Posts Tagged ‘psychiatrist’

Dosed in juvie jail: Troubled doctors hired to treat kids in state custody

Monday, June 20th, 2011

By Michael LaForgia

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

By the time Florida started paying Dr. Gold Smith Dorval to counsel and medicate jailed children, the Pembroke Pines psychiatrist already had experience with kids in state custody.

He had used them, authorities said, to bilk the government out of money for the poor.

When Dorval pleaded no contest to a felony grand theft charge, it should have barred him, by law, from working for Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice.

It didn’t.

And, like Dorval, other doctors have emerged from past troubles and gotten jobs at DJJ – with authority to prescribe drugs to kids in state jails, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.

Some psychiatrists took DJJ jobs after they were cited for breaking the law, making grave medical missteps or violating state rules. Others were hired after they were accused of overmedicating patients, sometimes fatally.

All were empowered to prescribe drugs to jailed kids as powerful antipsychotic pills flowed freely into Florida’s homes for wayward children.

“It’s appalling. A psychiatrist is a psychiatrist. They’re licensed, they’ve been to medical school, and there is a certain trust placed in that person’s judgment when they tell you that this child needs to be medicated,” said John Walsh, an attorney with the Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society who has represented children in juvenile court. “This just illustrates that we always have to be on guard with children.”

In two years, Florida bought hundreds of thousands of tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for children housed in state-run jails and programs. The meds were administered in a juvenile justice system that doesn’t track prescriptions and has no way of telling whether doctors are prescribing to make kids easier to control.

In some jails and homes, pills were prescribed by psychiatrists who took huge speaker fees from companies that make antipsychotic drugs, The Post found. In others, the task fell to doctors with troubled pasts.

In response to the newspaper’s first reports, published last month, DJJ Secretary Wansley Walters launched an investigation into the department’s use of antipsychotic drugs. DJJ officials declined to discuss The Post’s latest findings, citing the probe.

Spokesman C.J. Drake acknowledged, though, that the department has struggled to find psychiatrists willing to work in jails and programs. He also said DJJ sometimes has relied on companies that employ a stable of doctors, rather than signing a contract with a single physician.

As a result, Dorval went to work in a Broward County jail for children – even though he would have failed a state-mandated background check required by the contract.

Doctor’s bogus billings

In the late 1990s, Dorval claimed he was providing juvenile delinquents and other vulnerable children with needed therapy. Instead, state investigators said, he used bogus counselors to bill Medicaid for more than $350,000 in fraudulent claims.

He charged the government for offering more than 24 hours’ worth of children’s therapy in a single day, investigators said, and structured the scheme around kids who were homeless or in DJJ custody or foster care.

He tended to bill “for those children that the system ‘lost,’ ” according to an affidavit for his arrest.

Originally charged with four felonies in Broward, Dorval pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft in 2004.

Later, to keep his medical license, he agreed to pay $10,000 and was suspended, reprimanded and put on four years’ probation.

Although a judge withheld a formal finding of guilt, the plea disqualified Dorval from seeing patients in a juvenile jail. Even so, his employer, Miami-based Compass Health Systems, sent him to work at the Broward Juvenile Detention Center between August and December 2007.

No one screened his background beforehand.

In written responses to questions, Dorval said he was doing as he was told when Compass sent him to work in the Broward juvenile jail.

“At that period you cited, the psychiatrist that was seeing patients at the DJJ was out. Therefore I was designated by the management office to go and cover for that psychiatrist, until they switched me again to another place. I was not aware of any wrongdoing,” wrote Dorval, who stressed that he never signed a contract with DJJ. “I am only an employee. Wherever they send me to work I have to go.”

As for the criminal charges, he offered this explanation: “This case was a simple matter that became complicated, because my first lawyer messed me up.” After wrangling over the facts, “they decided to offer me a plea that would allow me to get a chance to fight for my license to practice medicine,” he wrote. “It was a real nightmare that generated in me a post-traumatic syndrome that I will never forget.”

DJJ officials declined to comment on Dorval’s hiring, again citing the investigation.

Compass officials didn’t respond to questions about Dorval.

DJJ had no contract with Compass as of May, records show.

Patient’s death missed in screening

In state-operated jails and programs, the rules say DJJ must screen doctors’ backgrounds and verify that physicians’ hold valid medical licenses. In privately run programs, which house the majority of children in the department’s custody, that responsibility falls to contracted companies.

Such screenings don’t catch everything: Doctors who kept their licenses after the state accused them of serious lapses have gone on to work in juvenile jails and homes.

Dr. Charles J. Dack is an example. For six years, Dack, a Lakeland-based physician who is board-certified in addiction and child psychiatry, prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants and powerful painkillers, including methadone and morphine, to a patient named Mary Tuxbury.

Eventually, Dack ramped up the doses of pills Tuxbury was taking, keeping her “at a toxic level of morphine for approximately two and a half years,” regulators from the state health department said. In March 2002, Tuxbury was found dead. She was 42.

An autopsy showed she died of “multiple drug intoxication, namely opiates and tricyclic antidepressants.”

Regulators charged Dack with failing to meet care standards and inappropriate prescribing. Dack settled the allegations in August 2007. He admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $7,000 fine and complete a course on “misprescribing” drugs.

A year later, he was hired to care for children at three privately run programs in Central Florida: Wilson Youth Academy, Peace River Youth Academy and New Beginnings Youth Academy. He worked in the homes until April.

Dack didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Doctor hired after child’s death

Other DJJ doctors weren’t cited by regulators, but they were accused in court of fatal neglect. Roughly one in eight of the psychiatrists who have worked for DJJ in the past five years has settled a malpractice lawsuit in Florida, records show.

Among these was Dr. Samuel McClure. As a psychiatrist in Orlando, McClure diagnosed an 11-year-old boy named David Morganthal with attention deficit disorder. He prescribed powerful, mind-altering drugs for David – even though the child was much smaller than other kids his age, according to court documents.

One morning in November 2001, David’s mother woke to find her son dead on the floor of her double-wide mobile home. When they laid David out at the morgue, he measured less than 4-foot-2 and weighed 49 pounds.

Lab tests showed his blood contained an unusually high concentration of an antidepressant: about 60 percent more of the medication than doctors had expected.

The drug, mirtazapine, still hasn’t been approved as safe for children. David was taking the drug along with another antidepressant that hasn’t been approved for kids, citalopram.

The autopsy concluded the boy probably died from a seizure and heart problems caused by “reaction to prescription medication.”

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/dosed-in-juvie-jail-troubled-doctors-hired-to-1549240.html?viewAsSinglePage=true

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Tags: Abilify, antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, child psychiatry, children, criminal, death, Department of Juvenile Justice, DJJ, drug intoxication, Florida, foster kids, Medicaid, Medicare, psychiatrist, psychiatrists, Risperdal, Seroquel
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The Illusions of Psychiatry

Monday, June 20th, 2011

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

by Marcia Angell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tags: APA funding, billing bible, Brain, brain research, CHADD, Columbia University, diagnoses, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, Drug companies, drug side effects, drugs, dsm, DSM task force, insurance companies, mental disorders, mental illness, NAMI, National Mental Health Association, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, opinion leaders, pharmaceutical industry, psychiatrist, psychiatry, psychoactive drugs, Robert Spitzer
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Child victims of the chemical cosh: Boy who killed himself after taking Ritalin

Monday, June 13th, 2011

The Daily Mail – June 13, 2011

by Sue Reid

“This doctor said at the inquest my son had a chemical imbalance in his brain. I asked him: “How do you know? Did you take chemicals from his brain? ‘He told me it was a theory. So based on a theory — and seeing my son five times at the most — he decided to put him on this drug, Ritalin, which is as powerful as cocaine.” – Darren Hucknall

Boisterous: Harry Hucknall was, says his father, a 'normal kid' whose problems were overstated

Captured in a family video, Harry Hucknall gives a cheeky grin before whizzing off down the street on his new bike. His father, Darren, will never forget the moment — when Harry was seven — and often watches the scene again and again.

It is a precious memory of Harry who, one Sunday evening in September last year, kissed his mother Jane and older brother, David, goodnight before going upstairs to his bedroom and locking the door. He then hanged himself with a belt from his bunk bed.

He was ten years old.

His father blames Harry’s death on two ‘mind-altering’ drugs that his son had been prescribed by a psychiatrist to cure his boisterous behaviour and low spirits.

An inquest was told in April that the boy had more drugs in his body than the normal level for adults suffering from the same problems.

Now, a distraught Mr Hucknall is to make a formal complaint to the NHS for prescribing his son Ritalin, a cocaine-like stimulant which, paradoxically, is said to calm down a child, and Prozac, a powerful antidepressant.

‘When I was growing up there were lots of kids like Harry — a bit over-active, a bit naughty, who didn’t always do as they were told. Now they are branded with a complaint called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,’ says the computer engineer at his semi-detached house on the outskirts of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.

‘What is it? What has changed? Is there some weird disease in the air? Harry was just a normal little boy. But because we live in 2011 he, and many other kids, are on tablets.

‘It seems nearly every child has suddenly developed this ADHD. What a load of nonsense. It’s an easy get-out for parents and schools who can’t control children.’

Mr Hucknall is obviously grieving for Harry, and his words are spoken with anger. But they are close to the truth. Earlier this year, this paper revealed that 661,000 prescriptions are dished out annually in Britain to treat childhood ADHD — double the figure of five years ago.

Coroner: An inquest was told in April that the boy had more drugs in his body than the normal level for adults suffering from the same problems

These medicines are being given to very young children — one aged just 15 months, according to our investigations — despite official guidelines from the manufacturer and the fact that the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) prohibits their use for those under six.

Last week, educational psychologist David Traxson told me he suspects that in the West Midlands at least 100 three, four and five-year-olds are on Ritalin or similar drugs. If this is replicated around the country — as is likely — the number will run into thousands.

‘These young children are taking powerful, potentially addictive drugs and no one knows what will happen to their brains in the future,’ he warned.

The Association of Educational Psychologists last week demanded a national review into the use of Ritalin and similar drugs on children.

General Secretary Kate Fallon said: ‘The danger is that we rely on this “quick fix” for children with conditions such as ADHD, which frequently means a prescription for Ritalin.

‘No one’s certain what it will do to children’s brains’

‘We have significant concerns that the neurological impact of these drugs on the developing brains of children has not been fully researched. The potential damage they could cause needs further investigation.’

In America (where the term ADHD was first created 50 years ago), one in five children is diagnosed as having a hyperactivity disorder and is on Ritalin or a similar drug

The psychologists’ call was backed by the National Union of Teachers, whose members have to cope with the huge rise in pupils being dosed with ADHD drugs — which act on the central nervous system to change a child’s behaviour.

In some state primary classrooms, one in ten pupils is on Ritalin pills, which have to be handed out by teachers at lunch or break times. In one junior school of 389 children in the South-East, no fewer than 80 pupils — more than 20 per cent — are on the medication.

It is a phenomenon across Britain, affecting families in every income bracket. The area with the highest proportion of children receiving the drug is the Wirral, a wealthy part of Cheshire which is home to millionaire footballers and business executives.

Meanwhile, sceptics question the very existence of ADHD as an illness. There is no recognised test for it. A diagnosis is made by a psychiatrist or paediatrician merely by watching a child’s behaviour.

Some of the doubters argue the condition is really a politically correct creation, conjured up by the medical world for a child who finds it difficult to sit still or concentrate thanks to a combination of a fast-food diet, late nights and lack of exercise.

It’s easier for the medical world and its political masters, of course, to diagnose a syndrome rather than deal with the real causes.

Another worrying factor is that the parents of children receiving drugs for ADHD immediately become eligible for an array of generous state benefits, including a carer’s allowance and child-disability allowance, which can total thousands a year.

For instance, one family in the West Midlands has two children receiving medication for ADHD. They get £600 a month in disability allowances for each of the two children who have been diagnosed with the ailment.

A third child is being examined by psychologists to see if he is also a sufferer. If he is diagnosed, the family’s annual haul from the state will be £21,600 tax free.

No wonder thousands of families happily agree with child psychiatrists when they are told their son or daughter needs medicine to ‘cure’ their hyperactive behaviour.

Gwynedd Lloyd, an education researcher at Edinburgh University, has explained her doubts. ‘You can’t do a blood test to see if a child has ADHD. It is diagnosed by ticking a behaviour checklist — getting out of your seat and running about is an example. Half the kids in a school would qualify under these sorts of criteria.’

And, it appears, a lot of them do. In the four years to 2010, there was a 65 per cent increase in NHS spending on drugs to treat childhood ADHD, with a cost to the taxpayer of £31million annually. This does not take into account thousands of prescriptions paid for by parents who take their children to private doctors.

In America (where the term ADHD was first created 50 years ago), one in five children is diagnosed as having a hyperactivity disorder and is on Ritalin or a similar drug.

It is predicted that unless the craze for drugging children is not stopped in the UK, one in seven pupils will soon be diagnosed with the condition in many parts of the country, as is already the case in places such as the Wirral.

‘Doubters say it’s an illness conjured up by medics’

Meanwhile, the side-effects of the ADHD treatments are legion. Ritalin is a Class B drug, which is banned for recreational use. It was invented in the Fifties in the U.S. to combat the effects of illegal drug overdoses.

Alarmingly, it can stunt growth (doctors are asked to regularly monitor a young patient’s height and weight), while making children prone to heart problems, depression and insomnia.

At least 11 deaths of children while taking Ritalin have been reported to the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products’ Regulatory Agency since the drug became available 20 years ago. The official causes of nine of the deaths included heart conditions, respiratory problems and brain diseases. Significantly, two of the children ended their own lives just like Harry Hucknall.

'Enough is enough': Home Secretary Theresa May has warned of the dangers of the ADHD drugs

Home Secretary Theresa May has said that enough is enough. As the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons before the last election, she warned of the dangers of the ADHD drugs. ‘They are powerful prescription drugs and we don’t know what their long-term effects on a child will be.’

She related to Parliament the story of a six-year-old on Ritalin. ‘He experienced low moods and marked depression and tried to throw himself out of a window within two months of starting treatment. He only recovered once the drug had been withdrawn.’

Sadly, Harry Hucknall never had the chance to stop taking Ritalin, or the antidepressant Prozac. Now his father is asking difficult questions about why his son died. On the fateful weekend last September, Harry was staying at the home in Dalton-in-Furness of his mother, Jane White, 33, his brother David, and his two step-siblings.

In America (where the term ADHD was first created 50 years ago), one in five children is diagnosed as having a hyperactivity disorder and is on Ritalin or a similar drug

He would spend every other weekend and one day during the week with his father, who parted amicably from Jane when Harry was three.

Early last year, child psychiatrist Mr Sumitra Srivastava had prescribed Harry with Prozac for depression, and Ritalin for hyperactivity. He was having difficulty concentrating at school, was being bullied by classmates, and had told his parents he was feeling unhappy.

At an inquest in April, the coroner Ian Smith declared that Mr Srivastava had acted appropriately, but warned that doctors should be extremely careful what they prescribed to ten-year-old boys.

The coroner ruled out a deliberate suicide, but said that the influence of Ritalin and Prozac could not be excluded as a factor in Harry’s death. ‘What a child with ADHD is prescribed by his doctor is mind-altering drugs of a powerful nature,’ he added.

But Harry’s father believes drugs had a huge part to play in the tragedy. ‘Harry was put on Prozac first, and without my knowledge,’ he told me. ‘I only found out about it when he came to stay for the weekend and his mother told me what dose to give him: one in the morning and one at night. “Are you crazy?” I asked her. “That’s an antidepressant.”

‘I can go to work every day and pay for my child’s keep, but it seems I have little say when it comes to things like the authorities deciding to give my son drugs.’ At first, Mr Hucknall refused to give Harry the pills. But Harry’s mother said that if he didn’t dose his son, the child would not be allowed to visit him. She said the doctors had told her Prozac would stop Harry being depressed.

‘I reluctantly agreed. I wanted to see Harry,’ remembers 37-year-old Mr Hucknall. ‘Later, I went with Harry’s mother to see the psychiatrist. I insisted on going along to tell him that I did not want Harry on any drugs whatsoever.

‘While I was there, he said Harry was going to be put on Ritalin as well. I said I did not want him on more drugs. I didn’t want him on any at all.

‘I had never heard of Ritalin. I was told it was to help his concentration. I was never told a side-effect of Ritalin is depression. But the doctor said that if Harry took the Ritalin he would be off everything and drug free within a month.’

Mr Hucknall believed him, although this scenario was very unlikely. Most children remain on ADHD drugs for years. ‘In the end I agreed, because I thought I was doing the right thing. The next thing I know, a month or two later, there was a knock on my door and two police officers were telling me my son had hanged himself,’ he says.

‘He was just a kid. There was nothing wrong with him. He may have had some problems, but they were overstated.

‘A lot of things that Harry’s mum complained about in terms of his behaviour, he did not do here. How can you have ADHD in one place and not in another?

‘I think Harry might have been playing up a bit by attention- seeking because there were three other children in the family.

‘I admit there were a couple of times I forgot to give him his tablets. To me, he seemed quiet and subdued when he was on them.

‘I would have happily thrown them in the bin. Harry just took them, of course. He was a kid and he did as he was told.’

An emotional Mr Hucknall continues: ‘I think ADHD is a disease invented by drug companies. Nobody ever died of ADHD and it didn’t existed once upon a time. It’s too easy to hand out tablets. They are being over-prescribed to children.

‘A perfectly normal kid isn’t allowed to grow up without interference these days. I’m angry about what has happened because I have lost my son.

‘At the school meetings about Harry, his teachers said he was quiet. My son had just recently moved house and been put into a new school, where he didn’t know anybody. What did they expect?

‘Another teacher said Harry didn’t laugh at his jokes. I asked Harry about that. He told me they weren’t very funny.’

Mr Hucknall believes his son was ‘inappropriately medicated’ and has asked Independent Complaints’ Advocacy Service (ICAS) — which supports those wishing to complain about the NHS — to take on the case.

At the inquest, Mr Hucknall also took the chance to challenge Mr Srivastava again about why he had put Harry on drugs. ‘This doctor said at the inquest my son had a chemical inbalance in his brain. I asked him: “How do you know? Did you take chemicals from his brain?”

‘He told me it was a theory. So based on a theory — and seeing my son five times at the most — he decided to put him on this drug, Ritalin, which is as powerful as cocaine.

‘Harry ended up taking two drugs that work against each other — the Prozac that fights depression and the Ritalin that can cause it. How can that be right?’

Note from CCHR: If you want to help inform parents of the actual documented dangers of psychiatric drugs from international drug regulatory agencies — help distribute this video, which links to our psychiatric drug side effects database:

Drugging Kids - Side Effects

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR4EWSbXLWA&feature=player_embedded

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Tags: 10-year-old, 20 percent, ADHD, antidepressants, Association of Educational Psychologists, attention deficit disorder, chemical cosh, chemical imbalance, children, cocaine, mind alterning drugs, National Institute for Health, NICE, prozac, psychiatrist, quick fix, Ritalin, Suicide, UK
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Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry’s Pre Diagnosing Kids Agenda: Voodoo Science & Snake Oil

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Seroxat Sufferers Please Stand Up
By Bob Fiddaman
June 2, 2011

Two great articles by Kat McCormick from May 2011. It seems McGorry has a growing army of critics, pity the Aussie government can’t see through his crystal ball gazing as many others can – it’s akin to taking a losing lottery ticket up to a paypoint and…well, being paid the jackpot prize.

McCormick’s first article poses many questions, the most pertinent of which are: Are our children really AT RISK or is Patrick McGorry selling us Voodoo Science & Snake Oil?

Her article is concise as well as thought-provoking.

McCormick’s second article, ‘Mental Health and the Budget’ focuses on McGorry’s research methods and she writes, “There are several disturbing elements in Patrick McGorry’s research and I’m not the only one to question his motives or methodologies.”

Nope, you sure ain’t sister!

Read article here: http://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-patrick-mcgorry-selling-us-voodoo.html

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Tags: Australia, Australian, Australian government, Australian of the Year, Bristol Myer Squibb, conflicts of interest, dominated mental health delivery, drug company consultant, drugging kids, drugs, early intervention, Eli Lilly, Headspace, international Early Psychosis Association, Martin Whiteley, Novartis, Patrick McGorry, Pfizer, Pre drugging kids, President Pharmaceutically funnded, professor Ian Hickie, psychiatrist, Psychosis Risk Syndrome, Scientologist, tax dollars, Unresricted grants to Patrick McGorry, Voodoo Science
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America’s Most Dangerous Pill? Klonopin.

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

No "benzo" has been more lethal to millions of Americans than a popular prescription drug called Klonopin

It’s not Adderall or Oxy. It’s Klonopin. And doctors are doling it out like candy, causing a surge of hellish withdrawals, overdoses and deaths.

Alternet – June 1, 2011

by Christopher Byron

You could argue that the deadliest “drug” in the world is the venom from a jellyfish known as the Sea Wasp, whose sting can kill a human being in four minutes—up to 100 humans at a time. Potassium chloride, which is used to trigger cardiac arrest and death in the 38 states of the U.S. that enforce the death penalty is also pretty deadly . But when it comes to prescription drugs that are not only able to kill you but can drag out the final reckoning for years on end, with worsening misery at every step of the way, it is hard to top the benzodiazepines. And no “benzo” has been more lethal to millions of Americans than a popular prescription drug called Klonopin.

Klonopin is the brand name for the pill known as clonazepam, which was originally brought to market in 1975 as a medication for epileptic seizures. Since then, Klonopin, along with the other drugs in this class, has become a prescription of choice for drug abusers from Hollywood to Wall Street. In the process, these Schedule III and IV substances have also earned the dubious distinction of being second only to opioid painkillers like OxyContin as our nation’s most widely abused class of drug.

Photo Credit: Kristin Burns

Seventies-era rock star Stevie Nicks is the poster girl for the perils of Klonopin addiction. In almost every interview, the former lead singer of Fleetwood Mac makes a point of mentioning the toll her abuse of the drug has taken on her life. This month, while promoting her new solo album, In Your Dreams, she told Fox that she blamed Klonopin for the fact that she never had children. “The only thing I’d change [in my life] is walking into the office of that psychiatrist who prescribed me Klonopin. That ruined my life for eight years,” she said. “God knows, maybe I would have met someone, maybe I would have had a baby.”

Nicks checked herself into the Betty Ford Clinic in 1986 to overcome a cocaine addiction. After her release, the psychiatrist in question prescribed a series of benzos—first Valium, then Xanax, and finally Klonopin—supposedly to support her sobriety. “[Klonopin] turned me into a zombie,” she told US Weekly in 2001, according to the website Benzo.org, one of many patient-run sites on the Internet offering information about benzodiazepine addiction, withdrawal and recovery. Nicks has described the drug as a “horrible, dangerous drug,” and said that her eventual 45-day hospital detox and rehab from the drug felt like “somebody opened up a door and pushed me into hell.” Others have described Klonopin’s effects as beginning with an energized sense of euphoria but ending up with horrifying sense of anxiety and paralysis, akin to sticking your tongue into an electric outlet, or suddenly feeling that your brain is on fire.

When benzodiazepines first came to market in the 1950s and 1960s, they were prescribed for a range of neurological disorders such as epilepsy as well as anxiety related disorders such as insomnia. But over time, a loophole in federal drug-control laws known as the “practice of medicine exception” has permitted psychiatrists and other physicians to prescribe the drugs for any perceived disorder or symptom imaginable, from panic attacks to weight control problems. Much in the same way, Valium became infamous as “mother’s little helper,” a sedative used to pacify a generation of bored and frustrated suburban housewives.

Alcoholics and drug addicts are most likely to run into Klonopin during detox, when it is used to prevent seizures and control the symptoms of acute withdrawal. Klonopin takes longer to metabolize and passes through your system more slowly than other benzos, so in theory you don’t need to take it so frequently. But if you like the high it gives you, and keep increasing your dosage, the addictive effects of the drug accumulate quickly and can often be devastating. The drug’s label clearly specifies that it is “recommended” only for short-term use—say, seven to 10 days—but once exposed to the pill’s seductive side-effects, many patients come back for more. And not surprisingly, many doctors are happy to refill prescriptions to meet this consumer demand. In the process, countless numbers of people swap one addiction for another, often worse than the initial addiction they were trying to treat. Although benzodiazepines are rarely reported to be the cause of single-drug overdoses, they show up with great frequency in deaths from so-called combined drug intoxication, or CDI. In recent years there have been thousands of deaths caused by this lethal combination. The drug has also help hasten the death of a wide list of otherwise healthy celebrities. :

In 1996, Actress Margaux Hemingway committed suicide by overdosing on a barbiturate-benzodiazepine cocktail. Weeks later, Hollywood movie producer Don Simpson (Beverly Hills Cop) also died from an unintentional benzo-based overdose. Klonopin was one of 11 different prescription drugs—all written by the same doctor—found in the body of Playboy centerfold model Anna Nicole Smith, who OD’d in 2007. Thereafter, the well-known Los Angeles author, David Foster Wallace, who was suffering from a profound depression when a doctor prescribed him Klonopin, went into his backyard on a September evening and hanged himself with a leather belt he had nailed to an overhead beam on his patio. Klonopin has been striking down more than just troubled celebrities, however. In 2008, reports began to surface of soldiers returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder who were dying in their sleep, the victims of a psych-med cocktail of Klonopin, Paxil (an antidepressant), and Seroquel, an antipsychotic that is routinely prescribed by VA hospitals.

Hospital emergency room visits for benzodiazepine abuse now dwarf those for illegal street drugs by a more than a three-to-one margin. This trend has been increasing for at least the last five years. In 2006, the U.S. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration published data showing that prescription drugs that year were the number two reason for ER admissions to hospitals for drug abuse, slightly behind illicit substances like heroin and cocaine. But a survey released by the agency earlier this year claims that benzos, opioids and other prescriptions meds are now responsible for the majority of drug-related hospital visits.

Scientists can’t say for sure what Klonopin does when ingested, except that it dramatically affects the functioning of the brain. This much we know: If your brain is on fire with electrical signals—like, say, you’re having an epileptic seizure—a dose of clonazepam will help put out the flames. It does so by lowering the electrical activity of the brain, specifically which electrical activities it suppresses is something that no one really seems to know for sure. And therein lies the reason why clonazepam, like nearly the entire class of benzos, causes such unpredictable reactions in people. Put simply, the brain is just too complex a structure for its owners to understand—and when you start monkeying around with the way it functions, it’s anybody’s guess what is going to happen next.

Here’s how the respected neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick, Jr., describes the brain in his book When The Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery: “The human brain: a trillion nerve cells storing electrical patterns more numerous than the water molecules of the world’s oceans.” So, if clonazepam is given to a patient with a history of epileptic seizures, it is likely to bring the symptoms under control. But give the same drug to a person suffering from a completely different problem (an eating or sleeping disorder, for example), and it might actually cause an epileptic seizure.

Clonazepam has wreaked such havoc on people partly because it is so highly addictive; anyone who takes it for more than a few weeks may well develop a dependence on it. As a result, you can be prescribed Klonopin as a short-term treatment for, say, insomnia, and wind up so hooked on it that you’ll begin frantically “doctor shopping” for new prescriptions if the first physician who gave it for you refuses to renew the prescription. As with all benzos, use of Klonopin for more than a month can lead to a dangerous condition known as “benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome,” featuring elevation of a user’s heart rate and blood pressure along with insomnia, nightmares, hallucinations, anxiety, panic, weight loss, muscular spasms or cramps, and seizures.

Along with Klonopin, here are the three other benzos that, by general agreement, have made it into the top ranks of the world’s worst and most widely abused drugs: temazepam, alprazolam, and lorazepam.

Temazepam: Sold in the U.S. under the brand name Restoril, this benzo was developed and approved in the 1960s as a short-term treatment for insomnia. It is basically what is commonly called a “knockout drop.” Taken even in relatively modest dosages, temazepam can produce a powerfully hypnotic effect that numbs users and makes them extremely compliant and susceptible to control. But thanks to the “practice of medicine exception” physicians can prescribe it for anything they want.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union reportedly used temazepam extensively to keep political dissidents in a drugged-out state in government-run psychiatric hospitals. Both the CIA and the KGB are also said to have also used the sleeping pill in prisoner interrogations and in research into mind-control, brainwashing and social engineering.

Temazepam is sometimes referred to as a “date rape” drug, and it figures frequently in drug-related crimes of violence. In the drug world underground, where it is often sold as an alternative to heroin and crack cocaine, it goes by such street names as “tams,” “Vitamin T,” “terminators,” “big T,” “mind eraser” and “Mommy’s Big Helper.” Common side-effects include confusion, clumsiness, chronic drowsiness, impaired learning, memory and motor functions, as well as extreme euphoria, dizziness and amnesia.

Alprazolam: Brand name Xanax, this benzo now accounts for as many as 60% of all hospital admissions for drug addiction, according to some research. What’s more, violent and psychotic responses to Xanax are not limited to humans. In May 2009, a 200-lb chimpanzee being kept as a house pet by a Stamford, Conn., woman went on a rampage after being dosed with Xanax, escaping into the neighborhood and ripping off the face of a friend of its owner.

Lorazepam: Brand name Ativan, this drug has figured in an array of well-publicized homicides and suicides by those using it. Ativan surfaced in the 2000 divorce case between Washington, D.C., socialite Patricia Duff and her husband, Wall Street billionaire Ronald Perelman. In deposition testimony, Perelman acknowledged taking Ativan as an anti-anxiety drug during his separation from Duff and the commencement of divorce proceedings. The period was marked by numerous outbursts by Perelman and at least two physical assaults on Duff. In 2008, news reports revealed that Ativan was being used by the U.S. Customs Service to keep suspected terrorists sedated while deporting them to detention facilities abroad.

You can buy any of these “feel-good” drugs without a doctor’s signature by simply typing the name into any Internet search engine. Instantly, you’ll be presented with dozens of websites, both foreign and domestic, where you can make your purchase, no prescription required. (Most of the websites accept all major credit cards.)

Why has all this happened? In large measure you can thank the 47,000 members of the American psychiatric profession for this dreadful state of affairs. Neither the pharmaceutical industry nor the psychiatric profession would be anywhere near as lucrative as they are today without their mutual support system. Together they have created a marketing juggernaut that over the last 20 years has spawned a seemingly nonstop gusher of profits that is only now beginning to slow—and probably only temporarily.

The scholarly journals of the psychiatric profession were filled with early warnings, beginning almost 50 years ago, from those who could see where the encroaching influence of the drug companies was destined to lead the profession. Now, even the medical journals themselves have been corrupted by the hidden hand of Big Pharma. In 2008, the New York Times reported that a survey of the six top medical journals showed that on average almost 8% of the bylined articles published in their pages were ghostwritten by freelance writers, then published under the names of cooperating doctors and researchers to give the pro-drug messages contained in the articles the appearance of impartiality. The scheme is bankrolled, of course, by the company that makes the drug.

Consider Dr. Joseph Biederman, the world-renowned Harvard University psychiatrist and father of modern psychopharmacology for children, who, it now turns out, has been taking secret “consulting fees” from drug companies for years. Biederman is widely credited with legitimizing the concept of “bipolar disorder” as a chemical imbalance in the brain that can be corrected with psychiatric drugs. But documents uncovered by Senate investigators probing ties between the psychiatric profession and the drug industry, which have resulted in an explosion in medically approved uses for psychiatric drugs for children, show that Biederman received more than $1.6 million in undisclosed payments since 2000 from the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the drugs he was encouraging parents to give to their children if they appeared to be “bipolar.”

No surveys that I am aware of have ever been conducted regarding the public’s impression of what psychiatrists actually do. But from pop culture media characters such as the fictional female psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi in the HBO series The Sopranos, the general belief seems to be that psychiatrists are learned and humane professionals who counsel their patients through hour-long “talk therapy” sessions in their offices once a week, and more frequently than that if necessary to help them resolve their conflicts.

In fact, many do nothing of the sort. It may be only a patient’s first session with a psychiatrist that lasts any meaningful amount of time. In this initial consultation the psychiatrist relies on the DSM manual as the diagnostic tool to decide precisely what the patient suffers from. Once that is established, the psychiatrist can begin prescribing psych meds as therapy, free of fear about the danger of a medical malpractice suit lurking down the road.

The follow-up sessions (weekly, monthly, etc.) that come after the initial consultations—that is, the sessions that are portrayed on The Sopranos as the occasions when Mafia killer Tony Soprano sits down in Dr. Melfi’s darkened office and pours out his guts about his troubled childhood—usually last as little as 15 minutes. During these so-called “med checks,” a psychiatrist typically charges $100 or more for asking the patient little more than how he or she is responding to the prescribed medication—a question that can usually be answered by a quick glance at the patient’s demeanor.

At the end of such a med-check, the psychiatrist may decide to renew the patient’s current prescription, substitute or add a new one—or even offer the patient a free sample of some new psych-med, courtesy of a sales rep from a pharmaceutical company. At four med-checks per hour, a psychiatrist with enough patients to fill up his workdays can easily make $120,000 annually from his med-check practice alone and still take a month-long summer vacation.

It’s obvious that this system incentivizes doctors financially to keep prescribing drugs in order to keep patients returning for med-checks. But Big Pharma offers a whole host of additional income opportunities. Last year, ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize–winning public-interest investigative website, did an extensive report on the financial compensation drug companies shower on physicians. Well-titled “Dollars for Docs,” this series included a database of more than 17,000 doctors who accepted “speaker fees” and other money from eight drug companies in 2009 and 2010 totaling $320 million.

That accounting is only the tip of the iceberg, however, as most pharmaceutical companies have refused to disclose their physician payments. Not surprisingly, most doctors interviewed by ProPublica denied that their medical decisions and prescribing habits were influenced by drug company payments. The new healthcare reform bill calls for greater transparency, requiring all drug-makers to disclose all fees paid to all doctors by 2014. Until then, you can type your doctor’s name into the database to find out if he or she is on the pharma take, and for how much.

http://www.alternet.org/health/151166/america%27s_most_dangerous_pill?page=entire

Christopher Byron is a prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times best-selling author. His columns and articles have appeared in a dozens of major publications, including New York Magazine, Fortune, The New York Times and The New York Post. He has also been a regular guest commentator on CNN. Fox, and CNBC. This article is exclusively excerpted from his forthcoming book, Mind Drugs, Inc.: How Big Pharma and Modern Psychiatry Have Corrupted Washington and Destroyed Mental Health in America.

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Tags: anti anxiety drug, Ativan, benzo, benzodiazapines, bipolar disorder, death, homicide, joseph biederman, Klonopin, overdose, psychiatric, psychiatrist, Stevie Nicks, Xanax
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Mother battles Michigan over daughter’s medication

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

Centre Daily Times
By Corey Williams
May 22, 2011

This May 12, 2011 photo shows Maryanne Godboldo in Detroit. Godboldo is locked in a battle with Michigan's Department of Human Services over her right to determine whether her physically impaired daughter should continue taking the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, since she claims the girl has responded better to holistic treatment. AP Photo

DETROIT — Frustration over her physically impaired daughter’s medical care led Maryanne Godboldo to lash out at what she considered state interference and into a 12-hour standoff when Detroit police came to take the girl away.

When it ended, the unemployed mother was in handcuffs; her daughter placed in a psychiatric hospital for children.

Godboldo now is locked in a bitter battle with Michigan’s Department of Human Services over her right to determine whether the girl should continue taking the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal and the government’s responsibility to look after the child’s welfare.

Godboldo doesn’t trust doctors much – she blames some of the girl’s past medical problems on possible physician negligence and complications from childhood immunizations, but did not name the doctors or release her daughter’s medical records to The Associated Press. She claims the girl has responded better to holistic treatment that does not include Risperdal.

But the state is not budging on its assertion that without the proper medication, Ariana is at risk.

“Our mandate is to go into court and prove there is medical neglect,” said Human Services Director Maura Corrigan, who declined to speak directly about Godboldo’s case due to the ongoing court proceedings.

“Is there harm to the child? That’s what we are trying to assess,” Corrigan told the AP in a recent interview.

A defiant Godboldo still believes she was right to defy police, despite five days in jail and criminal charges, including discharge of a firearm, three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and resisting officers.

“I was in my home. Why should I come out? They were invading my home,” Godboldo said.

Citing the charges, Godboldo declined to say if she fired a gun when police arrived at her home March 24. But officers said a gun and about 43 rounds of live ammunition were in the house, and a spent shell casing was found after the standoff, according to court records. Ariana also was in the house.

“I would always be concerned with a parent who has a gun and is using it when a child is present because accidents happen,” said Oakland County Probate Court Judge Linda Hallmark, who isn’t connected to the case but handles child custody issues. “If a parent feels the child is going to be removed and there isn’t a basis for it, there are legal avenues that the parent needs to follow.”

Ariana already had her share of medical troubles when Godboldo started giving her Risperdal more than a year ago at a doctor’s suggestion. She had lost her right leg below the knee as an infant and wears a prosthesis. Godboldo claims she also developed encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, before entering 6th grade.

She said her daughter complained often of being dizzy and had a hoarse voice, became more clingy and fearful, and avoided playing outside.

“It happened slowly at first, but it was enough to know when your child makes a change,” Godboldo said.

She sought help at a Detroit area center. Staff there put Ariana on a treatment plan that included Risperdal, said Allison Folmar, one of Godboldo’s attorneys.

Child Protective Services in its petition wrote that Ariana was diagnosed with “psychosis NOS,” or “not otherwise specified,” Folmar said.

“They are saying ‘it’s something going on in her head, but we don’t know what it is,’” the attorney added.

But Godboldo balked at a suggestion that her daughter be placed in a mental hospital. She took the girl’s treatment to another center. She also decided to wean her from Risperdal, which sometimes is used to treat schizophrenia.

“Ariana has some issues. She requires one-on-one attention,” said Folmar, describing how the girl at times appears unresponsive. But “she writes. She reads.”

Risperdal often is used to contain behaviors like aggression and even treat autism, said Derek H. Suite, a board certified psychiatrist and president and chief executive of Full Circle Health in the Bronx, N.Y. Risperdal use has shown dramatic reductions in psychotic symptoms, but there can be side-effects, he added.

“Sometimes kids can have neurological problems … muscular tics,” Suite said. “These drugs can slow you down.”

After Godboldo’s confrontation with police, Ariana spent about a month in a children’s psychiatric facility. She now is living with Godboldo’s sister, Penny. A judge has ordered that other adult relatives be present when Godboldo visits with her daughter.

But “to this day, there is not one court order saying give her the medication,” Folmar said. “No one has recommended giving the child the medication.”

It’s not unusual for parents and the state to be at odds over what’s best.

Two Idaho parents lost a civil lawsuit last year when a judge ruled their rights were not violated by an officer who took custody of their infant daughter so a doctor could check for signs of meningitis. Dale and Leilani Neumann of Wisconsin were convicted of reckless homicide following the 2008 death of their 11-year-old daughter, whose undiagnosed diabetes was treated with prayer instead of conventional medicine.

Godboldo said the state was not involved in the care of her daughter until she pursued a more holistic treatment. When asked by the AP what that entailed, she replied: “God’s medication.”

After Godboldo refused to attend a meeting with Child Protective Services, officers arrived at her home to remove Ariana. Godboldo claimed they never showed her a court order.

Detroit police declined to comment about the case “because of the litigation involved,” Sgt. Eren Stephens said in an email.

When Godboldo refused to allow police in, the officers tried to force their way through a side door but backed off after hearing a gun shot, court documents said.

“Maryann did not shoot at police and she did not fire a gun with any intention of scaring the police,” Folmar said. “But even if she did fire a so-called warning shot, right now the question is of self-defense.”

Read article here: http://www.centredaily.com/2011/05/22/2728095/mother-battles-michigan-over-daughters.html

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Tags: antipsychotic, Child Protective Services, court documents, CPS, Detroit, Detroit Children's Center, drugging children, drugs, Maryanne Godboldo, mother, police, psychiatric drug side effects, psychiatrist, Risperdal, SWAT team
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Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter released as parents, state wrangle over her medical care

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

Livingston Daily
By Gina Damron
May 8, 2011

Maryanne Godboldo’s supporters will gather today for a reunion party at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit.

They’re celebrating the fact that Godboldo’s 13-year-old daughter — at the center of a struggle between her parents and the state over her medical care — was released Friday from a medical facility in Northville into her aunt’s care.

Godboldo, who has garnered significant community support, says she has the right to determine her daughter’s care and had been weaning her off a prescribed psychotropic drug in favor of holistic treatments.

But in an order to take the child into protective custody in March, Child Protective Services accused Godboldo of being in denial about her daughter’s mental health.

The state also accused her of neglecting the girl by not giving her the psychotropic drug.

With police assistance, state workers came to take the girl, but Godboldo has said she wasn’t going to allow that.

She is accused of firing a gun, triggering an hours-long standoff, and is facing criminal charges.

Last month, authorities determined there was no emergency need for the girl to be medicated.

On the order of a Wayne County juvenile court judge, doctors for the family and of a facility where the girl was taken after the standoff have come up with a treatment plan that can be implemented now that the girl is in family custody.

The trial in the case is set to begin in June.

“We still have a long way to go,” read an e-mail Saturday from the Justice 4 Maryanne Action Committee. But now that the girl is back with family, “we have much cause to celebrate.”

A love of dance

Godboldo, 56, said she and the girl’s father, Mubarak Hakim, met at a Detroit restaurant in the 1990s. Hakim, she said, was a jazz musician.

The two began to date and, in 1998, they had a baby girl.

“It was wonderful,” Godboldo said. “It was absolutely delightful.”

The girl’s right leg had to be amputated below the knee when she was 3 days old, but Godboldo said her daughter became athletic, frequented social occasions with her aunt and loved to dance.

She got that from her mom.

Godboldo was a young girl when she and her sister, Penny, started taking dance classes on Saturdays. They learned ballet, modern dance and tap.

Godboldo said she grew up on the city’s west side, born to parents who moved to Detroit from the South. She was the youngest girl and 11th in a line of 12 children.

In the early 1980s, Godboldo and her sister went to New York to study dance. Godboldo later went back to pursue dance and landed with a jazz dance company. Her father died in the late ’80s and, in 1993, she came home to take care of her mother. But dance was always within reach, and her sister hooked her back in. The art has been a release for Godboldo.

“It’s relaxing,” she said. “It rejuvenates you.”

A treatment plan

Dr. Margaret Betts, the family’s physician and friend, said Godboldo’s daughter used to be active — she danced, was in choir, took horseback riding lessons.

But a series of immunizations in 2009, Godboldo has said, changed her.

Now she seems shy, Betts said.

According to the order to take the girl, she was diagnosed with an unspecified psychosis and was placed on medication.

In a petition filed by CPS, allegations were made that the girl became aggressive after Godboldo stopped the medication, and her behavior was unpredictable.

Betts, who believes in alternative medicine, questioned the original diagnosis and said more tests will be done.

The new treatment plan includes resuming an alternative regimen, while consulting with a psychiatrist, neurologist and other medical specialists.

Betts said alternative medicine may not work for everyone, but “it should be the starting point for most.”

According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a 2008 survey of Americans showed that in 2007, more than 38% of adults and nearly 12% of children were using some form of complementary and alternative medicine.

The organization is a federal government agency for scientific research on complementary and alternative medicine, which the agency defines as “a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine.”

According to the survey, some diseases or conditions for which complementary or alternative medicine were used most frequently included back or neck pain, colds, anxiety or stress, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and insomnia.

Betts said parents have the right to determine what is best for their children.

“As guardian and parent, that is our responsibility,” she said. “No one knows you better.”

Read article here: http://www.livingstondaily.com/article/C4/20110508/NEWS01/105080569/Maryanne-Godboldo-s-daughter-released-parents-state-wrangle-over-her-medical-care?odyssey=nav|head

For more information on alternatives, click here: http://www.cchrint.org/alternatives/

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Antipsychotic Drugs Called Hazardous for the Elderly

Monday, May 9th, 2011

The New York Times
By Gardiner Harris
May 9, 2011

Nearly one in seven elderly nursing home residents, nearly all of them with dementia, are given powerful atypical antipsychotic drugs even though the medicines increase the risks of death and are not approved for such treatments, a government audit found.

More than half of the antipsychotics paid for by the federal Medicare program in the first half of 2007 were “erroneous,” the audit found, costing the program $116 million for those six months.

“Government, taxpayers, nursing home residents as well as their families and caregivers should be outraged and seek solutions,” Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in announcing the audit results.

Mr. Levinson noted that such drugs — which include Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon — are “potentially lethal” to many of the patients getting them and that some drug manufacturers illegally marketed their medicines for these uses “putting profits before safety.”

The audit is an unusual assessment by the government of whether doctors are treating Medicare patients appropriately in nursing homes. Mr. Levinson suggested that the government should collect information on the diagnoses given Medicare patients so that the government can assess whether the drugs prescribed to them are appropriate.

While common in the private sector, such basic oversight is unheard of in the Medicare program and would almost certainly be opposed by doctors’ groups and many in Congress who view government intrusions into the doctor-patient relationship as inappropriate. In response to the audit, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that some of the inappropriate use of antipsychotics in elderly nursing home patients is a result of drug makers’ paying kickbacks to nursing homes to increase prescriptions for the medicines.

Omnicare Inc., a pharmacy chain for nursing homes, paid $98 million in November 2009 to settle accusations that it received kickbacks from Johnson & Johnson and other drug makers for antipsychotic prescriptions.

Medicare officials said that diagnosis information is not generally included with prescriptions so the government cannot assess in real time whether prescription payments are appropriate.

While the Food and Drug Administration has warned doctors that using antipsychotic drugs in elderly patients with dementia increases their risks of death, doctors continue the practice because they have few other good choices, said Dr. Daniel J. Carlat, editor in chief of The Carlat Psychiatry Report, a medical education newsletter for psychiatrists.

“Doctors want to maximize quality of life by treating the patient’s agitation even if that means the patient will die a bit sooner,” Dr. Carlat said.

The government auditors found that of the 2.1 million elderly patients in nursing homes during the first six months of 2007, 304,983 had at least one Medicare claim for an antipsychotic medicine. Nursing home residents received 20 percent of the 8.5 million claims for antipsychotic medicines for all Medicare beneficiaries at a cost of $309 million during those six months.

The auditors found that 83 percent of antipsychotic prescriptions for elderly nursing home residents were for uses not approved by federal drug regulators, and 88 percent were to treat patients with dementia — for whom the drugs can be lethal.

“These results are alarming,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who asked for the audit. “Medicare officials need to pay attention.”

Federal rules require that any drugs that are paid for by the government be given only for uses that are approved either by the government or one of three independent drug usage encyclopedias. Auditors found that 51 percent, or 726,000 of 1.4 million claims, for antipsychotic medicines did not meet this criterion and were thus paid for by the government improperly.

Government rules also ban drugs that are used in excessive doses or duration, even if patients are found to have a condition for which the drug is appropriate. Auditors found that 22 percent, or 317,971 of 1.4 million claims, for antipsychotic medicines failed this standard.

Read article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/health/policy/10drug.html?_r=2

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Tags: Abilify, antipsychotics, atypical antipsychotic drugs, Charles E. Grassley, death, dementia, Department of Health and Human Services, drug maker, elderly, Food and Drug Administration, Geodon, illegal marketing, kickbacks, lethal, Medicare, nursing home, Omnicare, psychiatrist, risks of death, Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa
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My Favorite Mistake — by Stevie Nicks

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

Newsweek – May 1, 2011

by Stevie Nicks

Photo Credit: Kristin Burns

The biggest mistake I ever made was giving in to my friends and going to see a psychiatrist. It was in the mid-1980s, and I had just gotten out of Betty Ford. I was feeling buoyant and saved and fantastic. But everyone said, “We’re sure you’re going to start using again. You should go to a psychiatrist.” Finally, I said, “All right!” and went. What this man said was: “In order to keep you off cocaine we should put you on the drug that we’re using a lot these days called Klonopin.” Stupidly, I said, “All right.” And the next eight years of my life were destroyed.

Klonopin is in the Valium family, but Valium is fuzzy and Klonopin is insidious because it’s so subtle that you can hardly tell you took it. I got through 1986 and 1987. Thank God I’d already written the words for my record The Other Side of the Mirror. But what started happening was that if I didn’t take it, my hands started to shake. I felt like I had a neurological disease or Parkinson’s. I started not being able to get to Lindsey Buckingham’s house on time, and I would get there and everybody was drinking, so I’d have a glass of wine. Don’t mix tranquilizers and wine. Then I’d sing horrific parts on his songs, and he would take the parts off. I was hardly on Tango of the Night, which I happen to love.

The next six years were terrible. Looking back on it, I think this therapist was basically a groupie. He loved hearing stories of rock and roll and he started upping my dose. He watched me go from a beautiful, 125-pound, newly sober woman who had the world at her feet to a 170-pound woman who had the lights go out in her eyes.

Finally, in 1993, I’d had enough. I said, “Take me to a hospital.” I went in for 47 days, and it made Betty Ford look like a cakewalk. My hair turned gray and my skin molted. I could hardly walk. You can detox off heroin in 12 days. Coke is just a mental detox. But tranquilizers—they are dangerous. I was terrified to leave, and I came away knowing that that would never happen to me again.

I learned so much in that hospital. I wrote the whole time I was there, stuff that I consider to be some of my best writing ever. I learned that I could have fun and laugh and cry with amazing people and not be on drugs. I learned that I could live my life and still be beautiful and fun and still go to parties and not even have to have a glass of wine. I never went to therapy again after that—why would I?

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/05/01/my-favorite-mistake-stevie-nicks.html

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Tags: Betty Ford, coke, Fleetwood Mac, heroin, Klonopin, psychiatrist, Stevie Nicks, therapist, tranquilizers, Valium
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Detroit mother’s heroism sends message to all parents: Say “no” to child drugging

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

NaturalNews.com

by Monica G. Young

Click image to watch video: Drugging our Children—Side Effects

The story of the Detroit mother, Maryanne Godboldo, undergoing a police siege on her home after refusing to give her daughter a psychotropic drug has set off a national outcry. Many facts not only vindicate her defiance but point the finger squarely at the correct villains: the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries.

As a recap, on March 24 a Children’s Protective Services (CPS) case worker petitioned to remove Maryanne Godboldo’s 13-year-old daughter from her care and place her in state custody. Only two weeks on the assignment (scarcely knowing the girl), the case worker claimed the mother was medically neglecting her child by taking her off Risperdal – a highly toxic antipsychotic drug.

A police SWAT team, accompanied by the case worker, was promptly dispatched to the home – complete with assault weapons, an armored carrier and helicopter. Despite police breaking down her door, the mother refused to give up her daughter and allegedly fired a warning shot. After a 12-hour standoff, the woman surrendered.

This mother – a teacher, dancer and respected figure in Detroit’s art circles – was then jailed and arraigned on multiple felony charges. Maryanne was since released from jail but faces criminal charges. The child was essentially kidnapped by the police and CPS and placed in a juvenile psychiatric facility.

State officials since confirmed there was no need for her to take the drug and a judge has announced a plan to get the teen out of the facility and into her aunt’s home.

The mother says her daughter’s troubles began in September 2009 with a bad reaction to immunizations. Upon seeking help for the girl at a Detroit Children’s Center, a psychiatrist prescribed the antipsychotic drug Risperdal – without any diagnosis and despite no history of mental problems.

Maryanne at first complied, but after months of worsening symptoms and severe side effects she consulted with a holistic doctor who advised weaning her daughter off the drug. The child’s aunt confirms, “There were absolutely no mental issues with her until she had the immunizations and even more with the Risperdal. It’s been hell ever since.” The girl’s father, Mubuarak Hakim, reports, “Maryanne’s decision to wean her from that was making a difference, making her better, helping her to be a happy kid again.”

Court documents show Maryanne was within her legal rights in halting the drug. On June 3, 2010 she signed an informed consent on behalf of her child, stating, “It has been explained to me that I have the right to withdraw this consent at any time and can stop taking the medication at any time.” The document was also signed by the psychiatrist who prescribed the drug – reportedly the same one who later complained to child welfare workers when she stopped administering the drug.

It’s no wonder a mom would go to such lengths to protect her child from psychotropic drugs. Reported Risperdal “side” effects include abdominl pain, vomiting, sore throat, agitation, aggression, anxiety, chest pain, nasal inflammation, dizziness, drowsiness, insomnia, dry skin, difficulty urinating, heavy menstruation, tremor, weight gain, lethargic feelings, joint pain, respiratory infection, tardive dyskinesia (involuntary movements of face and limbs), liver failure, stroke, blood clots, hemorrhaging and suicidal thoughts.

Follow the money

It is not uncommon for Children’s Protective Services – an agency ostensibly dedicated to protecting children – to coerce parents to give their kids dangerous psychiatric drugs, often three or four drugs at a time.

CPS’s funding comes from the state and federal grants (as is the case with the Children’s Center which originally put Maryanne’s daughter on the drug). And one of the most powerful and high-rolling government lobbying forces in the U.S. is the pharmaceutical industry.

In reporting on the Godboldo story, the Voice of Detroit talked to Starletta Banks who filed suit in 2005 when her three children were snatched by CPS. Banks says, “The sole reasons that children are being stolen from their families and homes are the financial incentives associated with each child and circumstance. There is federal grant money given to states and child placement agencies to create situations that do not exist to generate these funds. The state of Michigan is financially broke, thus surviving on the backs of our children.”

Big Pharma’s stronghold over Michigan is evidenced by it being the only state with an immunity law for drug makers. Per Michigan State Representative, Vicki Barnett, “Michigan is the only state in the nation that gives drug companies total immunity when their products harm or kill consumers.”

Ironically, the same week Michigan officials busted a mother’s door down for taking her child off Risperdal, a South Carolina jury found the drug’s manufacturer (Johnson & Johnson) guilty of deceiving doctors about its side effects and effectiveness. “It was all about the money,” says the South Carolina state attorney. At least ten other states have similar Risperdal lawsuits pending trial in federal courts.

But it is not only Michigan parents or those involved with child protection who have been marginalized by psychiatric influence. Millions of parents across the country, in every economic strata and race, have been misled into believing that they must defer to mental health “experts”. Yet these psychiatric drug pushers sacrifice children’s health and futures for the sake of profit.

About the author:
Monica G. Young is a human rights investigator and educational writer with a purpose to expose the truth about the pharmaceutical and psychiatric industries and safeguard human liberty. She encourages non-drug alternative approaches based on healthy lifestyles and human decency. She supports the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and like-minded groups.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032186_Maryanne_Godboldo_psychiatric_drugs.html#ixzz1KkaCSTyl

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