Natural News
By PF Louis
August 29, 2011

A highly effective public relations technique is the “third party technique” of creating front groups to endorse or promote the need of any service or product. The first party is the original group or client that would benefit more from increased public trust or affinity. The second group is the public or consumers. A third group is created with a contrived name to appear publicly as a disinterested party endorsing the industry of the first party.

Often, the third party, or front group, uses a name that implies authority or concern for the public’s welfare or concerns. You can be sure these bogus front groups are usually only concerned about their clients welfare and themselves.

Edward Bernays Pioneered Front Groups

Edward Bernays, a notorious spin doctor throughout the 20th Century, is considered USA’s original front group creator as well as the father of public relations. The public relations industry is concerned with creating a favorable image more than direct sales advertising, although they can be closely associated at times.

The womens rights movement peaked in 1919 with the passage of the 19th amendment, granting women the right to vote. A very few years later, Edward Bernays created an image to help promote the tobacco industry. He had photographs published in newspapers and magazines of several women marching in a New York City Easter parade brazenly smoking cigarettes, which until then was considered unladylike. The idea was to link a womans struggle for more rights with openly smoking anywhere, just like the guys.

Besides making tobacco appear healthy over several years using fake doctors to promote various cigarette brands, Bernays also used front groups to glorify fluoridating water supplies. He was a very important contributor to our mass poisoning.

Psychiatry, Big Pharma, and Front Groups

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI) focuses on psychiatry’s irrational and barbaric treatment of mental illness with its propensity for categorizing behavior in order to dispense harmful drugs. It’s a cozy arrangement with the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and Big Pharma.

Ever since the APA was accepted as a regular medical organization a few decades ago, Big Pharma’s sales for psychotropic drugs have gone through the roof. What was once pen and pad for taking notes by a psychiatrist during talk therapy became the pen and prescription pad.

For children, psychiatry’s categorizing behavioral problems enables educational and child care institutional personnel virtual prescription power as well. Children are kidnapped “legally” by social services agencies if parents refuse to medicate them according to psychiatric decree. Big Pharma’s reach into TV advertising enables depressed adults to demand prescriptions for drugs that lead to bad health, actual insanity, and death.

Front groups exposed by CCHRI include the following: The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHAAD) and several bipolar, depression or ADHD “support groups” that flourish on the internet.

CCHRI has several more front groups listed on one of their site pages with links to explanations of who they really are and how they function for psychiatry and Big Pharma. (see CCHRI source below)

CCHRI’s depth of investigative reporting offers the premier site for understanding the true nature of psychiatry and its relationship with Big Pharma’s destructive psychotropic drug racket.

Front Groups Everywhere

Front groups can also lobby directly to government officials, elected or appointed. And they are created for almost any controversial issue that needs to be white or green washed.

A former health insurance insider, Wendell Potter, became a whistle blower with his book Deadly Spin. He explained that a front group “Health Care America” was used to attack Michael Moore’s “Sicko” documentary.

APCO Worldwide created Health Care America with Big Pharma money. The insurance industry used APCO in 2007. APCO recruits think tanks and other agencies as allies for their campaigns. The public is unaware of who is really supplying the media’s information.

Earlier in 2011, New York Republican Congresswoman Nan Hayworth submitted a press release photo of her receiving a plaque from a representative of a purported senior citizen support group called 60 Plus Association. The sign above those two declared in large letters “Senor Citizens Thank You for Protecting Medicare and Social Security.”

There are two lies here. Nan Hayworth had voted against Medicare, and 60 Plus has hardly any senior citizen members at all. They remain afloat financially from Big Pharma’s funding, according to AARP.

All this crassly corrupt activity backed by government and corporations continues to escalate through the mainstream media. A lyric from a 1980s jazz tune rings true “We are Caught in a Blizzard of Lies.” The upside is we are forced to distinguish between truth and fiction and become our own informed authority.

Sources for this article include:

List of Front Groups for Psychiatry and Big Pharma http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharm…

Main page CCHRI site http://www.cchrint.org/

Insurance whistle blower Wendell Potter http://www.commondreams.org/view/20…

60s Plus Group outed by AARP as Big Pharma front group http://my.firedoglake.com/junkyardd…

Edward Bernays pioneered third party technique of PR and advertising http://www.frontgroups.org/node/418

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Minyanville
By Minyanville Staff
July 28, 2011

When the DSM-II was published in 1980, it became “the bible of psychiatry,” writes Angell, who adds, “but like the real Bible, it depended a lot on something akin to revelation. There are no citations of scientific studies to support its decisions.”

For any mental illness or passing mood swing that may trouble a person, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — better known as the DSM — has a label and a code. Recurring bad dreams? That may be a Nightmare Disorder, or 307.47. Narcolepsy uses the same digits in a different order: 347.00. Fancy feather ticklers? That sounds like Fetishism, or 302.81. Then there’s the ultimate catch-all for vague sadness or uneasiness, General Anxiety Disorder, or 300.02. That’s a label almost everyone can lay claim to.

These codes are used by doctors, psychologists, and regulators to maintain a mutual language; it’s a handy shorthand system for bureaucratic purposes. But over the past few decades, the staggering, ever-expanding influence of the ever-expanding DSM, which is published by the American Psychiatric Association, has also played a lead role in building wealth and off-label product uses for the major drug manufacturers. In an insightful essay in this week’s New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, explains how.

The medical director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Melvin Sabshin, declared in 1977 that “a vigorous effort to remedicalize psychiatry should be strongly supported."

Angell’s essay is based on a review of three current books examining the psychiatric industry: The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, by Irving Kirsch; Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker, and Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry–A Doctor’s Revelations About a Profession in Crisis, by Daniel Carlat. She also cites the DSM-IV, the most recent edition of the manual, while her review traces big pharma’s role in our current mental disorder epidemic to the DSM-III, published in 1980.

To begin, Angell describes the psychiatric profession’s backlash against a developing perception in the 1960s and 1970s that the practice was a “soft” almost pseudo science:

In the late 1970s, the psychiatric profession struck back–hard. As Robert Whitaker tells it in Anatomy of an Epidemic, the medical director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Melvin Sabshin, declared in 1977 that “a vigorous effort to remedicalize psychiatry should be strongly supported,” and he launched an all-out media and public relations campaign to do exactly that. Psychiatry had a powerful weapon that its competitors lacked. Since psychiatrists must qualify as MDs, they have the legal authority to write prescriptions. By fully embracing the biological model of mental illness and the use of psychoactive drugs to treat it, psychiatry was able to relegate other mental health care providers to ancillary positions and also to identify itself as a scientific discipline along with the rest of the medical profession. Most important, by emphasizing drug treatment, psychiatry became the darling of the pharmaceutical industry, which soon made its gratitude tangible.

Of the 170 contributors to the current version of the DSM (the DSM-IV-TR), ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.

These efforts to enhance the status of psychiatry were undertaken deliberately. The APA was then working on the third edition of the DSM, which provides diagnostic criteria for all mental disorders. The president of the APA had appointed Robert Spitzer, a much-admired professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, to head the task force overseeing the project. The first two editions, published in 1952 and 1968, reflected the Freudian view of mental illness and were little known outside the profession. Spitzer set out to make the DSM-III something quite different. He promised that it would be “a defense of the medical model as applied to psychiatric problems,” and the president of the APA in 1977, Jack Weinberg, said it would “clarify to anyone who may be in doubt that we regard psychiatry as a specialty of medicine.”

When the DSM-II was published in 1980, it became “the bible of psychiatry,” writes Angell, who adds, “but like the real Bible, it depended a lot on something akin to revelation. There are no citations of scientific studies to support its decisions.”

Despite its lack of citations, that DSM named 265 disorders doctors were meant to identify by matching (or mostly matching) a list of symptoms in the book with symptoms described by a patient. The drug companies were quick to see this radical shift in psychiatry as an opportunity. From the 1980s until now, as Angell demonstrates, the drug makers have supported the move away from talk therapy to the drug therapy, which also benefits practitioners, since doling out drugs and tweaking prescriptions earns a psychiatrist more money for less time spent with a patient.

Here Angell explains how companies influence the DSM itself. The bold typeface is ours.

Drug companies are particularly eager to win over faculty psychiatrists at prestigious academic medical centers. Called “key opinion leaders” (KOLs) by the industry, these are the people who through their writing and teaching influence how mental illness will be diagnosed and treated. They also publish much of the clinical research on drugs and, most importantly, largely determine the content of the DSM. In a sense, they are the best sales force the industry could have, and are worth every cent spent on them. Of the 170 contributors to the current version of the DSM (the DSM-IV-TR), almost all of whom would be described as KOLs, ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.

The drug industry, of course, supports other specialists and professional societies, too, but Carlat asks, “Why do psychiatrists consistently lead the pack of specialties when it comes to taking money from drug companies?” His answer: “Our diagnoses are subjective and expandable, and we have few rational reasons for choosing one treatment over another.” Unlike the conditions treated in most other branches of medicine, there are no objective signs or tests for mental illness—no lab data or MRI findings—and the boundaries between normal and abnormal are often unclear. That makes it possible to expand diagnostic boundaries or even create new diagnoses, in ways that would be impossible, say, in a field like cardiology. And drug companies have every interest in inducing psychiatrists to do just that.

Eli Lilly gave $551,000 to NAMI

In addition to the money spent on the psychiatric profession directly, drug companies heavily support many related patient advocacy groups and educational organizations. Whitaker writes that in the first quarter of 2009 alone, “Eli Lilly gave $551,000 to NAMI [National Alliance on Mental Illness] and its local chapters, $465,000 to the National Mental Health Association, $130,000 to CHADD (an ADHD [attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder] patient-advocacy group), and $69,250 to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.”

And that’s just one company in three months; one can imagine what the yearly total would be from all companies that make psychoactive drugs. These groups ostensibly exist to raise public awareness of psychiatric disorders, but they also have the effect of promoting the use of psychoactive drugs and influencing insurers to cover them. Whitaker summarizes the growth of industry influence after the publication of the DSM-III as follows:

“In short, a powerful quartet of voices came together during the 1980’s eager to inform the public that mental disorders were brain diseases. Pharmaceutical companies provided the financial muscle. The APA and psychiatrists at top medical schools conferred intellectual legitimacy upon the enterprise. The NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health] put the government’s stamp of approval on the story. NAMI provided a moral authority.”

And now here we are in 2011, with almost everyone we know taking two or three different mood disorder drugs. (This trend is not limited to mental disorder, mind you. See Disease Branding.)

Work started on the DSM-V in 1999, which is due out in 2013. It will contain many new disorders, such as “binge eating” and “restless leg disorder.” It will also expand existing categories by tacking on words like “spectrum” to the end of a known disorder, Angell reports. “It looks as though it will be harder and harder to be normal,” she writes.

But the curtain gets pulled back further still.

In her review of Daniel Carlat’s book, Angell calls attention to the “disillusioned insider’s” frank admission that when he prescribes a drug, his decision process is largely guesswork. Carlat’s view is that although any psychiatrist will acknowledge that he or she has had great success with mental disorder drugs for say, depression or anxiety, no doctor can say with certainty whether the drugs are working or if a placebo effect has taken effect.

[Carlat's] work consists of asking patients a series of questions about their symptoms to see whether they match up with any of the disorders in the DSM. This matching exercise, he writes, provides “the illusion that we understand our patients when all we are doing is assigning them labels.” Often patients meet criteria for more than one diagnosis, because there is overlap in symptoms. For example, difficulty concentrating is a criterion for more than one disorder. One of Carlat’s patients ended up with seven separate diagnoses. “We target discrete symptoms with treatments, and other drugs are piled on top to treat side effects.” A typical patient, he says, might be taking Celexa for depression, Ativan for anxiety, Ambien for insomnia, Provigil for fatigue (a side effect of Celexa), and Viagra for impotence (another side effect of Celexa).

As for the medications themselves, Carlat writes that “there are only a handful of umbrella categories of psychotropic drugs,” within which the drugs are not very different from one another. He doesn’t believe there is much basis for choosing among them. “To a remarkable degree, our choice of medications is subjective, even random. Perhaps your psychiatrist is in a Lexapro mood this morning, because he was just visited by an attractive Lexapro drug rep.”

Messy. And, of course, the whole system is now being exported to China and other countries where the middle class is growing and the mental health industry is still in a developing stage.

Angell’s latest book is The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.

Read the rest of her essay, which examines the controversial use of brain chemistry drugs to treat children, here.

http://www.minyanville.com/dailyfeed/2011/07/25/harvard-expert-links-our-mental/

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New York Review of Books  – From the July 14, 2011 issue

by Marcia Angell

United Artists/Photofest Lan Fendors, Louise Fletcher, and Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1975

In my article in the last issue, I focused mainly on the recent books by psychologist Irving Kirsch and journalist Robert Whitaker, and what they tell us about the epidemic of mental illness and the drugs used to treat it.¹ Here I discuss the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—often referred to as the bible of psychiatry, and now heading for its fifth edition—and its extraordinary influence within American society. I also examine Unhinged, the recent book by Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist, who provides a disillusioned insider’s view of the psychiatric profession. And I discuss the widespread use of psychoactive drugs in children, and the baleful influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the practice of psychiatry.

One of the leaders of modern psychiatry, Leon Eisenberg, a professor at Johns Hopkins and then Harvard Medical School, who was among the first to study the effects of stimulants on attention deficit disorder in children, wrote that American psychiatry in the late twentieth century moved from a state of “brainlessness” to one of “mindlessness.”² By that he meant that before psychoactive drugs (drugs that affect the mental state) were introduced, the profession had little interest in neurotransmitters or any other aspect of the physical brain. Instead, it subscribed to the Freudian view that mental illness had its roots in unconscious conflicts, usually originating in childhood, that affected the mind as though it were separate from the brain.

But with the introduction of psychoactive drugs in the 1950s, and sharply accelerating in the 1980s, the focus shifted to the brain. Psychiatrists began to refer to themselves as psychopharmacologists, and they had less and less interest in exploring the life stories of their patients. Their main concern was to eliminate or reduce symptoms by treating sufferers with drugs that would alter brain function. An early advocate of this biological model of mental illness, Eisenberg in his later years became an outspoken critic of what he saw as the indiscriminate use of psychoactive drugs, driven largely by the machinations of the pharmaceutical industry.

When psychoactive drugs were first introduced, there was a brief period of optimism in the psychiatric profession, but by the 1970s, optimism gave way to a sense of threat. Serious side effects of the drugs were becoming apparent, and an antipsychiatry movement had taken root, as exemplified by the writings of Thomas Szasz and the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There was also growing competition for patients from psychologists and social workers. In addition, psychiatrists were plagued by internal divisions: some embraced the new biological model, some still clung to the Freudian model, and a few saw mental illness as an essentially sane response to an insane world. Moreover, within the larger medical profession, psychiatrists were regarded as something like poor relations; even with their new drugs, they were seen as less scientific than other specialists, and their income was generally lower.

In the late 1970s, the psychiatric profession struck back—hard. As Robert Whitaker tells it in Anatomy of an Epidemic, the medical director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Melvin Sabshin, declared in 1977 that “a vigorous effort to remedicalize psychiatry should be strongly supported,” and he launched an all-out media and public relations campaign to do exactly that. Psychiatry had a powerful weapon that its competitors lacked. Since psychiatrists must qualify as MDs, they have the legal authority to write prescriptions. By fully embracing the biological model of mental illness and the use of psychoactive drugs to treat it, psychiatry was able to relegate other mental health care providers to ancillary positions and also to identify itself as a scientific discipline along with the rest of the medical profession. Most important, by emphasizing drug treatment, psychiatry became the darling of the pharmaceutical industry, which soon made its gratitude tangible.

These efforts to enhance the status of psychiatry were undertaken deliberately. The APA was then working on the third edition of the DSM, which provides diagnostic criteria for all mental disorders. The president of the APA had appointed Robert Spitzer, a much-admired professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, to head the task force overseeing the project. The first two editions, published in 1952 and 1968, reflected the Freudian view of mental illness and were little known outside the profession. Spitzer set out to make the DSM-III something quite different. He promised that it would be “a defense of the medical model as applied to psychiatric problems,” and the president of the APA in 1977, Jack Weinberg, said it would “clarify to anyone who may be in doubt that we regard psychiatry as a specialty of medicine.”

When Spitzer’s DSM-III was published in 1980, it contained 265 diagnoses (up from 182 in the previous edition), and it came into nearly universal use, not only by psychiatrists, but by insurance companies, hospitals, courts, prisons, schools, researchers, government agencies, and the rest of the medical profession. Its main goal was to bring consistency (usually referred to as “reliability”) to psychiatric diagnosis, that is, to ensure that psychiatrists who saw the same patient would agree on the diagnosis. To do that, each diagnosis was defined by a list of symptoms, with numerical thresholds. For example, having at least five of nine particular symptoms got you a full-fledged diagnosis of a major depressive episode within the broad category of “mood disorders.” But there was another goal—to justify the use of psychoactive drugs. The president of the APA last year, Carol Bernstein, in effect acknowledged that. “It became necessary in the 1970s,” she wrote, “to facilitate diagnostic agreement among clinicians, scientists, and regulatory authorities given the need to match patients with newly emerging pharmacologic treatments.”³

The DSM-III was almost certainly more “reliable” than the earlier versions, but reliability is not the same thing as validity. Reliability, as I have noted, is used to mean consistency; validity refers to correctness or soundness. If nearly all physicians agreed that freckles were a sign of cancer, the diagnosis would be “reliable,” but not valid. The problem with the DSM is that in all of its editions, it has simply reflected the opinions of its writers, and in the case of the DSM-III mainly of Spitzer himself, who has been justly called one of the most influential psychiatrists of the twentieth century.⁴ In his words, he “picked everybody that [he] was comfortable with” to serve with him on the fifteen-member task force, and there were complaints that he called too few meetings and generally ran the process in a haphazard but high-handed manner. Spitzer said in a 1989 interview, “I could just get my way by sweet talking and whatnot.” In a 1984 article entitled “The Disadvantages of DSM-III Outweigh Its Advantages,” George Vaillant, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, wrote that the DSM-III represented “a bold series of choices based on guess, taste, prejudice, and hope,” which seems to be a fair description.

Not only did the DSM become the bible of psychiatry, but like the real Bible, it depended a lot on something akin to revelation. There are no citations of scientific studies to support its decisions. That is an astonishing omission, because in all medical publications, whether journal articles or textbooks, statements of fact are supposed to be supported by citations of published scientific studies. (There are four separate “sourcebooks” for the current edition of the DSM that present the rationale for some decisions, along with references, but that is not the same thing as specific references.) It may be of much interest for a group of experts to get together and offer their opinions, but unless these opinions can be buttressed by evidence, they do not warrant the extraordinary deference shown to the DSM. The DSM-III was supplanted by the DSM-III-R in 1987, the DSM-IV in 1994, and the current version, the DSM-IV-TR (text revised) in 2000, which contains 365 diagnoses. “With each subsequent edition,” writes Daniel Carlat in his absorbing book, “the number of diagnostic categories multiplied, and the books became larger and more expensive. Each became a best seller for the APA, and DSM is now one of the major sources of income for the organization.” The DSM-IV sold over a million copies.

As psychiatry became a drug-intensive specialty, the pharmaceutical industry was quick to see the advantages of forming an alliance with the psychiatric profession. Drug companies began to lavish attention and largesse on psychiatrists, both individually and collectively, directly and indirectly. They showered gifts and free samples on practicing psychiatrists, hired them as consultants and speakers, bought them meals, helped pay for them to attend conferences, and supplied them with “educational” materials. When Minnesota and Vermont implemented “sunshine laws” that require drug companies to report all payments to doctors, psychiatrists were found to receive more money than physicians in any other specialty. The pharmaceutical industry also subsidizes meetings of the APA and other psychiatric conferences. About a fifth of APA funding now comes from drug companies.

Drug companies are particularly eager to win over faculty psychiatrists at prestigious academic medical centers. Called “key opinion leaders” (KOLs) by the industry, these are the people who through their writing and teaching influence how mental illness will be diagnosed and treated. They also publish much of the clinical research on drugs and, most importantly, largely determine the content of the DSM. In a sense, they are the best sales force the industry could have, and are worth every cent spent on them. Of the 170 contributors to the current version of the DSM (the DSM-IV-TR), almost all of whom would be described as KOLs, ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.⁵

The drug industry, of course, supports other specialists and professional societies, too, but Carlat asks, “Why do psychiatrists consistently lead the pack of specialties when it comes to taking money from drug companies?” His answer: “Our diagnoses are subjective and expandable, and we have few rational reasons for choosing one treatment over another.” Unlike the conditions treated in most other branches of medicine, there are no objective signs or tests for mental illness—no lab data or MRI findings—and the boundaries between normal and abnormal are often unclear. That makes it possible to expand diagnostic boundaries or even create new diagnoses, in ways that would be impossible, say, in a field like cardiology. And drug companies have every interest in inducing psychiatrists to do just that.

In addition to the money spent on the psychiatric profession directly, drug companies heavily support many related patient advocacy groups and educational organizations. Whitaker writes that in the first quarter of 2009 alone,

Eli Lilly gave $551,000 to NAMI [National Alliance on Mental Illness] and its local chapters, $465,000 to the National Mental Health Association, $130,000 to CHADD (an ADHD [attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder] patient-advocacy group), and $69,250 to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

And that’s just one company in three months; one can imagine what the yearly total would be from all companies that make psychoactive drugs. These groups ostensibly exist to raise public awareness of psychiatric disorders, but they also have the effect of promoting the use of psychoactive drugs and influencing insurers to cover them. Whitaker summarizes the growth of industry influence after the publication of the DSM-III as follows:

In short, a powerful quartet of voices came together during the 1980’s eager to inform the public that mental disorders were brain diseases. Pharmaceutical companies provided the financial muscle. The APA and psychiatrists at top medical schools conferred intellectual legitimacy upon the enterprise. The NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health] put the government’s stamp of approval on the story. NAMI provided a moral authority.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul/14/illusions-of-psychiatry/

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The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, (CCHR) has launched a new video to expose the hypocracy of the pharmaceutically driven campaign to “Stop the Stigma” of mental illness.    With its seemingly altruistic sounding agenda to eliminate “stigma”  the fact is the real  “stigmatization” is coming from those behind this campaign—pharma, psychiatry and pharma-funded front groups such as  NAMI and CHADD to name but a few.    There are currently 20 million kids & adolescents labeled with mental “disorders” that are based solely on a checklist of behaviors, no brain scans, x-rays, genetic or blood tests can prove they are “mentally ill”,  yet they are being stigmatized with psychiatric labels, which will be part of their permanent medical record,  and prescribed dangerous, life-threatening psychiatric drugs.

Child drugging is a $4.8 billion-a-year industry, and the industry knows where to put its funding to get the most bang for its buck.    For example, take NAMI’s campaign to stop the “stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill—the “Founding Sponsors” were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs. (For an in-depth look at what else Pharma funds and how this funding not only helps set mental health policies but campaigns such as this, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies at the bottom of this post)

The real stigmatization is coming from those that benefit from labeling behaviors as diseases to be “cured” or “treated” despite the complete lack of  medical/biological evidence to support them.  George Orwell coined the term Doublespeak, meaning words redefined to mislead, distort and disguise, and no better example exists than psychiatry’s pathologizing and redefining behaviors into mental “illness”.      For example,  If an adolescent is strong willed,  this is redefined as  “oppositional defiant disorder.” If a kid acts like a kid,   sometimes losing pencils or toys, or acting “on the go” then this has been pathologized into  “ADHD.” If a teenager has normal adolescent mood swings, then this has been repackaged as “bi-polar disorder.” And shyness?  Doesn’t exist.  It is now called  “social anxiety disorder.” Moreover, once labeled, these kids are stigmatized for life.

Psychiatric labels are the stigma.

Various canned press releases and “studies” circulated by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry profess,  “more people now believe that illnesses like schizophrenia and depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.”  This is marketing at its best—say people believe in a chemical imbalance so you don’t have to bother pointing out the fact that there is no chemical imbalance .  How can the layperson be sure of this? It’s simple. Find one person who has a lab test showing their chemical imbalance.  Not one of the millions of people taking drugs to cure their “chemical imbalance” has a lab test showing they have an imbalance.

So when it comes to “stigmatization” one need look no further than those who benefit from labels which are simply based on opinion—not science, and not medicine. Now it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out… does it?

Watch video: Psychiatry—Stigmatizing Kids with Bogus ‘Mental Disorders’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv49RFo1ckQ

For more information  about pharmaceutical front groups see this:  http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

For an in-depth look at this topic, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies

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20 million kids are being prescribed dangerous mind-altering drugs

By CCHR

Today’s Huffington Post features an article from psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz, frequently seen in the press leading the cheer for more psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of children.   In today’s article, Koplewicz makes a plea to ‘Stop the Stigma’ which is preventing children from being diagnosed mentally ill.   Pretty catchy slogan isn’t it? “Stop the Stigma.”  It ought to be, it’s a brilliant marketing campaign, brought to you by Big Pharma, via the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a group that  masquerades as a “patient’s rights group for the mentally ill”  but receives tens of millions in Pharma funding.

But here’s the real rub—What entity is most responsible for stigmatizing millions of children? What group has pathologized childhood behavior and repackaged a list of behaviors into a “disease” called ADHD?  Psychiatry and Pharma.   You can’t be a kid anymore.  If you display child-like behaviors you can be  branded mentally ill for life. And its not just us saying this.  Consider that the former Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM task force,  psychiatrist Allen Frances, stated “Our country is in the midst of a fifteen year ‘epidemic’ of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). There are six potential causes for the skyrocketing rates of ADD—but only five have been real contributors. The most obvious explanation is by far the least likely – that the prevalence of attention deficit problems in the general population has actually increased in the last 15 years. Human nature is remarkably constant and slow to change, while diagnostic fads come and go with great rapidity. We don’t have more attention deficit than ever before-we just label more attentional problems as mental disorder.”

He  also talked about “stigma,” but sourced the industry creating it—psychiatry: “The ‘epidemic’ of childhood Bipolar Disorder has created a public health dilemma” and that it is  “based on much hype and very little scientific evidence. The label Bipolar Disorder also carries considerable stigma, implying that the child will have a lifelong illness requiring lifetime treatment.”

Exactly.

The title of Dr. Koplewicz’s article is “Why Are People So Divided When It Comes to Children’s Mental Health?” so we’d like to answer that question, as it’s pretty simple —Some of us are for children’s rights and putting their best interests above all else, while others are for Psycho/Pharma and putting their best interests above all else.

That’s the short version.  Here is a bit more detailed answer;

Point 1) Millions of children have been stigmatized with bogus psychiatric “labels” that are based solely on opinion, and not one shred of medical evidence that there’s anything physically wrong with them.  No blood tests, brain scans, X-rays, MRIs or any proof whatsoever they are “mentally ill” and require drugs euphemistically being called “medicine.”    Unlike real medical diseases which are discovered in labs, psychiatric diagnoses are invented by psychiatrists in committee, by  the following “scientific” process;  Cluster a number of behaviors into a nice little package, give it a name and add “disorder” on the tail end of it,  then take a vote.  Majority wins.   That’s about it. And that’s why mental disorders can be here one day and gone the next, because of majority opinion — namely, psychiatry’s.   So while psychiatrists talk about the “amazing progress” they’ve made, and how “close” they’ve come to proving mental disorders are “real medical conditions,” we’d like to point out the obvious—they haven’t.   They couldn’t prove mental disorders were physical/medical conditions 50 years ago, and can’t prove it today despite billions in government funding.    No progress.  Whatsoever.   Zippo.  Nada.    So understandably, Dr. Koplewicz,, as people become more educated about this ludicrous subjective process of disorders made to order, they are concerned about the lack of real science to psychiatric “diagnoses” particularly where their children are concerned.

Point 2) The majority of psychiatrists within the American Psychiatric Association that “decide” on what will and will not be a mental “disorder” are funded by Pharma.  That’s called a Conflict of Interest.  A serious, egregious conflict of interest.  No “conspiracy” here Dr. Kopelwicz, just some facts about your colleagues and their incentives for developing more mental disorders.

Point 3) Due to these subjective, invented mental disorders,  20 million children are currently taking mind-altering, life-threatening drugs, acknowledged by international drug regulatory agencies to cause future drug dependence, stunted growth, mania, psychosis, violence, aggression, hallucinations, heart attack, stroke, sudden death and suicidal ideation.  All international studies and warnings on psychiatric drugs along with all the reports filed with the U.S. FDA’s Medwatch by doctors, pharmacists and healthcare providers reporting suicidal ideation and death from psychiatric drugs given to toddlers, young children and teenagers can be found here:  http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/

Point 4) While Koplewicz has the audacity to call the “over-drugging” of children “a myth”,  consider that the Government Accountability Office has launched a federal investigation into the massive increase of drugging children in foster care.  “The investigators will attempt to account for estimates in the hundreds of millions of dollars of possible fraud arising from prescriptions for drugs explicitly barred from Medicaid coverage.  The GAO is collecting data from six states to search for patterns of abuse.  According to a number of foster care experts who spoke with Politics Daily, children in foster care, who are typically concurrently enrolled in Medicaid, are three or four more times as likely to be on psychotropic medications than other children on Medicaid. Alarmingly, many of these drugs are medically prohibited for minors and dangerous to the children taking them.”

Point 5) Senate investigations this past year revealed that some of the “leading” psychiatrists touting the wonders of diagnosing and drugging kids, and largely responsible for massive increases in kids unnecessarily placed on dangerous psychiatric drugs, were on Pharma’s payroll, and failed to disclose this.  Psychiatrists such as Joseph Biederman, who was being paid millions of dollars by the Pharmaceutical companies while skewing the results of drug trials to show false benefits for kids, in order the launch a nationwide campaign to get children diagnosed as “bi-polar.”

And he’s not the only one: Here are some of the “leading” psychiatrists exposed by Senate investigations:

Melissa DelBello, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati, was exposed in 2007 by the Senate Finance Committee for concealing $180,000 she received from AstraZeneca in 2003 and 2004.  DelBello’s studies of the antipsychotic Seroquel, made by AstraZeneca, in children helped to fuel the widespread pediatric use of antipsychotic drugs.

In 2008, Joseph Biederman, a leading Harvard child psychiatrist whose work helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs in children, was exposed for withholding earning at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers between 2000 and 2007.

Alan Schatzberg, president-elect of the APA, and Professor and Department of Psychiatry Chair of Stanford University was also investigated in 2008 by the Senate Finance Committee.  Schatzberg was forced to step down as principal investigator in an NIH funded research project into a drug called Mifeprestone, to treat “psychotic depression.” Senate investigators found that Schatzberg failed to report $4.8 million worth of stock in Corcept Therapeutics, a drug company which he co-founded and acted as lead researcher on a drug development project for until he was forced to surrender that role after being exposed.

A Senate investigation found Charles Nemeroff, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine had concealed $2.8 million he earned from drug companies. He was forced to step down as Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory due to being exposed for his hidden pharmaceutical pay and attempted cover up.

In December 2009, Sen. Charles Grassley filed a complaint about Fernando Mendez-Villamil to federal authorities for his excessive prescribing of antipsychotics to children that were not approved by the FDA.  This cost taxpayers $43 million over six years.  Mendez-Villamil is apparently also currently under investigation by the Medicaid program.  Mid 2009, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration reported that that Mendez Villamil is the top Medicaid prescriber of mental health drugs in the state—for all ages.  It was calculated that he wrote more than 150 prescriptions a day, seven days a week for six years

So to summarize, we don’t have an epidemic of mentally ill children, we have an epidemic of psychiatry stigmatizing children with mental disorders that cannot be medically/scientifically proven to exist.  We have an epidemic of children prescribed dangerous and potentially lethal psychiatric drugs, including infants and toddlers.  And we have the real source of stigmatization—the Psychiatric/Pharmaceutical industry.

To read Koplewicz’s article, click here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-harold-koplewicz/mental-health-being-openminded_b_791706.html

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Is Something Not Quite Right With Stan – A Mental Health Blog – November 10, 2010

The Big News in Pharma-land is that the DOJ is going after a former GSK lawyer/Exec for a myriad of crimes which could lead to a Fashionable Federal Prison Jump Suit & a very long stay at a Martha Steward Foo Foo Club Fed. The question still remains if this scum bag exec does go to trial and is convicted (or sings like a Canary); what effect this might have on the World Wide Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel Criminal business as usual model?

For a little back story)

This all sounds like a big wonderful hug fest & one giant “can’t we all just get along” moment for all those that have been watching these corporate crimes being waged against society and humanity go unchecked for decades now. But the caution bells are ringing in distance as we have learned the hard way many times before with Big Pharma; words are always cheap, while honesty & accountability is something of an abomination to the holy pharmaceutical corporate stone tablet creed.

So as they say, the proof will lay/lie in the pudding. Will AstraZeneca finally do the right thing when it’s comes to the many thousands injured by Seroquel, will J&J make good on the Risperdal crime settlements and get clean/sober, will GSK come in with a apology mop with groveling pledges of restitution and pay outs for damage caused by Paxil, Wellbutrin, Avandia, as we just name a few of the many ongoing Big Pharma Cartel horrendous criminal actions that have seriously harmed or killed consumers.

If you believe the sweet smell of change is in the air, you might want to ask/consider why is Big Pharma trying to close the honesty door at the same time they are saying they want it to be wide open? read here–>And Here Is The SEC Whistleblower Program

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(Image taken from: http://herinst.org/sbeder/corppower/pharm-agenda.html)

by CCHR Int

A new study, the result of a joint collaboration between Indiana University and Columbia University, and published  by the American Journal of Psychiatry, reports that prejudice and discrimination still exists among people with serious mental illness.  Headlines include “Mental Illness Stigma Hard to Shake, Survey Finds” and “Despite Deeper Understanding of Mental Illness, Stigma Lingers.”

So what exactly is behind this study? Taking aside the fact that Columbia University is well known for its collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, its medical center having collaborated with AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Merck, Novartis and Pfizer. Or the fact that Indiana University received a $1 million grant from Eli Lilly.

With a seemingly altruistic agenda, the fact is the campaign to end the “stigma” of mental illness is one driven and funded by those who benefit from more and more people being labeled mentally ill—pharma, psychiatry and pharmaceutical front groups such as  NAMI and CHADD to name but a few.   For example, take NAMI’s campaign to stop the “stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill—the “Founding Sponsors” were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs. (For an in-depth look at what else Pharma funds and how this funding not only helps set mental health policies but campaigns such as this, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies at the bottom of this post)

The fact is that the  “stigmatization ” is coming from those that benefit from people being labeled/stigmatized with mental disorders that have no medical/biological evidence. Case in point, if you are rebellious, you are “stigmatized” with the label “oppositional defiant disorder.” If your kid acts like a kid he is “stigmatized” with the label “ADHD.” If you are sad, unhappy (even temporarily) you are “stigmatized” with the label “depressive” or “bi-polar disorder.” If you are shy you are “stigmatized” with the label “social anxiety disorder.” Moreover, you or your child are now stigmatized for life as this label, which is based solely on opinion, is now part of your medical record, despite the fact there is no medical evidence to prove you are “mentally ill”.

This is also true of people diagnosed “schizophrenic.” There is no medical test to verify someone has a brain abnormality or medical condition of schizophrenia. And while no one claims  people can’t become psychotic, the fact remains there is no biological evidence to support schizophrenia as a brain disease or chemical abnormality.  And consider this, if people do become psychotic, or irrational,  is it in fact caused by some  underlying medical (not psychiatric) problem?   And why did a 15-year multiple follow up study find that there was a 40% recovery rate for those diagnosed schizophrenic who did not take antipsychotics, versus a 5% rate for those who did?  What happened to their supposed “brain disease?” Did it simply vanish?  Moreover, if they could recover from such a mental state, do they deserve the “stigma” of “schizophrenia” still being part of their permanent medical record?  For life?   Think about it.  Imagine you were extremely overweight—obese.  You lose all the weight so you are no longer obese.  Yet your medical records continue to say that you are.

And if schizophrenia is in fact a “disease” despite the fact there is no medical or biological evidence (note we did not say speculation, or theories, but evidence) then why is it that psychiatrist Loren Mosher, the former Chief of Schizophrenia Research for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) openly state that there is no biological condition of schizophrenia as a disease or brain malfunction? And why didn’t the mental health industry take advantage of his 2-year-outcome studies proving that those diagnosed schizophrenic could recover without the use of drugs? Is it because this proved that recovery was possible and thereby disproved the theory that something was wrong with their brain? Or was it the fact that they recovered without the use of drugs, thereby threatening a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry?  Maybe this explains why Mosher was fired from his position at NIMH (http://www.moshersoteria.com/)

As a final note regarding “stigmatization,” keep in mind that psychiatrists admit there is no recovery from “mental illness.” They admit no cures. So once you are labeled—game over.

The new “study” also reports, ” more people now believe that illnesses like schizophrenia and depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.”  This is marketing at its best—say people believe in a chemical imbalance so you don’t have to bother pointing out the fact that there is no chemical imbalance .  How can the layperson be sure of this? It’s simple. Find one person who has a lab test showing their chemical imbalance.  Not one of the millions of people taking drugs to cure their “chemical imbalance” has a lab test showing they have an imbalance.  Now it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out… does it?

For more information  about pharmaceutical front groups see this:  http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

For an in-depth look at this topic, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies

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Scoop Independent News
By Evelyn Pringle
June 22, 2010

Non-Profit Advocacy Groups

As a main component of the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, the so-called “patient advocacy” organizations have become the leading force behind the American epidemic of mental illness over the past two decades.

Drug makers, and their foundations, funnel millions of dollars to these non-profits every year. In return, the leaders recruit their members as foot soldiers to carry out the latest marketing campaigns and to provide a fire-wall so that no money trail can be tracked back to the drug companies.

Gigantic Pyramid

The psychiatric front groups form a gigantic pyramid and once pharmaceutical money enters the system through a major organization, it gets channeled into a huge spider-web that weaves through many groups, making it nearly impossible to keep track of where it came from or where it all went. Often, when the grant reports of the drug companies list a large donation to one organization, the annual reports of the other groups will show smaller gifts from that same organization.

The “charity” groups are exempt from income tax and the “contributions” funneled through them are tax deductible. The money is used for disease mongering campaigns to both market disorders and pressure public health care programs and private insurers to pay for expensive treatments.

“Presenting themselves as patient advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership, many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press and the American public — for they have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent,” according to Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health watchdog group.

In a June 2, 2010, commentary titled, “Psychiatric Fads and Overdiagnosis,” on the Psychology Today website, Dr Allen Frances points out that it “is too bad that there is no advocacy group for normality that could effectively push back against all the forces aligned to expand the reach of mental disorders.”

The leaders of the supposedly “non-profits” earn outrageously high salaries, along with excellent benefit packages, while many of the patients they claim to represent are encouraged to seek federal disability payments of under $700 a month, and apply for public housing, food stamps, and Medicaid, to make ends meet. The top officials will often move from a leadership role in one organization to a higher position in another.

The drug makers rely on the front groups to do their bidding any time profits are threatened. For instance, if the FDA is considering adding a black box warning about a deadly side effect to a drug’s label, which may result in a drop in sales, representatives of front groups will show up at the FDA advisory panel hearings to testify against adding the warning.

They will also lobby FDA panels whenever there is a chance to increase profits, such as enlarging the drug customer base. In June 2009, the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee was set to meet to evaluate AstraZeneca’s Seroquel, Pfizer’s Geodon and Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa for use with 13 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with schizophrenia, and 10 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder.

On June 8, 2009, nine front groups issued a joint statement urging the panel to vote to approve all three drugs for kids. The groups signing the letter included the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association, Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Families for Depression Awareness, Mental Health America, National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

Read entire article:  http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1006/S00162.htm

Also see:  http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

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The Faster Times
By Alison Bass
March 30, 2010

First the good news: The Physician Payment Sunshine Act is now law, signed by President Obama as part of the health care bill overhaul. Starting in 2012, drug and medical device companies must report all consulting, speaking and other payments to doctors and teaching hospitals in excess of $100 annually to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which will post the payments on a public website. This is an important first step toward making transparent the pervasive financial ties between doctors who are studying or promoting specific drugs and medical devices and the companies that manufacture these products.

There is one significant loophole in the law: according to thefinal provisions, payments related to clinical trials or product development agreements for new products are allowed a publication delay of four years or until product approval, whichever comes first. So if a particular doctor is researching a drug that has not yet been approved for a specific condition, we will have to wait four years to find out whether he or she is on the drug company’s payroll. But at least the disclosure will eventually see the light of day, and patients who are prescribed the drug in question can seek a second opinion from a doctor who is not on the drug firm’s payroll and whose medical judgment can be trusted.

The Physician Payment Sunshine Act, however, only goes so far. While it covers doctors and teaching hospitals, it does not extend to all the advocacy groups and professional organizations that have substantial influence on over how particular illnesses are treated. For example, as I reported, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), the most powerful advocacy group for people with mental illness, received millions of dollars in funding from drug companies for years — a payola that no doubt spurred this group’s embrace of potent psychoactive drugs over alternative methods of treating mental illness.

And now, in the current Psychiatric Times, two Massachusetts researchers tear the veil off efforts by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to hide industry funding of its two philanthropic arms — the American Psychiatric Foundation (APF) and the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE). As Lisa Cosgrove and Harold Burszstajn report: “While the APA recently announced it would phase out the visibly industry-supported educational programs, the organization has remained curiously silent about acknowledging and monitoring industry funding” of APF and APIRE.

Read entire article:  http://thefastertimes.com/healthinvestigations/2010/03/30/the-troubling-link-between-big-pharma-and-the-american-psychiatric-association/

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