Psychiatric prescriptions under state investigation:Top 5 Prescribers wrote $18 Million worth of prescriptions—mostly for kids

A Texas health agency has begun investigating more than three dozen healthcare providers who prescribed large quantities of powerful psychiatric drugs — some to children — after a U.S. senator raised questions about the medications.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission has referred three providers to the attorney general for criminal prosecution, state Health Commissioner Thomas Suehs wrote to Sen. Charles Grassley last month. Some have been excluded from the Texas Medicaid program, including one convicted in a criminal case and another accused of inappropriate billing and coding of hours related to patient services.

Abuse of Mind-Altering Drugs Rising in Eldercare Facilities

The rising concerns of the abuse of medications in nursing homes comes as the psychiatric profession reviews its definitions of mental illness. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness guides mental health professionals in identifying nearly 300 different mental disorders. Its fifth edition, DSM-5, is due out next year.

As it stands now, the new guidelines could classify millions of elders as mentally ill for such conditions as bereavement and “mild cognitive disorder,” a heightened level of forgetfulness that many psychiatrists see as a possible precursor to dementia.

The manual doesn’t prescribe treatments; that’s left to individual doctors. But there are only 2,000 board-certified geriatric psychiatrists in the United States, according to Dilip Jeste, MD, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association and chief of geriatric psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

How FDA and Big Pharma mislead millions into taking dangerous anti-depressants

Here in the States, where pharmaceuticals are advertised in newspapers and magazines, radio, and especially TV, anyone seeing happy actors proclaiming how and an anti-depressant changed their lives can almost demand that drug from even a primary care physician, and usually get it.

A limited hangout is intelligence spook speak for letting out just enough information to appease investigations or grass roots suspicions. But only part of the picture is revealed, not the whole big picture…CBS did not reveal the horrible side effects from anti-depressants and psychotropic drugs. They did interview a British medical official who was part of a UK commission that banned anti-depressant use on mild to moderately depressed patients.Even Medscape lists these side effects from SSRI and SNRI anti-depressants: Abnormal bleeding, hepatitis, headache, hyponatrenia (potentially deadly low sodium), toxic epidermal necrolysis (potentially deadly skin death), impotence, abnormal sensations, mania and suicide.

The disgrace of a nation that treats old people like animals

Let’s imagine for a moment that it’s routine practice in this country to sedate babies who won’t settle: that the more they cry, the more drugs are poured down their tiny throats.

The same treatment, let’s imagine, is also routine for the mentally disabled: whenever they create too much disturbance, we simply cosh them with chemicals.

There would be a national outcry. Heads would roll. Money would be found immediately to train medical staff and carers so that such a scandal could never, ever happen again.

Now let’s stop imagining and face the appalling truth. The nightmare scenario that I’ve just painted is precisely what’s happening to some of the most vulnerable people in the land — the elderly.

Would We Have Drugged Up Einstein? How Anti-Authoritarianism Is Deemed a Mental Health Problem

In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by 1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians; and 2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.

Anti-authoritarians question whether an authority is a legitimate one before taking that authority seriously. Evaluating the legitimacy of authorities includes assessing whether or not authorities actually know what they are talking about, are honest, and care about those people who are respecting their authority. And when anti-authoritarians assess an authority to be illegitimate, they challenge and resist that authority—sometimes aggressively and sometimes passive-aggressively, sometimes wisely and sometimes not.