Posts Tagged ‘psychiatric disorders’

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Beginning of the end of the DSM-IV? Feds Move Away from Psychiatry’s Billing Bible

Monday, May 6th, 2013

Now, in a move sure to rock psychiatry, psychology and other fields that address mental illness, the director of the National Institutes of Mental Health has announced that the federal agency–which provides grants for research on mental illness–will be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories”

Salon Magazine – May 6, 2013—this article originally appeared in Scientific American

What is mental illness? Schizophrenia? Autism? Bipolar disorder? Depression? Since the 1950s, the profession of psychiatry has attempted to provide definitive answers to these questions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Often called The Bible of psychiatry, the DSM serves as the ultimate authority for diagnosis, treatment and insurance coverage of mental illness.

Now, in a move sure to rock psychiatry, psychology and other fields that address mental illness, the director of the National Institutes of Mental Health has announced that the federal agency–which provides grants for research on mental illness–will be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.”  Thomas Insel’s statement comes just weeks before the scheduled publication of the DSM-V, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Insel writes:

“While DSM has been described as a ‘Bible’ for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been ‘reliability’–each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.

In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment.

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Normal behaviour, or mental illness?

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Macleans – March 19, 2013
by Anne Kingston

A look at the new psychiatric guidelines that are pitting doctors against doctors

Jonathan Kirn/Getty Images

Every parent of a preteen has been there: on the receiving end of sullen responses, bursts of frustration or anger, even public tantrums that summon the fear that Children’s Aid is on its way. Come late May, with the publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), however, such sustained cranky behaviour could put your child at risk of a diagnosis of “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder.” This newly minted condition will afflict children between 6 and 12 who exhibit persistent irritability and “frequent” outbursts, defined as three or more times a week for more than a year. Its original name, “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria,” was nixed after it garnered criticism it pathologized “temper tantrums,” a normal childhood occurrence. Others argue that even with the name change the new definition and diagnosis could do just that.

“Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder” isn’t the only new condition under scrutiny in the reference manual owned and produced by the American Psychiatric Association (APA)—and lauded as psychiatry’s bible. Even though the final version of DSM-5 remains under embargo, its message is being decried in some quarters as blasphemous. Its various public drafts, the third published last year, have stoked international outrage—and a flurry of op-ed columns, studies, blogs and petitions. In October 2011, for instance, the Society for Humanistic Psychology drafted an open letter to the DSM task force that morphed into an online petition signed by more than 14,000 mental health professionals and 50 organizations, including the American Counseling Association and the British Psychology Society.

Of fundamental concern is a loosening and broadening of categories to the point that everyone potentially stands on the brink of some mental-disorder diagnosis, or sits on some spectrum—a phenomenon the American psychologist Frank Farley has called “the sickening of society.” One change summoning criticism is DSM-5’s reframing of grief, that inescapable fact of life, by removing the “bereavement exclusion” for people who’ve experienced loss. Previously, anyone despairing the death of a loved one wasn’t considered a candidate for “major depression” unless their despondency persisted for more than two months or was accompanied by severe functional impairment, thoughts of suicide or psychotic symptoms. No longer.

Other updates to DSM-5, the first full revision in nearly two decades, have raised red flags. Forgetting where you put your keys or other memory lapses, a fact of aging formerly shrugged off as “a senior moment,” could portend “minor neurocognitive disorder,” a shift destined to also stoke anxiety. Anyone who overeats once a week for three weeks could have a “binge-eating disorder.” Women not turned on sexually by their partners or particularly interested in sex are candidates for “female sexual interest/arousal disorder.” Nail-biters join the ranks of the obsessive-compulsive, alongside those with other “pathological grooming habits” such as “hair-pulling” and “skin-picking.”

The fuzzy boundary between “generalized anxiety disorder” (GAD) and everyday worries has also been blurred. As Allan V. Horowitz, a sociology professor at Rutgers University, points out, changes in this category are potentially the most important because they affect the largest number of people. Under the new “somatic symptom disorder” (SSD), for instance, people who express any anxiety about physical symptoms could also be saddled with a mental illness diagnosis, which could thwart their attempts to have their physical issues taken seriously. To meet the definition one only needs to report a single bodily symptom that’s distressing and/or disruptive to daily life and have just one of the following three reactions for at least six months: “ ‘disproportionate’ thoughts about the seriousness of their symptom(s); a high level of anxiety about their health; devoting excessive time and energy to symptoms or health concerns.”

DSM-5 represents a step back in mental health care, says psychologist Peter Kinderman, head of the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society at the University of Liverpool. Kinderman, who is organizing an international letter of objection to DSM-5 to be posted on dsm5response.org, which launches March 20, believes many new DSM classifications, among them “female orgasmic disorder,” defy common sense. “If you’re not enjoying sex, it’s a problem, but it’s crazy to say it’s a mental illness,” he says. He also questions the new criteria for alcohol and drug “substance-use disorders.” “According to it, 40 to 50 per cent of college students should be considered mentally ill.” Such diagnoses interfere with the human helping response, says Kinderman. “When women get raped, it’s traumatic; when soldiers go to war, they come back emotionally affected. We don’t need the new label, ‘post-traumatic stress disorder,’ ” he says.

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Medical Cartel’s Open Secret—There are No Definitive Lab Tests for Any So-Called Mental Disorder

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

America’s Leading Psychiatrist Convicts Himself of Crimes Against Humanity

Natural News—September 3. 2012

by Jon Rappoport

The medical cartel, one of a handful of evolving super-cartels that strive for more power every day, is rife with so much fraud it’s astounding. In the psychiatric arena, for example, an open secret has been bleeding out into public consciousness for the past ten years.

THERE ARE NO DEFINITIVE LABORATORY TESTS FOR ANY SO-CALLED MENTAL DISORDER.

And along with that:

ALL SO-CALLED MENTAL DISORDERS ARE CONCOCTED, NAMED, LABELED, DESCRIBED, AND CATEGORIZED by a committee of psychiatrists, from menus of human behaviors.

Their findings are published in periodically updated editions of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), printed by the American Psychiatric Association.

For years, even psychiatrists have been blowing the whistle on this hazy crazy process of “research.”

Of course, pharmaceutical companies, who manufacture highly toxic drugs to treat every one of these “disorders,” are leading the charge to invent more and more mental-health categories, so they can sell more drugs and make more money.

But we have a mind-boggling twist. Under the radar, one of the great psychiatric stars, who has been out in front inventing mental disorders, went public. He blew the whistle on himself and his colleagues. And for 2 years, almost no one noticed.

“There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.” —Dr. Allen Frances, Psychiatrist, former Chairman, DSM task force

His name is Dr. Allen Frances, and he made VERY interesting statements to Gary Greenberg, author of a Wired article: “Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness.” (Dec.27, 2010).

Major media never picked up on the interview in any serious way. It never became a scandal.

Dr. Allen Frances is the man who, in 1994, headed up the project to write the latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the DSM-IV. This tome defines and labels and describes every official mental disorder. The DSM-IV eventually listed 297 of them.

In an April 19, 1994, New York Times piece, “Scientist At Work,” Daniel Goleman called Frances “Perhaps the most powerful psychiatrist in America at the moment…”

Well, sure. If you’re sculpting the entire canon of diagnosable mental disorders for your colleagues, for insurers, for the government, for Pharma (who will sell the drugs matched up to the 297 DSM-IV diagnoses), you’re right up there in the pantheon.

Long after the DSM-IV had been put into print, Dr. Frances talked to Wired’s Greenberg and said the following:

“There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.”

BANG.

That’s on the order of the designer of the Hindenburg, looking at the burned rubble on the ground, remarking, “Well, I knew there would be a problem.”

After a suitable pause, Dr. Frances remarked to Greenberg, “These concepts [of distinct mental disorders] are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the borders.”

Frances might have been referring to the fact that his baby, the DSM-IV, had rearranged earlier definitions of ADHD and Bipolar to permit many MORE diagnoses, leading to a vast acceleration of drug-dosing with highly powerful and toxic compounds.

Finally, at the end of the Wired interview, Frances flew off into a bizarre fantasy:

“Diagnosis [as spelled out in the DSM-IV] is part of the magic…you know those medieval maps? In the places where they didn’t know what was going on, they wrote ‘Dragons live here’…we have a dragon’s world here. But you wouldn’t want to be without the map.”

Translation: People need to hope for the healing of their troubles; so even if we psychiatrists are shooting blanks and pretending to know one kind of mental disorder from another, even if we’re inventing these mental-disorder definitions based on no biological or chemical diagnostic tests—it’s a good thing, because people will then believe there is hope for them; they’ll believe it because we place a name on their problems…

If this is medical science, a duck is a rocket ship.

If I were an editor at one of the big national newspapers, and one of my reporters walked in and told me, “The most powerful psychiatrist in America just said the DSM is sheer b.s. but it’s still important,” I think I’d make room on the front page.

If the reporter then added, “This shrink was in charge of creating the DSM-IV,” I’d clear more room above the fold.

If the reporter went on to explain that the whole profession of psychiatry would collapse overnight if the DSM was discredited, I’d call for a special section of the paper to be printed.

I’d tell the reporter to get ready to pound on this story day after day for months. I’d tell him to track down all the implications of Dr. Frances’ statements.

I’d open a bottle of champagne to toast the soon-to-be-soaring sales of my newspaper.

And then, of course, the next day I’d be fired.

Because there are powerful multi-billion-dollar interests at stake, and those people don’t like their deepest secrets exposed in the press.

And as I walked out of my job, I’d see a bevy of blank-eyed pharmaceutical executives marching into the office of the paper’s publisher, ready to read the riot act to him.

Keep in mind that Dr. Frances’ work on the DSM IV allowed for MORE toxic drugs to be prescribed, because the definition of Bipolar was expanded to include more people.

Adverse effects of Valproate (given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:

  • Acute, life-threatening, and even fatal liver toxicity;

 

  • life-threatening inflammation of the pancreas;

 

  • brain damage.

 

  • Adverse effects of Lithium (also given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:

 

  • intercranial pressure leading to blindness;

 

  • peripheral circulatory collapse;

 

  • stupor and coma.

 

  • Adverse effects of Risperdal (given for “Bipolar” and “irritability stemming from autism”) include:

 

  • serious impairment of cognitive function;

 

  • fainting;

 

  • restless muscles in neck or face, tremors (may be indicative of motor brain damage).

Dr. Frances self-admitted label-juggling act also permitted the definition of ADHD to expand, thereby opening the door for greater and greater use of Ritalin (and other similar compounds) as the treatment of choice.

So what about Ritalin?

In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a most important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)” [v.21(7), pp. 837-841].

Scarnati listed a large number of adverse affects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.

For every one of the following (selected and quoted verbatim) Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:

  • Paranoid delusions
  • Paranoid psychosis
  • Hypomanic and manic symptoms, amphetamine-like psychosis
  • Activation of psychotic symptoms
  • Toxic psychosis
  • Visual hallucinations
  • Auditory hallucinations
  • Can surpass LSD in producing bizarre experiences
  • Effects pathological thought processes
  • Extreme withdrawal
  • Terrified affect
  • Started screaming
  • Aggressiveness
  • Insomnia
  • Since Ritalin is considered an amphetamine-type drug, expect amphetamine-like effects
  • Psychic dependence
  • High-abuse potential DEA Schedule II Drug
  • Decreased REM sleep
  • When used with antidepressants one may see dangerous reactions including hypertension, seizures and hypothermia
  • Convulsions
  • Brain damage may be seen with amphetamine abuse.

A recent survey revealed that a high percentage of children diagnosed with bipolar had first received a diagnosis of ADHD. This is informative, because Ritalin and other speed-type drugs are given to kids who are slapped with the ADHD label. Speed, sooner or later, produces a crash. This is easy to call “clinical depression.” Then comes Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft. These drugs can produce temporary highs, followed by more crashes. The psychiatrist notices the up and down pattern – and then comes the diagnosis of Bipolar (manic-depression) and other drugs, including Valproate and Lithium.

In the US alone, there are at least 300,000 cases of motor brain damage incurred by people who have been prescribed so-called anti-psychotic drugs (aka “major tranquilizers”). Risperdal (mentioned above as a drug given to people diagnosed with Bipolar) is one of those major tranquilizers. (source: Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin, St. Martin’s Press, 1991)

This psychiatric drug plague is accelerating across the land.

Where are the mainstream reporters and editors and newspapers and TV anchors who should be breaking this story and mercilessly hammering on it week after week? They are in harness.

And Dr. Frances is somehow let off the hook. He’s admitted in print that the whole basis of his profession is throwing darts at labels on a wall, and implies the “effort” is rather heroic – when, in fact, the effort leads to more and more poisonous drugs being dispensed to adults and children, to say nothing of the effect of being diagnosed with “a mental disorder.” I’m not talking about “the mental-disease stigma,” the removal of which is one of Hillary Clinton’s missions in life. No, I’m talking about MOVING A HUMAN INTO THE SYSTEM, the medical apparatus, where the essence of the game is trapping that person to harvest his money, his time, his energy, and of course his health—as one new diagnosis follows on another, and one new toxic treatment after another is undertaken, from cradle to grave. The result is a severely debilitated human being (if he survives), whose major claim to fame is his list of diseases and disorders, which he learns to wear like badges of honor.

Thank you, Dr. Frances.

Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.
www.nomorefakenews.com

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Speaking Out Against Prescription Drug Propaganda and Use

Friday, February 17th, 2012

“I am giving Houston, and all the others, and each of us, a standing ovation by speaking out against the irresponsible, duplicitous, misleading and dangerous prescription drug propaganda and use in America.”

NaplesNews.com
By Nori St. Paul
February 17, 2012

It’s time to take back our human potential, and find the answers within, where they have always been.

It’s time to take back our human potential, and find the answers within, where they have always been.

It happens every day to people of all ages, but there are certain people who in death shine a spotlight on paradigms of cultural fragmentation and social inconsistency, even though most of us don’t see it at first.

Even while America and the rest of the world celebrate these icons’ lives, these “stars” illume a sad state of the American condition, and in some ways perhaps focus a beam on the collective human suffering. These public figures ante up the unnecessary ultimate price for a peoples that more and more feel alone in a crowd and are turning to Big Pharma to sate our appetites for some kind of reprieve from our psychic suffering. We are looking for that missing mirror of wholeness, and many believe it’s in a bottle.

On the outset, let me say I am not against all prescription drugs. Just most psychotropic medicines. I am passionately against the mass epidemic promotion and consumption of drugs in a world that cannot seem to produce unbiased numbers that substantiate efficacy in the realm of pill popping bliss.

It looks like the latest sacrifice to this devastation, of course, is Whitney Houston. While toxicology results are pending, it is widely known that Houston used, and allegedly abused prescription drugs.

As I have been known to do, allow me to get away from the drama of the bathtub in which she allegedly died, the glamorous dresses and Grammy parties, even her incredible musical talent, because these specifics are irrelevant fodder for the American frenzy toward sensationalism. Today a blue collar middle aged man with a wife and small children may suffer the same death as Houston, without the fanfare, because tens of thousands of people die each year from drug overdoses, including prescription medication. Now, believe me, I know you might be well tired of hearing this, but since I am not here to win a popularity contest, let me shed light on perhaps the deeper and more sensitive issue.

The scientific evidence doesn’t fit, and itself is cause for concern and the promulgation of a return to sanity is adding to the insanity, not fixing it. This is a grave issue for society.

I am giving Houston, and all the others, and each of us, a standing ovation by speaking out against the irresponsible, duplicitous, misleading and dangerous prescription drug propaganda and use in America.

The big dollar is winning out for doctors, pharmaceutical companies, advertising agencies, investors, and the government. Is this game somehow killing a part of the human potential, even before stealing lives to their last broken breath? I believe the answer is “yes.” The sad thing, too, is that people who turn to drugs are searching for an answer to their suffering, but I believe are really succumbing to the huge anatomy of the big cult of Big Pharma. The result is not a natural state of happiness. It’s high, or numb. Or worse. It’s a manufactured brand of happiness that is widely accepted by consumers that are suffering, and thing is, the message is so enticing, there seems nowhere else to turn.

It seems like we all see this happening, but as a whole we are in denial. Houston’s death is amid a pattern, and perhaps started years ago, at the height of her career, when Houston joined the ranks of an ever-growing world of “wanna-be-fixed-by-a-pill” culture. When I say by a pill, I really mean any mind altering drug, including illegal drug use, but critical, however, is that the problem includes an ongoing and aggressively promoted upward spiral of prescription drug use in America.

Research into this prescription drug issue uncovers some alarming facts. For example, Kenneth Kendler, coeditor in chief of Psychological Medicine, wrote in 2005, “We have hunted for big simple neurochemical explanations for psychiatric disorders and have not found them.”

On the promotion side, suffice it to say that research reveals a gaping and frightening discrepancy in the direct marketing vs. research dollars for American drug companies. That’s right. More money is spent to entice us than is spent to insure our safety and well-being when it comes to drugs for anxiety, schizophrenia, depression and bipolar illness. And worse, there is no evidence this tack is working. Mental illness has not abated, it has grown more widespread. This subverted reality keeps a lot of people working, and some are making a lot of money, while a lot of people are dying, or just living drugged up lives unaware of who they really are, or could be.

It’s like walking a tight rope, where we will find that “perfect balance” between total death and drug induced bliss or balance or walking zombies.

Back to Houston. Is it possible that compounding this is the potential that as a result of her death, or other high profile deaths like Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse, we actually experience a deeper delusion in some ways, as the fodder flies for weeks or years over these untimely deaths? “Well, gosh, I’m not that bad.” Or, “He’s not as bad as that. Oh, what a loss of a great talent. Wow, look at that.” In fact, are we living in a world of truncated human potential and looking for the answers outside of ourselves?

I am giving Houston, and all the others, and each of us, a standing ovation by speaking out against the irresponsible, duplicitous, misleading and dangerous prescription drug propaganda and use in America.

It’s time to take back our human potential, and find the answers within, where they have always been.

Read article here: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/feb/17/listening-to-life-speaking-out-against-drug-and/

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Ron Paul reintroduces Parental Consent Act, prohibiting federal funding for psychiatric screening of children

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Natural News – February 15, 2012

Even from the campaign trail, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has not forgotten his roots, his vision and, most importantly, his liberty-first philosophy.

As a practicing physician, Paul has the most insight into what is right – and wrong – with the U.S. healthcare system among all the GOP candidates. As such, when he re-introduces legislation such as the Parental Consent Act, which he first proposed in 2009 and which would keep federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health, psychiatric, or socioemotional screening program, you should listen.

“Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence and weight gain” Paul has said. “Yet, parents are already being threatened with child abuse charges if they resist efforts to drug their children. Imagine how much easier it will be to drug children against their parents’ wishes if a federally-funded mental-health screener makes the recommendation.”

Though first introduced a couple of years ago, the repackaged Parental Consent Act of 2011 (H.R. 2769 – previously H.R. 2218 in 2009) would keep “federal education funds from being used to pay any local educational agency or other instrument of government that uses the refusal of a parent or legal guardian to provide consent to mental health screening as the basis of a charge of child abuse, child neglect, medical neglect, or education neglect until the agency or instrument demonstrates that it is no longer using such refusal as a basis of such charge,” according to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International.

All About the Children

In a House floor speech April 30, 2009, when he first introduced the legislation, Paul said the impetus behind his opposition to using taxpayer dollars to fund so-called “mental health screening” without parental consent was the fact that it was not in the best interests of those parents, or their children.

“Already, too many children are suffering from being prescribed psychotropic drugs for nothing more than children’s typical rambunctious behavior. According to Medco Health Solutions, more than 2.2 million children are receiving more than one psychotropic drug at one time,” Paul said. “In fact, according to Medico Trends, in 2003, total spending on psychiatric drugs for children exceeded spending on antibiotics or asthma medication.”

He decries the recommendations of a mandated group called the “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health,” which he says “has recommended that the federal and state governments work toward the implementation of a comprehensive system of mental-health screening for all Americans.”

That commission, he says, wants “the implementation of a comprehensive system of mental-health screening for all Americans,” a process which would begin “in public schools as a prelude to expanding it to the general public.”

Looking for Support

In addition to looking for votes on the campaign trail, Paul is also searching for support for his bill. As such, he’s established an online petition supporters can use to send a message to Congress that they back what the Texas congressman is selling.

Besides establishing “a parent’s right to refuse mental health screening of their child,” Paul says the bill is “crucial” in protecting parental rights in general.

How important are parental rights to the mainstream media? Well, a Google news search using the terms “ron paul parental consent act,” as of this writing, produced no appreciable results.

Sources for this article include:

http://news.nationalpost.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/026187_child_health_children.html

http://www.petitiononline.com/rppca/petition.html

http://www.google.com

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Australia’s Reckless Experiment In Early Intervention

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Note from CCHR: The article below was written by Allen Frances, a psychiatrist, and former Chairman of the DSM IV task force.  The subject of the article is Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry and his agenda to pre- diagnose kids with mental ‘illness’ before they develop it, which  Frances calls  a dangerous and risky proposition.    It is.  Yet Frances seems to be making excuses for the fact that McGorry’s plan is not only dangerous – its criminal.    He calls McGorry a charismatic psychiatrist, which may be true, but this is exactly what makes him so dangerous.  Because the Australian government has just funded a program so controversial and dangerous to children that even other psychiatrists, leaders in the field, are speaking out against it.  And why did they fund it?   Because “charistmatic” Patrick McGorry sold them  a $400 million bill of goods.

“Charisma is a tricky thing.  Jack Kennedy oozed it–but so did Hitler and Charles Manson. Con artists, charlatans, and megalomaniacs can make it their instrument as effectively as the best CEOs, entertainers, and presidents.” Patricia Sellers, FORTUNE Magazine


prevention that will do more harm than good

Psychology Today
By Allen Frances
May 31, 2011

Patrick McGorry is a charismatic psychiatrist who has recently gained heroic status. First he was chosen to be Australia’s Man Of The Year. Now, he has convinced the Australian government to spend more than $400 million over five years to fund his plan for a nationwide system of Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres. McGorry is the visionary prophet and pied piper of preventive psychiatry. His goal is to diagnose mental disorders early and treat them expectantly- before they can do their worst damage.

McGorry’s goal is certainly great. But its current achievement is simply impossible and Australia’s plans are patently premature. Early intervention to prevent psychosis requires first that there be an accurate tool to identify who will later become psychotic and who will not. Unfortunately, no such accurate tool exists. The false positive rate in selecting prepsychosis is at least about 60-70% in the very best of hands and may be as high as 90% in general practice. That’s right, folks, nine misidentified non patients for one accurately identified truly prepsychotic patient. Those are totally unacceptable odds.

What are the costs? McGorry does not recommend antipsychotic medications as a routine part of his prevention regimen. But experience teaches us that they will be overused despite having no proven efficacy and posing the risk of massive weight gain (and its consequent array of serious complications). The false positives will also suffer unnecessary stigma and worry and will undergo unnecessary and misdirected treatment. And surely there are many more productive ways to spend $400 million doing a better job of managing the mental health needs of those who have real and treatable psychiatric disorders.

Unfortunately, Mcgorry is a false prophet who’s visions are offered at least a few decades before their time. Australia, led astray by his impractical hopes, is about to embark on a vast and untried public health experiment that will almost surely cause more harm to its children than it prevents. Before embarking on this headlong and reckless rush, the following research steps need to be accomplished:

1)Developing a proven and reliable definition of “Psychosis Risk”

2)Learning how to use it in a way that reduces current outrageously high false positive rates to levels that are tolerable.

3)Demonstrating that the interventions chosen are indeed effective in preventing psychosis.

4)Determining the likely rate of antipsychotic use and how this influences the overall risk/benefit balance sheet of early intervention.

5)Studying the beneficial and harmful impacts of early diagnosis on stigma and self perception.

6)Comparing the marginal utility of a dollar spent trying to prevent an alleged future disorder vs a dollar spent treating an already clearly established one.

This is a research enterprise that will take many groups around the world many decades to complete. But it is an absolutely necessary precondition before spending $400 million on what is likely to be a failure. The Australian experiment will be flying blind on an airplane that is not at all ready to leave the ground. Doing prevention prematurely and poorly will give a good idea an unnecessary bad name.

McGorry’s intentions are clearly noble, but so were Don Quixote’s. The kindly knight’s delusional good intentions and misguided interventions wreaked havoc and confusion at every turn. Sad to say, Australia’s well intended impulse to protect its children will paradoxically put them at greater risk. Let’s applaud McGorry’s vision but not blindly follow him down an unknown path fraught with dangers.

Read article here:  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201105/australias-reckless-experiment-in-early-intervention

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Children Exploited for Profit Using Fictitious Mental Disorders

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

"For over two decades drug and psychiatric industries have bombarded schools, parents, doctors, the media and government with propaganda that ADHD is a medical condition that must be managed with drugs."

NaturalNews.com— April 7, 2011

By Monica G. Young

We’re ashamed that exploitation of children for profit was once tolerated in America: such as children as young as five shackled to machines while working 16-hour days in factories, or black children auctioned and sold as slaves. Yet future generations will look back on our era too with shame: a time when labeling kids with fictitious mental disorders and hooking them on drugs was a multi-billion dollar business.

About 10 percent of U.S children – over five million – are said to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a mental illness treated with drugs. A recent study blows a wide hole in that myth.

A team of Dutch researchers took 100 unmedicated children diagnosed with ADHD and fed half of them a diet free of processed foods and allergens. The other half served as a control group. Within five weeks, 64 percent of those in the test group saw remarkable changes. “After the diet, they were just normal children with normal behavior,” lead researcher Dr. Lidy Pelsser tells NPR. “They were no longer more easily distracted, they were no more forgetful, there were no more temper-tantrums.”

Dr. Pelsser explains, “ADHD, it’s just a couple of symptoms — it’s not a disease. There is a paradigm shift needed. If a child is diagnosed ADHD, we should say, ‘OK, we have got those symptoms, now let’s start looking for a cause.’… With all children, we should start with diet research. But now we are giving them all drugs, and I think that’s a huge mistake.”

Most ADHD-diagnosed kids are prescribed powerful stimulants which can cause nausea, insomnia, liver damage, heart failure, hallucinations, convulsions, violent behavior, suicidal thoughts and sudden death. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration categorizes these as Schedule II drugs – the same class as cocaine and opium.

For over two decades drug and psychiatric industries have bombarded schools, parents, doctors, the media and government with propaganda that ADHD is a medical condition that must be managed with drugs. But let’s dissect this:

* Pharmaceutical and psychiatric literature, ads and advocates typically claim ADHD kids have brain dysfunctions or brain chemical imbalances and that it’s genetically based, while also stating the cause is unknown and no lab tests can detect it.

Huh? As no lab tests can detect it and its cause is unknown, how can they scientifically link it to brain malfunction, chemical imbalances or genetic influence? They can’t.

* They say a doctor’s diagnosis relies on the child’s response to questions, the family’s description of behavior problems and a school assessment.

Hello? Can you imagine a doctor diagnosing cancer without lab tests? Or diagnosing diabetes and prescribing insulin injections based on a family member’s report? Or putting a boy’s leg in a cast due to a teacher’s assessment? We would call such a doctor a fraud.

* They say symptoms include impulsivity, dashing around, difficulty focusing on one thing, avoiding activities that are boring, squirming and bouncing a lot, talking excessively and finding it difficult to play quietly. And these symptoms must have been present before the age of seven.

Wait a second. When are kids generally the most spontaneous, energetic, rambunctious and have the lowest attention span? Before the age of seven!

* They say that in a child with ADHD, the above symptoms are more pronounced than in other kids the same age. In other words, this isn’t medical science – it’s OPINION. Plus they omit or enormously downplay the factor of diet.

*And here’s the clincher. They say ADHD cannot be cured but its symptoms can be managed with medication.

So there you have it – it’s clearly a marketing scheme to target children and create lifelong customers for the psychiatric drug industry.

Dr. Fred Baughman, neurologist and author who has testified before Congress, says it like this, “They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive — termed them a ‘disease.’ Twenty five years of research, not deserving of the term ‘research,’ has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically – the ‘epidemic’ having grown from 500 thousand in 1985 to between five and seven million today – this remains the state of the ‘science’ of ADHD.”

One of the world’s most influential child psychiatrists and “expert” proponents of ADHD for years has been Harvard’s Dr. Joseph Biederman. He has published hundreds of papers on ADHD and ADHD drug treatment, and is one of the most-cited researchers on the subject. In 2009 a Congressional inquiry revealed that between 2000-2007, Biederman earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers. It appears Dr. Biederman has an acute case of Greed Disorder.

Just as our country has defeated and outlawed child exploitation in the past, psychiatric labeling and drugging of children must too be abolished.

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DSM: The Book of Woe—Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness

Monday, December 27th, 2010

Wired—December 27, 2010

by Gary Greenberg

Every so often Al Frances says something that seems to surprise even him. Just now, for instance, in the predawn darkness of his comfortable, rambling home in Carmel, California, he has broken off his exercise routine to declare that “there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.” Then an odd, reflective look crosses his face, as if he’s taking in the strangeness of this scene: Allen Frances, lead editor of the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (universally known as the DSM-IV), the guy who wrote the book on mental illness, confessing that “these concepts are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the boundaries.” For the first time in two days, the conversation comes to an awkward halt.

But he recovers quickly, and back in the living room he finishes explaining why he came out of a seemingly contented retirement to launch a bitter and protracted battle with the people, some of them friends, who are creating the next edition of the DSM. And to criticize them not just once, and not in professional mumbo jumbo that would keep the fight inside the professional family, but repeatedly and in plain English, in newspapers and magazines and blogs. And to accuse his colleagues not just of bad science but of bad faith, hubris, and blindness, of making diseases out of everyday suffering and, as a result, padding the bottom lines of drug companies. These aren’t new accusations to level at psychiatry, but Frances used to be their target, not their source. He’s hurling grenades into the bunker where he spent his entire career.

One influential advocate for diagnosing bipolar disorder in kids failed to disclose money he received from the makers of the bipolar drug Risperdal.

As a practicing psychotherapist myself, I can attest that this is a startling turn. But when Frances tries to explain it, he resists the kinds of reasons that mental health professionals usually give each other, the ones about character traits or personality quirks formed in childhood. He says he doesn’t want to give ammunition to his enemies, who have already shown their willingness to “shoot the messenger.” It’s not an unfounded concern. In its first official response to Frances, the APA diagnosed him with “pride of authorship” and pointed out that his royalty payments would end once the new edition was published—a fact that “should be considered when evaluating his critique and its timing.”

Frances, who claims he doesn’t care about the royalties (which amount, he says, to just 10 grand a year), also claims not to mind if the APA cites his faults. He just wishes they’d go after the right ones—the serious errors in the DSM-IV. “We made mistakes that had terrible consequences,” he says. Diagnoses of autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and bipolar disorder skyrocketed, and Frances thinks his manual inadvertently facilitated these epidemics—and, in the bargain, fostered an increasing tendency to chalk up life’s difficulties to mental illness and then treat them with psychiatric drugs.

The insurgency against the DSM-5 (the APA has decided to shed the Roman numerals) has now spread far beyond just Allen Frances. Psychiatrists at the top of their specialties, clinicians at prominent hospitals, and even some contributors to the new edition have expressed deep reservations about it. Dissidents complain that the revision process is in disarray and that the preliminary results, made public for the first time in February 2010, are filled with potential clinical and public relations nightmares. Although most of the dissenters are squeamish about making their concerns public—especially because of a surprisingly restrictive nondisclosure agreement that all insiders were required to sign—they are becoming increasingly restive, and some are beginning to agree with Frances that public pressure may be the only way to derail a train that he fears will “take psychiatry off a cliff.”

At stake in the fight between Frances and the APA is more than professional turf, more than careers and reputations, more than the $6.5 million in sales that the DSM averages each year. The book is the basis of psychiatrists’ authority to pronounce upon our mental health, to command health care dollars from insurance companies for treatment and from government agencies for research. It is as important to psychiatrists as the Constitution is to the US government or the Bible is to Christians. Outside the profession, too, the DSM rules, serving as the authoritative text for psychologists, social workers, and other mental health workers; it is invoked by lawyers in arguing over the culpability of criminal defendants and by parents seeking school services for their children. If, as Frances warns, the new volume is an “absolute disaster,” it could cause a seismic shift in the way mental health care is practiced in this country. It could cause the APA to lose its franchise on our psychic suffering, the naming rights to our pain.

This is hardly the first time that defining mental illness has led to rancor within the profession. It happened in 1993, when feminists denounced Frances for considering the inclusion of “late luteal phase dysphoric disorder” (formerly known as premenstrual syndrome) as a possible diagnosis for DSM-IV. It happened in 1980, when psychoanalysts objected to the removal of the word neurosis—their bread and butter—from the DSM-III. It happened in 1973, when gay psychiatrists, after years of loud protest, finally forced a reluctant APA to acknowledge that homosexuality was not and never had been an illness. Indeed, it’s been happening since at least 1922, when two prominent psychiatrists warned that a planned change to the nomenclature would be tantamount to declaring that “the whole world is, or has been, insane.”

Some of this disputatiousness is the hazard of any professional specialty. But when psychiatrists say, as they have during each of these fights, that the success or failure of their efforts could sink the whole profession, they aren’t just scoring rhetorical points. The authority of any doctor depends on their ability to name a patient’s suffering. For patients to accept a diagnosis, they must believe that doctors know—in the same way that physicists know about gravity or biologists about mitosis—that their disease exists and that they have it. But this kind of certainty has eluded psychiatry, and every fight over nomenclature threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the profession by revealing its dirty secret: that for all their confident pronouncements, psychiatrists can’t rigorously differentiate illness from everyday suffering. This is why, as one psychiatrist wrote after the APA voted homosexuality out of the DSM, “there is a terrible sense of shame among psychiatrists, always wanting to show that our diagnoses are as good as the scientific ones used in real medicine.”

If bad tests are sanctioned in the DSM, insurance companies might use them to cut off coverage for patients deemed not sick enough. It could be a disaster.

Since 1980, when the DSM-III was published, psychiatrists have tried to solve this problem by using what is called descriptive diagnosis: a checklist approach, whereby illnesses are defined wholly by the symptoms patients present. The main virtue of descriptive psychiatry is that it doesn’t rely on unprovable notions about the nature and causes of mental illness, as the Freudian theories behind all those “neuroses” had done. Two doctors who observe a patient carefully and consult the DSM’s criteria lists usually won’t disagree on the diagnosis—something that was embarrassingly common before 1980. But descriptive psychiatry also has a major problem: Its diagnoses are nothing more than groupings of symptoms. If, during a two-week period, you have five of the nine symptoms of depression listed in the DSM, then you have “major depression,” no matter your circumstances or your own perception of your troubles. “No one should be proud that we have a descriptive system,” Frances tells me. “The fact that we do only reveals our limitations.” Instead of curing the profession’s own malady, descriptive psychiatry has just covered it up.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_dsmv/all/1

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1 million misdiagnosed ADHD children for $80B drug industry

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Examiner.com
By Deborah Dupre
October 30, 2010

Two new studies published suggest something wrong with the way ADHD is diagnosed in young children in the US, confirming the need for the public to utilize Citizens Commission on Human Rights International resources for injury prevention.

One or the new studies found nearly 1 million children potentially misdiagnosed just because of being youngest in their kindergarten year, with the class youngest twice likely to be medicated with stimulant medication. The other study confirmed that whether children were born just before or just after the kindergarten cutoff date significantly affected chances of being diagnosed ADHD.

20 million children are taking psychiatric drugs according to the mental health watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI).

CCHR works shoulder-to-shoulder with like-minded groups and individuals who share a common purpose to restore basic inalienable human rights to the field of mental health. These rights include, but are not limited to, full informed consent regarding risks of treatments and all available medical alternatives, and the right to refuse any treatment considered harmful.

Psychiatric disorders fuels an 80 billion dollar industry, highlighted CCHTI’s new documentary online, THE STAMP: Psychiatric Disorders Fuel $80 Billion Drug Industry.

Most authors of the “official” Diagnostic Manual that sets criteria for mental “diseases” have ties to the drug industries.”

“The psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars a year to convince the public, legislators and the press that psychiatric disorders such as Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc., are medical diseases on par with verifiable medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Yet unlike real medical disease, there are no scientific tests to verify the medical existence of any psychiatric disorder. To counter this obvious flaw in their push to medicalize behaviors, the psychiatric industry will claim that there are certain medical conditions that do not have a verifiable test so this is why there isn’t one for “mental illness.” This is frankly a lame argument; Whereas there may be rare medical conditions that do not have a verifiable medical test, there are virtually no psychiatric disorders that can be verified medically as a physical abnormality/disease. Not one.” (CCHR)

Parents, legislators and the general public are not being given documented risks of drugs prescribed to children. CCHRI provides an easy to use search engine with complete information including warnings, studies, and adverse reactions to psychiatric drugs at www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/.

No More ADHD

Dr. Mary Ann Block, Medical director of the Block Center and associated with CCHRI is an outspoken critic of children being diagnosed ADHD and put on drugs documented to cause tics, stunted growth, heart attack, stroke and sudden death.

Dr. Block describes how parents are being misinformed about the medical legitimacy of ADHD and the dangers of the drugs being prescribed to treat children. She encourages parents to have their child given a full medical examination to find underlying medical problems that are being misdiagnosed as a mental disorder.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a mental health watchdog and non-profit organization. It has been responsible for more than 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive practices committed under the guise of mental health.

CCHR’s Board of Advisers, called Commissioners, include doctors, scientists, psychologists, lawyers, legislators, educators, business professionals, artists and civil and human rights representatives.

Co-founder of CCHR, Dr. Thomas Szasz is a Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York, Adjunct Scholar at Cato Institute and Lifetime Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Considered by many scholars and academics to be psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, Szasz has authored over 35 books on the subject, the first being The Myth of Mental Illness, a book that rocked the foundations of psychiatry upon its release more than 50 years ago.

Photo: CCHR International

Watch the full CCHR documentary, THE STAMP: Psychiatric Disorders Fuel $80 Billion Drug Industry, here.

Read the entire article here:  http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/1m-misdiagnosed-adhd-children-for-80b-drug-industry

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Hundreds of U.S. Pilots Treated for Drug Abuse and Psychiatric Disorders, Review Finds

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Note From CCHR: If the fact that commercial airline pilots are now allowed to fly while under the influence on antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs doesn’t send off any alarm bells, then perhaps you should take two minutes and try this— go to this link http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/drug_warnings.php and in the Search box (with the red text) simply type in the word suicide and scroll down the page to quickly look over the results.   Then search  aggression,  hallucinations, violence and psychosis.   By reversing their previous ruling and now allowing commercial airline pilots to fly under the influence of these drugs, the FAA is playing a game of Russian Roulette with all of us.

FoxNews.com

Published September 15, 2010

By Jessica Heslam

Boston Herald

Hundreds of commercial and private U.S. pilots have been diagnosed and treated for a broad array of serious psychiatric and medical conditions, including schizophrenia, attempted suicide, sexual deviance, alcoholism and drug abuse, a Herald review has found.

The review comes in the wake of a chilling episode at Logan International Airport four months ago involving a distraught JetBlue [JBLU] pilot who threatened to “harm himself in spectacular fashion” an hour before takeoff – an incident that sent shudders through airline passengers across the country.

Medical record data from 2008, 2009 and 2010 provided by the Federal Aviation Administration under a public records request show:

– 15 pilots – including one from Massachusetts – have been treated for or diagnosed with schizophrenia.

– Another 292 pilots have attempted suicide, including five Bay Staters.

– 2,700 pilots have been treated for alcohol abuse, including 34 from Massachusetts, and another 1,253 have been diagnosed as alcoholics – including 20 Bay Staters.

– 1,377 pilots have been treated for drug abuse – 23 from Massachusetts – and another 94 for drug dependence.

Read the rest of this article here:  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/15/hundreds-pilots-treated-drug-abuse-psychiatric-disorders-review-finds/?test=latestnews

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