Posts Tagged ‘medication’

Connecticut Shooting: Long-shot DNA tests ordered on Lanza, psych med questions ignored

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Digital Journal – Jan 4 2013
by Ralph Lopez

Wayne Carver, Chief Medical Examiner for the State of CT, has ordered controversial DNA tests on suspected Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza which critics say could end up stigmatizing sufferers of autism.

Meanwhile investigators remain silent on the questions regarding Adam Lanza’s reported history of psychiatric medications. Some classes of these drugs have clearly linked to violent behavior. Other scientists regard the drugs as causative of episodes of violent behavior.  The Los Angeles Times reported Lanza’s former babysitter said Lanza was on some sort of medication since age 10. The former baby sitter, Ryan Kraft, is now an aerospace engineer in Hermosa Beach. Kraft said:

“I know there was something administered. I’m not sure what.”

And the Washington Post reported last month that a neighbor of Lanza’s, the suspected shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings, said that Lanza was on some form of medication. On Monday, December 17th, the Seattle Pi said that police had issued warrants for Lanza’s medical records to determine if Lanza was being treated for a medical or psychiatric condition, and what, if anything, was prescribed. No results of their examination of the records have been released. It has been reported that Lanza was diagnosed with a form of autism, for which a controversial class of drugs, known as SSRIs, have in the past been prescribed. Dr. Peter Breggin, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, told the House Committee on Veterans Affairsin February of 2010:

“There is overwhelming evidence that the SSRIs and other stimulating antidepressants cause suicidality and aggression in children and adults of all ages.”

SSRIs, which stands for “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors” are disproportionately linked with violent behavior in studies such as one from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices. Time Magazine reported the results of the study in a January 2011, article entitled “Top Ten Legal Drugs Linked to Violence.” The article named 31 drugs that are disproportionately linked with violent behavior. In an article “The Batman Shooter and His Psyche Drugs,”Dr. Gary G. Kohls, MD, detailed the research on thousands of recorded incidents of violence linked to SSRIs. In the article Dr. Kohls wrote of the presence of certain psychiatric medications in almost all recent notorious mass shootings such as “the Batman shooter” in Aurora, Colorado, and the killings at Columbine. Kohls said:

“The thousands of examples reported…represent just the tip of what surely is an enormous iceberg, since even the FDA estimates that as many as 99% of adverse events from any given drug is never reported to that agency.”

DNA testing ordered The testing of DNA for genetic mutations which may be predictors of criminal behavior is a hotly debated science. Robert Nussbaum, a geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco, told Bloomberg News:

“It’s a shot in the dark that’s unlikely to show anything…If they find something associated with autism, I’m afraid that it might have the effect of stigmatizing autistic people. I can see a whole morass coming out of this.”

And Ellen Wright Clayton, a specialist in law and genetics at Vanderbilt University, told NPR’s All Thing Consideredthat a person’s genes could not reveal why an individual commits mass murder. When asked if a person’s genes could explain this, Clayton told NPR:

“Absolutely not…Genetic variants do not explain criminal behavior.”

A call by this reporter to the Newtown Police Department, Public Affairs Office, for comment has not been returned.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/340461#ixzz2H1uS814p

Despite 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.

Read: Another Senseless Shooting, Another Psychiatric Drug?

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InfoWars—Dr. Lynne Fenton, the Batman killer, drugs and drug money

Tuesday, July 31st, 2012

Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
July 31, 2012

“This is a high stakes game. WHAT DRUGS WAS HOLMES TAKING?”

People don’t get it. The media don’t get it and they don’t want to get it. Billions of dollars are riding on the drugs Dr. Lynne Fenton may have prescribed to her patient, James Holmes, the accused Batman shooter.

And when billions of dollars in potentially lost revenue are hanging in the balance, the interested parties take action. They’re serious about their money. They don’t screw around.

You see, if James Holmes was, for example, taking Prozac, all of a sudden no one wants to take it. If doctors prescribe it to patients, the patients say, “Hey, wasn’t this the drug that nutcase took before he killed all those people in the theater?”

So right now, in Aurora, there are pharmaceutical people on the scene

And that’s not all. Congress holds hearings, not because they want to, but because they want to look like they’re doing the right thing. And at those hearings, all sorts of nasty stuff comes out about Prozac. It’s big news. The studies that showed the drug was dangerous, that it could and would cause people to commit suicide and homicide. Boom. More bad press for the manufacturer. More investigations. More lost revenue. So right now, in Aurora, there are pharmaceutical people on the scene. Not just low-level goofballs, but competent investigators. They want to know what drugs James Holmes was prescribed. They need to know. And behind the scenes, people with clout are making phone calls. These pharma types are talking to government agents and it’s crazy time and damage-control time, and nobody is laughing. This is a high-stakes game. WHAT DRUGS WAS HOLMES TAKING?

There is pressure on both attorneys in the case, too. And the cops. With an insanity plea lurking in the wings, Holmes’ medical records could very well see the light of day. That would let everybody know what the drugs were. So somebody is calling the governor of Colorado, and other state officials, and they’re trying to maneuver and manipulate the legal process, to make the medical records vanish.

Come on. This isn’t just a murder case. Now it’s about money. Big pharma lawyers are reading up on Colorado law to find loopholes, ways to get around revealing Holmes’ medical history.

Holmes is now a pawn. He’s the nowhere kid who is going to be shuttled around on the game board to save the drug money for the people who own it.

Holmes’ psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, was reprimanded by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners, in 2005, for prescribing drugs to several patients, including herself, without entering the information in patient records

The money is dirty. It always was. It’s filthy. It’s been made on the backs of people who have died at the rate of 100,000 a year in the US alone. That’s a million people per decade—pharmaceutically caused deaths. The heads of these drug companies and their allied banks are Mafiosa. They inflict more human damage in a day than all the goombahs who have ever shot up pizza joints on Mulberry Street or dealt narcotics to addicts across the world, since Sicily puts itself on the map as the center of the Cosa Nostra.

Holmes’ psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, was reprimanded by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners, in 2005, for prescribing drugs to several patients, including herself, without entering the information in patient records. She could now find a target painted on her back, as the drug companies try to make her a patsy, an “irresponsible and incompetent doctor who didn’t give Mr. Holmes what he truly needed.” They would do this to take the drugs off the hook. “In the hands of a good psychiatrist, the proper medications would have worked well.” Who knows? Maybe they’ll claim she didn’t even treat Holmes directly, but supervised interns or grad students, who actually worked with Holmes.

I wrote the following as part of a 1999 white paper for The Truth Seeker Foundation, in the wake of the Columbine massacre. So the information is from that period. The white paper was titled: WHY DID THEY DO IT? THE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ACROSS AMERICA.

It’s quite long; I’ve only printed an excerpt here. You can go to my blog and read the whole thing. It’s very relevant to the issues at hand.

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com

The bulk of American media is afraid to go after psychiatric drugs as a cause of violence. This fear stems, in part, from the sure knowledge that expert attack dogs are waiting in the wings, funded by big-time pharmaceutical companies.

There are doctors and researchers as well who have seen a dark truth about these drugs in the journals, but are afraid to stand up and speak out. After all, the medical culture punishes no one as severely as its own defectors.

if the mothers of the young killers and young victims began to see a terrible knowledge about the psychiatric drugs swim into view, a knowledge they hadn’t imagined, and if THEY joined forces, the earth would shake.

And what of the federal government itself? The FDA licenses every drug released for public use and certifies that it is safe and effective. If a real tornado started at the public level, if the mothers of the young killers and young victims began to see a terrible knowledge about the psychiatric drugs swim into view, a knowledge they hadn’t imagined, and if THEY joined forces, the earth would shake.

After commenting on some of the adverse effects of the antidepressant drug Prozac, psychiatrist Peter Breggin notes, “From the initial studies, it was also apparent that a small percentage of Prozac patients became psychotic.”

Prozac, in fact, endured a rocky road in the press for a time. Stories on it rarely appear now. The major media have backed off. But on February 7th, 1991, Amy Marcus’ Wall Street Journal article on the drug carried the headline, “Murder Trials Introduce Prozac Defense.” She wrote, “A spate of murder trials in which defendants claim they became violent when they took the antidepressant Prozac are imposing new problems for the drug’s maker, Eli Lilly and Co.”

Also on February 7, 1991, the New York Times ran a Prozac piece headlined, “Suicidal Behavior Tied Again to Drug: Does Antidepressant Prompt Violence?”

In his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Breggin mentions that the Donahue show (Feb. 28, 1991) “put together a group of individuals who had become compulsively self-destructive and murderous after taking Prozac and the clamorous telephone and audience response confirmed the problem.”

Breggin also cites a troubling study from the February 1990 American Journal of Psychiatry (Teicher et al, v.147:207-210) which reports on “six depressed patients, previously free of recent suicidal ideation, who developed intense, violent suicidal preoccupations after 2-7 weeks of fluoxetine [Prozac] treatment.’ The suicidal preoccupations lasted from three days to three months after termination of the treatment. The report estimates that 3.5 percent of Prozac users were at risk. While denying the validity of the study, Dista Products, a division of Eli Lilly, put out a brochure for doctors dated August 31, 1990, stating that it was adding ‘suicidal ideation’ to the adverse events section of its Prozac product information.”

An earlier study, from the September 1989 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, by Joseph Lipiniski, Jr., indicates that, in five examined cases, people on Prozac developed what is called akathisia. Symptoms include intense anxiety, inability to sleep, the “jerking of extremities,” and “bicycling in bed or just turning around and around.” Breggin comments that akathisia “may also contribute to the drug’s tendency to cause self-destructive or violent tendencies … Akathisia can become the equivalent of biochemical torture and could possibly tip someone over the edge into self-destructive or violent behavior … The June 1990 Health Newsletter, produced by the Public Citizen Research Group, reports, ‘Akathisia, or symptoms of restlessness, constant pacing, and purposeless movements of the feet and legs, may occur in 10-25 percent of patients on Prozac.’”

The well-known publication, California Lawyer, in a December 1998 article called “Protecting Prozac,” mentions other highly qualified critics of the drug: “David Healy, MD, an internationally renowned psychopharmacologist, has stated in sworn deposition that ‘contrary to Lilly’s view, there is a plausible cause-and-effect relationship between Prozac’ and suicidal-homicidal events. An epidemiological study published in 1995 by the British Medical Journal also links Prozac to increased suicide risk.”

When pressed, proponents of these SSRI drugs sometimes say, “Well, the benefits for the general population far outweigh the risk,” or, “Maybe in one or two tragic cases the dosage prescribed was too high.” But the problem will not go away on that basis. A shocking review-study published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases (1996, v.184, no.2), written by Rhoda L. Fisher and Seymour Fisher, called “Antidepressants for Children,” concludes: “Despite unanimous literature of double-blind studies indicating that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos in treating depression in children and adolescents, such medications continue to be in wide use.”

In wide use. This despite such contrary information and the negative, dangerous effects of these drugs.

There are other studies: “Emergence of self-destructive phenomena in children and adolescents during fluoxetine treatment,” published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (1991, vol.30), written by RA King, RA Riddle, et al. It reports self-destructive phenomena in 14% (6/42) of children and adolescents (10-17 years old) who had treatment with fluoxetine (Prozac) for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

July, 1991. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Hisako Koizumi, MD, describes a thirteen-year-old boy who was on Prozac: “full of energy,” “hyperactive,” “clown-like.” All this devolved into sudden violent actions which were “totally unlike him.” [Sound like James Holmes?]

September, 1991. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Author Laurence Jerome reports the case of a ten-year old who moves with his family to a new location. Becoming depressed, the boy is put on Prozac by a doctor. The boy is then “hyperactive, agitated … irritable.” He makes a “somewhat grandiose assessment of his own abilities.” Then he calls a stranger on the phone and says he is going to kill him. The Prozac is stopped, and the symptoms disappear.

[What is true about Prozac is true about Paxil or Zoloft or any of the other SSRI antidepressants. And be warned: suddenly withdrawing from any psychiatric drug can be extremely dangerous to the patient. See www.breggin.com on this subject and how to handle it.]

Ritalin, manufactured by Novartis, is the close cousin to speed which is given to millions of American schoolchildren for a condition called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). ADD and ADHD, for which no organic causes have ever been found, are touted as disease-conditions that afflict the young, causing hyperactivity, unmanageability, and learning problems. Of course, when you name a disorder or a syndrome and yet can find no single provable organic cause for it, you have nothing more than a loose collection of behaviors with an arbitrary title.

Correction: you also have a pharmaceutical bonanza.

Read the rest of the article here:

To see a list of international drug advisory warnings and studies on psychiatric drugs and violence  click here

To see a partial list of school shooters documented to be under the influence of psychiatric drugs, click here

To visit the psychiatric drug side effects search engine – click here

 

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Another Mass Shooting, Another Psychiatric Drug? Federal Investigation Long Overdue

Friday, July 20th, 2012

Fact: Despite 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.

Fact: At least 31 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence have been committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 162 wounded and 72 killed (in other school shootings, information about their drug use was never made public—neither confirming or refuting if they were under the influence of prescribed drugs).

Fact: Between 2004 and 2011, there have been over 11,000 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system of psychiatric drug side effects related to violence.  These include 300 cases of homicide, nearly 3,000 cases of mania and over 7,000 cases of aggression.  Note:  By the FDA’s own admission, only 1-10% of side effects are ever reported to the FDA, so the actual number of side effects occurring are most certainly higher.

Fact: It took months for  the release of information showing that police had found psychiatric drugs in the apartment of Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter, James Holmes—including the anti-anxiety drug clonazepam and the antidepressant sertraline, the generic version of the antidepressant Zoloft.

Colorado shooter James Holmes was under the care of psychiatrist Lynne Fenton prior to the shootings. Police found antidepressant and anti-anxiety drugs in Holmes apartment.

Click here to sign the Petition: Call for Federal Investigation of Psychiatric Drugs, School Shootings & Senseless Violence

Of the 31 people who committed acts of violence that were documented to be under the influence of psychiatric drugs, ten were seeing either a psychiatrist or psychologist.  See the list of school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence by those on psychiatric drugs here.

School-related acts of violence aren’t the only cases commonly found to be under the influence of psychiatric drugs.  There are 12 other recent acts of senseless violence committed by individuals taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in an additional 46 dead and 23 wounded.

A bill introduced in New York in 2000 proposed police investigate psychiatric drug in all cases of violent crimes and suicides. This is a bill that must be reintroduced and passed on state and federal levels. Click image to read the bill

Despite 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.

The correlation between psychiatric drugs and acts of violence and homicide is well documented – both by international drug regulatory warnings and studies, as well as by hundreds of cases where high profile acts of violence/mass murder were committed by individuals under the influence of psychiatric drugs.

The New York State Senate recognized this as far back as 2000, introducing a bill which would “require police to report to the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), certain crimes and suicides committed by persons using psychotropic drugs,” citing “a large body of scientific research establishing a connection between violence and suicide and the use of psychotropic drugs.”

Unfortunately that bill stalled out in the finance committee.   By reviewing the international drug regulatory warnings, studies, and adverse reaction reports submitted to the US FDA below, it is evident that the reintroduction of the New York bill is needed on a federal level in order to determine just how many crimes and acts of violence are being committed by individuals under the influence of drugs documented to induce violence, mania, psychosis, aggression, hostility and  homicide.

As the world’s leading mental health watchdog, CCHR has for decades investigated hundreds of acts of senseless violence, working alongside investigative reporters,  law enforcement, as well as legislative hearings, such as those held in Colorado following the 1999 Columbine  massacre  (ringleader Eric Harris was found to be under the influence of the antidepressant Luvox, Dylan Klebold’s autopsy reports were never unsealed).

And while there is never one simple explanation for what drives a human being  to commit such unspeakable acts, all too often one common denominator has surfaced in hundreds of cases—prescribed psychiatric drugs which are documented to cause mania, psychosis, violence, suicide and in some cases,  homicidal ideation. It is an injustice that the general public are not being  informed about the well documented links between psychiatric drugs and violence, and so once again we present the facts:

There have been 22 international drug regulatory warnings issued on psychiatric drugs causing violence, mania, hostility, aggression, psychosis, and other violent type reactions.  These warnings have been issued in the United States, European Union, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

Click image to read MANIA—The shocking link between psychiatric drugs, suicide, violence and mass murder

In determining what would prompt a person  to commit such brutal and senseless crimes, the press must ask the right questions,  including:  What, if any, prescribed psychotropic drugs the perpetrator may have been on (or in withdrawal from).

Read the international drug regulatory warnings issued on psychiatric drugs causing violence, mania, hostility, aggression, psychosis, and other violent type reactions.

See the recent study from PLoS One here on psychiatric drugs being linked to violence.

Watch this short interview with Michael Moore, author, director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, where he calls for a federal investigation into the link between prescribed drugs and mass shootings such as the 1999 Columbine massacre.

At least 31 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence were committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs. It is important to note the following lists cases where the information about the shooters psychiatric drug use was made public.

It took months for  the release of information showing that police had found psychiatric drugs in the apartment of Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter, James Holmes—including the anti-anxiety drug clonazepam and the antidepressant sertraline, the generic version of the antidepressant Zoloft.

Note that all these mass shootings didn’t just occur in the United States.

Of these 31, ten were seeing either a psychiatrist (8 of them) or psychologist (2 of them).  It is not known whether or not the others were seeing a psychiatrist, as it has not been published.

  1. St. Louis, Missouri – January 15, 2013: 34-year-old Sean Johnson walked onto the Stevens Institute of Business & Arts campus and shot the school’s financial aid director once in the chest, then shot himself in the torso. Johnson had been taking prescribed drugs for an undisclosed mental illness.
  2. Snohomish County, Washington – October 24, 2011: A 15-year-old girl went to Snohomish High School where police alleged that she stabbed a girl as many as 25 times just before the start of school, and then stabbed another girl who tried to help her injured friend. Prior to the attack the girl had been taking “medication” and seeing a psychiatrist. Court documents said the girl was being treated for depression.
  3. Planoise, France – December 13, 2010: A 17-year-old youth held twenty pre-school children and their teacher hostage for hours at Charles Fourier preschool.  The teen was reported to be on “medication for depression”.  He took a classroom hostage with two swords. Eventually, all the children and the teacher were released safely.
  4. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – September 21, 2011: 14-year-old Christian Helms had two pipe bombs in his backpack, when he shot and wounded Socastee High School’s “resource” (police) officer. However the officer was able to stop the student before he could do anything further.  Helms had been taking drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression.
  5. Huntsville, Alabama – February 5, 2010: 15-year-old Hammad Memon shot and killed another Discover Middle School student Todd Brown.  Memon had a history for being treated for ADHD and depression.  He was taking the antidepressant Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.” He had been seeing a psychiatrist and psychologist.
  6. Kauhajoki, Finland – September 23, 2008: 22-year-old culinary student Matti Saari shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself.  Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine. He was also seeing a psychologist.
  7. Fresno, California – April 24, 2008: 17-year-old Jesus “Jesse” Carrizales attacked the Fresno high school’s officer, hitting him in the head with a baseball bat.  After knocking the officer down, the officer shot Carrizales in self-defense, killing him.  Carrizales had been prescribed Lexapro and Geodon, and his autopsy showed that he had a high dose of the antidepressant Lexapro in his blood that could have caused him to be paranoid, according to the coroner.
  8. Dekalb, Illinois – February 14, 2008: 27-year-old Steven Kazmierczak shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amount of Xanax in his system. He had been seeing a psychiatrist.
  9. Jokela, Finland – November 7, 2007: 18-year-old Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School in southern Finland, then committed suicide.
  10. Texas – November 7, 2007: 17-year-old Felicia McMillan returned to her former Robert E. Lee High School campus and stabbed a male student and wounded the principle with a knife.  McMillan had been on drugs for depression, and had just taken them the night before the incident.
  11. Cleveland, Ohio – October 10, 2007: 14-year-old Asa Coon stormed through his school with a gun in each hand, shooting and wounding four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon had been placed on the antidepressant Trazodone.
  12. Sudbury, Massachusetts – January 19, 2007: 16-year-old John Odgren stabbed another student with a large kitchen knife in a boy’s bathroom at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. In court his father testified that Odgren was prescribed the drug Ritalin.
  13. North Vernon, Indiana – December 4, 2006: 16-year-old Travis Roberson stabbed another Jennings County High School student in the neck, nearly severing an artery. Roberson was in withdrawal from Wellbutrin, which he had stopped taking days before the attack.
  14. Hillsborough, North Carolina – August 30, 2006: 19-year-old Alvaro Rafael Castillo shot and killed his father, then drove to Orange High School where he opened fire. Two students were injured in the shooting, which ended when school personnel tackled him. His mother said he was on drugs for depression.
  15. Chapel Hill, North Carolina – April 2006: 17-year-old William Barrett Foster took a shotgun to school and took a teacher and a fellow student hostage at East Chapel Hill High School. After being talked out of shooting the hostages, Foster fired two shots through a classroom window before fleeing the school on foot. Foster’s father testified that his son had stopped taking his antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs without telling him.
  16. Red Lake, Minnesota – March 21, 2005: 16-year-old Jeff Weise, on Prozac, shot and killed his grandparents, then went to his school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation where he shot dead 5 students, a security guard, and a teacher, and wounded 7 before killing himself.
  17. Greenbush, New York – February 2004: 16-year-old Jon Romano strolled into his high school in east Greenbush and opened fire with a shotgun. Special education teacher Michael Bennett was hit in the leg. Romano had been taking “medication for depression”. He had previously seen a psychiatrist.
  18. Red Lion, Pennsylvania – February 2, 2001: 56-year-old William Michael Stankewicz entered North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School with a machete, leaving three adults and 11 children injured. Stankewicz was taking four different drugs for depression and anxiety weeks before the attacks.
  19. Ikeda, Japan – June 8, 2001: 37-year-old Mamoru Takuma, wielding a 6-inch knife, slipped into an elementary school and stabbed eight first- and second-graders to death while wounding at least 15 other pupils and teachers. He then turned the knife on himself but suffered only superficial wounds. He later told interrogators that before the attack he had taken 10 times his normal dose of antidepressants.
  20. Wahluke, Washington – April 10, 2001: Sixteen-year-old Cory Baadsgaard took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates and a teacher hostage. He had been taking the antidepressant Effexor.
  21. El Cajon, California – March 22, 2001: 18-year-old Jason Hoffman, on the antidepressants Celexa and Effexor, opened fire on his classmates, wounding three students and two teachers at Granite Hills High School. He had been seeing a psychiatrist before the shooting.
  22. Williamsport, Pennsylvania – March 7, 2001: 14-year-old Elizabeth Bush was taking the antidepressant Prozac when she shot at fellow students, wounding one.
  23. Oxnard, California – January 2001: 17-year-old Richard Lopez went to Hueneme High School with a gun and shot twice at a car in the school’s parking lot before taking a female student hostage.  Lopez was eventually killed by a SWAT officer.  He had been prescribed Prozac, Paxil and “drugs that helped him go to sleep.”
  24. Conyers, Georgia – May 20, 1999: 15-year-old T.J. Solomon was being treated with the stimulant Ritalin when he opened fire on and wounded six of his classmates.
  25. Columbine, Colorado – April 20, 1999: 18-year-old Eric Harris and his accomplice, Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 26 others before killing themselves. Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox.  Klebold’s medical records remain sealed. Both shooters had been in anger-management classes and had undergone counseling.  Harris had been seeing a psychiatrist before the shooting.
  26. Notus, Idaho – April 16, 1999: 15-year-old Shawn Cooper fired two shotgun rounds in his school, narrowly missing students. He was taking a prescribed antidepressant and Ritalin.
  27. Springfield, Oregon – May 21, 1998: 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 25. Kinkel had been taking the antidepressant Prozac. Kinkel had been attending “anger control classes” and was under the care of a psychologist.
  28. Blackville, South Carolina – October 12, 1995: 15-year-old Toby R. Sincino slipped into the Blackville-Hilda High School’s rear entrance, where he shot two Blackville-Hilda High School teachers, killing one. Then Toby killed himself moments later. His aunt, Carolyn McCreary, said he had been undergoing counseling with the Department of Mental Health and was taking Zoloft for emotional problems.
  29. Chelsea, Michigan – December 17, 1993: 39-year-old chemistry teacher Stephen Leith, facing a disciplinary matter at Chelsea High School, shot Superintendent Joseph Piasecki to death, shot Principal Ron Mead in the leg, and slightly wounded journalism teacher Phil Jones. Leith was taking Prozac and had been seeing a psychiatrist.
  30. Houston, Texas – September 18, 1992: 44-year-old Calvin Charles Bell, reportedly upset about his second-grader’s progress report, appeared in the principal’s office of Piney Point Elementary School. Bell fired a gun in the school, and eventually wounded two officers before surrendering. Relatives told police on Friday that Bell was an unemployed Vietnam veteran and had been taking anti-depressants.
  31. Winnetka, Illinois – 20 May 1988: 30-year-old Laurie Wasserman Dann walked into a second grade classroom at Hubbard Woods School in Winnetka, Illinois carrying three pistols and began shooting children, killing an eight-year-old boy, and wounding five others before fleeing. She entered a nearby house where she shot and wounded a 20-year-old man before killing herself. Dann had been seeing a psychiatrist and subsequent blood tests revealed that at the time of the killings, she was taking the antidepressant Anafranil.

Note: Psychiatric Drugs Can Also Cause Severe Withdrawal Symptoms—Violent and Suicidal Thoughts – Watch This 2 Minute Video

12 additional recent murders and murder-suicides, resulting in 46 dead and 23 wounded:

  1. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – March 8, 2012:  30-year-old John Shick, former patient of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and former student at nearby Duquesne University, shot and killed one and injured six inside UPMC’s Western Psychiatrist Institute. Nine antidepressants were identified among the drugs police found in Shick’s apartment.
  2. Seal Beach, California – October 12, 2011:  Scott DeKraai, a harbor tugboat worker, entered the hair salon where his ex-wife worked, killing her and seven others and injuring one. At DeKraai’s initial hearing, his attorney indicated to the judge that DeKraai was prescribed the antidepressant Trazodone and the “mood stabilizer” Topamax.
  3. Lakeland, Florida – May 3, 2009:  Toxicology test results showed that 34-year-old Troy Bellar was on Tegretol, a drug prescribed for “bi-polar disorder,” when he shot and killed his wife and two of his three children in their home before killing himself.
  4. Granberry Crossing, Alabama – April 26, 2009:  53-year-old Fred B. Davis shot and killed a police officer and wounded a sheriff’s deputy who had responded to a call that Davis had threatened a neighbor with a gun. Prescription drug bottles found at the scene showed that Davis was prescribed the antipsychotic drug Geodon.
  5. Middletown, Maryland – April 17, 2009:  Christopher Wood shot and killed his wife, three small children and himself inside their home. Toxicology test results verified that Wood had been taking the antidepressants Cymbalta and Paxil and the anti-anxiety drugs BuSpar and Xanax.
  6. Concord, California – January 11, 2009:  Jason Montes, 33, shot and killed his wife and then himself at home. Montes had earlier begun taking the antidepressant Prozac for depression related to his impending divorce and a recent bankruptcy.
  7. Little Rock, Arkansas – August 14, 2008:  Less than 48 hours after Timothy Johnson shot and killed Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney, the Little Rock Police declared they were investigating shooter’s use of the antidepressant Effexor, which was found in Johnson’s house.  A Little Rock city police report later stated that Johnson “was on an antidepressant and that the drug may have played a part in his ‘irrational and violent behavior.’”
  8. Omaha, Nebraska – December 5, 2007:  19-year-old Robert Hawkins killed eight people and wounded five before committing suicide in an Omaha mall. Autopsy results confirmed he was under the influence of the “anti-anxiety” drug Valium.
  9. North Meridian, Florida – July 8, 2003:  Doug Williams killed five and wounded nine of his fellow Lockheed Martin employees before killing himself. Williams was reportedly taking two antidepressants, Zoloft and Celexa, for depression after a failed marriage.
  10. Wakefield, Massachusetts – December 26, 2000:  42-year-old computer technician Michael McDermott had been taking three antidepressants when he hunted down employees in the accounting and human resources offices where he worked, killing seven.
  11. Buffalo, New York – May 1, 1998:  37-year-old Juan Roman, an Erie County sheriff’s deputy, pursued his estranged wife into their children’s elementary school and shot her dead, and a school aide was hit in the elbow. Roman was taking antidepressants and seeing a psychiatrist.
  12. St. Petersburg, FL – May 25, 1992:  30-year-old David Doyle Rittenhouse shot and killed a man that went on a date with his wife. Rittenhouse said he was taking a drug somewhat similar to the controversial drug Prozac, and that the drug impeded his perception abilities and he thought the man had raped his wife, though he said “He knows it didn’t happen that way – but he said that is what was in his mind.”

As far back as 1991, CCHR, along with numerous experts brought evidence before the US FDA that antidepressants were causing suicide and violence. The heavily Pharma-funded FDA panel ignored the evidence provided, and it would take 14 years, and a great deal of public pressure,  for the FDA to finally issue it’s strongest warning, the black box, on antidepressants inducing suicidal ideation.   21 years later, the FDA has yet to issue a black box warning on antidepressants and other classes of psychiatric drugs documented by international regulatory agencies and studies to cause violence.  This is not in the public’s interest, who deserve to be warned, it’s in Big Phama’s interest,  upon whose funding the FDA heavily relies on.

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Australia—New Guidelines Threaten Parents Who Refuse to Drug Their Kids

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Note from CCHR: The group that fought for, and won, state legislation in the United States prohibiting schools from being able to force a parent to drug their child as a condition of attending school, was CCHR.     The article does not mention that in the U.S. this bill was also passed on a federal level, the Prohibition on Mandatory Medication Amendment (also due to CCHR’s efforts).   Now it appears Australia is in desperate need of similar legislation.

The Australian – November 21, 2011

EXPERTS have warned that parents who don’t medicate children with ADHD could be referred to child protection authorities under controversial draft guidelines being considered by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

The practice points, to guide doctors who treat the disorder, were drawn up by an NHMRC expert working group to address community concern over the use of stimulant medication to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They state: “Consideration should be given to the ability of the child/adolescent and their caregivers to implement strategies. As with any medical intervention, the inability of parents to implement strategies may raise child protection concerns.”

West Australian Labor MP, author and anti-ADHD medication campaigner Martin Whitely says “the only possible medical interventions are ADHD drugs and the implied threat that a parent’s refusal to allow their child to be ‘medicated’ with amphetamines may see their child put in care”.

The clinical practice points are open for public comment until the end of the week and he is calling for the statement to be removed because he fears it may lead to a situation similar to that in the US.

Some US states have had to legislate to prevent schools and child protection authorities from telling parents they must put their children on drugs, he said.

However, child psychiatrist and Monash University lecturer George Halasz says the situation should not be seen as unique to ADHD and parents who fail to manage serious conditions such as their child’s asthma or diabetes could also be considered to be failing their duty as a parent.

Dr Halasz said the new guidelines were a step in the right direction because they asked doctors to first try to find other explanations for a child’s behaviour before they diagnosed ADHD.

And he says it will not be humanly possible to diagnose ADHD in a single 50-minute consultation under the new clinical practice points.

“If any child is given medication after one consultation, then that child should be reviewed,” he said.

The practice points state that “a child who meets diagnostic criteria for ADHD may not be best served by making that diagnosis” and says their behaviour may be better understood as a reaction to more specific cognitive difficulties or family/environmental services.

The document says “not all people with ADHD will require, or benefit from, pharmacological management”.

It says children using medication should receive a three- to six-monthly review and that the long-term effects of ADHD drugs are unknown.

However, the document also says “for children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD, stimulant medications like Ritalin can reduce core ADHD symptoms and improve social skills and peer relations in the short term”.

In the short term, the paper says, “combined behavioural-pharmacological treatment is most effective” in normalising child behaviour.

Controversy has dogged the NHMRC’s ADHD guidelines since Daryl Effron, the original chairman of the committee, resigned because of his association with drug companies that produce ADHD medications.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/medicate-adhd-kids-or-else-parents-told/story-fn59niix-1226200652633

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Drugging of children for “ADHD” has become an epidemic

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

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.”

Drug company marketing has focused on selling the diagnosis and the drugs to American parents and teachers.

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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Mainstream psychiatry is failing – but there is another way

Monday, July 25th, 2011

Speak Out About Psychiatry wants to change the way mentally ill people are treated in the UK

The Guardian – July 25, 2011

I am sick of seeing friends who are seriously mentally distressed neglected and damaged by mainstream psychiatry. I am fed up hearing about people being detained, locked up and forced to take damaging medication before anyone has found out why they are distressed. I am angry about children being forced to take addictive psychoactive drugs by health professionals because no one could be bothered to work out why they are playing up. I met some others who wanted to change things and together we formed an organisation called Speak Out Against Psychiatry.

Speak Out Against Psychiatry is a group of service users, carers and advocates with direct experience of the psychiatric industry. We know that people who are mentally distressed need compassionate understanding and intense social support. We know that there have been many successful units around the world that have helped people resolve their problems with little or no medication. They have been relatively cheap and successful yet they are not being taken up in the UK. Why not?

Take Western Lapland, in Finland. There, the mental healthsystem is based on a method called Open Dialogue: lots of long conversations with family and friends. It has the best outcomes for first episode psychosis in the developed world. About 80% of participants are back at work or training within two years. Very little medication is used. These results should be the envy of the medical professional yet it is mainly ignored. Similarly, the Family Care Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden, allows seriously disturbed people to live with rural families for a year or more. They get therapy and the family can regularly talk over how things are going. It gets people off medication, a frightening contrast with the standard treatment from the NHS.

Here, psychiatrists’ main activity is diagnosis, yet many people do not find this helpful. They find talking about their lives and their symptoms helpful. Yet talking about hearing voices or the unusual ideas expressed by people experiencing psychosis is discouraged by mainstream psychiatry.

Most people who are extremely distressed have experienced immense personal trauma. Two-thirds of people diagnosed with schizophrenia had experienced physical or sexual abuse. Most psychiatrists ignore the evidence and prefer to talk about unproven brain disorders and imbalances in neurotransmitters. So the causes of mental distress are not fed back into wider social policy.

Then there are the drugs. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has no scientific basis and concerns about the drug Ritalin, used to ‘treat’ it are well documented. There are other ways of helping children who are in conflict with their parents and teachers that do not use potentially addictive medication. Equally, the prescribing of major tranquillisers such as Haloperidol to elderly people in hospital and nursing homes can be dangerous yet is becoming standard practice instead of developing staff skills in dealing with people experiencing dementia. Meanwhile, anti-depressants may be no more effective than a placebo. The serotonin hypothesis of depressionis rubbish. It is a marketing ploy by drug companies. Anti-depressants are potentially addictive and sometimes dangerous, yet one in three women take them some time in their lives. On top of this, electroconvulsive therapy is still used yet there has been ample research showing its dangers and it is just about useless.

Speak Out Against Psychiatry is inviting people to come along at 4pm on Wednesday 27 July, outside the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Belgrave Square, London, to tell us about their experiences of the damaging treatment they have received. We want to hear your stories and we want the Royal College to hear them too.

After the Speak Out we are going to Hyde Park for a picnic and to discuss our next move. I repeat, all the evidence shows that mainstream psychiatry and psychiatric medication is a waste of public money. There are better ways of helping people who are mentally distressed and we need to start using them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/mental-health

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Concern over high medication rate among foster kids—Review of kids’ psych drugs urged

Monday, February 21st, 2011

The Atlanta Journal Constitution, February 21, 2011

By April Hunt

photo credit: Bita Honarvar — While in foster care, Giovan Bazan, now 20, says he was put on Ritalin, anti-depressants and sleeping pills. At 18, he elected to stop all drugs, and says he learned he didn't need them.

Giovan Bazan was 6 when a doctor first gave him medicine to treat his diagnosis of hyperactivity.

Bazan admits he was unruly at the time. Perhaps it was because the only parent he had ever known, his foster mother since he was an infant, had just died.

No one asked about that. Nor did anyone check years later to see that he was on a double dose of Ritalin when another physician, seeing a boy so mellowed out that he barely reacted, prescribed an antidepressant. “They start you on one thing for a problem, then the side effects mean you need a new medicine,” Bazan said. “As a foster kid, I’d go between all these doctors, caseworkers, therapists, and [it] seemed like every time there was a new drug to try me on.”

When he turned 18, Bazan elected to stop all medications. It turned out he didn’t need any of them.

Now, the Georgia House is weighing an idea to better track the psychotropic drugs foster children take at a far greater rate than other kids.

House Bill 23 hits a rare political sweet spot. The proposal to create an independent clinic review of the drugs foster children are given has support from Democrats and Republicans because of its efforts to protect the vulnerable — and projections that it will save the state millions of dollars. The state spends $7.87 million per year in Medicaid funds on those mind-altering drugs for foster kids. “This is an idea I’m very open and willing to have a discussion about,” said Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, adding his main concern is the cost of the review.

The issue is a national one. Only half of state child welfare systems — not including Georgia — have a policy to review usage of mind-altering drugs, even though as many as 52 percent of kids in foster care are taking them.

By comparison, about 4 percent of the general youth population is on the medications, according to a 2010 Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute study.

“These drugs are not something you take like an aspirin,” said state Rep. Judy Manning, a Marietta Republican and chairwoman of the House Children & Youth Committee who is co-sponsoring HB 23 with Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur.

“We want to monitor it and make sure the treatment is correct,” she said. “You don’t want a tragedy.”

Lack of oversight can prove deadly. Gabriel Myers, a 7-year-old foster child in Florida, hanged himself in 2009 while taking three powerful psychotropic medications, none of which had been approved for use in children.

There have been no similar high-profile cases in Georgia. Still, one in three foster 
children on Medicaid was 
prescribed mind-altering psychotropic drugs last year, according to a January report from the state Department of Community Health. More than half of them were on a daily cocktail of more than two of the drugs — some of which lack approval for treatment in children.

Oliver argues that both the cost and number of foster children on such drugs will drop if her proposal succeeds.

Her plan calls for an independent review to kick in on red-flag cases in the system, such as when a very young child is prescribed drugs for mental health or when a youngster is on multiple medications at once.

It would be up to the Human Services or Behavioral Health departments to decide what would flag cases and how to best manage the independent psychiatrists who would monitor them.

Oliver said private foundations have expressed interest in funding the idea as a national pilot program.

“Foster children are more traumatized, for horrible reasons, and that’s why their medical care has to be better,” Oliver said. “I am excited about the number of stakeholders who want to work on solving this problem with us.”

The issue may extend to lack of oversight on what drugs foster kids are being prescribed and taking. A 2010 investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed several companies operating foster care homes in the state had repeatedly used psychotropic medications to “subdue” children.

“Medications dispersed often aren’t to help the child with their problems but to make the child more docile for the caregivers,” said Richard Wexler, who heads the National Coalition for Child Protection and Reform. “And the paradox of child welfare care has always been the worst thing for the kids is what costs the most.”

That seems to have been the case for Bazan. Now 20, he can recall a brief period in high school when prescriptions had run out and his foster mother didn’t keep him on the stew of mind-altering drugs.

Fellow students noticed the no-nonsense boy was suddenly joking around and friendly.

“When I was off the medicines, everyone kept asking me why I was so happy,” Bazan said. “There was a real difference.”

The medications quickly 
returned, however. But Bazan said they didn’t help with the loss he felt over the death of 
his first foster mother or his feelings of being unwanted 
and under attack in the foster home he repeatedly ran away from.

He spent time in Department of Juvenile Justice facilities, where the medications kept coming, sometimes provoking seizures because some of them didn’t mix.

No one, he said, ever asked about his feelings. “They would have gotten a better response if someone had just taken a look at what was really going on in my life,” he said.

Bazan did that himself when he quit all medications cold turkey at age 18. But the years of medication already have hurt his future: His plan to enter the military to pay for college is blocked by the diagnosis of hyperactivity. He is ineligible to serve.

Bazan now works part time at the Division of Family and Children Services, acting as 
a liaison with community 
organizations and state agencies.

He also has started his own security company to provide nighttime patrols at his church in DeKalb County and others.

His goal is to get a full-time job with DFCS and persuade Gov. Nathan Deal to appoint him to the Georgia National Guard. With that, he could pay for college.

First, though, he is sharing his story in the hope that lawmakers and others will see him as a cautionary tale for what can happen when someone isn’t monitoring care of foster kids.

“I ask them, ‘Would you give all these people carte blanche with your kids, without any scrutiny of their medical history and a review of their life?’” Bazan said. “We’re just children. Someone has to look out for us. We need the same care and attention you give your own children.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/concern-over-high-medication-846324.html

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US Soldiers’ Suicides Caused by Prescription Drugs?

Monday, November 1st, 2010

The Epoch Times, November 1, 2010

by Martha Rosenberg

The suicide rate among U.S. troops is astonishing.

In 2009 there were 239 suicides within the Army, including the Reserves, 160 active duty suicides, 146 active duty deaths from drug overdoses and high-risk behavior, and 1,713 suicide attempts, says the Army’s suicide report released in July.

More troops are dying from their own hands than in combat, says the Army report, titled “Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention.” Thirty-six percent of the suicides were among troops who were never deployed.

Also astonishing is the psychoactive prescription drug rate among active duty-aged troops, aged 18 to 34, which is up 85 percent since 2003, according to the military health plan, Tricare. Including family prescriptions, since 2001, 73,103 prescriptions for Zoloft have been dispensed, 38,199 for Prozac, 17,830 for Paxil, and 12,047 for Cymbalta. All of the drugs carry a suicide-warning label.

In addition to the spike in SSRI antidepressant prescriptions, prescriptions for the anticonvulsants Topamax and Neurontin rose 56 percent in the same group since 2005, says Navy Times. The FDA warned last year that taking these drugs doubles suicidal thinking.

In fact, 4,994 troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., are on antidepressants right now, says the Fayetteville Observer. Six hundred and sixty-four are on an antipsychotic and “many soldiers take more than one type of medication.”

Troops may also be taking Chantix, an antismoking drug so linked to violence and self-harm that Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake was forced to defend its use before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in 2008 even in drug trials. Related Articles

“If you know the drug induces suicidal thoughts,” an unappeased committee chair Bob Filner, D-Calif., asked Rep. Filner, “Why don’t you just stop [prescribing it]?”

The FDA says that even widely prescribed asthma drugs like Singulair and Advair are linked to suicide and have been cited in young people’s deaths.

Who knows what happens when the drugs are mixed with mood stabilizers, insomnia meds, pain pills, anti-anxiety drugs, and antipsychotic pills? These drug combinations have never been tested for safety.

Links between suicide and even murder-suicide and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI) antidepressants have been long recognized.

Traci Johnson, a healthy 19-year-old with no mental problems, hung herself during Lilly trials of Cymbalta in the drugmaker’s own clinic in 2004. Columbine shooter Eric Harris had reportedly just switched from Zoloft to Luvox.

Red Lake shooter Jeff Weise who killed 10 on a Minnesota Native American reservation in 2005 had just upped his Prozac dose. And the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was also on psychoactive medications, say news reports.

Even though Americans have doubled their antidepressants since 1999 so that 10 percent of the population or 27 million now take them, suicides have climbed by 5 percent since 1999 and 16 percent in middle-aged adults, says an article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2008.

In fact, the high percentage of civilian suicides on psychoactive drugs is probably the clearest indication that military life is not the only cause of the shocking troop suicides.

In September alone, there were 18 civilian suicides, 11 murders, 2 murder-suicides, and other violence linked to people who were using or had used antidepressants, according to published reports. (Ssristories.com/index.php?sort=what&p=recent)

A 54-year-old patient with a breathing tube and an oxygen tank and no previous criminal record held up a bank in Mobile, Ala. She had gone off her antidepressants.

An enraged man in Australia, also off his antidepressants, chased his mailman and threatened to cut his throat for bringing him junk mail.

A 58-year-old Amarillo, Texas, man with no criminal history tried to abduct three people, killing an Oklahoma grandmother in the process. He had “an antidepressant in his blood,” said police.

Also in the 30-day period, a 60-year-old grandmother in Seattle killed three family members and herself; a disc jockey in Bristol, U.K., set himself on fire; and a man in Exeter, U.K., was found to have stabbed himself in the heart. All were on antidepressants.

Finally, in the month of September, legal proceedings began against two mothers and a father charged with killing their own children.

Over 4,000 published reports of violent and bizarre behavior of people affected by antidepressants on the Web archive ssristories.com reveal the same out-of-character violence and self-harm in civilians that is currently seen in the military.

Twenty people set themselves on fire. Ten bit their victims (including a biter who was sleepwalking and a woman, on Prozac, who bit her 87-year-old mother into a critical condition.) Three men in the 70s and 80s attacked their wives with hammers.

Many stabbed their victims obsessively—one even stabbed furniture after killing his wife—and 14 parents drowned their children, a crime seldom heard of before the 2001 Andrea Yates case. Yates, who drowned her five children, was on the antidepressant Effexor, which manufacturer Wyeth (now Pfizer) “issued no public warning” about [the possibility of violent behavior], says the Associated Press.

Then there was the North Carolina pilot on Zoloft who sang “I’m going down for the last time” into the cockpit voice recorder before he crashed his plane in June. And the mayor of Coppell, Texas, Jayne Peters, who killed herself and her daughter in July over the grief of losing her husband. Police found antidepressants at the home.

Such murder-suicides committed by women used to be rare, says Betty Henderson the ssristories.com moderator and researcher. “Before the SSRI antidepressants, women committed 5 percent of the murder-suicides, and now they account for almost 15 percent of this type of violence,” she said in an interview.

Antidepressants are also causing women to become sexual predators, says Henderson. “There have been more than a dozen recent cases of women school teachers molesting their young students under the influence or withdrawal of antidepressants. Who heard of this type of sexual aberration before the antidepressant craze?”

Why don’t doctors and media outlets publicize the names of these volatile drugs?

“It’s a good question,” said Dr. Gary Kohls, a Minnesota family practitioner, in an op-ed written after Iraq veteran Matthew Magdzas killed his pregnant wife, their 13-month-old daughter, their dogs, and himself in Wisconsin in August.

“Nobody in the media has, to my knowledge, had the courage to report what the drugs were, nor have they interviewed the physician or his clinic to find out the rationale for prescribing drugs that have common violence-inducing effects (with black box warnings stating that in the prescribing information),” he writes. “Therefore nothing has been learned from this important teachable moment, probably because revealing the common reality of prescription drug-induced violence would be economically harmful for the sacred cows of Big Pharma and Big Medicine.”

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., called the fact that one of every six troops are now on psychoactive drugs “pretty astounding and also very troubling,” in Senate hearings this year.

Retired Col. Bart Billings, a former Army psychologist who has also testified before Congress, says, “I feel flat-out that psychiatrists are directly responsible for deaths in our military, for some of these suicides,” in a March Marine Times article. “I think it’s criminal, what they are doing.”

Even Katie Bagosy, the wife of Marine Sgt. Tom Bagosy, who took his own life in May, indicts the Neurontin medication he was prescribed for his downfall.

“He told me, ‘It all started to get worse when I got on this medication.’ Looking back, that was the beginning of the end,” she says in an article called “A Prescription for Tragedy” in the current National Journal.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/45181/

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Americas Mental Illness Epidemic

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Rense.com
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
August 25, 2010

Tens of millions of innocent, unsuspecting Americans, who are mired deeply in the mental “health” system, have actually been made crazy by the use of or the withdrawal from commonly-prescribed, brain-altering, brain-disabling, indeed brain-damaging psychiatric drugs that have been, for many decades, cavalierly handed out like candy ­ often in untested and therefore unapproved combinations of drugs – to trusting and unaware patients by equally unaware but well-intentioned physicians who have been under the mesmerizing influence of slick and obscenely profitable psychopharmaceutical drug companies aka, BigPharma.

That is the conclusion of two books by investigative journalist and health science writer Robert Whitaker. His first book, entitled Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill noted that there has been a 600% increase (since Thorazine was introduced in the US in the mid-1950s) in the total and permanent disabilities of millions of psychiatric drug-takers. This uniquely First World mental ill health epidemic has resulted in the life-long taxpayer-supported disabilities of rapidly increasing numbers of psychiatric patients who are now unable to be happy, productive, taxpaying members of society. Whitaker has done a powerful, albeit unwelcome job of presenting previously hidden, but very convincing evidence to support his thesis, that it is the drugs and not the diagnosis that is causing the epidemic of mental illness disability. Many open-minded physicians and many aware psychiatric patients are now motivated to be wary of any and all synthetic chemicals that can cross the blood/brain barrier because all of them are capable of altering the brain in ways totally unknown to medical science, especially when the patients are taking the drugs long-term..

In Whitaker’s second book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, he goes much further in advancing this sobering reality. He documents the history of the powerful forces behind the relatively new field of psychopharmacology and its major shaper and beneficiary, BigPharma. Psychiatric drugs, whose developers, marketers and salespersons are all in the employ of the giant drug companies, are far more dangerous than the drug and psychiatric industries are willing to admit: These drugs, it turns our, are fully capable of disabling ­ often permanently – body, brain and spirit.

More evidence to support Whitaker’s well-documented claims are laid out in two important new books written by psychiatrist and scholar Grace Jackson. Jackson did a beautiful job of researching and documenting, from the voluminous basic neuroscience research (which is uniformly ignored by the clinical sciences) the unintended and often disastrous consequences of the chronic ingestion of any of the five major classes of psychiatric drugs. Her second and most powerful book: Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that any of the five classes of drugs that are commonly used in psychiatric patients (antidepressants, antipsychotics, psychostimulants, tranquilizers and anti-seizure/”mood-stabilizer” drugs) have shown microscopic, macroscopic, biochemical, clinical and/or radiological evidence of brain shrinkage and other signs of brain damage, which can result in clinically-diagnosable, permanent dementia, premature death and a variety of other related brain disorders that can mimic mental illnesses. Jackson’s first book, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent was an equally sobering book warning about the many hidden dangers of psychiatric drugs.

This sad truth is that the seemingly knee-jerk prescribing (without very much information being given to patients about the long list of serious long-term adverse effects) of potent and often addicting/dependency-inducing psychiatric drugs has become the standard of care in American psychiatry since the introduction of the so-called anti-schizophrenic “miracle” drug Thorazine in the mid-1950s. (Thorazine was the offending drug that all of Jack Nicholson’s fellow patients were coerced into taking at “medication time” in the Academy Award-winning movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.) Thorazine and all the other “me-too” early antipsychotic drugs are now universally known to have been an iatrogenic (= doctor or other treatment-caused) disaster because of their serious long-term, initially unsuspected, brain-damaging effects that resulted in a number of incurable neurological disorders such as tardive dyskinesia and Parkinson’s disease.

Thorazine and all the other knock-off drugs like Prolixin, Mellaril, Navane. etc, are synthetic “tricyclic” chemical compounds similar in molecular structure to the tricyclic “antidepressants” like imipramine and the similarly toxic, obesity-inducing, diabetogenic, “atypical” anti-schizophrenic drugs like Clozaril, Zyprexa and Seroquel.

Thorazine, incidentally, was originally developed in Europe as an industrial dye. That doesn’t sound so good although it may not be so unusual in the closely related fields of psychopharmcology and the chemical industry, especially when one considers that Depakote, a popular drug marketed initially as an anti-epilepsy drug but now is being heavily used as a so-called “mood stabilizer”. Depakote, known to be a hepatotoxin and renal toxin, was originally developed as an industrial solvent capable of dissolving fat – including, presumably, the fatty tissue in human livers and brains.

Some sympathy and understanding needs to be generated for the various victims of BigPharma’s compulsive drive to expand market share and “shareholder value” (share price, dividends and the next quarter’s financial report) by whatever means necessary. Both the prescribers and the swallowers of BigPharma’s drugs have succumbed to BigPharma’s cunning marketing campaigns, the prescribers having been seduced by attractive drug company representatives and their “pens, pizzas and post-it note” freebies in the office, and the patients being brain-washed by the inane and unbelievable (if one has intact critical thinking skills) commercials on TV that quickly gloss over the lethal adverse effects in the fine print while urging the watcher to “ask your doctor” about the latest unaffordable wannabe blockbuster drug..

For a quick overview of these issues, I recommend that everybody with an open mind read a long essay written by Whitaker that persuasively identifies the source of America’s epidemic of mental illness disability (a phenomenon that doesn’t exist in Third World nations because costly psych drugs are not prescribed so cavalierly as in the US).

Whitaker and Jackson (among a number of other ground-breaking and whistle-blowing authors who have been essentially black-listed by the mainstream media and mainstream medical journals) have proven to most critically-thinking scientists, alternative practitioners and assorted “psychiatric survivors” that it is the drugs – and not the so-called “disorders” – that are causing our nation’s epidemic of mental illness disability. The Whitaker essay, plus other pertinent information about his books can be accessed at www.madinamerica.com A recent interview on Wisconsin Public Radio can be accessed at www.wpr.org (at their radio archives link) and a long interview with Dr.Joseph Mercola can be heard at: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/05/08/robert-whitaker-interview.aspx

After reading and studying all these inconvenient truths, mental health practitioners must consider the medicolegal implications for them, especially if the information is ignored or if the information is dismissed out of hand by practitioners who might be tempted to not take the time to study this new information. Those people who are hearing about this for the first time need to pass the word on to others, especially their prescribing healthcare practitioners who should be equally concerned. This is important because the opinion leaders in the highly influential (for good or ill) psychiatric and medical industries have been marketed into submission without hearing the all the facts (which may have been intentionally hidden from them. If that is the case, they cannot be automatically blamed for proceeding in a practice that some day might represent malpractice. It shouldn’t have to be pointed out that is the solemn duty of ethical practitioners who are in positions of authority to fully examine potential malpractice issues and then warn others, especially their patients, of the dangers.

Sadly, it must be admitted that most of the over-worked, double-booked care-givers in medical clinics have not yet heard the news that most if not all of the brain-altering synthetic chemicals known as psychotropic drugs (which are treated as hazardous waste unless they are packaged in a swallowable capsule!) have been marketed as safe and effective – but only for short-term use. The captains of the drug industry know that the psychotropic drugs that they present for the FDA-approval have only been tested in animal trials for days and in clinical trials for 6 weeks. They also know ­ indeed they hope – that patients will be taking their drugs for years (despite no long-term trials proving safety and efficacy) as the only “treatment” for mental ill health. They know that their brain-altering drugs are also dependency-inducing (aka addicting, causing withdrawal symptoms when stopped), neurotoxic and increasingly ineffective (a la “Prozac Poop-out”) as time goes by.

The truth is that the people diagnosed as “mentally ill” for life are often simply those unfortunates who find themselves in acute or chronic states of crisis or “overwhelm” due to any number of preventable, curable and treatable (without the use of drugs) bad luck accidents such as poverty, abuse, violence, torture, homelessness, discrimination, underemployment, brain malnutrition, addictions/withdrawal, brain damage from electroshock “therapy” and/or exposure to neurotoxic chemicals in their food, air, water or prescription bottles.

Those labeled as the “mentally ill” are just like us “normals” who have not yet decompensated because of some yet-to-happen, crisis-inducing, overwhelming (however temporary) life situation. And thus we have not yet been given a billable code number (accompanied by the seemingly obligatory – and unaffordable – drug prescription or two signifying we are now chronically mentally ill. Unlabeled, we are likely to remain off prescription drugs but with a label and in “the system”, it is hard to “just say no to drugs.”

The victims of hopelessness-generating situations like simple bad luck, bad circumstances, bad company, bad choices, bad government, big business, and a competitive society that generates a few winners but mostly losers. America tolerates, indeed celebrates, punitive and thus fear-inducing social systems resembling in many ways the infamous police state realities of 20th century European totalitarianism, where people who were different or just dissidents were thought to be abnormal and therefore “disappeared” into insane asylums, jails or concentration camps without just cause or competent legal defense. And many of them were and are drugged with disabling psychoactive chemicals against their will.

The truth is that most, if not all, of BigPharma’s psychotropic drugs are lethal at some dosage level (the LD50, the lethal dose that kills 50% of lab animals, is calculated before efficacy testing is done), and therefore the drugs must be regarded as dangerous. The chronic use of these drugs is a major cause of cognitive disorders, brain damage, loss of creativity, loss of spirituality, loss of empathy, loss of energy, loss of strength, fatigue and tiredness, permanent disability and a multitude of metabolic adverse effects that can readily sicken the body, brain and soul by causing insomnia or somnolence, increased depression or anxiety, delusions, psychoses, paranoia, mania, etc. So before filling the prescription, it is advisable to read the product insert labeling under WARNINGS, PRECAUTIONS, ADVERSE EFFECTS, CONTRAINDICATIONS, TOXICOLOGY, OVERDOSAGE and the ever-present BLACK BOX WARNINGS ABOUT SUICIDALITY.

Long-term, high dosage or combination psychotropic drug usage could be regarded as a chemically traumatic brain injury (TBI) or, as drugs like Thorazine were known in the 1950s and 60s, a “chemical lobotomy”. That is a useful way to conceptualize this serious issue, because such chemically brain-altered patients are often indistinguishable from those who have suffered a physically traumatic brain injuries or been subjected to ice-pick lobotomies which were popular in the 1940s and 50s – before the drugs came on the market.

America has a mental ill health epidemic on its hands that is grossly misunderstood because it is worsening, not by the supposed disease progression, but because of the neurotoxic, non-curative drugs that are somehow regarded as first-line “treatment.”
Read the rest of this article here: http://www.rense.com/general91/edi.htm

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Overmedication contributes to military suicides, advocates say

Thursday, August 12th, 2010
By Veronica Nett
The Charleston Gazette

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The suicide rate among military veterans has ballooned in recent years, in part because of overmedication of service members and a lack of support for veterans, advocates for treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder said Thursday.

Psychiatrists sometimes prescribe drugs as a cure without an actual understanding of what the drugs do, said Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a psychiatrist and author from Ithaca, N.Y.

In 2008, the Army’s suicide rate — 20.2 per 100,000 — exceeded the civilian suicide rate for the first time. The civilian suicide rate has held steady for years at about 18 per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Breggin and seven panelists addressed a crowd of about 50 therapists, social workers, members of the state Veterans Affairs department, in addition to service members and their families at the 2010 PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury Education and Awareness Conference.

Care-Net, a branch of the state Council of Churches, sponsored the conference at the Blessed John XXIII Pastoral Center in Charleston.

PTSD is the brain’s natural reaction to extreme stress and traumatizing experiences, said Breggin, the conference’s keynote speaker. Tramuatic brain injury looks just like PTSD, he said.

“There is no drug that improves the function of the brain,” said Breggin, who said he will not prescribe psychiatric drugs as treatment for any disorder.

Psychiatric drugs, such as antidepressants and anxiety medication, alter the chemical balance in the brain, disrupt the release of serotonin and, in many cases, have the same effect as street drugs, Breggin said.

Patients using psychiatric drugs have experienced psychotic and violent behavior, attempted suicide and are unable to think clearly, Breggin said.

Mary Lahas talked about her son, Michael, who she said stuck IV needles into his arms in a suicide attempt.

Her son, an Army infantry member, survived roadside bomb explosions, and witnessed the shooting death of civilians in Iraq, Lahas said Thursday.

He returned from his first deployment in 2008 with PTSD and TBI and suffered from headaches, anxiety, guilt, tinnitus and memory problems, Lahas said. He refused to seek help, she said, because he saw other soldiers ridiculed who did.

When he finally did seek help, he was given a “cocktail of death,” that included antidepressants, anxiety medications and sleep aids, Lahas said.

“He was so overmedicated he could not care for himself — eat, sleep or brush his teeth,” she said.

The drugs and stress led him to try to take his own life, and while standing in his bathroom bleeding, he drew a smiley face on the wall in his own blood, she said.

Read the rest of this article here: http://wvgazette.com/News/201008120975

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