Posts Tagged ‘Psycho Pharma’

Would Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn be diagnosed mentally ill and drugged?

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Natural News – September 1, 2011

by Monica G. Young

Imagine if the beloved young characters in Mark Twain’s classic, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” lived today. Based on current psychiatric criteria, Tom and Huck could be designated mentally ill and prescribed mind-altering drugs. Quiet, listless and numb, their legendary adventures would be over.

Describing a day in school, Twain wrote: “The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered.” His “heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time.” That’s a text book so-called symptom of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). A teacher today could refer him to a psychiatrist who would dope him with stimulants. Yet like any typical boy, Tom had no trouble focusing attention on something he found interesting – like finding a hidden treasure.

Tom’s friend Huckleberry might fare worse. An avowed non-conformist, a psychiatric checklist could tag him with ODD – oppositional defiant disorder. And having run away from an abusive father, Huck would land in the hands of Child Protective Services who would sedate him on psychoactive drugs subsidized by government funds.

Although no brain scan, blood test or x-ray had been done, the psych doctors would claim the boys’ mental illness stemmed from a neurobiological disorder involving chemical imbalances in the brain, probably hereditary.

Tom and Huck would likely experience insomnia, stomach aches, high blood pressure, stunted growth or some other “side” effects, and more drugs would be added to treat these. They would start feeling despondent and have mood swings, leading to probable depression or bipolar disorder diagnoses and more drug cocktails. The once spirited youths might end up as life-long pharmaceutical junkies.

Psychiatry revealed as an industry of fakers

Recently Harvard-trained psychiatrist Daniel Carlat exposed psychiatry as essentially a field of imposters. His book, “Unhinged; the Trouble with Psychiatry – a Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis,” reads much like a confession – and rightly so.

Despite all their years in medical school, psychiatrists do not use any medical tests in diagnosing. Instead their labels are entirely subjective, opinionated and based upon a manual of disorders voted into existence by a psychiatric committee.

Yet these “experts” have transformed boyhood into “ADHD,” shyness into “social anxiety disorder” and menstrual discomfort into “premenstrual dysphoric disorder.” Some toddlers are labeled before given a chance to learn to talk.

Carlat states, “Psychiatrists have cordoned off the most painful versions of normal life, defined them as syndromes, and have given them medical-sounding names.” Yes, there are people who suffer from severe mental disturbances, but he says it’s “an illusion that we understand our patients when all we are doing is assigning them labels.”

Where is the science in all this? He writes, “While the scientific literature contains thousands of papers proposing neurobiological theories to explain PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder], depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other psychiatric disorders, these theories remain unproven…” And he confides, “the shocking truth is that psychiatry has yet to develop a convincing explanation for the pathophysiology of any illness at all.”

In regards the chemical imbalance rant, Carlat says this is nothing more than a “convenient myth” so psychiatrists can appear authoritative and avoid looking ignorant with their patients.

This is an industry riveted to drugs, drugs and more drugs. Forget really listening to and understanding a patient’s troubles in life. Now it’s all about lucrative fifteen-minute monthly med checks – about as personal as Wendy’s drive-through.

Pharmaceutical industry influence has vast bearing on what medications psychiatrists use and how often. Carlat admits, “We have been seduced by the constant encouragement from drug companies to prescribe more medications…” Such seduction ranges from a drug rep bringing a doctor his favorite drink from Starbucks, to companies paying him up to a million or more to be their marketing mouthpiece.

Psycho-Pharma’s drug obsession diverts society’s attention off non-harmful solutions like teaching life skills, improving education, better nutrition and exercise, and addressing environmental factors.

In short, for all their diplomas, chic offices, puffed-up terminology and high fees, this is a field where greed and deception replace ethics and scientific methodology. Fortunately some like Daniel Carlat are blowing the whistle.

Most unforgivable is the dispensing of labels and drugs to millions of children. The leading gurus of this campaign have been psychiatrists deep in the pockets of Big Pharma, such as the exalted Dr. Joseph Biederman – flanked by an army of Pharma-paid “advocacy” groups.

Perhaps we should ourselves vote on labels to categorize such mentally-depraved individuals, such as conscience deficit hyper-lying disorder (CDHD) or better yet, false representation and underhandedness disorder (FRAUD).

Sources for this article include:

“The book, “Unhinged; the Trouble with Psychiatry – a Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis,” by Daniel J. Carlat, M.D.

http://speedupsitstill.com/dangerou…

http://www.thefix.com/content/jj-su…

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CCHR exposes list of psycho-pharma front groups

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Natural News
By PF Louis
August 29, 2011

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

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

Edward Bernays Pioneered Front Groups

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

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

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

Psychiatry, Big Pharma, and Front Groups

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

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

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

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

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

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

Front Groups Everywhere

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources for this article include:

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

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

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

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

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

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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?

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Behind the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex; Pharma-funded front groups masquerading as “patient advocates”

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Scoop Independent News
By Evelyn Pringle
June 22, 2010

Non-Profit Advocacy Groups

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

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

Gigantic Pyramid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How Vested Interests Created the Perfect Marketing/Lobbying Machine: Mental Health “Advocacy” Groups—Funded by Pharma

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

by CCHR International

An ongoing U.S. Senate investigation headed by Senator Charles Grassley has  sought disclosure of pharmaceutical funding paid to researchers, physicians,  medical schools and medical journals.  Some of the nation’s most prominent psychiatrists have now been exposed for extensive conflicts of interest amounting to millions in undisclosed pharmaceutical funding, including Dr. Charles Nemeroff, Dr. Joseph Biederman, Dr. Melissa DelBello, Dr. Timothy Wilens, Dr. Thomas Spencer, Dr. Alan Schatzberg, Dr. Martin Keller, Dr. A. John Rush, Dr. Karen Wagner, Dr. Jeffrey Bostic and Dr. Frederick Goodwin — many of which serve as advisory board members to mental illness “advocacy groups” which are now also the subject of the Senate investigation for their undisclosed pharmaceutical funding.

The majority of the public may or may not be familiar with these so-called mental health advocacy organizations, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) or the myriad of bipolar, depression or ADHD “support groups” that are inundating the internet.

But they need to be.

These are groups operating under the guise of advocates for the “mentally ill,” which in reality are heavily funded pharmaceutical front groups – lobbying and working on state and federal laws which effect the entire nation — from our elderly in nursing homes to our military, pregnant women, nursing mothers and school children. Presenting themselves as patient advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership, many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press and the American public — for they have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent.

Certainly any organization claiming to be for the rights of patients diagnosed mentally ill would have as their primary goal, full informed consent in the field of mental health – including full and complete disclosure of all drug risks, the right to refuse treatment, the right to know that psychiatric diagnoses are not medical conditions (evident by the fact there is not one confirmatory medical/scientific test). Above all such groups would provide patients with an abundance of information on non-harmful, non- drug, medical solutions and options considering the dangerous and well documented risks of psychiatric drugs by international drug regulatory agencies.

These groups do not.

A patients rights group for the mentally ill would never endorse something as absurd and obviously dangerous as giving electroshock to pregnant women, nor condone schools being able to require children to take a psychiatric drug as a condition of attending school. Furthermore, they would never be opposed to the FDA actually doing its job and finally issuing long overdue warnings that antidepressants can cause children to commit suicide, or issue warnings that ADHD drugs have serious and even deadly side effects. Yet these are just some of the actions condoned and promoted by these so-called patients rights groups.

As another example take the federally proposed bill, The Mothers Act; a previous version of this bill called on using a method of “screening” pregnant women and new mothers called EPDS, a screening method documented to triple the number of women diagnosed with Postpartum depression, according to a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology. The Scandinavian Journal of Public Health stated that EPDS screening was unethical and should not be used. None of the so called advocacy groups for the mentally ill had any objections to this bill whatsoever, or endorsing such an unethical screening tool. They supported it. The bill would have passed with no objections from them whatsoever, if not for the dedication of real advocacy groups with no vested interests (ties to Pharma) opposing language in this bill that would have led to women being falsely diagnosed and put on dangerous psychiatric drugs to “treat” them, unnecessarily placing new mothers and their infants at great risk.

To put it simply, these groups are not what they appear to be. Yet their influence over legislation, lobbying, drug regulation (or lack thereof), and public relations campaigns is substantial and effects the entire nation. For they claim to be the voice of the “mentally ill.” But are they? Or are they the result of a brilliant marketing/lobbying campaign designed to benefit the industry that funds them—the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry.

To find out how it all started click here: http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

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