The Huffington Post
By Dr. Ronald Ricker and Dr. Venus Nicolino
September 8, 2010

Today, the use of psychoactive drugs by children (6-17) is all too common, relied on far too much and growing at an alarming rate. It all started in the ’70s.

Memorialized in 1966 by the Rolling Stones’ “Mothers Little Helpers,” it was at that time that our society took the first steps at becoming “Pill Crazy.” Valium and Librium and Quaaludes were “Mother’s Little Helpers. The first drugs to enter the stage. If you couldn’t stand Johnny, your friends, your husband, in-laws, etc, tranquilizers smoothed you out, made you tranquil. Not surprisingly, in the 70s, the consumption of these tranquilizers, once discovered and available, skyrocketed. Anxiety was the popular diagnosis. Antidepressants were beginning to raise their heads as well. Their popularity at that time, however, was muted by the fact that they didn’t work well, and also sported many side effects, some of which were very annoying and occasionally dangerous. And, no one knew what was just around the corner.

Prozac

Prozac was first marketed in 1987. It was a totally new type of antidepressant, which seemed to work and had far less side effects. What had been a stream of tranquilizers became a tsunami of Prozac’s and tranquilizers. Other ‘Prozac’s’ entered the scene–Zoloft, Celexa, Paxil and Luvox, all vying to take part of Prozac’s market share. Promotion of these drugs by drug manufacturers exploded. Where there had been a surge in the diagnosis of anxiety, now the diagnosis of the decade was ‘depression.’ Housewives by the droves needed and demanded antidepressants and even more tranquilizers. If one was good, two must be better. The pill craze was on.

Diagnoses started to morph. The more the diagnoses, the more opportunities to sell drugs. Anxiety became anxiety neurosis, panic disorder, panic attacks, etc. ‘Depression,’ as a diagnosis, was of course and remains very popular. However, many patients don’t and didn’t like that diagnosis–perhaps it sounded too much like a disease. So a new depression explanation and diagnosis emerged–’chemical imbalance,’ which sounded more sheik and less like a disease and, of course, yielded more customers.

Not far behind ‘chemical imbalance’ came ‘mood disorder,’ a special type of depression, also called bipolar disorder. There are people who actually have a bipolar disorder and require numerous special medications for treatment. These medications, mood stabilizers, antidepressants, and second generation antipsychotics are far more dangerous medications than Prozac and tranquilizers. Further, there are also many people who are said to have ‘bipolar disorder’ who don’t. Often these patients are those who were said to be depressed yet don’t get better with standard antidepressants. They get all the special and dangerous medications (the number of which is multiplying geometrically) and have the additional advantage of being able to excuse pretty much anything they do as a result of their ‘mood disorder.’

This pretty well takes us through the ’90s. But here come our children. How did our children get sucked into all this? Our pill craze was and is a huge part. Parents and physicians often subscribe to this theory, that there is a pill for everything. Mommy says Johnnie is depressed, doctor agrees, Johnnie doesn’t. Guess who wins? Certainly not Johnny. Guess what Johnnie gets? A pill, usually an SSRI, which he may end up taking for a long time. Assuming Johnnie takes three years of SSRI therapy, his diagnosis is changed 25 percent of the time, usually to the much more serious diagnosis, bipolar disorder. His medications are changed to a much more serious and dangerous types. If Johnny takes an SSRI for six years the chances of his diagnosis changing to bipolar increases to 50 percent. So do his meds.

There’s yet another and newer mine field for Johnnie to negotiate, new in the last two decades. Let’s say Johnnie fidgets in his seat, doesn’t listen to the teacher, hates to read, and talks to his neighbor all the time. Guess what. Johnnie is diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and given another serious type of drug, a stimulant–usually Ritalin or a form of speed (one example being Adderall). Did you know that Adderall is 100 percent speed? We know speed kills but give it to our children. Think about that. Speed kills and we give speed to our children, masked as Adderall.  Astounding.

Read entire article here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-ronald-ricker-and-dr-venus-nicolino/psychotropic-drugs-our-ch_b_680488.html

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The Huffington Post

September 1, 2010

by Dr. Ronald Ricker and Dr. Venus Nicolino

Today, the administration of psychoactive drugs to children (6-17) is all too common and growing at an alarming rate. These drugs often cause the opposite of the intended effect, often condemning children to a life of misery and ill health. The prescription of these drugs is said to treat “chemical imbalances” which were said to cause ADHD, Depression and Bi-polar disorder. It turns out, however, that what we were calling “disease-causing chemical imbalances,” is simply incorrect . The sad irony is, the inappropriate use of these medications is in fact creating different chemical imbalances, which do cause mental disorders, many of which are both life-long and debilitating.

Furthermore, it is now clear that often we are diagnosing ordinary childhood and adolescent behavior as mental disorders (Wait, children are supposed to be bursting with energy? It’s normal for a teenager to be moody and aloof?). This diagnosing is not only based on this idea of “chemical imbalances,” but also a general and pervasive notion that every non-acceptable behavior is due to a mental illness. And last, but certainly not least, the prescribing of these medications by doctors is based on the disinformation provided them by the FDA, drug manufactures and often fraudulent studies, all in the name of making money, on the backs of our children.

In a recent lecture, respected journalist, writer and Nobel Prize Nominee, Robert Whitaker (PBS, Boston, June 15, 2010) highlighted not only the appallingly unscientific methodology used in the development, prescription and use of psychotropic drugs in school-aged children, but also how hopelessly corrupt and failed the systems that should be regulating the safety of medicines are in this country.

Unfortunately, many drug companies exist for one reason: to make money. As such, the people who run these companies have developed a worldview bereft of any more notion of ethics or morality than British Petroleum. Some drug companies’ success is not based on a drug’s usefulness or the safety of its products, but whether it makes money. The path to more money is simple: find new uses for their old drugs, invent new drugs and find new markets for both new and old drugs. Unfortunately, children are today’s newest market.

The FDA requires a “Successful Drug Trial” to approve new medications. “Trial” is often a misnomer, as the word implies some notion of impartiality and unknown outcome. These “trials” often are more like kangaroo courts. In one “trial,” in this case to prove the usefulness of Prozac, corruption and dishonesty were the rule. Children who responded to placebos were removed from the data, as were negative responders to the actual drug. This meant that the only children who were left in the study group were so-called “positive responders.” And, even then, the researchers and doctors, whose “research” funding was provided by the makers of Prozac, were the very ones to decide which subjects, if any, actually did respond “positively” to the drug. This, of course, is a massive conflict of interest. The doctors, researchers and drug companies all want the same thing — FDA approval and to make more money.

In a 2004 article published in perhaps the most prestigious British medical journal, Lancet, said the trial studies used to provide proof of the usefulness of anti-depressant drugs in children, were “nothing but fraudulent.” Following that assessment, all anti-depressants but Prozac were banned in the UK for use on children. (The fact that Prozac was not banned was based on very dubious, some say dishonest, research as documented above).

The true damage caused by the use of anti-depressant drugs like Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, etc. (AKA of SSRI’s: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) by school-aged children is only found by legitimate, longer studies, like those that continued from 17 months to six years. In one study, 25 percent of children who had been on SSRI’s for three years were re-diagnosed with the much more serious disorder of Bi-polar disease. This number increased to 50 percent after six years of SSRI use. Long-term use of new anti-psychotics may lead to even greater problems than the initial disease. Diabetes, morbid obesity and early death have all been linked to the use of these drugs. And, as written by us in a previous blog both short and long term use of stimulant drugs such as Adderall), have numerous serious side effects.

Read the rest of this article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-ronald-ricker-and-dr-venus-nicolino/the-prescribing-of-psycho_b_665838.html

Note: To view all international drug regulatory warnings and studies on psychiatric drugs including those issued specifically for children,visit CCHR’s psychiatric drug search engine here: http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/drug_warnings.php

Also see this video – Drugging Our Children: Side Effects – http://www.cchrint.org/videos/

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• New Review of FDA antidepressant drug trials suggests antidepressants only “marginally better” than placebo – Ineffectiveness of antidepressants called “jaw-dropping” (0)

Medscape
By Deborah Brauser
August 24, 2010

A new review of 4 meta-analyses of efficacy trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggests that antidepressants are only “marginally efficacious” compared with placebo and “document profound publication bias that inflates their apparent efficacy.”

In addition, when the researchers also analyzed the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) trial, “the largest antidepressant effectiveness trial ever conducted,” they found that “the effectiveness of antidepressant therapies was probably even lower than the modest one reported…with an apparent progressively increasing dropout rate across each study phase.

“We found that out of the 4041 patients initially started on the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor] citalopram in the STAR*D study, and after 4 trials, only 108 patients had a remission and did not either have a relapse and/or dropped out by the end of 12 months of continuing care,” lead study author Ed Pigott, PhD, a psychologist with NeuroAdvantage LLC in Clarksville, Maryland, told Medscape Medical News.

Sustained Benefit “Jaw Dropping”

“In other words, if you’re trying to look at sustained benefit, you’re only looking at 2.7%, which is a pretty jaw-dropping number,” added Dr. Pigott.

Overall, “the reviewed findings argue for a reappraisal of the current recommended standard of care of depression,” write the study authors.

“I believe there are likely some people where [antidepressants] are truly beneficial beyond placebo. The problem right now is that we simply have no way of knowing who those people are,” noted Dr. Pigott. “My hope is that this kind of analysis creates ‘more oxygen’ for looking at other kinds of approaches to treatment.”

The study was published in the August issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

When registering new drug application trials with the FDA, drug companies must prespecify the primary and secondary outcome measures, the investigators report. “Prespecification is essential to ensure the integrity of a trial and enables the discovery of when investigators selectively publish the measures that show the outcome the sponsors prefer following data collection and analysis, a form of researcher bias known as HARKing or ‘hypothesizing after the results are known’,” they write.

For this article, Dr. Pigott and his team reviewed the following meta-analyses:

• 1. Rising and colleagues (reviewed all efficacy trials for new drugs between 2001 and 2002)
• 2. Turner and colleagues (reviewed 74 past trials of 12 antidepressants)
• 3. Kirsch and colleagues, 2002 (reviewed 47 trials of 6 FDA-approved antidepressants)
• 4. Kirsch and colleagues, 2008 (reviewed depression severity and efficacy in 35 trials)

The researchers also sought to reevaluate the methods and findings of STAR*D, a randomized, controlled trial of patients with depression. Its prespecified primary outcome measure was the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD), whereas the Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology–Clinician-Rated (IDS-C30) was secondary for identifying remitted and responder patients.

“STAR*D was designed to identify the best next-step treatment for the many patients who fail to get adequate relief from their initial SSRI trial,” the study authors write.

“When I first read about STAR*D’s step 1 phase, it just seemed biased to me,” explained Dr. Pigott. “I thought of it as the ‘tag, you’re healed’ research design. Patients who were scored as having a remission during the first 4 to 6 weeks of up to 14 weeks of acute care treatment were counted as remitted, taken out of the subject pool, and put into the follow-up care phase. In other words, they didn’t have the ability to have a relapse. But as most people know, depression ebbs and flows.

“So what made me want to continue to follow this study was that it became clear that the only way that people were really going to be able to evaluate the antidepressants’ effectiveness was to wait for the publication of the follow-up findings,” he added. “After their major final summary study was published, I felt as though the results weren’t really being portrayed in a manner that was consistent with the study’s prespecified criteria.”

High Dropout, Low Remission Rates

In addition to reporting on low efficacy of antidepressants compared with placebo, the 4 meta-analyses “also document a second form of bias in which researchers fail to report the negative results for the prespecified primary outcome measure submitted to the FDA, while highlighting in published studies positive results from a secondary or even a new measure, as though it was their primary measure of interest,” the investigators write.

For example, they note, the meta-analysis from Rising and colleagues found that studies with favorable outcomes were almost 5 times more likely to be published and that over 26% of primary outcome measures were left out of journal articles. Turner and colleagues found that antidepressant studies were 16 times more likely to be published if favorable compared with those with unfavorable outcomes.

In reanalyzing the STAR*D methods, the researchers found that the high dropout rate resulted in frequently missed exit HRSD and IDS-C30 interviews. So the revised statistical analytical plan dropped the IDS-30 for the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self Report (QIDS-SR), which was given at each visit.

“Even with the extraordinary care of STAR*D, only about one fourth of patients achieved remission in step 1 [and] the dropout rate was slightly larger than the success rate,” the study authors write. Steps 2 through 4 also each showed increasingly fewer success rates and larger dropout rates.

Of the 4041 patients at the study’s initiation, 370 (9.2%) dropped out within 2 weeks, and only 1854 patients (45.9%) obtained remission “using the lenient QIDS-SR criteria.” Of these, 670 dropped out within a month of their remission, and only 108 “survived continuing care” and underwent the final assessment.

Dr. Pigott described reanalyzing STAR*D as being “a bit like an onion. Each time we thought we understood the results, we found another layer. It wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that we discovered that the secondary outcome measure, the QIDS-SR, was not originally supposed to be used as a research measure. What was particularly disconcerting to me was that in their summary article, they basically used the QIDS-SR to report all of the results, which clearly had an inflationary effect on the outcome.”

He also noted that STAR*D did not have a placebo design. “Because the patients knew they were receiving the active medication, I would have expected a higher remission rate than what you’d find normally in a placebo-controlled study.

“The inescapable conclusion from the STAR*D results is that we need to explore more seriously other forms of treatment (and combination thereof) that may be more effective. This effort will require developing new service delivery models to ensure that as treatments are identified, they are widely implemented,” the investigators conclude.

Read entire article here:  http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/727323
(Free registration required)

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• Why Antidepressants Don’t Work for Treating Depression, by Dr. Mark Hyman (3)
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A 23 minute TV expose on Big Pharma by ALJAZEERA (see video at bottom of this page)

This piece pulls no punches exposing the rampant fraud, fatal drug side effects, off label marketing, criminal practices  and “absolutely jaw dropping” payouts Pharma makes to psychiatrists/doctors.

• “There is so much money to be made in stealing from the United States Healthcare system,” says Patrick Byrnes, Taxpayers Against Fraud.

• Lewis Morris, US Department of Health states, “One of the things we are now looking at is going after the executives in these companies and holding them personally accountable.”

• Sharon Ormsky, FBI Financial Crimes Unit states, “Pharmaceutical fraud is one of our top three threats — everybody is touched by these frauds in the extent that when you look at the billions of dollars that go into healthcare for the United States, a good percent,  3-10% of that is believed to be siphoned off into fraud—that’s  money that  could be going to very needy patients.”

Now the U.S. government is fighting back.  In the last two years alone, the  government has fined six of America’s  top ten pharmaceutical companies for fraud.  Investigations are ongoing against another three.  In this period the industry has had to pay out over 5 billion dollars in fines, and topping the list is drug giant Pfizer, having recently settled civil & criminal charges resulting in $2.3 billion dollars —the biggest fraud case, the biggest criminal case, the biggest false claims act in U.S. history.   ALJAZEERA also exposes Pfizer’s “interesting way of doing business.  Witnesses in the case revealed just how the company persuaded doctors to prescribe its drugs. It entertained them in strip clubs, it told them that the blues teenagers feel when they don’t make the football team was signs of treatable depression and it paid them to endorse Pfizer drugs. One doctor received $150,000 in a year.

Also highlighted is the current scandal regarding antipsychotic drugs, including state law suits, dangerous documented side effects and how federal investigators are now looking into claims drug company Johnson & Johnson illegally marketed their antipsychotic drug Risperdal to children, paying “some of the most influential doctors in the field” in order to accomplish this.  And leading that pack sits none other than the  [now] infamous psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, who has been “credited” with the huge increase of children prescribed psychiatry’s most powerful/dangerous drugs, antipsychotics, while receiving millions in Pharma kickbacks that he failed to disclose.   Biederman is shown on tape being questioned under oath, and when asked “What rank are you?” Biederman responds, “Full Professor.” When asked “What comes after that?” Biederman responds, “GOD.”

This is a 23 minute expose well worth watching.

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by Jason Walsh

Saturday, August 14th

With drafts of the latest edition of the world’s leading psychiatry manual emerging, critics question the growing medicalisation of life’s problems

OVER THE past three decades, unhappiness has been redefined as depression, shyness has been reclassified as social anxiety disorder – even trivial complaints such as fussy eating are now being viewed through a psychiatric prism. Some of this is due to a single book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual , which critics claim is contributing to the ever-expanding empire of mental health. The next official edition of the DSM will be published in May 2013, but draft versions are currently doing the rounds.

Books abound on the creeping medicalisation of everyday life, television shows like In Treatment and The Sopranos revolve around endless therapy sessions, as do films by the likes of Woody Allen. According to clinical psychotherapist Áine Tubridy: “Many people’s problems have sociological causes, not medical ones. They are problems of living. Society needs to recognise that for many people life is bloody hard,” she says.

But there is growing criticism of the DSM itself and the entire model of diagnoses from within the psychiatric establishment.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Pat Bracken, clinical director of mental health services in west Cork, is unrelenting in his criticism of over-reliance on the DSM .

“Despite being a primarily American book, the DSM is used universally. The alternative is the International Classification of Diseases published by the World Health Organisation,” he says.

“The DSM really took off in the 1980s, introducing what are called ‘operationalised definitions’. That seemed more scientific – a psychiatrist could say: ‘This person fits these diagnostic criteria.’ It introduced a new way of thinking and a focus on diagnosis.”

The criticism boils down to this: reliance on the DSM reduces psychiatry to little more than a consensus on what kind of behaviour or thoughts are abnormal, not an evidence-based analysis of what is wrong in people’s lives.

Bracken says along with the DSM ’s rise there was a corresponding demise in the use of psychotherapy within the medical profession, even if there was an expansion of private use of therapies and counselling, many of which are of dubious efficacy. For Bracken though, the medicalisation of life’s problems creates the worry that “expert” intervention in private life is often disempowering and misses the point.
“The DSM reflects a growing trend to seek ‘experts’ for problems that once wouldn’t have been the domain of the expert: gambling, social anxiety, marriage problems and so on,” says Bracken. “These were once seen as the vicissitudes of life. The demise of organised religion has also contributed to the growing social demand. The DSM legitimises that process and contributes to it,” he says.

This argument links the medical critique of the DSM back to its social implications. The repercussions of privatised social lives driven by the breakup of traditional sources of solidarity outside the family unit – organised religion, trade unions, political parties and other communal organisations – has left individuals confused, lonely and often frightened and encouraged to seek therapy when in fact the problem is a socio-political one.

What, though, is to be done when a patient arrives at their GP’s surgery in despair?

Niall Crumlish, deputy external affairs and policy director of the College of Psychiatry of Ireland, is a locum consultant psychiatrist at St James’s Hospital in Dublin. While he recognises the limitations of psychiatric diagnosis, a patient who asks for help must be given it, he says.

“There are cases for arguing that we are both over-medicalised and under-medicalised,” he says. “There is a huge number of people presenting to primary care providers [seeking psychiatric help] but there are also many not presenting, people with major depression who are functioning but at a much lower level than they might.

“Without the DSM we’d be losing a basic foundation for what we are doing. There is some validity to diagnosis. There is such a thing as a depressive syndrome that you could produce biologically if you were so minded,” he says.

An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this July by two of the DSM ’s authors argued the forthcoming fifth edition should be of interest to all health providers, not just psychiatrists.

The DSM is in part a product of the US psychiatric establishment being rocked in the 1960s. David Rosenhan, a follower of the controversial Scottish “anti-psychiatrist” Dr RD Laing, virtually smashed psychoanalysis as it was practised in America almost single handedly.

Rosenhan and some colleagues presented themselves at several mental hospitals claiming to have a sole auditory hallucination – a voice in their heads saying “thud” – and then behaved normally. They were all diagnosed with a variety of mental illnesses: schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis. They were eventually released, months later, when they “admitted” they were mentally ill and pretended to get better, demonstrating – they said – that psychiatrists were unable to distinguish between the sane and the insane.

The experiment’s objective wasn’t to prove the obvious point that it is possible to pretend to be mentally ill. Instead it demonstrated that, once admitted, all behaviour by patients is pathologised and ordinary actions were taken as evidence of illness. This rocked the establishment and one hospital challenged Rosenhan to do it again. He agreed and the hospital soon declared it had discovered 41 fakes. Rosenhan then announced he had sent no one for the second experiment.

According to Bracken, this body blow coincided with the increasing use of drug treatment for illnesses: “In the 1950s and 1960s, psychoanalysis was very dominant. Then you had a rejection of that and a move toward the DSM and the psychopharmacology revolution. “Today, the efficacy of the drugs is being called into question,” he says.

By moving away from endless psychoanalysis the diagnostic model favoured by the DSM , particularly from the 1980 third edition onwards, seemed to offer an answer to the problem. Patients symptoms were analysed on a more or less statistical basis and those who fit a specified pattern were declared to have the relevant condition.

Although it has since spread worldwide, the American bias of the DSM is clear: given that unhappiness is not covered by health insurance policies but major depression is, a massive expansion of diagnoses of depression and related illnesses is unsurprising. However, DSM critics argue the book is part of a wider reshaping of our understanding of what it is to be human, not simply a licence to malinger but pathologising everyday experiences.

Read the rest of this article here: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0814/1224276782556.html

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Note: To see side effects of psychiatric drugs on pregnant women that have been reported to the US FDA,  click on this link http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/medwatch_psych_drug_adverse_reactions.php scroll all the way down in the Drug Class/Drug Name drop down link and select ANTIDEPRESSANTS, then in the AGE RANGE category, select  age range of 0-1 years.

OpEdNews
By K. L. Carlson
August 5, 2010

Mom’s Opportunity to Access Health, Education, Research, and Support for Postpartum Depression Act sounds very supportive of new mothers. The truth is just the opposite. The cleverly worded title can be shortened to the Mothers Act and it was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It was introduced by Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey; the state with the most pharmaceutical companies’ headquarters. According to the public interest group, Common Cause, Senator Menendez received over $2 million from the healthcare industry, including drug companies.

The Mothers Act was included in the immense health plan that was recently signed into law. New mothers need to be made aware that this Act was not written to benefit them, but to benefit the drug companies. This Act will have grave results literally.

Postpartum depression, as defined in the Act, is a “mood disorder” that has three categories. The most severe category is “postpartum psychosis.” Notice the use of psychiatric terms. The public is supposed to believe that motherhood can cause mental illness. Fear of a new mother suffering “postpartum psychosis” is then increased by the Act stating that one in every one thousand new mothers will suffer the mental illness.

The Act states that postpartum depression goes undiagnosed and untreated due to “social stigma surrounding depression and mental illness.” So giving birth and becoming a new mother with vastly fluctuating hormones and physiological changes, as well as the demands of a new baby, is now a mental illness. What is the probability the Mothers Act would have been written if psychiatric drugs did not reap more than $330 billion dollars a year?

The Act establishes federally funded grants to screen all new mothers before they leave their birthing centers and to continue screening during the first year. Although it is unknown why some women suffer depression after giving birth, and most likely there are many reasons including concerns of financially supporting a new baby, the pharmaceutical industry has ensured that it is considered a mental illness that will lead to non-curing, addictive, dangerous psychiatric drugs. As stated in the Act, “the new mother shall be referred to an appropriate mental healthcare provider.”

“There is no evidence that any mental disorder is caused by chemical imbalance,” a Surgeon General’s report states. The much-touted idea of brain chemical imbalance is a total myth with no scientific research ever supporting it. All psychiatric “disorders” are voted into existence by the American Psychiatric Association and have no objective diagnostic tests, such as blood tests or hormone tests. The Mothers Act is the latest version of the old story of the Emperor’s New Clothes – get people to believe something exists when in fact it does not. Mothers who have trouble emotionally after giving birth do not have any mental illness. They may have temporary hormonal imbalance. They may need a stronger emotional support system to feel confident they can get help with the new baby. They may need financial assistance. But they are not mentally ill.

The Act also funds clinical research “for the development and evaluation of new treatments for postpartum conditions, including new biological agents.” That means synthetic drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has ensured more tax dollars will continue to flow into its coffers.

“The suicide rate is 718 for every 100,000 people taking SSRI/SNRI drugs in clinical trials,” Dr. Arif Khan told NIH in August 2002. SSRI/SNRI drugs are antidepressant drugs, which is an oxymoron because the drugs cause depression. They should be called pro-depression drugs. The suicide rate in the general population not taking psychiatric drugs is about 11 for every 100,000 people. In fact, all 33 brands of SSRI/SNRI drugs carry the FDA’s most severe warning, a Black Box Warning, for suicide. Besides suicide the drugs have more than 100 other severe side effects, including anxiety, panic attacks, irritability, hallucinations, hostility, aggressiveness, and mania. Antidepressants are mind-altering drugs that have never been shown in any clinical study to help depressed people much more than the herb St. John’s Wort or the placebo (sugar pill). In one study the placebo group had significantly better results than the group receiving the antidepressant drug, confirming that the body has natural ways to deal with the ups and downs of life.

Once people are labeled with a mental disorder, such as postpartum psychosis, their behavior is then blamed on the disorder when in fact the drugs are causing the behavior. For a real life example, check out Amy Philo’s story on You Tube. She was anxious because her newborn son had a severe allergic reaction to a formula given to her by a physician. Amy’s fear and anxiety for her child was absolutely normal and would have subsided once she had her baby safely at home. Instead, she was diagnosed as suffering from postpartum depression and given an antidepressant. She asked if the drug would be safe for her baby since she was breast-feeding. A physician told her yes, the drug would make her baby happy too. Research results do not support what the doctor told Amy. “In conclusion, our results suggest that maternal exposure to fluoxetine (Prozac, Luvox, Sarafem, and Symbyax) during pregnancy and lactation results in enduring behavioral alterations “throughout life.” All psychiatric drugs, including antidepressants, are neurotoxins. That means they kill nerve cells everywhere in the body.

“After only being on the antidepressant for a couple of days I had thoughts of killing my baby.” Amy was horrified, but instead of blaming the drug’s known side effects, the physician blamed the label of postpartum depression. Obviously, Amy’s “mental illness” had worsened and she now needed to be put in a psychiatric ward. She didn’t agree to the incarceration but her resistance was again labeled as due to her mental illness. The white coats know best! Fortunately Amy’s story has a happy ending. She suspected the antidepressant was causing her strange thought patterns. She managed to be released from the psychiatric ward after only a brief stay and she stopped taking the drugs they had given her. All of Amy’s symptoms that had been labeled by the medical community as postpartum depression symptoms ceased when she stopped taking the drugs. Her baby and she were home together. A happy ending. That will not be the case when they initiate the Mothers Act. Since every mother is potential income to psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry, we can predict that the majority of new mothers will be labeled and drugged for postpartum depression. It is about money, not health.

The pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry are conjoined twins joined at the wallet. “Adoption of the Mothers Act is a positive development for women and their families,” says Alan F. Schatzberg, MD, President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Scharzberg was one of several influential psychiatrists who Senator Grassley’s investigations found had failed to disclose financial ties to pharmaceutical companies.

“In order to survive we psychiatrists must go where the money is,” Dr. Steven Sharfstein, APA Vice President told Congress. The money is in prescription psychiatric drugs as demonstrated by the astounding fact that in 2007 the five leading psychiatric drugs grossed more money than the gross national product of half the countries in the world.

The French philosopher Voltaire wrote, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” The conjoined twins of the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry are doing their best to have the public believe the absurdity that the stress and emotional roller coaster of becoming a new mother is a mental illness. Then they get these vulnerable women to commit the atrocity of taking mind-altering, addictive antidepressant drugs that go directly into the baby through the mother’s milk. These drugs can make a new mother’s life a living hell. Ask Amy Philo.

Even if the mother does not suffer visible side effects from an antidepressant, she is still consuming an addictive drug that is a neurotoxin. And if she breast feeds, her baby is consuming a drug that has been shown to cause severe, irreparable damage.

Pregnant women taking antidepressants have babies who are 6 times more likely to have primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) or a developing lung disorder. PPH is extremely serious. The drug causes developmental distortion of the lungs leading to lack of oxygen to crucial organs such as the brain, kidneys and liver. PPH is often fatal. Babies who initially survive PPH have long-term health problems including breathing difficulties, seizures and developmental disorders.

K.L. Carlson is a former drug rep turned whistleblower, author of the compelling expose, Diary of a Legal Drug Dealer – One Drug Rep. Dares to Tell You the Truth. She is also a CCHR International Commissioner (advisor)

Read the rest of this  article here:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/PHARMACEUTICAL-S-CONTROL-P-by-K-L-Carlson-100803-846.html

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The Star Phoenix
By Mark Lemstra
July 29, 2010

We could save $2 billion a year on health-care costs in Saskatchewan while improving health outcomes if we adopt evidence-based protocols.

To do so, we need to find about $40 million of efficiency in each of about 50 areas.

This is the third article in a five-part series on depression. My first column discussed the limitations in diagnosing depression. The second presented literature reviews that concluded antidepressants are no more effective than placebos in treating depression.

This column explains how the drug companies deceive us. Let’s start with some general information and proceed to specific examples for antidepressants.

In 2008, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine wrote an editorial for the Journal of the American Medical Association, titled: Industry sponsored research: A broken system?

Based on her tenure as the editor of the world’s most prestigious medical journal, Dr. Marcia Angell made some accusations. She wrote that drug companies often design studies, conduct the data analysis, decide which data will be included or suppressed, write the papers, pay for prestigious clinicians to put their name on papers already written by the drug company, and then decide how and when the paper will be published.

Dr. Angell concluded: “Drug companies now finance most clinical research on prescription drugs, and there is mounting evidence that they often skew the research they sponsor to make their drugs look better and safer. Physicians can no longer rely on the medical literature for valid and reliable information.”

She also published a best selling and award-winning novel, The Truth about Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.

Let’s look at some examples from anti-depressants.

A research team from the United States, which was skeptical about the benefits of antidepressants, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain results from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for all placebo-controlled trials. The team was startled to learn that 40 per cent of the studies had been suppressed because of negative results.

When all the studies were included, incorporating the negative studies, the authors concluded that “antidepressants are little more than active placebos, drugs with very little specific benefit, but with serious side-effects.”

The resulting publication in Prevention and Treatment made headlines around the world. And although regulatory agencies in Europe have begun to respond, there has been no response in North America.

At this point, let’s discuss the potential side-effects of antidepressants in a review from Harvard Medical School, titled: What are the real risks of antidepressants?

The most serious of these includes the increased risk of attempted suicide, especially among children. Other side-effects include insomnia, skin rashes, headaches, joint and muscle pain, stomach upset, nausea, diarrhea, reduced blood clotting capacity, stomach bleeding, uterine bleeding, tics, muscle spasms, trembling limbs, restlessness, severe anxiety, reduced sexual interest, reduced sexual performance, reduced sexual satisfaction, disturbed heart rhythms and reduced liver function.

There are also complications when antidepressants are taken with other drugs, and there is a long list of side-effects when antidepressant use is discontinued, including dizziness, loss of co-ordination, fatigue, burning sensations, blurred vision, insomnia, vivid dreams, nausea, diarrhea, flu-like symptoms, irritability, anxiety and crying spells.

Recently, the antidepressant Serzone was removed from the market after it was associated with hepatitis and liver failure.

The most worrisome side-effect is the increased risk of suicide attempt so let’s take a closer look.

Another review from the Food and Drug Administration found that not only do antidepressants provide no benefit to children, but the drugs are associated with a 50 per cent increase in suicidal behaviour.

Regrettably, these negative results, too, were buried by the drug companies.

Read the rest of this article here:  http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/Pharmaceutical+companies+deceive+public/3336124/story.html

Previous articles in this series: Effect of antidepressants, placebos similar by Mark Lemstra
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/health/Effect+antidepressants+placebos+similar/3307896/story.html

Expanding mental disorders list adds to cost by Mark Lemstra
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/health/Expanding+mental+disorders+list+adds+cost/3280676/story.html

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Though this article includes some scientific/medical terminology, the  significance of what the neurologist is describing is extremely relevant:  Unlike regular “diseases” there is no clear pathology for psychiatric disorders.   See this previous blog/news entry by CCHR on this same subject: Wake Up FDA—Even Drug Giants Are Admitting No Lab Tests Exist To Prove If Antidepressants Work  http://www.cchrint.org/2010/02/05/wake-up-fda%E2%80%94even-drug-giants-are-admitting-no-lab-tests-exist-to-prove-if-antidepressants-work/

ScienceMag.com

by Greg Miller, July 28, 2010

Earlier this year, pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced it was ceasing drug-discovery research for psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. The move, along with cutbacks at other companies, has raised concerns about where the next generation of neuropsychiatric drugs will come from—see this Friday’s issue of Science for a feature article exploring this topic.

Yesterday, ScienceInsider spoke with neuroscientist Menelas Pangalos, who in May took over as AstraZeneca’s head of drug-discovery research and early development. His comments have been edited for brevity.

Q: What do the recent changes mean for neuroscience research at AstraZeneca?

M.P.: Basically, from a research perspective, we’re pulling out of the psychiatry space. We’re still very much focused on neurology, so Alzheimer’s disease, pain, cognition, … those areas are still very active.

Q: What makes research on psychiatric drugs less attractive?

M.P.: Our understanding of disease pathophysiology is still relatively in its infancy.

These are complex and heterogeneous disorders. Also, the size and robustness of the clinical trials made it a less attractive area for us to be in compared to other areas we were working in. There has to be a much better alignment between preclinical and clinical work.

Q: How so?

M.P.: In neurology, if you take stroke as an example, preclinical models of stroke tend to be occlusion of the middle cerebral artery, which causes ischemic damage in the brain of a rodent or nonhuman primate that mirrors fairly well what happens in the human situation.

When you start getting into psychiatry, we have tail suspension assays, we have forced swim assays, we have learned helplessness assays … none of which have been developed through a detailed understanding of the pathophysiology. [In these tests, researchers measure how long it takes a rodent to stop struggling after being suspended by its tail or placed in a pool of liquid; giving up is presumed to be a rodent version of despair.]

Read the entire article here:  http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/this-is-your-brain-off-drugs-why.html

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BBC News
By Philippa Roxby
July 28, 2010

Diagnosing psychiatric illness has always been controversial, mental health experts say. Now some are worried that a new draft of the diagnostic ‘bible’ for mental health medicine could result in almost everyone being diagnosed with a mental condition.

The diagnostic ‘bible’ in question is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association.

The US manual is used worldwide as a basis for diagnosis, research and medical education.

Its forthcoming fifth edition – known in the profession as as DSM-5 – is set to contain a range of new diagnoses, including conditions such as “mixed anxiety depression, psychosis risk syndrome and temper dysregulation disorder”, as well as the more mundane binge eating.

The danger, say experts writing in a special issue of the Journal of Mental Health, is that there has not been enough research to back up these changes.

Even the smallest shift in how to define something like depression could have huge implications.

Self-fulfilling

Dr Felicity Callard, senior research fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, says it is crucial to understand what happens when people are over-diagnosed.

“There are very big potential implications on how people, particularly adolescents, respond to being told they have a mental illness. It’s likely there will be harmful consequences,” she said.

She cites the “at risk psychosis syndrome” diagnosis as an example of a label which is given to young people who ‘might’ have psychosis – characterised by abrupt changes in personality. It is a diagnosis of something which could result in a disorder, but only potentially. That can have complicated effects, she says.

“Imagine a young person being told that they are “at risk” of developing a mental illness. How would that affect that individual’s behaviour? Could it lead to increased stigma or even discrimination? And how might it affect the parents and family of that person too?”

Jerome Wakefield of New York University’s Department of Psychiatry writes: “One of the most frightening scenarios is the potential for medicating people – particularly children – who haven’t yet shown any signs of illness in a bid to ‘treat’ them.”

These concerns are shared by a number of clinical experts in the Journal of Mental Health.

Read entire article here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10787342

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The StarPhoenix
By Mark Lemstra
July 22, 2010

We could save $2 billion a year on health-care costs in Saskatchewan while actually improving health outcomes if we adopt evidence-based protocols.

To do so, we need to go line by line through budgets to find about $40 million of efficiencies in each of about 50 areas.

This is the second article in a five-part series on depression. The first one discussed how there is no medical test to diagnose depression; the interview scales have no known validity or reliability because there is no comparative gold standard; the varying interview scales result in different diagnostic conclusions; and almost every life reaction is considered a symptom for depression — including things such as indecisiveness, inability to concentrate, changes in weight or sleeping pattern.

None of this is very scientific.

From 1952 to 1980, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) described mental disorders as reactions to environmental events such as the death of a loved one.

To make depression seem more medical, the editors of the DSM published a revision in 1980, dismissing environmental influences as causative events.

A small group of practitioners voted and agreed that depression should no longer be diagnosed if the symptoms were caused by factors such as bereavement, substance use or other medical conditions.

Although this purely medical concept is obviously good for pharmaceutical companies, it ignores the reality that almost all cases of depression are triggered by stressful life events.

So let’s review the medical or biological basis for depression.

Numerous theories have been suggested, including noradrenalin abnormalities, cortisol excess, hippocampal insufficiency and neurotrophic factor.

All have been dismissed. The latest theory is neurotransmitter deficiency with a focus on serotonin, although norepinephrine and dopamine are also included.

The problem with this latest theory is that it, too, cannot be backed up by data. Molecular Psychiatry published a literature review of all papers that studied what happens when you lower neurotransmitter levels. It found that depletion did not result in depression.

In other words, low levels of serotonin, norepinephrine or dopamine do not cause depression.

Read entire article:  http://www.thestarphoenix.com/health/Effect+antidepressants+placebos+similar/3307896/story.html

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