Posts Tagged ‘Seizures’

Shy children now candidates for dangerous psychiatric drugs

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

NaturalNews
By Elizabeth Walling
October 5, 2011

(NaturalNews) New guidelines for mental illness turn shyness in children from a personality trait into a mental disorder that warrants drug treatment. Drug companies already target children, who fidget too much in class or have trouble concentrating on their homework, with stimulant drugs for treating attention deficit disorder. Now children who sit too quietly or are more withdrawn than their peers will also be targeted with medication for social anxiety disorder or depression.

These new guidelines increase the likelihood that children, who tend to be quiet or sad, will be diagnosed with depression. And children who talk back to adults or lose their temper frequently may be diagnosed with what is called oppositional defiant disorder. A diagnose in either case will likely lead to treatment with powerful psychotropic drugs.

Serious Risks for Children who take Psychiatric Drugs

The idea of turning every spectrum of human emotion into some kind of mental disorder is not only absurd, but it also threatens the long-term mental and physical health of our children.

Millions of children are currently taking one or more behavior-altering medications, despite the fact that these drugs carry the risk of serious side effects. Some of these side effects include suicidal thinking, loss of appetite, nausea, insomnia, sedation, seizures, insulin resistance, acne, tremors, muscle stiffness and more.

Some psychologists also point out that simply drugging children for behaving out of the norm could actually be masking very serious underlying problems. Children, who are the victims of mental, physical or sexual abuse, will often exhibit behaviors such as shyness, sadness or being more withdrawn. These experts warn that trying to seek a quick-fix for negative emotions denies children what they truly need: long-term care and guidance.

Who stands to profit from expanding the guidelines for diagnosable mental disorders? The answer is quite simple: the pharmaceutical companies which manufacture the drugs for treating these conditions. However, when we start labeling children as disordered for simply being quieter than their peers or having an occasional angry outburst, we are stepping into dangerous territory that threatens the future of an entire generation and beyond.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h…

http://www.sciencedaily.com/release…

http://www.aboutourkids.org/article…

About the author:

Elizabeth Walling is a freelance writer specializing in health and family nutrition. She is a strong believer in natural living as a way to improve health and prevent modern disease. She enjoys thinking outside of the box and challenging common myths about health and wellness. You can visit her blog to learn more:
www.livingthenourishedlife.com/2009…

Read the article here:  http://www.naturalnews.com/033778_shy_children_psychiatric_drugs.html

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Antipsychotics Have Dramatic Consequences in Kids, Study Shows

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Note from CCHR: There are a lot more serious documented side effects to antipsychotics  than simply weight gain for kids—such as, diabetes,  stroke, tumors,  seizures, coma and heart problems to name a few.  These warnings/studies are summarized in our psychiatric drug database – simply search antipsychotics in under 18-year-olds – here: http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/drug_warnings.php

Parent Dish – June 21, 2011

Children can experience dramatic weight gain and insulin resistance just weeks after taking the drugs for the first time. Credit: Getty Images

Careful with the crazy pills.

Doling out antipsychotic to kids for the first time can be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Researchers found children can experience dramatic weight gain and insulin resistance just weeks after taking the drugs for the first time, Medscape.com reports.

Lead researcher, John W. Newcomer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami, tells Medscape that prescribing antipsychotics has become trendy in the past 15 years or so — even though there is no sudden epidemic of schizophrenia in children.

“The increase was due to the rising use of antipsychotics for disruptive behavior disorders,” he says.

In other words, your kid acting a little hyper? Bomb him with meds.

Newcomer led the study while he was at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo. Researchers studied 125 kids who were prescribed Aripiprazole, Risperidone or Olanzapine for behavior problem. Newcomer admitted kids were less aggressive and irritable on the drugs.

“They got a lot better,” Newcomer tells Medscape. “I was actually stunned at how much better they got. It gave me some margin of sympathy that I didn’t have before for why the child psychiatrists and the pediatricians are using so much of these drugs.”

But at what cost?

Kids who participated in the study showed significant weight gain and their bodies became less receptive to insulin. Their body fat shot up an average of 8.98 percent while their sensitivity to insulin decreased by an average of 3 percent.

Read the rest of the article here:

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Oh That? Seroquel Marketing Undeterred by This Week’s Deceptive Marketing Settlement

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

OpEdNews  March 15, 2011

by Martha Rosenberg

Google the word “depression” and the first search result you’ll get is for the antipsychotic Seroquel XR.

Visit WebMD and the home page hosts similar ads for Seroquel XR, above and adjacent to the lead news story.

Who would know AstraZeneca inked the largest multi-state consumer protection settlement on record relating to deceptive Seroquel marketing just this week? For $68.5 million? Only a year after inking a similar settlement related to burying side effect and safety information for $520 million with the government?

Who would know AstraZeneca has already settled nearly 25,000 personal injury lawsuits pertaining to Seroquel with more to come says ABC news?

First approved in 1997, Seroquel has enjoyed the camel-nose-under-the-tent phenomenon known as indications creep. First approved for schizophrenia, it was later approved for bipolar disorder and psychiatric conditions in children. But it was Seroquel’s 2009 approval as an add-drug for depression that helped it reach its spectacular sales of $5.3 billion in 2010 thanks to the US’ walloping depression “market” of 20 million.

Seroquel’s blood sugar, weight gain and heart side effects are well known. That’s why FDA regulators opposed its use as a first choice, stand-alone treatment for the 10 percent of the US population with depression when safer drugs exist. “I saw no clear advantage demonstrated in efficacy,” said Dr. Wayne Goodman who chaired the FDA panel considering the depression indication. “There were side effects, and I would expect unintended consequences associated with wide-scale use of the drug.”

The drug also can cause increased mortality in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis, suicidality, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, cataracts, seizures, increases in blood pressure and movement disorders in neonates when their mothers take it.

Seroquel’s fraud trail is also well known with more than six conflict of interest scandals swirling around Seroquel researchers and promoters. Psychiatrist Richard Borison was sentenced to a 15-year prison sentence in 1998 for a pay-to-play Seroquel research scheme which helped establish Seroquel’s original perception as safe.

But how many realize Seroquel’s cost to the individual taxpayer and health insurance consumers at a Red Book price of almost $500 per month per person?

Auditors with the Michigan Corrections Department say the state could save $350,000 a month by switching just half of its Seroquel prescriptions to another pill. (Anyone know a school that could use $350,000 a month?) And North Carolina spends $29.4 million per year on Seroquel prescriptions. Who knows how much else states and taxpayers are paying to control the metabolic side effects that emerge with Seroquel?

Reports are also starting to surface about the effect $6,000-a-year Seroquel prescriptions, many unnecessary and inappropriate, are having on rising insurance premiums themselves for private insurance holders.

In fact, the public is really paying twice for the irrepressible Seroquel marketing. First for drug purchases in state and private plans (and the advertising) and second in side effects from a drug whose safety continues to be in doubt.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Oh-That-Seroquel-Marketin-by-Martha-Rosenberg-110315-836.html

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New Jersey Is Sued Over the Forced Medication of Patients at Psychiatric Hospitals

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

New York Times
by Richard Perez-Pena
August 3, 2010

Patient advocates filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday charging that New Jersey psychiatric hospitals routinely medicate patients against their will without a review by an outside arbiter, a practice that is banned in most other states.

Twenty-nine states require a judge’s ruling for involuntary medication, according to the suit, including New York, Connecticut and other large states, like California, Florida and Texas. Five other states leave the decision to an individual or panel outside the hospital. Some states also provide an advocate to represent a patient in a hearing on forced medication.

But in New Jersey, state rules allow a patient in a state hospital to appeal medication decisions only to people in the hospital. The lawsuit contends that the internal appeal process is routinely ignored and that psychiatric patients in private hospitals lack any opportunity to appeal medication regimens at all.

The suit, filed in Federal District Court in Trenton by the group Disability Rights New Jersey, seeks a court order requiring the state to provide judicial review of involuntary medication. It notes that a prison inmate has more power to contest treatment decisions than a psychiatric patient.

The drugs forced on patients include powerful medications for conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. They help many people with those diseases function better, but can have serious side effects, including diabetes, tremors, seizures, high blood pressure, obesity, sedation, aches and impaired mental function.

“As a patient in a state hospital, it’s your legal right to refuse and go through a process, but you get severely penalized if you try,” said W. Emmett Dwyer, litigation director of Disability Rights New Jersey, a federally financed organization. “They view you as noncompliant with treatment. They give you an injection instead of a pill. And they tell you if you don’t take it, you won’t get out.”

There are about 1,800 patients at any given time in New Jersey’s five state psychiatric hospitals, and 1,000 in private ones.

Michael D. Reisman, a lawyer with Kirkland & Ellis, which is helping bring the lawsuit, said recent records from one state hospital showed that fewer than 20 percent of patients contested their medication.

But the advocates and several former patients said many more objected to their prescriptions but submitted quietly, rather than risk painful injections or a longer hospital stay. Others, they said, are too medicated to object.

“When I said no, they just shot me up instead, so pretty soon I gave up,” said Alice Hsia, 34, who has been in and out of hospitals for schizophrenia. “The times I was sedated, I would sign anything they wanted.”

Mr. Reisman said the question often was not whether some medication was needed, but rather one of dosage or a desire to try a “different drug with fewer side effects.” Some hospital

psychiatrists do not take such concerns seriously, he said, but “a judicial hearing would give the patient more leverage and force the doctors to listen.”

The State Department of Human Services, which runs the hospitals, declined to comment on the suit. But among advocates for the mentally ill, there are wide-ranging opinions on involuntary treatment.

Phil Lubitz, associate director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New Jersey,  said he did not see forced medication as a major issue, noting that it was extremely difficult to get patients committed in New Jersey, and that most who were presented “a danger to themselves or others.”

But Robert Davison, executive director of the Mental health Association of Essex County,  called New Jersey’s policy “beneath contempt.”

Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Joseph Cichowski said he would have challenged forced medication if he had the opportunity.

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Alice Hsia said she submitted to prescriptions at hospitals quietly rather than risk painful injections.

Read the entire article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/health/policy/04psych.html

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Hidden Facts About Ritalin; Side Effects include brain damage, psychosis, severe dependence, paranoia

Monday, July 5th, 2010

New With Views
By Jon Rappoport
July 5, 2010

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

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

For every one of the following Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:

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

Many parents around the country have discovered that Ritalin has become a condition for their children continuing in school. There are even reports, by parents, of threats from social agencies: “If you don’t allow us to prescribe Ritalin for your ADHD child, we may decide that you are an unfit parent. We may decide to take your child away.”

This mind-boggling state of affairs is fueled by teachers, principals, and school counselors, none of whom have medical training. Yet even if they did…

The very existence of the “illnesses” for which Ritalin would be prescribed is unproven. It is merely assumed.

In commenting on Dr. Lawrence Diller’s book, Running on Ritalin, Dr. William Carey, Director of Behavioral Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has written, “Dr. Diller has correctly described… the disturbing trend of blaming children’s social, behavioral, and academic performance problems entirely on an unproven brain deficit…”

On November 16-18, 1998, the National Institute of Mental Health held the prestigious “NIH Consensus Development Conference on Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD].” The conference was explicitly aimed at ending all debate about the diagnoses of ADD, ADHD, and about the prescription of Ritalin. It was hoped that at the highest levels of medical research and bureaucracy, a clear position would be taken: this is what ADHD is, this is where it comes from, and these are the drugs it should be treated with. That didn’t happen, amazingly. Instead, the official panel responsible for drawing conclusions from the conference threw cold water on the whole attempt to reach a comfortable consensus.

Read entire article:  http://www.newswithviews.com/Rappoport/jon101.htm

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Huffington Post—Adderall: The Most Abused Prescription Drug in America; can cause lasting mental defects & death

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

The Huffington Post
By Dr. Ronald Ricker and Dr. Venus Nicolino
June 21, 2010

Adderall is abused mostly by college students and young adults. Estimates are that somewhere between 20-30 percent of college students regularly abuse Adderall.

Adderall has the dubious distinction of being the latest addition to the rogue’s gallery of lawful drugs that have made the transition to the black market. In recent years, abuse of Adderall and its imitators has increased by nearly 200 percent. Calling it an “upper” is like calling a hydrogen bomb a grenade. It is made of pure amphetamine, it’s already picked up its share of street monikers: Speed, Beans, Black Beauties, Christmas Trees, and Double Trouble, amongst others.

What are the pluses in this wonder-drug? In ordinary people it often but not always offers increased concentration. It also keeps people awake for more studying and lots more partying. It often offers a sense of euphoria and happiness and a lot better and more frequent sex, all fun at parties.

Between the glut of pop-psychology theories (often fraudulent) and the never-ending blitz of promotion by Big Pharma, people now believe they can diagnose themselves with something like ADHD as easily as ascertaining if they have a head cold and believe they have the ability to determine the correct medication for their condition. Sometimes they’re grandiosely right. Most of the time, however, they’re wrong on both counts. Even more of the time, diagnosis is irrelevant. The relevant question is where’s the “connection?” Sadly, that’s where many of us physicians fit in. We certainly don’t intend to, but often serve as the ‘connection’. Then, of course, there are those ‘patients’ and doctors that inhabit the bottom of the barrel: lying ‘patients’ and immoral doctors. Scripts can and are sold, for lots of money. Never mind the human cost, there’s money to be made and drugs to be copped. Take that prescription to the pharmacy. Or, take your money to a nearby local University. You’ll pay $30 to $40 dollars per pill for a very small amount of Adderall, usually sold to you by a student. Sales are usually student to student although the numbers of genuine drug dealers are growing rapidly in numbers, bringing with them all the problems of low-life, criminal drug dealers. Dealers recognize good business opportunities. Imagining little Johnny, having just finished Geography 1A, dealing with a real dealer chills the mind.

Illicit Adderall is taken in many ways. Most obviously, a pill can be swallowed. Pills can also be chewed, ground up and snorted, and ground up and injected (the most dangerous way of administration, by far). And then there’s ‘Stuffing’. This is accomplished by ‘stuffing’ Adderall in any orifice with a mucous membrane (anus, vagina, penis, mouth, etc.). Shooting gets the most immediate and strongest effect. Snorting is second, chewing third, and stuffing fourth. What ‘stuffing’ lacks in immediate ‘oomph’ and the loss of whatever dignity the person may retain, is made up by the length of effect and allows for the greatest amount of Adderall to be used at one time. The anus and vagina are big places and can hold a great deal of Adderall.

Sadly, there’s no free lunch.

1) Side effects are numerous. Some are minor, some serious, and some very serious. Most users have no clue as to negative side effects and usually don’t care. Ignorance, we suppose, is bliss. The most important and most negative side-effect is the Overdose. Overdose with Adderall is nasty. Results include Cardiac and/or pulmonary arrest, death, severe and lasting mental effects/defects. Which one happens to you is a matter of chance. If you’re in an Emergency Room and still alive your chances are relatively good. If you overdose at your apartment and are alone, the chance of your living is slim. If you Over Dose at a party, maybe a Frat Party, you’ve probably bought it. Drunken, high Frat boys are not known for their medical skills or even a modicum of clear thinking. Minor side effects include anxiety, and transient depression. More serious effects include heart palpitations, elevation of blood pressure, Tourette’s syndrome, seizures, stroke, and psychotic episodes or plain old psychosis.

Read entire article:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-ronald-ricker-and-dr-venus-nicolino/adderall-the-most-abused_b_619549.html

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On Earth Day, with Green Causes in the Forefront, Here is a Video about Green Mental Health

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Psychiatry’s solution to life’s problems is stigmatizing psychiatric labels and the administration of toxic drugs which international drug regulatory agencies have warned can cause mania, worsening depression, anxiety, delusions, seizures, liver failure, suicide, mania, heart attack, stroke, fatal blood clots, sudden death, diabetes and much more.

(See http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/)

Green Mental Health Care is a non-toxic, non-addictive and non-invasive approach to mental health which focuses on workable medical, not psychiatric, solutions that have better patient outcomes and are not harmful or toxic to those seeking help.  The focus is on finding underlying medical causes that can manifest as psychiatric “symptoms” without  the need for subjective psychiatric labels and deadly drugs.  For more information on medical alternatives to toxic drugs, visit  http://www.cchrint.org/alternatives/

View video on Green Mental Health here.

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Rampant illegal psychiatric drugging of elderly/nursing home patients: 1,200 violations involving 2,900 patients

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Sam Roe
Chicago Tribune
October 27, 2009

Frail and vulnerable residents of nursing homes throughout Illinois are being dosed with powerful psychotropic drugs, leading to tremors, dangerous lethargy and a higher risk of harmful falls or even death, a Tribune investigation has found.

Thousands of elderly and disabled people have been affected, many of them drugged without their consent or without a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis that would justify treatment, state and federal inspection reports show.

Lloyd Berkley, 74, was in a nursing home near Peoria for less than a day before staff members held him down and injected him with a large amount of an antipsychotic drug, according to a state citation. A few hours later he fell, suffering a fatal head injury.

One woman was given a psychotropic drug partly because she refused to wear a bra. Nursing home staff administered an antipsychotic medication to an 87-year-old man because he was “easily annoyed.”

In all, the Tribune identified 1,200 violations at Illinois nursing homes involving psychotropic medications since 2001. Those infractions affected 2,900 patients.

Read entire article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-nursing-home1-psychotropics-oct27,0,4539632.story

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Adderall addiction: A growing trend with life-threatening consequences

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

TestCountry.com
October 3, 2009

We have posted about stimulant addiction a few times, and so have a few thousand other sites, but it seems that we are still not talking about it enough. When we try to scour the news, we still find that Adderall addiction is still prevalent in high schools, universities – and even the family kitchen.

AdderallA Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools nurse was charged recently with obtaining a controlled substance by fraud or forgery and embezzlement by an employee”. According to a feature by the Charlotte Observer, the 52-year-old nurse was working with a school that serves cognitively disabled students, and was accused of replacing the Adderall prescription of a 19-year-old handicapped student with vitamins. She was supposed to monitor and administer the students’ prescription; the incident led to her nursing license being revoked.

Stimulant addiction can be rather tricky; it is probably due to the fact that as opposed to other illegal substances such as cocaine and heroin, the trigger for taking the drugs outside of its primary medical purpose appears “harmless”.

Read moentire article: http://hometestingblog.testcountry.com/?p=4049

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