Posts Tagged ‘stimulants’

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Drugging of children for “ADHD” has become an epidemic

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

New York Times – October 13, 2011

by Dr. Peter Breggin

click image to read Psychiatric Disorders - The Facts Behind the Billion Dollar Marketing Campaign

The drugging of children for A.D.H.D. has become an epidemic. More than 5 million U.S. children, or 9.5 percent, were diagnosed with A.D.H.D. as of 2007. About 2.8 million had received a prescription for a stimulant medication in 2008.

The A.D.H.D. diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis, from the 2000 edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” is simply a list of behaviors that require attention in a classroom: hyperactivity (“fidgets,” “leaves seat,” “talks excessively”); impulsivity (“blurts out answers,” “interrupts”); and inattention (“careless mistakes,” “easily distractible,” “forgetful”). These are the spontaneous behaviors of normal children. When these behaviors become age-inappropriate, excessive or disruptive, the potential causes are limitless, including: boredom, poor teaching, inconsistent discipline at home, tiredness and underlying physical illness. Children who are suffering from bullying, abuse or stress may also display these behaviors in excess. By making an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, we ignore and stop looking for what is really going on with the child. A.D.H.D. is almost always either Teacher Attention Disorder (TAD) or Parent Attention Disorder (PAD). These children need the adults in their lives to give them improved attention.

Stimulant drugs “work” by suppressing all spontaneous behavior in normal children — and even in chimpanzees and other animals. This suppression of behavior and production of compulsive activities looks like an improvement in a classroom or home where the child has seemed uncontrollable and required a great deal of attention. The drugs do nothing to improve learning or psychosocial development. I document these observations in many scientific articles and books, most recently in the second edition of my medical textbook “Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry.”

Drug company marketing has focused on selling the diagnosis and the drugs to American parents and teachers.

Why are the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and the use of stimulants so prevalent in America? The idea that American children are somehow genetically or even culturally predisposed has no scientific or common sense basis. For several decades, starting in the 1970s, drug-company marketing has focused on selling the diagnosis and the drugs to American parents and teachers. As I first documented in my book “Toxic Psychiatry” in 1971, “Astroturf” organizations like Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and National Alliance on Mental Illness masquerade as representing families while taking millions of dollars from drug companies in support of their promotion of psychiatric medication for children. The National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychiatric Association and even the American Neurological Association have promoted the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and stimulant medication, which leads to considerable business for mental health clinicians.

As the American market gets saturated, promotional efforts are increasing in other countries, like Canada, Britain, Australia and Germany, which are also experiencing increased rates of diagnosing and drugging children. In Australia, the controversy has been especially heated in recent years. Everywhere that A.D.H.D. and stimulants are promoted, they substitute for needed modern reforms in education and family life.

In all cases of so-called A.D.H.D., the diagnosis is harmful. The child instead needs a real medical and psychosocial educational evaluation, and usually the child will quickly respond to improved teaching and parenting. We are diagnosing and drugging millions of our children instead of providing them the improved educational and family life that they truly need.

Peter R. Breggin, a psychiatrist in Ithaca, N.Y., is the author of more than 20 books

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/12/are-americans-more-prone-to-adhd/adhd-is-a-misdiagnosis

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Popping Ritalin Won’t Improve Grades, Warns Medical Journal—Its a Myth

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Note from CCHR: Several  years ago, NBC interviewed a group of high school kids that were recreationally using drugs like Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta. They asked the kids why they would risk using drugs that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classifies as a schedule ll drug, in the same highly addictive category as cocaine, morphine and opium. Drugs that have severe side effects including death.   The high school kids answer?  ‘We figured since they’re given out to 6-year-olds, how bad can they be?’

Enough said.

Popping pills won’t improve grades, warns Canadian medical journal

Toronto Star – September 6, 2011

by Theresa Boyle

Universities and colleges must crack down on illicit use of Ritalin and other stimulants, which are not the grade boosters many assume, an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal urges

“Students who think simply popping a pill will improve their grades or give them new-found academic abilities are sorely mistaken,” says the editorial released online on Tuesday.

Students use stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall because they are perceived to boost to academic performance through enhanced attention and alertness. But these supposed benefits are not reality based, but are part of a “pervasive myth,” the CMAJ charges.

The vast majority of evidence shows that stimulants offer no cognitive improvements over placebos in healthy individuals.

Those who abuse these drugs seem unaware of the potential dangers. While data on the impact of these drugs on healthy individuals is sparse, studies show that inappropriate use by those diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can lead to death, life-threatening hypertension, irregular heartbeat, overdose, addiction and depression.

An overdose can result in symptoms seen in abuse of amphetamines and cocaine, including severe hypertension, abnormally high fever, rapid heartbeat, severe agitation and psychosis.

Effects can be more pronounced in those who snort or inject stimulants, the editorial warns.

The CMAJ calls on universities and colleges to create education campaigns that debunk myths and expose risks.

Post-secondary institutions should also try to identify and address the root cause of stimulant abuse, the journal says. It’s plausible that unhealthy competition or “play-hard-work-hard” attitudes prevail, the opinion piece says. Clear expectations, peer mentorship, additional resources and a more structured environment may encourage proper study habits. Programs that help integrate students living away from home for the first time would also be helpful.

“We must remember that the majority of students who inappropriately use these medications have good intentions but may simply need reliable information or resource to make good choices.”

Universities should have a self interest in addressing the problem because they could be held legally liable for the consequences of stimulant abuse, the editorial cautions.

It also calls on campus health clinics to look out for students may have undiagnosed ADHD. It’s possible they may be self medicating. The clinics should warn students who are prescribed these drugs about repercussions of selling any “excess” supply.

“Like doping in sports, abuse of stimulants by our best and brightest students should be denormalized by being viewed as cheating or substance abuse, pure and simple,” the editorial says.

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/mindmood/mentalhealth/article/1049813–popping-pills-won-t-improve-grades-warns-canadian-medical-journal

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Pharmageddon: Prescription drugs are killing America’s youth

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

NaturalNews – July 19, 2011

by J. D. Heyes

No parent wants to lose a child, but when one dies from something that should be very preventable, the heartbreak and tragedy is compounded. Such is increasingly the case with prescription drugs – they’re killing our youth.

Sarah Shay and Savannah Kissick, of Morehead, Ky., best friends since high school, were both victims of what experts and the White House are describing as an epidemic of prescription drug deaths. Sarah died in 2006 at the tender age of 19; Savannah just three years later, at 22.

Since the medications they were using were prescribed by physicians, some experts believe they carry some sort of legitimacy. But the fact is they are being abused by young people just the same as drugs that are illegal – more so even, in some cases.

“I don’t think the kids have any idea how addicting the substance is,” Karen Shays told the BBC in an interview. “Before they know it, bam! They’re addicted.”

Drugs like Xanax, Oxycodone, Klonopin and Hydrocodone are routinely being abused more and more in Kentucky in particular, but in other parts of the nation too, by teenagers and young adults. So bad is the problem that the state has set up rehabilitation centers, where a huge number of addicts – more all the time – are being treated.

So bad is the addition that some kids have even turned to crime to feed it.

Some of the kids say they could have likely found other drugs to feed their habit, but prescription drugs were not only legal but much easier to get.

All in all, it’s sort of like Armageddon, but with  prescription drugs – a sort of “Pharmageddon,” if you will, as evidenced by Kentucky’s overflowing jails, say state officials.

“I believe I can safely say that over 80 percent of the inmates in the Pike County regional detention center are in there for something dealing with their addiction to prescription drugs,” Dan Smoot, director of law enforcement with an organization called Unite – a new and innovative counterdrug that combines police investigations, treatment and education.

According to the federal Office of the National Drug Control Policy, in a recent report, the problem stretches beyond the borders of Kentucky – and it’s getting worse.

“A number of national studies and published reports indicate that the intentional abuse of prescription drugs, such as pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants and sedatives, to get high is a growing concern — particularly among teens — in the United States. In fact, among young people ages 12-17, prescription drugs have become the second most abused illegal drug behind marijuana,” said the study, called, “Teens and Prescription Drugs.”

“Though overall teen drug use is down nationwide and the percentage of teens abusing prescription drugs is still relatively low compared to marijuana use, there are troubling signs that teens view abusing prescription drugs as safer than illegal drugs and parents are unaware of the problem,” it said.

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52% of foster kids are prescribed psych drugs—One of them is fighting back

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

By CCHR Int
June 23, 2011

At just 6 years of age, still grieving over the death of the only mother he’d ever known, his foster mother, Giovan Bazan received the first of many psychiatric “diagnoses” and drugs that would plague him for the next twelve years of his life. Moved from foster home to  foster home, orphanages and other modes of state care, Giovan was stigmatized with a plethora of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs until the age of 18, when he could finally make his own medical decisions and quit. Now a child advocate working part time at the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) in Georgia, Giovan is on a mission: To get a full-time job with DFCS and help enact laws to combat the wholesale labeling and drugging of foster children. In the video below, Giovan tells his story and why he decided to fight back against the abuse of kids in foster care.

(Story continues below)

Foster kids—often removed from family homes because of abuse—are further abused when they are prescribed psychotropic drugs under state care. Many of these children are on cocktails of prescribed drugs, including antipsychotics and antidepressants with documented side effects of diabetes, stroke, mania, psychosis, tumors, coma, suicide and death.

Yet, the rates with which these children are being given drugs has been increasing. The antipsychotic use rate among foster kids increased by 5.6% between 2004 and 2007 (from 11.7 percent to 12.4 percent). Another study in Pediatrics, revealed that youth in foster care covered by Medicaid insurance receive psychotropic medication at a rate more than 3 times that of Medicaid-insured youth who qualify by low family income.

Only half of state child welfare systems have a policy to review usage of these drugs, and those are weak policies at that.

The psychiatric drugging of foster kids has caused so much concern nationally that in July 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) started an investigation into the use of these drugs in foster care, as they are widely used in dangerous combinations, and for so-called “off-label” uses to treat symptoms for which they have not been medically approved. The GAO is looking into the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud arising from this and is collecting and analyzing data from Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas.

For more information on the psychiatric drugging of children, watch these videos:

Psychiatry—Labeling Kids with Bogus ‘Mental Disorders’


Drugging Our Children—Side Effects

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Children Exploited for Profit Using Fictitious Mental Disorders

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

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

NaturalNews.com— April 7, 2011

By Monica G. Young

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Adderall’s on First, Ritalin’s on Second: The Ongoing Saga of PEDs in Baseball

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Bleacher Report
By Joseph Jones
March 23, 2011

It seems like an eternity since Major League Baseball finally got around to admitting it had a problem of the performance enhancing variety, but in reality it has barely been a half a decade.

Players once thought to be first-ballot Hall of Famers are struggling to garner more than a pittance of support from sports writers and fans alike as the sport carries on the best it can.

Attendance remains high—despite an ongoing quasi-recession—television revenue is streaming in and it appears that many of the measures taken by commissioner Bud Selig and his merry band of nitwits salvaged what little dignity this great sport had left in the wake of all that ugliness.

But alas, as always, looks can be deceiving.

I, for one, was more than a little bit surprised when MLB decided to include a ban on stimulants in its new drug program a few years back.

Now the use of uppers is neither new nor surprising in the baseball world, going back as far as the days of Willie Mays players have been using some form or another to endure the grueling demands of the 162-game season.

While steroids, and their artificial augmentation of baseball’s favorite play, the longball, have received most of the mainstream media coverage, anyone who really knows two shits about baseball recognizes that “greenies” have always been a much more pervasive part of the game.

Countless stories of large Ronald Reagan-esque like jars filled with amphetamines (as opposed to Ronnie’s trademark jellybeans) and pots of coffee labeled “extra-caffeinated” could be found without much effort at all.

A baseball season is a long & grueling one, after all. 162 games, packed into about 180 days, taking players, coaches and fans through a hot and humid summer can wear down even the best of men.  So for decades players have turned to “artificial means” to carry them through the dog days of summer.

I told more than one friend that it would be interesting to see who “faded down the stretch” and chuckled at the sudden emergence of energy drinks as sponsors for the big league clubs.

But I never could have imagined the thing that would catch my eye exactly one year later…and every year since.

When the league banned these drugs, an amazing thing happened. The number of players claiming and obtaining “therapeutic use” exemptions for stimulants nearly quadrupled from 28 to 103.

“Therapeutic use” means you can justifiably use the drug because you need it for a medical condition. If you didn’t have the condition, you’d just be a normal pro baseball player, and the attention-focusing benefits of Ritalin would be a form of “enhancement,” i.e., cheating.

Before the ban only 28 players had “therapeutic use exemptions” allowing them to take drugs such as Ritalin or Adderall.  Twenty-eight.  Then somehow magically that number jumps to over 100 as soon as the ban kicks in?

Color me suspicious but do they really think we are that dumb?

I mean how the hell can ADHD multiply fourfold in a sport in a single year? How can it become three times as prevalent in that sport as in the adult population? Is it contagious? Can Derek Jeter give it to Dustin Pedroia if he coughs on him as he slides into second base?  Of course not.

ADHD is a psychological diagnosis. Like post-traumatic stress disorder or bipolar disorder it’s open to interpretation in any given patient. Three doctors may say you don’t have it. A fourth may say you do.

It’s that subjectivity that should have led to the league having a more discerning eye. After all they had literally just caught the foxes trying to rob the hen house when they found over 100 major leagues had tested positive in their last round of anonymous testing.

MLB should have also taken notice of what pretty much EVERYONE else had when these numbers were first published, namely that among adults, the rate of diagnosis is between 1 percent and 3.5 percent. But among pro baseball players, the disease seems epidemic.  That means 8 percent of major-league players have ADHD—twice the rate among children and three to eight times the rate among adults.

But, of course, they didn’t.

They argue that once the number spiked up to 103 it “plateaued” and has remained at or about that same level since.  This is true, the numbers show there were 105 therapeutic use exemptions in 2010, up from 106 TUEs in 2008/2009 and 103 in 2007, but it still doesn’t address why there was such a sharp rise in the first place.

But then again, do we really expect more from Bud the Dud?

The World Anti-Doping Agency sure as hell doesn’t:

“My reaction is the same as last year and the year before that,” said Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the committee that determines the banned substances list for the World Anti-Doping Agency. “It seems to me almost incomprehensible that ADHD is so pervasive in baseball to a degree that it requires medicine.”

A frequent critic of baseball’s drug-testing program, Wadler said “these numbers really cry out for transparency in the TUE process in baseball — a good look-see at the process, not just the numbers.”

This ostrich-like ability of Selig’s, where he is able to shove his head in the sand for unnaturally long periods of time has long infuriated me frankly.

I only wish I could have been a fly-on-the-wall in the offices of Major League Baseball when the recent divorce proceedings of Kansas City Royals catcher Jason Kendall and his estranged wife Chantel have remained frequent fodder for internet gossip sites like TMZ and RadarOnline and even recently made the jump to websites not concerned with the latest atrocious parenting of Jon and Kate Gosselin.

While professional athletes ditching gold digging trophy wives is no novel concept, this one had steamy particulars involving the love triangle of a pro athlete, a smokin’ hot babe and the son of a rock-n-roll legend (Chantel is currently dating Sean Stewart, son of Rod Stewart).

The focus of the tittle-tattle involved Chantel accusing her husband of abusing the drug Adderall, which subsequently led to him both physically and emotionally abusing her.

Aside from accusations that he urinated & defecated on a pile of Chantel’s clothes after finding out she had been cheating on him, she claimed that he received a spurious prescription to take what is now labeled a performance enhancing drug otherwise banned by Major League Baseball.

While Kendall refused to answer the judge’s question about his use of greenies under the argument that (I. shit. you. not) Mark McGwire didn’t have to answer the questions he was asked in court about PEDs, he was very forthcoming about his prescription drug habits and more than willing to toss former teammates Brian Giles and Bobby Crosby under the bus, implicating them as fellow Adderall appreciators in court depositions.

One has to think that Bud was running around Manhattan looking for a schoolyard sandbox the shove his head in the moment he caught wind of these proceedings.

I am sure Selig is a good man. It appears he has a passion for baseball, and genuinely wants to do the right thing to help the sport.  But there is a problem—he is gutless.

For years he ignored steroids in baseball while the problem grew out of control.  Despite many fans knowing certain players were on steroids, even going back to the 1980s (for an example, a 1988 Fenway Park crowd chanted “Ster-oids” at Jose Canseco), Selig in February of 2005 said, with a straight face:

“I never heard about it.  I ran a team and nobody was closer to their players and I never heard any comment from them.  It wasn’t until 1998 or ’99 that I heard the discussion…I don’t know if there were allegations in the early 90s.  I never heard them.”

I remember reading those comments and thinking either this man is absolutely lying, or he is completely incompetent and oblivious.  Maybe it is a little of both, but either way, this man should not be allowed to run major league baseball.

Further, even if taken at face value, if Selig knew about steroids in 1998 or ’99, why did it take him until 2005 to take any action, and only after Congress forced him into it.

Sadly, I fully expect this same sort of blissful ignorance to plague Selig’s handling of this next round of PEDs in baseball.

Just as stories about players juicing were swept under the rug because of increasing television ratings and attendance due to historical records falling every year, this dirty little secret will go on flying under the radar.

Instead of looking out for the interest and integrity of the game, Selig will gladly keep trading it  away, piece by piece, for an increased revenue stream.

Read article here:  http://bleacherreport.com/articles/643751-adderalls-on-first-ritalins-on-second

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Psychiatric drug industry driven by wealth and stealth, not mental health

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Natural News
By Monica Young
March 22, 2011

Drug company corporate websites tell us of their integrity and utmost commitment to people’s health and well-being. The American Psychiatric Association’s website begins with “Healthy Minds. Healthy Lives” and asserts the “highest ethical standards of professional conduct.” Yet a mountain of evidence points to an entirely different picture.

Most recently, thirty-eight state attorneys won a $68.5 million settlement with pharmaceutical titan AstraZeneca for unlawful marketing of antipsychotic Seroquel for unapproved use. These states also charged this company with failing to disclose the drug’s harmful side effects and concealing negative information about its safety and efficacy. “The company’s illegal practices put our most vulnerable populations at risk, including children and older patients with dementia and other debilitating diseases,” states Illinois Attorney General. U.S. sales of Seroquel brought in $5.3 billion for AstraZeneca last year.

Looking further, it’s evident that the pharmaceutical industry is fraught with fraud. For instance, the new generation of antipsychotics is the single biggest target of the False Claims Act. Every major drug company selling the drugs has either settled recent government cases for hundreds of millions of dollars or is under investigation for health care fraud.

Psychiatric drugs are notoriously high-priced. A year’s supply of one top antipsychotic is $7,000. A recent Biosocieties (scientific journal) article, entitled, “Demythologizing the high costs of pharmaceutical research,” exposes that drug companies widely exaggerate research costs to justify these prices. These companies typically cite a 2003 industry-funded study to claim a tag of over $1 billion to research and bring a drug to market. A new independent analysis indicates the figure is closer to $55 million.

Meanwhile drug company CEOs are some of the most excessively paid CEOs on Wall Street. Johnson & Johnson CEO’s publicly reported total compensation for 2009 (the last report available) was $25.6 million, including salary, bonus, stock options and other perks. This is three times the average for CEOs of S&P 500 companies and over 500 times the median American household income. His base salary was raised this year, despite an ongoing lawsuit, backed by the Department of Justice, accusing J&J of involvement in a kickback scheme to push their antipsychotic on elderly nursing home residents.

Drug manufactures spend billions yearly on marketing and advertising, far beyond what they spend on research. Billions go into direct to consumer advertising which drums a mantra to the masses: “ask your doctor if (___ medication) is right for you.” Billions are poured into marketing to doctors, including via drug sales reps – one of the most lucrative sales jobs in the U.S.

One ex-drug sales rep, Shahram Ahari, told a Senate Aging Committee that on top of a base salary for starting reps of $50,000, “there were four quarterly bonuses, an annual bonus, stock options, a car, 401k, great health benefits, and a $60,000 expense account.” He said his job involved “rewarding physicians with gifts and attention for their allegiance to your product and company despite what may be ethically appropriate.”

Another former drug sales rep and author of Confessions of an RX Drug Pusher, Gwen Olsen, says it’s all about the money. She described her hiring process. When asked why she wanted to become a pharmaceutical sales rep, she said she wanted to help people. The regional manager replied, “If that’s the case, you might want to join the Peace Corps…But if money is what motivates you, young lady, let me tell you how you can retire a millionaire.” Gwen reports that every manager she worked for said children are their biggest and most profitable expansion market.

Psychiatrists cash in big time as drug-pushers. The faster they shuffle people in and out for 15-minute medication management visits, the more they fill their deep pockets.

A recent New York Times article “Talk Therapy Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy,” gives an example of a practicing psychiatrist since 1972. He likens his office now to a bus station. In the old days of 45-minute talk sessions, “he knew his patients’ inner lives better than he knew his wife’s; now, he often cannot remember their names,” states the author. The doctor admits, “I had to train myself not to get too interested in their problems.”

And how much does the average psychiatrist make a year peddling drugs? $191,000.

Worldwide sales of antidepressants, stimulants, antianxiety and antipsychotic drugs exceed $82 billion a year. Yet for all the wealth this has brought these industries, are people truly getting better?

Psychiatric drugs have repeatedly proven to not only be extremely hazardous to one’s health but can be life-threatening and even fatal. Now the Archives of General Psychiatry has released scientific proof that antipsychotic drugs shrink brain tissue. (No wonder psychiatrists are called “shrinks”!)

Science journalist and author, Robert Whitaker, reports that long-term use of psychiatric medications is actually causing more mental illness – not less. He states “what you find with them when you look at long term outcomes, you see more people having chronic symptoms long term than you do in the unmedicated.”

Whitaker also points to disability statistics. Since the boom of psychiatric prescriptions began in 1987, adults on disability for mental illness more than tripled to 4 million. Amongst those on disability, the percentage of children has risen from about 5% in 1987 to over 50% today.

Of course the pill-pushers and their hordes of paid lobbyists, advocacy groups and spokesmen want us to believe that this means more mentally ill are finally getting the drug treatment they really need.

But who wants to believe a bunch of liars anyway?

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The New Child Abuse: The Psychiatric Diagnosing and Drugging of Our Children

Friday, December 17th, 2010

The Huffington Post—Dec 17, 2010

by Peter Breggin

Every society has found its own methods to abuse its most vulnerable members: children; women; the elderly; ethnic, racial and religious minorities; the poor; the mentally distressed or distressing; the physically disabled; those with unconventional lifestyles. All of these have been widely abused and all remain victims of abuse to varying degrees in societies throughout the world.

Just as it is certain that these abuses can never be fully eliminated, it is also certain that these same abuses will expand to the degree that individual citizens justify or ignore them and fail to take a stand.

In the past, the most rampant abuses have been justified on moral, religious, patriotic or ethnic grounds. But increasingly we will see the worst abuses rationalized on scientific and medical grounds. It’s the modern way.

Science and medicine have so successfully rationalized and justified our society’s most devastating and pervasive form of child abuse that it remains almost wholly unacknowledged, though it is known to every sentient adult and to most children. Probably every adult and half-grown child in America knows and can identify at least one child who is the victim of this abuse. Those who teach, coach, minister to or otherwise serve children may know dozens or even hundreds of children who are victims of the new child abuse.

Our society’s particular form of child abuse is the psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of our children.

The diagnoses are becoming almost innumerable including LD, ADHD, OCD, oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, and Asperger’s and autistic spectrum disorders. Increasingly children also fall victim to psychological tests that allegedly identify frontal lobe dysfunctions characterized by inattention or flawed executive functions.

Like the diagnoses, the drugs administered to children have mushroomed to involve every class of psychiatric medication, including stimulants, antidepressants, tranquilizers, mood stabilizers and anti psychotic agents. The FDA has increasingly given official approval for giving children especially deadly anti-psychotics such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon and Seroquel. Meanwhile, anything that can sedate the child’s growing brain from anti-hypertension drugs to anti-seizure drugs are routinely dispensed with callous disregard for their harmful impact.

It’s not uncommon to find children subdued and crushed by multiple psychiatric drugs. Probably 10 to 20 percent of our children will at some time be diagnosed or drugged. This number includes nearly every child in special education classes, foster care or on SSI/SSDI. Any child singled out by child services and educational or psychiatric authorities is likely to fall victim to psychiatric drugs.

The Psychopharmaceutical Complex is the source of these abuses: the pharmaceutical industry, organized psychiatry and medicine, NIMH, insurance companies and various other groups supported by the drug companies. Few parents are abusers; they are misled and intimidated by the “authorities” and often medicate their children against their better judgment.

Two principles are self-evident: First, convincing children that they have “something wrong” in their heads such as genetically crossed wires or biochemical imbalances is the surest way to rob them of self-esteem, personal responsibility, self-mastery and the hope of an unlimited future. Second, convincing children that they have a psychiatric diagnosis or treating them as if they have one and teaching them to rely on psychiatric drugs is a prescription for their becoming lifelong mental patients.

Two other principles require a little more thought or scientific evidence: First, all psychoactive substances from alcohol and marijuana to psychiatric drugs reduce and compromise the function of brain and mind, and none improve it. Whether or not we like the feelings we get from them, all psychoactive substances impact us precisely by producing a partial disability of our highest mental and spiritual life. More concretely most are poisonous to brain cells. I call this “the brain-disabling principle” of psychiatric treatment and have described and documented it in a lengthy medical text book with more than 1,000 scientific references.

Second, all psychiatric drugs have potentially horrendous and even lethal adverse effects from chronic depression and growth stunting caused by stimulants to diabetes, severe obesity, disfiguring neurological disorders and shortened lifespan caused by “antipsychotic” agents. You can confirm and expand on these observations by googling antipsychotic drugs or reading my various books on the subject, especially “Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition.” The names of the diagnoses will change. The chemical structures of the drugs will change. The promotional strategies will change. But, in my opinion, it will always be abusive to psychiatrically diagnose and drug children.

Now comes the challenge. Put yourself into the emotional and spiritual life of a child who has been diagnosed and will soon be drugged. Be empathic, but not in a disheartening way. Be empathic by connecting with love to the child’s inherent desire to love and be loved, to benefit from rational discipline, to play and to have fun, to grow up and to take responsibility, to learn, and to reach to his or her self-determined stars.

Are you able to put yourself in that child’s place? How does it feel to be told you’re not normal, that you have a disorder, that you’re special but not in a good or hopeful way? How does it feel to be different, let alone mentally impaired? And what impact will it have on you when the expectations of your parents and teachers are tailored to your limitations?

Be genuinely empathic. Children will say almost anything to adults to cover up their shame or to appease them. Beyond that, the medication spellbinding effects of psychiatric drugs impair the individual’s ability to perceive or evaluate the emotional and cognitive disruption that the psychoactive substances are causing. Put yourself in the child’s place and know what he or she must feel about being stigmatized and marginalized by psychiatric diagnoses.

Now imagine yourself inside the head of the child being drugged. The drug makes you feel different and you don’t like it, but everyone says you need it. You don’t want to have to take a drug to make you normal. But you’re a kid and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Gradually your brain and mind struggle to adapt to the brain-disabling chemical that’s crossed your blood brain barrier and disrupted your normal biochemical functions. As an aspect of medication spellbinding, you become so accustomed to your more flattened emotions and reduced mental acuity that you hardly notice the difference anymore.

And now consider this: All these children will grow up with brains drenched in toxic substances, literally polluted in the extreme. Think about the known adverse effects and dare to imagine the even more subtle changes in the function of the brains of each child, brains forever chemically altered.

These children will never know what evolution or God really intended them to become before these toxic intrusions.

Do not be misled that the medical and scientific authorities, and the weight of the universities and government, wholly support this rampant abuse of children. From the systematic abuse of women, children and minorities throughout the ages to the institution of slavery and the Holocaust, those in authority have condoned and benefited from these abuses. Authority at the top of society always justifies these widespread abuses, otherwise the abuses would never get started, nor would they persist.

Reject the authorities. Rely on common sense, sound ethics and real science. Allow yourself to become empathic toward these abused children. Then become angry, energized, motivated and engaged. Educate yourself. My books and those of many others will introduce you to a new world of science, education and philosophy about childhood and children. Find your own way to protest and to make a difference. Join us at empathictherapy.com in our efforts to protect our nation’s children from psychiatric abuse and to offer them genuine love, inspiration, service and education.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/the-new-child-abuse-psych_b_788900.html

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York, and the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty books. His two most recent books are  Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime and Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex. Dr. Breggin’s professional website is www.breggin.com. Dr. Breggin and his wife Ginger have founded a new organization, The Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living (www.empathictherapy.com). It will hold an international conference in Syracuse, New York, April 8-10, 2011.

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1 million misdiagnosed ADHD children for $80B drug industry

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Examiner.com
By Deborah Dupre
October 30, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No More ADHD

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: CCHR International

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

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

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Psych Meds Spike Among Younger Troops—The rise & potential dangers of psychiatric drug use a growing concern

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

The Navy Times

by Andrew Tilghman and Brendan McGarry
Friday Sep 3, 2010

Use of psychiatric medications among people ages 18 to 34 — mostly active-duty troops and their spouses — is rising at a significantly higher rate than other age groups in the military health care system, according to data newly released to Military Times.

Overall, the number of prescriptions filled for psychiatric medications rose 42 percent from 2005 to 2009 among Tricare beneficiaries in that age group, according to data provided by Tricare Management Activity in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

That compares to an increase of 24 percent among Tricare beneficiaries ages 45 to 64, mostly retirees. For children 17 and younger, the increase was 18 percent.

All the increases outpace overall growth in the Tricare population over the same period.

Anti-depressants like Zoloft, Wellbutrin and Celexa account for slightly more than half of the prescriptions in this age group. But increasingly, young adults in the military and their spouses are turning to other types of psych meds to treat their mental health problems.

Prescriptions for stimulants, including amphetamines and drugs to treat attention-deficit disorders, more than doubled. And claims for anti-psychotics like Seroquel and Abilify nearly doubled from 2005 to 2009 among beneficiaries ages 18 to 34, the Tricare data show. Seroquel is often used to treat nightmares and sleeping problems related to post-traumatic stress disorder.

The rise — and potential dangers — of psychiatric drug use is a growing concern for many military officials and doctors.

The Army also should “conduct comprehensive research and analysis of the impact of increased use of antidepressant, psychiatric and narcotic pain management medications on the force,” the report said.

Last year, the Army issued a series of policies designed to reduce the risks linked to multi-drug use. Another policy is expected out later this year.

Military death records obtained by Military Times show that at least 68 accidental drug deaths in 2009, up from 24 in 2001. In total, at least 430 troops have died from drug use — or, in a small number of cases, alcohol use — in the past decade.

Read the rest of this article here:  http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/09/military-psych-meds-080910/

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