using drugs that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classifies as a schedule ll drug, in the same highly addictive category as cocaine, morphine and opium. Drugs that have severe side effects including death.   The high school kids answer?  ‘We figured since they’re given out to 6-year-olds, how bad can they be?’

Enough said.

Popping pills won’t improve grades, warns Canadian medical journal

Toronto Star – September 6, 2011

by Theresa Boyle

Universities and colleges must crack down on illicit use of Ritalin and other stimulants, which are not the grade boosters many assume, an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal urges

“Students who think simply popping a pill will improve their grades or give them new-found academic abilities are sorely mistaken,” says the editorial released online on Tuesday.

Students use stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall because they are perceived to boost to academic performance through enhanced attention and alertness. But these supposed benefits are not reality based, but are part of a “pervasive myth,” the CMAJ charges.

The vast majority of evidence shows that stimulants offer no cognitive improvements over placebos in healthy individuals.

Those who abuse these drugs seem unaware of the potential dangers. While data on the impact of these drugs on healthy individuals is sparse, studies show that inappropriate use by those diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can lead to death, life-threatening hypertension, irregular heartbeat, overdose, addiction and depression.

An overdose can result in symptoms seen in abuse of amphetamines and cocaine, including severe hypertension, abnormally high fever, rapid heartbeat, severe agitation and psychosis.

Effects can be more pronounced in those who snort or inject stimulants, the editorial warns.

The CMAJ calls on universities and colleges to create education campaigns that debunk myths and expose risks.

Post-secondary institutions should also try to identify and address the root cause of stimulant abuse, the journal says. It’s plausible that unhealthy competition or “play-hard-work-hard” attitudes prevail, the opinion piece says. Clear expectations, peer mentorship, additional resources and a more structured environment may encourage proper study habits. Programs that help integrate students living away from home for the first time would also be helpful.

“We must remember that the majority of students who inappropriately use these medications have good intentions but may simply need reliable information or resource to make good choices.”

Universities should have a self interest in addressing the problem because they could be held legally liable for the consequences of stimulant abuse, the editorial cautions.

It also calls on campus health clinics to look out for students may have undiagnosed ADHD. It’s possible they may be self medicating. The clinics should warn students who are prescribed these drugs about repercussions of selling any “excess” supply.

“Like doping in sports, abuse of stimulants by our best and brightest students should be denormalized by being viewed as cheating or substance abuse, pure and simple,” the editorial says.

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/mindmood/mentalhealth/article/1049813–popping-pills-won-t-improve-grades-warns-canadian-medical-journal

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NaturalNews – August 2, 2011

by Ethan A. Huff

Click image to watch 1 minute video: ADHD—Labeling Normal Kids 'Mentally Ill'

A major study recently published in the journal Pediatrics — and republished by countless other medical and mass media sources — made the bold claim that stimulant drugs like those used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children are not linked to cardiovascular events and death. But a recent analysis by Dr. Robert Tozzi writing for FOX News explains that the study was flawed, and that the drugs will cause cardiovascular events or death, especially in individuals with certain conditions.

Like most studies that allege the safety of pharmaceutical drugs, the Pediatrics study was at least partially, if not completely, funded by the drug industry. It was also deliberately constructed in such a way as to artificially minimize the risks associated with stimulant drugs. As a result, its findings ended up mirroring claims long made by the drug industry that stimulant drugs are safe, and that children do not need to be tested for certain conditions prior to being prescribed them.

The study included two groups of children, one taking stimulant drugs, and the other not taking stimulant drugs. The idea was to simply compare the number of heart events between the two groups, and determine whether or not stimulant drugs are associated with an increased risk of heart events and sudden death.

Well, according to Dr. Tozzi, few, if any, of the high-risk children with conditions that would react negatively in the presence of stimulants were placed in the stimulant group. Most parents of children with such conditions, as well as their doctors, would not normally opt for giving stimulants to their high-risk children, and thus the vast majority of these children were placed in the non-stimulant group.

This inherent and obvious flaw completely debunks the credibility of the study. After all, the whole point of it was supposedly to identify whether or not children need to be pre-screened for certain conditions before being prescribed stimulant drugs. With this in mind, it makes sense to actually identify how children with existing conditions respond to stimulant drugs, otherwise the data is meaningless.

It is difficult to say which is worse — testing dangerous drugs on high-risk children, or not testing dangerous drugs on high-risk children and simply declaring that they are  safe (which is what the drug industry basically did in a recent study). One thing is for sure, though. The propositions made in the study that stimulant drugs are safe and do not raise the risk of heart disease and sudden death are patently false. And many children will likely suffer and die as a result of these lies.

To read all international drug regulatory warnings and studies on Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta and other ADHD drugs visit CCHR’s Psychiatric Drug Side Effects Search Engine”

http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/drug_warnings.php

http://www.naturalnews.com/033204_ADHD_drugs_death.html

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The Telegraph – July 22, 2011

By Martni Beckford, Health Correspondent

Five dementia sufferers die each day after being wrongly prescribed “chemical cosh” drugs, the Department of Health has warned.

Click image to read: The Psychiatric Abuse of Our Elderly

Many more hospital patients and care home residents suffer strokes triggered by the antipsychotic medications they are given to keep them sedated.

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Forbes – June 30, 2011

by Martin Fridson

In 2006, The New York Review of Books reported that four-year-old Rebecca Riley died of the effects of two prescription drugs—Clonidine and Depakote.

These medications, along with Seroquel, were prescribed for Rebecca after she was diagnosed, at the age of two, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder.  The three drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treatment of ADHD or long-term treatment of bipolar disorder, nor are they approved for children as young as Rebecca.

The New York Review of Books‘ recent two-part article (1)  by Marcia Angell on the treatment of mental illness with psychoactive drugs (those that affect the mental state) addresses an issue that may one day prove very important to investors in pharmaceutical stocks.  (All statistics and quotations herein are drawn from Dr. Angell’s article.)

It is not illegal for a doctor to prescribe a drug off-label, that is, for a non-FDA-approved use, but a drug marketer cannot lawfully encourage a doctor to do so.  The profits in psychoactive drugs, however, make it tempting to flout the law.  In the past four years, AstraZeneca (AZN), Pfizer (PFE), Eli Lilly (LLY), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and Forest Labs (FRX) have all settled federal charges of marketing psychoactive drugs off-label, at a cost running into hundreds of millions.

Seeing that pharmaceutical marketing executives are evidently undeterred by the law, Dr. Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, advocates a prohibition on prescribing psychoactive drugs off-label.

A ban would cut into a major growth area for pharmaceutical companies.

This growth is not a function of a few blockbuster drug discoveries. It parallels an extraordinary rise in the portion of the population, particularly children, diagnosed with mental illness.  For example, if diagnoses mirror the actual incidence of juvenile polar disorder, that affliction grew forty-fold between 1993 and 2004.

Have mental disorders genuinely proliferated that dramatically?  Dr. Angell suggests instead that the surge in certain diagnoses reflects a long-run shift in emphasis from “talk therapy” to medication.  This change just so happens to enable psychiatrists to see more patients and earn higher fees.  Not incidentally, with drugs now regarded as the preferred mode of treatment, the increase in diagnoses is a boon to pharmaceutical manufacturers.  The new generation of psychoactives has displaced cholesterol-reducing medications as the biggest-selling class of drugs in the U.S.

Also benefiting from the present arrangement are low-income families that receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments on the basis of mental disabilities.  To qualify, applicants (children included) generally must be taking psychoactive drugs.  Getting into the program usually also ensures that the family will qualify for Medicaid.  The disbursements can be so substantial that MIT economics professor David Autor describes SSI as “the new welfare.”

The parents and two siblings of Rebecca Riley, the four-year-old who died from the effects of off-label drugs, were all on psychoactive drugs and were receiving about $30,000 a year from SSI.  Dr. Angell links the astonishing rise in diagnoses of certain mental disorders to the huge financial stakes of physicians, pharmaceutical companies and SSI recipients.

I do not want to portray this issue as an imminent or mortal threat to pharmaceutical stocks. If a ban on off-label prescription of psychoactive drugs were proposed in Congress, the companies’ lobbyists probably could stave it off for a long time.  Furthermore, the major pharmaceutical companies have widely diversified product lines, so a setback in the psychoactive category, even though it is a major growth area, would not be a body blow.

Still, this topic is one to keep an eye on for investors who hope to gain an edge by seeing beyond the quarterly EPS data.  Psychoactive drugs have been around since the 1950s, but parents can readily observe that their use with children is far more widespread than it was a generation ago.  If advocates such as Marcia Angell can make a persuasive case that the change is not fully justified on medical grounds, yet poses significant health hazards, is it unrealistic to expect a public opinion backlash some day?

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The Age – July 1, 2011

by Kate Hagen

Photo: Tamara Voninski

MORE than 200 psychiatric patients died in ”unexpected, unnatural or violent” circumstances last year, a report by Victoria’s chief psychiatrist reveals.

Six patients died by committing suicide in hospital but most of the 237 deaths occurred in the community.

Chief psychiatrist Ruth Vine could not provide a breakdown of the number of deaths that occurred inside hospitals but said it was ”very small, and when it does occur it is followed by a very thorough review”.

Dr Vine said deaths in the community could include those due to car accidents or house fires, but it was the role of the coroner to determine their cause.

The Age reported in February that a coroner was investigating the deaths of two psychiatric patients thought to have suffocated while being restrained in separate incidents at Frankston and Dandenong hospitals in 2007.

Dr Vine said she was ”of course” concerned about the suicides of psychiatric patients but believed they were impossible to completely prevent.

”If you compare a mental health inpatient unit with a coronary care unit, in terms of the severity of mental illness we’re treating it is equally severe,” she said.

”It is impossible to prevent completely because suicide is a choice and to completely prevent suicide would be to impose an incredible level of restriction on care that would be anti-therapeutic.”

Dr Vine’s annual report for 2009-10 shows that 14 per cent of inpatients were secluded, or confined in a room locked from the outside, in what guidelines say should be used only when a patient poses an immediate risk to himself or others.

A total of 1828 patients were secluded and there were 6059 episodes of seclusion, up slightly from the previous year. More than 1100 were for longer than 12 hours.

A total of 1750 patients received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), including 83 children, the youngest of whom was 13.

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Note from CCHR:  More than 1 million people are electroshocked every year, including children, the elderly and pregnant women.   This is simply a brutal, invasive and damaging ‘treatment’ where up to 450 volts of electricity are sent through the skull.  Psychiatrists admit they don’t know how electroshock ‘works’ and the reason behind this is simple:  it doesn’t work.  Not unless you consider cognitive impairment, brain seizures, permament memory loss and death ‘workable.’ Now in Australia, the use of electroshock for the young is on the rise.   Mentioned in this article are the atrocities that were committed in Chelmsford psychiatric hospital where patients were put into drugged induced coma’s and electroshocked, killing dozens.  That lethal and inhumane practice was exposed and then banned due  to the efforts of CCHR.   No organization has done more to expose the deadly practice of electroshock, or helped enact more international laws restricting or prohibiting its use, than CCHR.    To get the facts about electroshock ‘treatment’ read this article by psychologist John Breeding, “Think They Don’t Electroshock People Anymore? Think Again” http://qr.net/edoh

Sydney Morning Herald – June 26, 2011

by Natalie O’Brien

Revelations about the practises at Chelmsford and the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest led to a major drop in treatments.

ELECTRIC shock treatments for mental health patients have increased by almost 30 per cent in the past five years in NSW, particularly among young women, Medicare figures show.Female patients – all aged under 24 – received almost 600 procedures last year, more than twice the rate of young women in Victoria.

The trend has sparked concern among some psychiatrists about the ”start of a slippery slope”.

An investigation by The Sun-Herald into the resurgence of the treatment, also known as electro-convulsive therapy, or ECT, reveals that the number of voluntary sessions received by young women rose from 184 in 2000 to 575 last year.

The figures do not specify how many women were involved in the procedures, as one patient can often undergo more than one session.

Electric shock treatment still carries the stigma from its brutal portrayal in the film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and from the Sydney experience of the horrific practices at the Chelmsford Hospital in the 1960s and ’70s, where dozens of patients died after being given deep sleep therapy and ECT. But doctors say they are working with new treatments and patients no longer suffer a physical convulsion.

The Medicare figures show that last year, NSW men aged under 24 were given the therapy at three times the rate of men in that age group in Victoria.

Across Australia, 24,714 ECT sessions were administered to patients of all ages. In NSW, 5733 treatments were carried out – slightly fewer than in Victoria.

A former president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Dr Jonathan Phillips, who works as a private clinician, said he was worried by the number of sessions younger people had undertaken.

”In a way it is very easy to order ECT treatment,” he said. ”I would not like to think that it is being used just because it’s easy.”

He was especially surprised by the rate of young women receiving the treatment and said he would find it hard to explain.

”I don’t know why there is a such a difference in statistics. I do hope it is not the start of the slippery slope. Are we going back to an era where we resort to ECT rather than talking to people and using the art of psychiatry?

Read the rest of the article here -  http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/electric-shock-therapy-on-the-rise-for-young-20110625-1gklc.html#ixzz1QIdHnpE0

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By CCHR Int
June 23, 2011

At just 6 years of age, still grieving over the death of the only mother he’d ever known, his foster mother, Giovan Bazan received the first of many psychiatric “diagnoses” and drugs that would plague him for the next twelve years of his life. Moved from foster home to  foster home, orphanages and other modes of state care, Giovan was stigmatized with a plethora of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs until the age of 18, when he could finally make his own medical decisions and quit. Now a child advocate working part time at the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) in Georgia, Giovan is on a mission: To get a full-time job with DFCS and help enact laws to combat the wholesale labeling and drugging of foster children. In the video below, Giovan tells his story and why he decided to fight back against the abuse of kids in foster care.

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Foster kids—often removed from family homes because of abuse—are further abused when they are prescribed psychotropic drugs under state care. Many of these children are on cocktails of prescribed drugs, including antipsychotics and antidepressants with documented side effects of diabetes, stroke, mania, psychosis, tumors, coma, suicide and death.

Yet, the rates with which these children are being given drugs has been increasing. The antipsychotic use rate among foster kids increased by 5.6% between 2004 and 2007 (from 11.7 percent to 12.4 percent). Another study in Pediatrics, revealed that youth in foster care covered by Medicaid insurance receive psychotropic medication at a rate more than 3 times that of Medicaid-insured youth who qualify by low family income.

Only half of state child welfare systems have a policy to review usage of these drugs, and those are weak policies at that.

The psychiatric drugging of foster kids has caused so much concern nationally that in July 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) started an investigation into the use of these drugs in foster care, as they are widely used in dangerous combinations, and for so-called “off-label” uses to treat symptoms for which they have not been medically approved. The GAO is looking into the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud arising from this and is collecting and analyzing data from Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas.

For more information on the psychiatric drugging of children, watch these videos:

Psychiatry—Labeling Kids with Bogus ‘Mental Disorders’

Drugging Our Children—Side Effects

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