The Vancouver Sun
By Sharon Kirkey
June 14, 2010

The risk of coronary heart disease and a cluster of conditions known as metabolic syndrome increases soon after otherwise healthy, but depressed people are started on psychiatric drugs, putting them at risk for an early death, Canadian researchers are reporting.

Antidepressants, antipsychotics and other psychoactive drugs are the second most-prescribed drug class in the country, second only to cardiovasculars, according to prescription drug-tracking firm IMS Health Canada.

Across Canada, retail pharmacies last year dispensed 61.2 million prescriptions for psychotherapeutics, worth nearly $2.4 billion.

“Usually five of the top 10 prescribed medications worldwide are psychiatric drugs. We need to start looking at the impact of these medications on other systems,” says Dr. Valerie Taylor, an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at St. Joseph’s health care and McMaster University in Hamilton.

In a study published this week in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Taylor and her colleagues followed 52 patients, age 16 to 40, newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder.

Many were university students who had become ill for the first time. All were “treatment naive” — they had never before been treated for a psychiatric illness.

At the start of the study, researchers measured waist circumference, blood pressure, blood fats and other markers of metabolic syndrome — the name for a grab-bag of health problems that increase the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

People with metabolic syndrome are twice as likely to die from, and three times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared to people without the disorder. They also have up to a nine-fold greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Read entire article:  http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Psychiatric+drugs+carry+serious+physical+health+risks/3153278/story.html

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• “Psychiatry’s ‘bible’ could roll out a whole new list of disorders—and more prescriptions for psychoactive drugs” (0)
• Are Psychiatric Medications Making Us Sicker? (0)
• 52% of foster kids are prescribed psych drugs—One of them is fighting back (1)
• US Troops Heavily Medicated on Prescription Drugs, Report Warns (0)
• The New Child Abuse: The Psychiatric Diagnosing and Drugging of Our Children (0)

CounterCurrents.org
By Evelyn Pringle
April 19, 2010

The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age. Medicaid records in some states show infants less than a year old on drugs for mental disorders.

The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, “Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.”

The number of children in this age group diagnosed with bipolar disorder also doubled over the last decade, Reuters reported.

Of antipsychotic-treated children in the 2007 study sample, the most common diagnoses were pervasive developmental disorder or mental retardation (28.2%), ADHD (23.7%), and disruptive behavior disorder (12.9%).

The study reported that fewer than half of drug treated children received a mental health assessment (40.8%), a psychotherapy visit (41.4%), or a visit with a psychiatrist (42.6%) during the year of antipsychotic use.

“Antipsychotics, which are being widely and irresponsibly prescribed for American children–mostly as chemical restraints–are shown to be causing irreparable harm,” warned Vera Hassner Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, in a February 26, 2010 InfoMail.

“These drugs have measurable severe hazardous effects on vital biological systems, including: cardiovascular adverse effects that result in shortening lives; metabolic adverse effects that induce diabetes and the metabolic syndrome,” she wrote. “Long-term use of antipsychotics has been shown to result in metabolic syndrome in 40% to 50% of patients.”

The lead researcher on the study above, Columbia University psychiatry professor Mark Olfson, told Reuters that about 1.5% of all privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70, received some type of psychiatric drug in 2007, be it an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant.

Psychiatric drugs bathe the brains of growing children with agents that threaten the normal development of the brain, according to Dr Peter Breggin, founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), and author of about 20 books, including “Medication Madness.”

Read entire article:  http://www.countercurrents.org/pringle190410.htm

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• The New Child Abuse: The Psychiatric Diagnosing and Drugging of Our Children (0)
• MomLogic.com “Babies on Antipsychotics?…Why would anyone put a BABY on antipsychotic meds?!” (0)
• The Portland Press Herald: Psychiatric Drugging of American Children is Cause for Alarm (4)
• New York Magazine: Shrink Revolt—The controversy over psychiatric diagnoses and the DSM continues (0)
• Pharma-Funded Psychiatrists Behind Bogus Child ‘Bi-Polar’ Epidemic- Disciplined for Conflicts of Interest (0)

Dr. Peter Breggin
The Huffington Post
October 31, 2009

There are many problems within our legal system that could benefit from reform. But within the area in which I have great experience as a psychiatric expert, so-called tort reform has already gone too far. It is already too difficult for injured patients or their surviving families to bring malpractice suits against physicians and health facilities, and product liability suits against drug companies, even when their cases have great merit. I believe in private health care and I believe in the free market, but liberty requires checks and balances. The right to sue medical practitioners and pharmaceutical companies provides a necessary control in our free market system, as well as a means for individuals to seek compensation and justice.

Harm Caused by Antipsychotic Drugs

For illustrative purposes, I’ll focus on the newer antipsychotic drugs, the so-called atypicals, including Zyprexa, Risperdal, Geodon, Seroquel, and Abilify. These drugs produce horrendous adverse effects that often lead the victims or their surviving families to consider bringing lawsuits against doctors, health care facilities, or drug companies.

First, the antipsychotic drugs produce tardive dyskinesia. Tardive dyskinesia involves drug-induced abnormal movements that commonly disfigure patients and in some cases result in lifelong pain and total disability.

Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/antipsychotic-drugs-their_b_341108.html

« Return to news items

News Feed

Related Posts

• Antipsychotic Drugs Deadly for Elderly Patients, Prescribed Anyway (0)
• Nation of Pill Poppers: 19 Potentially Dangerous Drugs Pushed By Big Pharma (0)
• FDA Needs to Ban Antipsychotic Drug Use on Kids (0)
• Mass psychosis in the US—How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs (1)
• Antipsychotic Drugs Called Hazardous for the Elderly (0)