Posts Tagged ‘psychiatric’

« Older Entries

Chinese citizens sent to mental hospitals to quiet dissent

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

USA Today – December 29, 2011

By Calum MacLeod

“I have no home or family, I have been detained and tortured by illegal medical treatment,” Wu says. “They have destroyed the latter half of my life. Until the people who illegally handled my case are punished, I won’t close my eyes, even in death.”

ZHENGZHOU, China – The electric acupuncture needles stung her scalp, and the drugs bloated her weight, gave her heart palpitations and brought on premature menopause.

But Wu Chunxia consented to the treatments at the psychiatric hospital because if she didn’t, she knew she would be strapped to her bed and left vulnerable to assaults from violent inmates.

“It was worse than hell in there,” says Wu, 37, of the Henan provincial psychiatric hospital in Xinxiang. “I feared I would be strangled at night by other patients.”

Wu was not at the hospital for reasons of mental health. She was committed there in 2008 by the Chinese government for 132 days as punishment for protesting about local injustice to higher authorities.

The Communist Party does not acknowledge its mental facilities are used to silence critics, but according to numerous human rights groups and Chinese dissidents, China’s Communist-led government has for decades incarcerated healthy people in mental wards to suppress dissent. In the past two years, wrongful confinement cases have sharply increased, says Liu Feiyue of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, a human-rights organization based in Suzhou.

The rise in confinements is greatest among petitioners — the ordinary people who complain about local problems, he says. Committing them to mental hospitals is a “quick, convenient and very effective” method for the government to silence criticism.

Now some Chinese officials are pushing back against the political confinements. Prodded by academics, activists and former patients, China’s National People’s Congress is discussing what would be the country’s first ever mental health law.

Minister of Health Chen Zhu told the standing committee of the Congress in October that the new law will curb the abuse of involuntary hospitalization and better protect the rights of the mentally ill. Chen blamed “procedural failings” for cases of forcible treatment that were challenged by victims and families.

Despite several shortcomings, the draft legislation represents both a legal and social milestone for the world’s most populous country, says Wang Yue, a psychiatry professor at Peking University.

“Only once a society develops to a certain level does it pay more attention to mental health and forced hospitalization,” says Wang, who alludes to wrongful confinements in mental wards in the U.S. in the early 1900s, though such cases were not attempts by the government to silence political opponents.

“In China, we have long had the principle of big government and small society, and only now are we moving toward judicial supervision and a society ruled by law,” he says. “We must solve the problem of treating those mental patients who need treatment and not hospitalizing people who don’t.”

Complaining to higher authorities

The number of wrongful confinements has risen because the number of Chinese who demand justice for personal matters has grown, Liu Feiyue says. They are reviving an ancient Chinese system of seeking redress by taking a complaint directly to higher authorities. They are determined, often desperate, he says, and thus troublesome to the authorities who are well aware their careers can be ruined by disquiet.

Xu Wu, 43, a former security guard, had grown suicidal after four years of incarceration, including electric shock treatment, for petitioning authorities about a wage dispute with his employer. In April, after watching a film in which kung fu star Jet Li escapes from jail, Xu copied Li’s moves by loosening his cell bars over three nights and escaped from the mental hospital in the Yangtze River port Wuhan.

He fled by train to Guangzhou, 600 miles south, where a hospital test concluded he was sane. He was seized eight days later by plainclothes Wuhan police outside the Guangzhou television station where he had just described his plight on-air. Media coverage, including video of his re-capture, helped secure Xu’s release on June 10, the same day the initial draft law was released for public comment.

He has read it and is pessimistic about its effectiveness. “I hope the new law will help other patients, but it will be hard to implement, like all laws in China,” Xu says.

His lawyer sounds more optimistic.

“The law will reduce the abuse of power and the confinement of healthy people,” says Huang Xuetao, director of the Equity & Justice Initiative, a non-profit based in Shenzhen, south China. She welcomes the revisions adopted in the latest October draft, including removal of the catch-all “risk of public disorder” reason for involuntary hospitalization, but urges further revision before the law is finalized sometime in 2012.

Last month, with the help of Equity & Justice, Xu Wu and four fellow victims of forced hospitalization appealed to the National People’s Congress for patients to be permitted to enlist outside representatives to help appeal their diagnosis and confinement.

In China, only the person or organization that applied for a patient’s forced commitment can apply for his or her release.

“The ideal would be for every involuntary hospitalization case to be examined and verified by judicial authorities, as happens in some U.S. states,” Huang says. “But in China at present, that’s just not realistic.”

Persistence pays off sometimes

Wu Chunxia won her release from the psychiatric hospital in Xinxiang by threatening suicide and persistently demanding her case be investigated, she says. Now she is battling for justice and compensation both through China’s courts, despite their lack of independence from the Communist Party, and the more traditional route of petitioning higher authorities, the very act that, while legal, got her detained in the first place.

She has had some success. Officials revoked the police decisions to punish her petitioning first by detaining her, then by committing her to a labor camp, a decision later changed to confinement in the mental hospital. The policeman who handled her case, Zhang Xiaodong, told USA TODAY he doesn’t know Wu. But earlier this month, in an interview with Southern Metropolitan News, Zhang blamed his treatment of Wu on orders from the local political-legal committee, a Communist Party group that guides judicial work. Committee secretary Li Zongxi declined to comment.

Corruption plays a major role

Rights activist Liu says officials commit troublemakers to mental hospitals because the process is secretive and, unlike the courts, requires no evidence of wrongdoing. He says the full extent of wrongful confinement in recent years far exceeds the 1,000 cases his group has compiled in a database since 2009.

Corruption also plays a major role. Unethical doctors and hospital administrators can benefit financially by allowing police to turn hospitals into “black jails,” Liu says.

For these reasons, Liu says the new law will remain “just a piece of paper” until China undertakes “systematic change, to a society that genuinely respects law and human rights.”

Even accepting the current draft over nothing may be a devil’s bargain, warns Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. “A bad law will entrench bad practices and would extend too much the power of public security officials to detain people on the basis of their political opinion or other irrelevant aspects,” he says.

China has failed to adopt the international norms for mental health law set out in the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, despite its ratification by Beijing, Bequelin says. The draft lacks provision for people to be assisted by lawyers and fails to prohibit the “political use of psychiatry,” he says.

Wu Chunxia is encouraged by the pending legislation. “It shows more attention paid to human rights in China,” she says. “I hope the law stops normal people suffering the persecution I had.”

Two years after Wu filed a suit against both the hospital and the neighborhood officials who committed her, a court in nearby Shenqiu County held its first hearing in October. Now she is petitioning the provincial court to speed the process and asking police to investigate the policeman Zhang Xiaodong.

“I have no home or family, I have been detained and tortured by illegal medical treatment,” Wu says. “They have destroyed the latter half of my life. Until the people who illegally handled my case are punished, I won’t close my eyes, even in death.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-12-28/china-mental-hospitals/52260592/1

Watch: G Edward Griffin on Psychiatry and Politics as a form of Government Control:

 

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Prozac is now a defense for murder, writes Australian Member of Parliament Martin Whitely

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

For the first time in criminal history, a murder was attributed to an anti-depressant drug. (Photo Credit -The Daily Telegraph)

Perth Now – December 21, 2011

FIRST it was ADHD drugs, then organ donation, now WA Labor MP Martin Whitely is hoping to get some action on the fatal risks of antidepressant drugs, such as Prozac, to children.

Anti-depressant manufacturers warn that products such as Prozac should not be given to children, because of the potentially tragic consequences, but they are prescribed every day to Australian kids.

Some anti-depressants, prescribed to help lift people out of a depressive state, actually have the opposite effect and make things worse.

This is what happened, with fatal results, in the case of a 16-year-old boy in Canada who stabbed a friend to death.

For the first time in criminal history, a murder was attributed to an anti-depressant drug.

In the finding, handed down on the 16th of September 2011, a Canadian Judge said a 16-year-old boy, who stabbed his brother’s friend in the stomach, would not have committed the offence had he not been treated with the drug Prozac (a brand of Fluoxetine).

The judge accepted the evidence of psychiatrist, Dr Peter Breggin, who told the court the boy’s symptoms were consistent with a Prozac-Induced Mood Disorder with Manic Features.

In delivering his decision the judge stated, “his basic normalcy now further confirms he no longer poses a risk of violence to anyone and that his mental deterioration and resulting violence would not have taken place without exposure to Prozac”.

The boy, who had no history of violence, had been taking Prozac for three months, during which his parents observed a marked deterioration in his behaviour and mood, which included acts of violence and self-harm where previously no such signs existed.

His alarmed parents returned to his doctor for advice, but instead of taking him off Prozac or reducing his dosage, his doctor increased the dose, obviously believing more of what appeared to be causing these dangerous behaviours, would solve the problem.

Fluoxetine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and is approved for use in Australia for the treatment of depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

However, it is routinely prescribed ‘off label’ for a range of other conditions including panic and eating disorders.

Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing figures revealed that in the 2008 financial year, 110,848 Australians received Fluoxetine scripts that were subsidised via the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Concerns about possible aggression and manic side effects of Prozac were first raised in Australia in the New South Wales parliament in 1995, just five years after the release of the drug in Australia.

Since 2007, the US Food and Drug Administration has labelled SSRI antidepressants including Prozac with the highest possible ‘black box’ warning stating:

“All patients being treated with antidepressants for any indication should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, and unusual changes in behavior, especially during the initial few months of a course of drug therapy, or at times of dose changes, either increases or decreases. The following symptoms, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania, have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and non-psychiatric.”

The US Black Box warning was followed by similar warnings in Australia. The evidence that led to these warnings came from, ‘pooled analyses of short-term placebo-controlled trials of anti-depressant drugs (SSRIs and others)’ which ‘showed that these drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents [by 100%], and young adults ages 18-24 (by 50 per cent) with major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders.’ The fact that SSRI antidepressants like Prozac are supposed to manage severe depression in young people but increase the risk of suicidality poses obvious questions.

Over a 10 year period, up until 30 June 2011, more than 40 adverse events of self-harm and violence, including suicides, homicides and suicidal or homicidal ideation, for Fluoxetine were reported to the Australian Therapeutic Drugs Administration (examples are listed below).

Hundreds of reports were recorded by the TGA for other antidepressants however, it is impossible to know the true number of actual events, as the voluntary nature of the reporting system means only a fraction of actual incidents gets reported.

Despite the fact that the manufacturers advise that Prozac and other SSRI antidepressants are ‘not recommended for use in children and adolescents under 18 years of age’ they are frequently prescribed ‘off label’ to even very young children.

Data provided by the Commonwealth Department of Health revealed that in the 2007-8 financial year 3,752 Australian children 15-years-old or younger (863 were 10 or younger, 117 were six or younger) were prescribed Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme-funded Fluoxetine.

Furthermore all the expense and risks of adverse side effects may be for little or no benefit. The efficacy of antidepressants are being questioned – with some high profile, mainstream critics, arguing that placebos are just as effective and much safer in treating moderate depression.

One such critic, Marcia Angell, MD, Senior Lecturer on Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, contends; ‘that clinical trials have failed to find antidepressants effective at all in mild to moderate depression; that many psychiatric drugs have devastating adverse effects, especially in children and when used long-term; and that despite the risks and uncertain benefits, use of psychiatric drugs is soaring and the heavy reliance on drugs diverts resources better spent on improving treatment’.

In summary, taxpayers are subsidising the ‘off label’ use by children and adolescents of antidepressants, with questionable efficacy, that double their risk of suicidality. This invites some obvious questions: Is this the best way to spend our taxes? And more importantly, is this the best way to help troubled young people?

* A sample from the Adverse Drug Reactions Committee (ADRAC) adverse event reports for Fluoxetine Hydrochloride:

  • A 54 year old woman attempted suicide. She was also suffering from mania and a confusional state.
  • A 36 year old woman “attempted suicide”.
  • A 36 year old woman was admitted to intensive care in a coma following a suicide attempt.
  • A 51 year old woman “had sudden urge to murder someone”.
  • A 37 year old woman was admitted to a psychiatric hospital suffering from “suicidal ideation, nausea, trembling, feelings of despair, anxiety, paranoia and fear”.
  • A 16 year old boy suffering from agitation and auditory hallucinations heard voices “telling him to kill his mother, father, sister and himself”.
  • A 45 year old man “became obsessively suicidal and cut his throat” 3/7 days after Prozac was stopped.
  • A 17 year old girl “became manic half an hour after commencing antidepressant.”
  • A 40 year old patient “experienced trembling, cramps, heard voices and had suicidal ideation.”
  • A patient of unrecorded gender and age experienced “homicidal and suicidal ideation.”
  • A patient of unrecorded gender and age attempted suicide after experiencing suicidal ideation.
  • A 44 year old patient “experienced akathisia, suicidal ideation and suicide attempt.”
  • A patient of unrecorded gender and age experienced “suicidal violence” and “aggression.”
  • A patient of unrecorded gender and age experienced “suicidal ideation.”
  • A patient of unrecorded gender and age experienced “suicidal ideation and “suicide attempt.”
  • A 50 year old patient experienced “suicidal ideation, suicide attempt and akathisia.”
  • A 37 year old patient attempted suicide.
  • A patient of unrecorded gender and age experienced “suicidal ideation and suicide attempt.”
  • A patient of unrecorded gender and age made a suicide attempt and was violent.
  • A 16 year old girl “attempted to hang herself with television cord from curtain rail in hospital bedroom. Nurse said she found her at the last moment.”
  • A 16year old girl “ingested 40 Panadol tablets. Also frequent self-harming.”
  • A 16 year old girl “attempted suicide by ingestion of 80 Panadol, 20 Panadeine, 7 Olanzapine.”
  • A 29 year old patient “developed acute suicidal akathisia” and made a suicide attempt.
  • A 73 year old patient “experienced homicidal ideation and made a suicide attempt.”
  • A 60 year old woman “experienced suicidal ideation, suicide attempt and homicidal ideation – she attempted to kill her parents.”
  • A 69 year old patient “experienced suicidal ideation and was very anxious.”
  • A 16 year old girl attempted to “strangle herself with and IPod cord in the bathroom of the hospital. Agitation. She ran around crying and banging her fists of the walls and windows begging to be let out. … it lasted about 10 minutes before I could settle her.”
  • A patient of unrecorded gender and age “took a fistful of sleeping pills.”
  • A 35 year old patient “murdered his wife whilst on Prozac. He had also experienced suicidal thoughts.”
  • A female patient of unrecorded age “became seriously depressed, complained of headaches, and clenching jaw, was unable to sleep and started to self-harm. She began to have suicidal thoughts, was hyperventilating, agoraphobic, had five suicide attempts, was confused, tearful, phobic, aggressive, experienced akathisia and suspected serotonin syndrome. She experienced weird dreams, was impulsive, light headed, had numbness and tingling limbs and committed suicide by hanging on 11 September 2000 on the second attempt.”
  • A 50 year old woman “became more depressed whilst taking Prozac. She wanted to throw herself off a train or bus, had difficulty sleeping, was pacing and restless, had voice hallucinations, would look in the mirror and see a different person, had murderous thoughts, stiff legs, was hot a lot, felt she was in a delirium, could not concentrate, was angry, had numbness in her hands and pins and needles a lot in her body.”
  • A 19 year old male “had thoughts about killing himself which made him violent, tried to hit someone else, tried to hit a security guard with feelings of killing and tried to do physical damage. Tried to hurt himself and had thoughts of hurting other people. He was walking faster than normal. Experienced aggression, insomnia and was feeling high on Prozac. Also felt anxious and put on more than 20kg.”
  • A male of unreported age “experienced severe depression, cognitive impairment and was acutely suicidal.”
  • A 16 year old girl was “cutting herself, throwing herself against the walls while an inpatient”. She “intentionally overdosed on Fluroxetine” and “developed severe levels of aggression and violence.”
  • A 14 year old boy experienced “suicidal ideation.”
  • A female of unreported age “experienced suicidal ideation”.
  • A 16 year old girl experienced “excessive bleeding, psychosis, high blood pressure, severe diarrhea, sweating, tremors, violent, aggressive and suicidal behavior, serotonin syndrome.”
  • A 14 year old male experienced “severely increased suicidal ideation in two days with high level of intent and plan to jump in front of train. Previously no suicidal ideation and settled spontaneously within four days of ceasing Fluoxetine”.
  • A female patient experienced a “sudden and marked increase in hostility and verbal abuse of others and describes intrusive suicidal ideation. Seems agitated and restless”.
  • A 32 year old woman experienced “audio hallucinations, bright and blurred vision, made everything sound louder, constipation, increased suicidal thoughts and increased anxiety”

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/prozac-is-now-a-defence-for-murder/story-e6frg13u-1226227796937

Note from CCHR International:  CCHR is the only organization to have decrypted the US FDAs Medwatch reports on adverse reactions to psychiatric drugs and compiled them in an easy to search database.    This database is provided here http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/medwatch_psych_drug_adverse_reactions.php

CCHR has also compiled all international drug warnings and studies on psychiatric drugs here http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/drug_warnings.php

 

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Vindicated—Detroit Mom gets daughter back & all charges dropped following police stand off over refusing to drug daughter

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Detroit Free Press – December 13, 2011

2 wins for mom: Charges tossed, she gets daughter

Two courts gave Maryanne Godboldo early Christmas presents Monday — her child and dismissal of multiple felonies from an eight-hour standoff with police last spring.

“Thank you for just doing your job and following the law,” a weeping Godboldo said in the morning after Wayne County Circuit Judge Gregory Bill ruled that a lower court judge was correct in tossing out the criminal charges from the March incident.

Godboldo had held off child welfare workers and police who were try to remove her teenage daughter because Godboldo would not give the child Risperdal, a drug prescribed for an undisclosed psychiatric condition. Godboldo insisted that the drug, also used to stem aggressive behavior, was harming her daughter.

Bill’s ruling upheld 36th District Judge Ronald Giles’ ruling, which said the order to take the child was faulty and there was not enough evidence to support felony charges of assault and firearm violations.

“What a nice Christmas present,” one of Godboldo’s supporters said outside Bill’s courtroom.

In the afternoon, Circuit Judge Lynne Pierce, sitting in family court, said the daughter could stay with her mother.

“We’ve had a very good day,” Godboldo’s lawyer Byron Pitts said after court.

Pitts said the decisions were victories for parental rights and a rejection of overreaching social workers and agencies.

Godboldo said the many hours she has spent in court have taken her away from caring for her daughter.

Another of Godboldo’s lawyers, Allison Fulmar, said the decisions upheld what she called “a parent’s right to due process.”

There may be more rounds to fight, though. Within an hour of Bill’s decision, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said it would appeal.

“That’s their position, and it’s absurd,” Pitts said. “This woman has done nothing wrong.”

Earlier, Pitts had called on Prosecutor Kym Worthy to drop the case.

“If she wants to pursue it, we’ll keep fighting,” Pitts said.

http://www.freep.com/article/20111213/NEWS01/112130326/2-wins-for-mom-Charges-tossed-she-gets-daughter

 

 

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Is the American Psychiatric Association in Bed with Big Pharma? Answer: Yes

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Note from CCHR Int:  We’re happy to see more and more press running stories containing the facts about psychiatric diagnoses, that mental disorders are not diseases on par with real medical diseases as the psychiatric/pharmaceutical marketing teams would have you believe, but lists of behaviors and emotions repackaged as disease in order to sell billions of dollars worth of pharmaceutical ‘solutions.’   CCHR was the first organization to point out that psychiatric disorders were not medical conditions discovered in labs, but disorders invented in committee by pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists.  We’re very pleased we’re no longer the only ones reporting the facts about psychiatry and its marketing campaigns.  Get the facts here

Do we really need more mental disorder diagnoses creating the need for more drugs in a society that some would say is already over-medicated?

The Fog City Journal – 11/29/2011
by Ralph E. Stone

“The critics — and the public too — have a stake in the proposed DSM-V. More mental disorders may mean just more drugs in our over-medicated society.”

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders, which is used in the United States and to some extent internationally, by clinicians, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and policy makers. The DSM is produced by a panel of psychiatrists, many of whom have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. It is considered the “bible” of American psychiatry. The latest edition — DSM-IV — was published in 1994.

In 1952, the DSM was a small, spiral-bound handbook (DSM-I), but the latest edition (DSM-IV), is a 943-page magnum opus. Over time, psychiatric diagnoses have increased in the American population and in turn, drugs that affect mental states are then used to treat them. The theory that psychiatric conditions are caused by a biochemical imbalance is often used as a justification for their widespread use, even though the theory in unproven. Since there are no objective tests for mental illness and what is normal and abnormal is often unclear, psychiatry is a particularly fertile field for creating new diagnoses or broadening old ones.

Medications are widely used to treat the symptoms of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Sometimes medications are used with other treatments such as psychotherapy.

While I am sure research in mental disorders account for some of this increase, I cannot help but believe that there is a certain amount of disease-peddling going on. That is, instead of promoting drugs to treat diseases, diseases are promoted to fit the drugs. For example, shyness as a psychiatric illness made its debut as “social phobia” in DSM-III in 1980, but was said to be rare. By 1994, when DSM-IV was published, it had become “social anxiety disorder,” now said to be extremely common, thus, boosting sales of antidepressants. Now, social anxiety disorder is “a severe medical condition.” In 1999, the FDA approved a drug for social anxiety disorder. After a successful marketing campaign, the sales of Paxil soared.

Presently, a revised version of the DSM is set for publication in 2013. The proposed revision has proven quite controversial. A group of psychologists with the Society for Humanistic Psychology, for examle, has filed a petition objecting to many of the revisions, arguing that they broaden the definition of mental health disorders, which, in turn, could lead to over treatment with drugs. Some, but not all, of the objections of the Society — along with the British Psychological Society and the American Counseling Association — to the proposed DSM-V include:

- The proposed DSM “fails to explicitly state that deviant behavior and primary conflicts between the individual and society are not mental disorders. Given lack of consensus as to the ‘primary’ causes of mental distress, this proposed change may result in the labeling of sociopolitical deviance as mental disorder.”

- “Several new proposals with little empirical basis also warrant hesitation: For example, ‘Apathy Syndrome,’ ‘Internet Addiction Disorder,’ and ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome’ have virtually no basis in the empirical literature.”

- “…clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalization of their natural and normal responses to their experiences; responses which undoubtedly have distressing consequences which demand helping responses, but which do not reflect illnesses so much as normal individual variation.”

Do we really need more mental disorder diagnoses creating the need for more drugs in a society that some would say is already over-medicated? Let’s look at some statistics. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the percentage of Americans who took at least one prescription drug in the past month increased from 44 percent to 48 percent over the past ten years. The use of two or more drugs increased from 25 percent to 31 percent. The use of five or more drugs increased from 6 percent to 11 percent. And in 2007-2008, 1 out of every 5 children and 9 out of 10 older Americans reported using at least one prescription drug in the past month.

And Americans are spending more on drugs. According to the CDC, spending for prescription drugs in the U.S. was $234.1 billion in 2008, which was more than double what was spent in 1999.

And the pharmaceutical industry is profiting. According to Fortune 500 (May 3, 2010 issue date), the profits for the twelve largest pharmaceutical companies was almost $64 billion in 2010. Clearly, Pharma has a financial interest in a DSM with more mental disorders because it will mean a demand for more drugs to treat them.

The critics — and the public too — have a stake in the proposed DSM-V. More mental disorders may mean just more drugs in our over-medicated society.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once quipped, “If all the drugs were thrown in the ocean, everyone would be better-off . . . except for the fish.” While this is a an overstatement, it does contain a grain of truth.

http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/3217/is-the-american-psychiatric-association-in-bed-with-big-pharma/

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | 1 Comment »

Are you shy? Then you have a mental disorder

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

The mad claim that 165 million Europeans suffer from ‘mental illness’ confirms that normal emotional states are now seen as diseases.

Spiked – September 8, 2011

by Tim Black

‘Mental health disorders are Europe’s largest healthcare challenge in the twenty-first century’, announced Hans-Ulrich Wittchen this week.

A professor of psychology and psychotherapy at the University of Dresden, Wittchen wasn’t saying anything we haven’t heard before. The World Health Organisation has also gleefully predicted that by 2020, ‘depression will be the second leading contributor to the burden of disease’. Still, the magnitude of Wittchen’s Europe-wide diagnosis is more than a little shocking: 38 per cent of Europeans, he said, are suffering from a mental disorder. That’s about 165million people.

Wittchen arrived at these shocking results, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, after a three-year-long review of data from previous studies involving over 500 million people in 30 European countries. Therein he discovered that nearly 40 per cent of those 500million were suffering from one of nearly a hundred mental or neurological problems, the most common of which were anxiety disorders, insomnia, depression, alcohol and drug dependence, and dementia.

‘Although the figure [of 165million] seems shockingly high, this is the most rigorous study done in Europe’, saidGraham Thornicroft, a professor of community psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London.

There is a great deal of scepticism towards Wittchen’s results and what they mean. And no wonder. Even in these overly medicalised times, where feeling well is increasingly confused with awaiting diagnosis, the idea that well over a third of Europe is suffering from a mental disorder just doesn’t tally with our actual lived experience. After all, does it not seem absurd to think that one in every three Europeans is mentally ill?

In fact, what Wittchen’s findings really indicate is the expansion of the diagnostic categories of mental illness, not the expansion of mental illness itself. Writing in the Guardian on Wednesday, Lisa Appignanesi rightly drew attention to the ever-expanding girth of the so-called bible of the psychiatric profession, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

When it was first published in 1952 it contained a then unprecedented 60 diagnostic categories for mental illness. And subsequent editions have expanded its diagnostic reach even into everyday, mundane behaviour. By 1994, the fourth (and current edition) recognised a total of 384 mental ailments (plus 28 ‘floating diagnoses’). And if the preliminary revisions are any indication, the fifth edition, due in 2013, looks set to supply psychiatric practitioners with yet more labels for disorders and illnesses we didn’t even know we had.

As many have observed before, absurdity abounds in the psychiatric worldview. The most banal of everyday behaviours, emotional states that I’d wager almost everyone has encountered at some point in their lives, have been given technical, medical-sounding names. So shyness becomes ‘avoidant personality disorder’; anger becomes ‘intermittent explosive disorder’; and if the experts get their way, not throwing stuff away will become ‘hoarding disorder’. In an incredible bit of insightless prose, we are told by DSM’s recent consultation document that, ‘The symptoms [of hoarding disorder] result in the accumulation of a large number of possessions that fill up and clutter active living areas of the home or workplace to the extent that their intended use is no longer possible’.

While it is easy to make fun of the silliness of the psychiatric industry for giving our most banal behaviours a jargonised sheen, there is a serious point here, too. When everyday subjective states, such as shyness or distractedness, are turned into clinical objects, they become ripe for external, clinical intervention. We cease to be capable of overcoming a bout of anxiety, perhaps brought about by job worries; instead we are encouraged to see ourselves as in need of professional, expert help. And any practical problems at the root of, say, ‘depression’ or ‘anxiety’ – like unemployment or marital problems, for instance – are transformed into mental problems in need of psychiatric solutions. Wittchen’s assertion that the ‘immense treatment gap… for mental disorders has to be closed’ is therefore charged with ominous Brave New World intent. Europe is a continent of therapeutic supplicants in the making.

Read the rest of the article here:  http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11060/

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Ron Paul Reintroduces The Parental Consent Act 2011- Prohibits Federal Funding For Psychiatric ‘Screening’ of Kids

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Congressman Ron Paul has re-introduced  The Parental Consent Act ,  A bill which prohibits federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health, psychiatric, or socioemotional screening program.

“Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence and weight gain. 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.” – RON PAUL

Sign the petition in support of the Parental Consent Act here: http://www.petitiononline.com/rppca/petition.html

Bill information:  The Parental Consent Act 2011 (H.R. 2769 – previously H.R. 2218  in 2009) Prohibits 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.

Defines a screening program under this Act as any mental health screening program in which a set of individuals is automatically screened without regard to whether there was a prior indication of a need for mental health treatment, including: (1) any program of state incentive grants to implement recommendations in the July 2003 report of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, the State Early Childhood Comprehensive System, grants for TeenScreen, and the Foundations for Learning Grants; and (2) any student mental health screening program that allows mental health screening of individuals under 18 years of age without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of the parent or legal guardian of the individual involved.

Ron Paul speech given on April 30, 2009 on his bill, The Parental Consent Act (formerly H.R. 2218, now  reintroduced as H.R. 2769 ):

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the Parental Consent Act. This bill forbids Federal funds from being used for any universal or mandatory mental-health screening of students without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardians. This bill protects the fundamental right of parents to direct and control the upbringing and education of their children.

The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has recommended that the federal and state governments work toward the implementation of a comprehensive system of mental-health screening for all Americans. The commission recommends that universal or mandatory mental-health screening first be implemented in public schools as a prelude to expanding it to the general public. However, neither the commission’s report nor any related mental-health screening proposal requires parental consent before a child is subjected to mental-health screening. Federally-funded universal or mandatory mental-health screening in schools without parental consent could lead to labeling more children as “ADD” or “hyperactive” and thus force more children to take psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, against their parents’ wishes.

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. In fact, according to Medico Trends, in 2003, total spending on psychiatric drugs for children exceeded spending on antibiotics or asthma medication.

Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence, and weight gain. 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.

Universal or mandatory mental-health screening could also provide a justification for stigmatizing children from families that support traditional values. Even the authors of mental-health diagnosis manuals admit that mental-health diagnoses are subjective and based on social constructions. Therefore, it is all too easy for a psychiatrist to label a person’s disagreement with the psychiatrist’s political beliefs a mental disorder. For example, a federally-funded school violence prevention program lists “intolerance” as a mental problem that may lead to school violence. Because “intolerance” is often a code word for believing in traditional values, children who share their parents’ values could be labeled as having mental problems and a risk of causing violence. If the mandatory mental-health screening program applies to adults, everyone who believes in traditional values could have his or her beliefs stigmatized as a sign of a mental disorder. Taxpayer dollars should not support programs that may label those who adhere to traditional values as having a “mental disorder.”

Madam Speaker, universal or mandatory mental-health screening threatens to undermine parents’ right to raise their children as the parents see fit. Forced mental-health screening could also endanger the health of children by leading to more children being improperly placed on psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, or stigmatized as “mentally ill” or a risk of causing violence because they adhere to traditional values. Congress has a responsibility to the nation’s parents and children to stop this from happening. I, therefore, urge my colleagues to cosponsor the Parental Consent Act.

For more information on the Parental Consent Act watch this video featuring Kent Snyder, Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign manager 2008, and former Executive Director of the Liberty Committee  http://www.cchrint.org/videos/experts/ron-pauls-parental-consent-act-of-2009/

RETURN TO BLOGS PAGE

RSS Blog Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »

Ron Paul Reintroduces The Parental Consent Act 2011! Prohibits Federal Funding For Psychiatric ‘Screening’ of Kids

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Congressman Ron Paul has re-introduced  The Parental Consent Act ,  A bill which prohibits federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health, psychiatric, or socioemotional screening program.

Click Video for more information on the Parental Consent Act

Sign the petition in support of the Parental Consent Act here: http://www.petitiononline.com/rppca/petition.html

Bill information:  The Parental Consent Act 2011 (H.R. 2769 – previously H.R. 2218  in 2009) Prohibits 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.

Defines a screening program under this Act as any mental health screening program in which a set of individuals is automatically screened without regard to whether there was a prior indication of a need for mental health treatment, including: (1) any program of state incentive grants to implement recommendations in the July 2003 report of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, the State Early Childhood Comprehensive System, grants for TeenScreen, and the Foundations for Learning Grants; and (2) any student mental health screening program that allows mental health screening of individuals under 18 years of age without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of the parent or legal guardian of the individual involved.

Ron Paul speech given on April 30, 2009 on his bill, The Parental Consent Act (formerly H.R. 2218, now  reintroduced as H.R. 2769 ):

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the Parental Consent Act. This bill forbids Federal funds from being used for any universal or mandatory mental-health screening of students without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardians. This bill protects the fundamental right of parents to direct and control the upbringing and education of their children.

The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has recommended that the federal and state governments work toward the implementation of a comprehensive system of mental-health screening for all Americans. The commission recommends that universal or mandatory mental-health screening first be implemented in public schools as a prelude to expanding it to the general public. However, neither the commission’s report nor any related mental-health screening proposal requires parental consent before a child is subjected to mental-health screening. Federally-funded universal or mandatory mental-health screening in schools without parental consent could lead to labeling more children as “ADD” or “hyperactive” and thus force more children to take psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, against their parents’ wishes.

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. In fact, according to Medico Trends, in 2003, total spending on psychiatric drugs for children exceeded spending on antibiotics or asthma medication.

Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence, and weight gain. 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.

Universal or mandatory mental-health screening could also provide a justification for stigmatizing children from families that support traditional values. Even the authors of mental-health diagnosis manuals admit that mental-health diagnoses are subjective and based on social constructions. Therefore, it is all too easy for a psychiatrist to label a person’s disagreement with the psychiatrist’s political beliefs a mental disorder. For example, a federally-funded school violence prevention program lists “intolerance” as a mental problem that may lead to school violence. Because “intolerance” is often a code word for believing in traditional values, children who share their parents’ values could be labeled as having mental problems and a risk of causing violence. If the mandatory mental-health screening program applies to adults, everyone who believes in traditional values could have his or her beliefs stigmatized as a sign of a mental disorder. Taxpayer dollars should not support programs that may label those who adhere to traditional values as having a “mental disorder.”

Madam Speaker, universal or mandatory mental-health screening threatens to undermine parents’ right to raise their children as the parents see fit. Forced mental-health screening could also endanger the health of children by leading to more children being improperly placed on psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, or stigmatized as “mentally ill” or a risk of causing violence because they adhere to traditional values. Congress has a responsibility to the nation’s parents and children to stop this from happening. I, therefore, urge my colleagues to cosponsor the Parental Consent Act.

For more information on the Parental Consent Act watch this video featuring Kent Snyder, Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign manager 2008, and former Executive Director of the Liberty Committee  http://www.cchrint.org/videos/experts/ron-pauls-parental-consent-act-of-2009/

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | 7 Comments »

America conned: Psycho pharma drug pushing empire under fire

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

NaturalNews – July 26, 2011

by Monica G. Young

"psychopharma is looking like an idea whose time has passed."

Is America truly stricken with widespread mental illness? Do tens of millions need mind-altering drugs? A recent flurry of media articles lead readers to a realization that Big Pharma and the “mental health” industry have deceived Americans on a grand scale.

The “New York Review of Books” two-part article by Dr. Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, summarizes it extremely well. She analyzes three books by authors Irving Kirsch, Robert Whitaker, and Daniel Carlat. Each deconstructs the apparent mental illness epidemic and theory that mental disorders stem from brain chemical  imbalances which can be corrected by drugs.

Dr. Angell’s review has sparked a host of other journalists to applaud her and fuel the fire. An article in Forbes even concludes, “psychopharma is looking like an idea whose time has passed.”

As an overview:

Ten percent of Americans over age six take antidepressants. Antipsychotic drugs, once reserved for schizophrenics, have become the top-selling class of drugs in the US, with over $14 billion in sales in 2009. ADHD, bipolar and autism diagnoses have exploded in the past two decades with at least 5 million US kids now on psychiatric drugs.  Ten percent of boys take drugs for ADHD. Half a million kids take antipsychotics, including preschoolers.

The chemical imbalance theory rose to fame when Prozac hit the market in 1987, accompanied by massive hype that it corrected a chemical deficiency in the brain. In the years that followed, the number of people prescribed drugs for mental illness skyrocketed. Today, “treatment” for mental disorders is synonymous with psychoactive (mind-altering) drugs.

Tracing the origin of this theory shows it wasn’t that chemical imbalances were discovered in the mentally ill and then drugs were devised to correct the imbalance. Instead, drugs created for other purposes were incidentally found to also affect brain chemicals and blunt mental symptoms. Drug companies, hungry for new markets, and   psychiatry, eager to build stature in the medical arena, leapt on this. They conducted a vast campaign to popularize chemical imbalances as the cause of mental disturbance and push drugs as the answer.

As Dr. Angell writes, “instead of developing a drug to treat an abnormality, an abnormality was postulated to fit a drug.” “Or similarly,” she says, “one could argue that fevers are caused by too little aspirin.”

Many scientific studies disprove the chemical imbalance theory. After fifteen years of research, Irving Kirsch – psychologist and author of “The Emperor’s New Drugs” – concludes, “It now seems beyond question that the traditional account of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is simply wrong.” Research studies show psychoactive medications actually disrupt brain chemistry and causes the brain to function abnormally. This year prominent neuroscientist, Dr. Nancy Andreason, announced proof that antipsychotics shrink the brain.

Studies also demonstrate that long-term recovery rates are higher for nonmedicated patients. For instance, the World Health Organization conducted an investigation in fifteen cities around the world and out of 740 depressed individuals studied, those that weren’t on psychiatric drugs had the best long term outcomes.

In the pre-medication era, it was known that with time, people usually recovered from depression. If kids had tantrums, were unruly or shy, they were apt to outgrow it. Today, individuals branded with disorders are likely to receive long-lasting diagnoses, endless prescriptions and the poorer ones tend to remain on disability for life.

Big Pharma manipulation

Dr. Marcia Angell says the author of each of the three books agrees on “the disturbing extent to which the companies that sell psychoactive drugs – through various forms of marketing, both legal and illegal, and what many people would describe as bribery – have come to determine what constitutes a mental illness and how the disorders should be diagnosed and treated.”

According to IMS Health, an information and consulting company, pharmaceutical companies spent $6.1 billion in 2010 in marketing to US doctors. Another $4 billion was spent on direct-to-patient advertising.

Drug trials, used to bring a drug to market, are funded by drug companies, heavily biased and misleading. Companies may sponsor as many trials as they like until they have just two positive ones to submit to the FDA. Great care is taken to hide negative trials. The highly positive results of placebo trials are downplayed: a high percentage of patients recover on a fake drug (like a sugar pill) – proving that the more a person believes he will benefit from a treatment, the more likely he will experience a benefit.

In regards the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual – the psychiatric bible of mental disorders, used in prescribing drugs – Dr. Angell points out “in all of its editions, it has simply reflected the opinions of its writers.” The majority of the psychiatrists involved in creating the current edition had financial ties to drug companies.

Author Daniel Carlat points out that “psychiatrists consistently lead the pack of specialties when it comes to taking money from drug companies.”

Crime against humanity

And where has the “mental health” industry and “drug therapy” brought our nation?

As Americans line up at their local pharmacy, documented side effects are legion: weight gain, deadened emotions, diabetes, heart problems, liver damage, stunted growth in kids, shortened life spans and on and on. Those prescribed one psychoactive drug are commonly prescribed another to address side-effects, with many on daily cocktails of meds.

An estimated 2.2 million Americans are hospitalized each year for adverse drug reactions. Over 100,000 die from them.

Instead of decreasing, the number of adults on disability pay for mental illness has soared 250% since 1987 and for kids it’s a 35X increase.

The greatest  crime to humanity is the mass drugging of children. Yet it’s perpetrated within schools, doctors offices, foster homes and juvenile facilities daily.

There is good news. In the past few years, drug companies have faced a rise of multi-billion dollar class action suits. The key popularizer of childhood bipolar and antipsychotics for kids, Dr. Joseph Biederman, was publicly sanctioned by Harvard Medical School for failing to report $1.6 million he pocketed from drug companies. Some drugmakers are steering away from pursuing new psychoactive drugs.

Nazi chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

This chemical-imbalance/drug therapy lie has been told big enough and repeated enough, that much of America believes it. Isn’t it time we all put a stop to it?

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

Are You Taking Pills You Don’t Need? Here Are Some Reasons Why

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

OpEdNews – July 21, 2011
by Martha Rosenberg

Most people blame direct-to-consumer advertising, especially on TV, for elevating everyday anxiety to depression, depression to bipolar disorder, childhood behavior problems to psychiatric illnesses, lack of sleep to excessive sleepiness, migraines to epilepsy drug deficiencies and old age to hormone deficiencya.

But ghostwriting also helps the national malaise of people suffering from and treating diseases that didn’t even exist before and ballooning government and private health plans costs.

There are 200 US medical education and communication companies (MECCs) who ghostwrite medical journal articles for pharma for $20,000 to $40,000 per article. Companies like Complete Healthcare Communications (CHC) whose phalanx of 50 medical writers, editors and medical directors promise a “84.5 percent acceptance rate for first-time manuscript submissions.”

Ghostwriting was behind the blockbuster Vioxx, withdrawn in 2004 for doubling the risk of heart attacks. “Merck designed the trial, paid for the trial, ran the trial,” Dr. Jeffrey R. Lisse told the New York Times about a Vioxx study he authored in the Annals of Internal Medicine that left out three cardiac deaths. Oops. “Merck came to me after the study was completed and said, ‘We want your help to work on the paper.’ The initial paper was written at Merck, and then it was sent to me for editing.”

Medical journals themselves can make $450,000 off one such ghostwritten article, because pharma orders reprints which reps disseminate as sales pieces (“look, Doc, it says RIGHT HERE”).

Click image to watch Psychiatric Drug Side Effects Video

In 2006, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Dr. Catherine DeAngelis had to apologize for a pharma-tainted article that defended the use of antidepressants during pregnancy and an article linking migraines to coronary risks in women. The doctor authors, it turned out, were getting money from antidepressant and heart medication manufacturers.

But ten months later, JAMA ran a study “designed jointly by the non-Merck investigators and Merck employees” and “supported by contracts with Merck and Co” that extolled the virtues of Fosamax, a Merck bone drug. Three Merck authors on the study disclosed they potentially owned Merck “stock and/or stock options” and the article’s 11 other authors disclosed 40 research grants, consultancies and other financial relationships with drug companies including Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Roche, SmithGlaxoKline, Wyeth (now Pfizer) Novartis, Procter & Gamble and Merck. Since then, the FDA has issued several warnings about Fosamax and other bone drugs.

In 2007, the AMA itself was criticized for playing both sides of the enterprise street and making $50 million a year selling the names, office addresses and practice types of its members to data miners. The AMA’s defense? Doctors could “opt out” of the privacy-invading program if they wanted to.

And then there are pharma’s “unbranded” campaigns designed to look like real public health messages or communications from grassroots groups. Who can forget PR firm Cohn and Wolfe’s faux grassroots group Freedom From Fear to sell Paxil, a pill now linked to birth defects? And the Wyeth (Pfizer) campaign, The Change You Deserve which said, whoever you are, you have depression and need Effexor?   Now, a new unbranded pharma campaign, Depression Is Real, running on radio stations, compares depression to cancer because it kills and diabetes because it doesn’t go away. Kind of like pharma’s huckstering.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Are-You-Taking-Pills-You-D-by-Martha-Rosenberg-110721-870.html?show=votes

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

In Australia— 200 Psych Patients Died Suddenly

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

The Age – July 1, 2011

by Kate Hagen

Photo: Tamara Voninski

MORE than 200 psychiatric patients died in ”unexpected, unnatural or violent” circumstances last year, a report by Victoria’s chief psychiatrist reveals.

Six patients died by committing suicide in hospital but most of the 237 deaths occurred in the community.

Chief psychiatrist Ruth Vine could not provide a breakdown of the number of deaths that occurred inside hospitals but said it was ”very small, and when it does occur it is followed by a very thorough review”.

Dr Vine said deaths in the community could include those due to car accidents or house fires, but it was the role of the coroner to determine their cause.

The Age reported in February that a coroner was investigating the deaths of two psychiatric patients thought to have suffocated while being restrained in separate incidents at Frankston and Dandenong hospitals in 2007.

Dr Vine said she was ”of course” concerned about the suicides of psychiatric patients but believed they were impossible to completely prevent.

”If you compare a mental health inpatient unit with a coronary care unit, in terms of the severity of mental illness we’re treating it is equally severe,” she said.

”It is impossible to prevent completely because suicide is a choice and to completely prevent suicide would be to impose an incredible level of restriction on care that would be anti-therapeutic.”

Dr Vine’s annual report for 2009-10 shows that 14 per cent of inpatients were secluded, or confined in a room locked from the outside, in what guidelines say should be used only when a patient poses an immediate risk to himself or others.

A total of 1828 patients were secluded and there were 6059 episodes of seclusion, up slightly from the previous year. More than 1100 were for longer than 12 hours.

A total of 1750 patients received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), including 83 children, the youngest of whom was 13.

« Return to news items

RSS News Feed

Share

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in News | No Comments »

« Older Entries