Psychiatric Hospital Chain Under Department of Defense & FBI Investigation

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have joined the multi-Federal agency investigations into the largest psychiatric hospital chain owned by Universal Health Services (UHS). In April 2017, Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also called for a federal probe into UHS’s behavioral facilities, describing one Tulsa, Oklahoma facility, Shadow Mountain Behavioral Health, as having “a pattern of conduct that is extremely concerning and casts a dark cloud over UHS’s ability to properly care for its patients.” In 2010, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), a 48 year mental health watchdog, began documenting abuses that employees and former employees of UHS psychiatric facilities, patients and their families reported to it. CCHR has filed more than 4,000 complaints to law enforcement, health officials, state FBI agencies, Federal and State legislators, and to the state branches of Tricare. The UHS scandal is symptomatic of a system that there are insufficient controls and accountability, where fraud can be committed against government programs, and those responsible continue to operate, including the psychiatrists treating hundreds of thousands of Americans in such facilities. CCHR continues to call for not only Federal and State investigations but effective action that shuts down a failed and abusive psychiatric-behavioral system that seems to put profit before patients.

Forced Psychiatric Treatments Expanded under Fast Track Bill Before Senate

URGENT ACTION ALERT On November 30th, the House passed HR 34, a 996-page bill, known as the 21st Century Cures Act. They are now rushing to get it introduced and passed by the Senate on Monday, December 5th, at 5:30 EST. This bill must be defeated because it contains some very dangerous provisions relating to psychiatric treatments. This is an urgent call to action as we must let our Senators know that they need to oppose it. WHY THIS BILL MUST BE OPPOSED: It drastically broadens the criteria for who qualifies for forced psychiatric treatment. For example, if you are labeled mentally ill, you can be court-ordered for psychiatric treatment just because you are “substantially unlikely to voluntarily participate in treatment.” All states already have their own laws regarding involuntary treatment and so there is no need for Federal legislation, especially with such dangerously broad language. It undermines FDA regulations that are essential for making sure medical and drug research is conducted ethically, scientifically and safely. Meaning it could cost lives. Additionally, this 996-page bill is being fast-tracked through as it is being introduced with no time for the Senators to fully study and understand the broad implications of it.

Holistic Psychiatrist Gets Big Book Deal on Women’s Mental Health – But is Blacklisted by Mainstream Media

Dr. Kelly Brogan is a Manhattan-based holistic women’s health psychiatrist. Her credentials are impressive. She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College, and has a B.S. from MIT in Systems Neuroscience. She is board certified in psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, and integrative holistic medicine. But it is not because of Dr. Brogan's credentials that New York book publishers lined up to bid for the rights to publish her new book, where she landed a 7 figure book publishing deal that paid out one of the largest advances in royalties in the history of her publisher, HarperCollins. It was because Dr. Brogan speaks to an issue affecting millions of women world-wide, the issue of depression, and how to treat depression without toxic drugs. After landing such a lucrative book deal such as Dr. Brogan did, it is customary to make the rounds of mainstream media programs to promote the book. The pre-release sales of the book has already catapulted her book to #1 on Amazon.com in a couple of book categories. A book deal this big covering a topic as popular as woman's mental health, should have had all the major media outlets fighting each other to get Dr. Brogan on their shows. However, after the publisher sent the galley to all the major networks, not one single one wanted to invite Dr. Brogan, and Dr. Brogan reports that one station even threatened to give negative publicity to the book. It is time for the alternative media to rise up and overcome the censorship that is bought by the advertisers of the mainstream media, such as the pharmaceutical industry. Let's help get Dr. Brogan's book on to the N.Y. Times best-seller list without any help from the mainstream media!

New Mexico Law Prohibits Forced Psychiatric Drugging of Children – First Such Law in the U.S.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has produced and released a new video featuring New Mexico lawmaker Nora Espinoza, who sponsored New Mexico House Bill 53 which ensures that a parent’s decision not to administer psychotropic drugs to a child is not grounds for a child being removed from parental custody by Child Protective Services (CPS). The law also restricts school personnel from taking any action against the parent or compelling or requiring any student to take a psychotropic drug and, further, requires parental written consent prior to any psychological screening. CCHR states that: "This is the strongest law against childhood drugging ever acted in the United States."

Success with Troubled Youth Using No Drugs or Mental Health Therapy – A Threat to the Medical Kidnapping System

In 2015, Health Impact News published an article from Nehemiah Flynt, a former foster parent who left the foster care system after seeing how corrupt it was. Nehemiah exposed how CPS often takes children away from loving parents. He noticed that almost all of the foster children were drugged. Nehemiah left the foster care system, and became part of a ministry that worked with troubled youth without using drugs or mental health services. It was a highly successful program, but soon CPS came knocking on his door, and effectively shut down the program, since it was not using "approved" drugs and mental health services. Is this the state of "Child Protection Services" in the United States today? Have we as a society allowed the government and their social services programs to redefine "abuse" and "health"? Is "abuse" and "mental health" now defined as the absence of psychiatric drugs? Who are the true abusers of today's troubled youth? I asked Nehemiah Flynt to describe the former program he worked in that was so successful, that it became a threat to CPS and the psychiatric drug industry.

Feds Pay for Drug Fraud: 92 Percent of Foster Care Kids Prescribed Antipsychotics for Unaccepted Uses

The release in late March of an alarming new report by federal investigators has confirmed in shocking new detail what has been known for years: Poor and foster care kids covered by Medicaid are being prescribed too many dangerous antipsychotic drugs at young ages for far too long -- mostly without any medical justification at all. Medicaid spends about $3.5 billion a year on antipsychotics for all ages, largely for unaccepted uses, with nearly 2 million kids prescribed them. Nationally, about 12 percent of all the nation's 500,000 foster care children have received Medicaid-paid antipsychotics at some point, often because they haven't been offered proven, "trauma-informed" intensive therapies, according to Kamala Allen, director of Child Health Quality for the Center for Health Care Strategies.

The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Military Suicides and Sudden Deaths

Hundreds of impassioned protesters, including veterans, marched against the American Psychiatric Association which held more than 65 sessions on psychiatric treatment of military personnel, veterans and their families. Retired Colonel John A. Henke, a clinical psychologist and highly decorated Air Force pilot who worked with the Pentagon stated: “Instead of helping veterans recover from war, their pain has been masked with potent drugs. These, including opioid painkillers and mind-altering psychiatric drugs, are feeding addictions and contributing to the fatal overdose rate among VA patients that is nearly double the national average.” Citizens Commission on Human Rights launched a petition requesting the U.S. House of Representatives Veterans Affairs Committee to investigate with public hearings the role of psychiatric drugs in veteran suicides, sudden deaths and recent shootings at Fort Hood and the Washington Navy Yard.

No Rest for Psycho-Pharma Until Every American is Drugged

With nearly 79 million Americans currently taking at least one mind-altering psychiatric drug, it boggles the mind that a May 13, 2014 USA Today article titled, “The cost of not caring: Nowhere to go,” would argue that the nation is somehow suffering from a lack of mental health treatment. According to the article, “More than half a million Americans with serious mental illness are falling through the cracks of a system in tatters.” Based on the fact that one in four Americans is taking at least one psychiatric drug, it seems the psycho-pharmaceutical industry will not be satisfied until every American is under the influence of pharmacological “treatment”. The real force behind the article is the push to increase mental health screening, which is part of Representative Tim Murphy’s (R-Pa) controversial legislation (H.R. 3717). The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013, not only creates a new mental health czar, but it also increases spending for mental health training, screening, awareness campaigns and court-ordered treatment—up to a whopping $270 million a year. And this taxpayer mental health financial benevolence is expected without any data to support that even one psychiatric disorder is based in science. Worse still, nowhere in the article is mention made of the known serious adverse reactions to the psychiatric drugs commonly used as treatment.

Fort Hood Shooting: Investigating Psychiatric Drugs & Violence Connection is Long Overdue

Thirty-seven percent of recent war veterans are being diagnosed with PTSD and 80 percent are of those are prescribed a psychiatric drug. The Veterans Administration's mental health budget has soared from less than $3 billion in 2007 to nearly $7 billion in 2014. From 2005 to 2011, the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration increased their prescriptions of psychiatric drugs by nearly seven times. That's more than thirty times faster than the civilian rate. Violence and psychiatric drugs is a deadly formula America is becoming too intimately familiar with. Rather than continually send heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims, it is time for lawmakers to investigate the connection between prescription psychiatric drugs and violence.

Number of 0-5 Year Olds on Psychotropic Drugs Skyrockets 42% Since 2009

While the national media has been running that the use of psychotropic drugs in children has decreased based on a “sample study” of only 43,000 kids, the fact is, according to data obtained from IMS Health, the number of children 0-5 on psychiatric drugs has increased 42% since 2009. In 2012, there were 1,085,410 children aged 0-5 on psychiatric drugs, which is the highest the number has been in the last decade.