John Shick, Psychiatric ‘Shooter,’ Had Mental Health History; Pittsburgh Cops Seek Motive

The gunman in a fatal shooting rampage inside a Pittsburgh psychiatric clinic was previously committed to a mental health facility for treatment following an altercation with police in Oregon in 2009, a prosecutor said.

Details of John Shick’s previous involvement with mental health professionals come as investigators piece together a motive for last week’s shooting that killed one person and wounded six others in the lobby of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh.

Is Mourning Madness? The wrongheaded movement to classify grief as a mental disorder

Is grief a disease? That is one of the crucial questions psychologists are asking as the American Psychiatric Association revamps its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), used by millions of mental health professionals to diagnose patients, for a fifth edition due out in 2013.

A group of psychiatrists have spearheaded a movement to include ongoing grief as a disorder, to be labeled “complicated” or “prolonged grief.” Others have proposed, separately, that a mourner can be labeled clinically depressed only two weeks after the loss of a loved one. The problem with both potential changes is that more people’s grief will be diagnosed as abnormal or extreme, in a culture that already leads mourners to feel they need to just “get over it” and “heal.”

State of Texas prescribed anti-psychotic drug to youth offenders while challenging its effectiveness in court

Left hand, we’d like to introduce you to the right.

For two years while the state of Texas was suing Johnson & Johnson for fraudulently inflating the cost and effectiveness of the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, taxpayers picked up a $247,666.87 bill for the Texas Youth Commission to continue prescribing the drug to young inmates.

Johnson & Johnson and a subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., agreed in January to pay the state $158 million to settle the lawsuit. The state had been seeking $579 million.

Natural News: Amazing facts about psychiatry revealed by psychiatric reformer, Peter Breggin, MD

I can’t think of a more fitting first guest for Mental Health Exposed. Our mission is to expose the fraud, abuse and incompetence in the mental health industry, as well as promote natural and effective methods of healing. Peter Breggin, MD and I discuss all of the above in the premier of Mental Health Exposed on Natural News Radio.

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant with NIMH who is in private practice in Ithaca, New York. Dr. Breggin is the author of more than twenty books including the bestseller Talking Back to Prozac and the medical book Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry. His most recent book is Medication Madness, the Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime. He is also the author of dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles, many in the field of psychopharmacology.