In the minds of many neuroscientists today, the chemical imbalance theory has turned out to be a myth, with little more scientific or medicinal substance than poetry or song. And the pills are now largely recognized by a multitude of experts, as well as some of the pharmaceutical companies that make them, as concoctions of magical thinking.
The military has spent at least $2.7 billion on antidepressants, and $1.6 billion in narcotic painkillers like Oxycontin over the last decade. According to the Military Times, DoD orders for anxiety medications and sedatives like Valium and Ambien increased 170 percent from 2001 to 2009. By 2009, 1 in 6 active duty service members were on some form of psychiatric drug, including 17 percent on antidepressants. In 2010, a significant Army report on suicide found that in 2009, 20 percent of the active duty force (106,000) had been prescribed at least one medication for pain, anxiety or depression, while prescription drugs were involved in one-third of the 160 active duty suicides that year. Of the 188 accidental/undetermined deaths from 2006 to 2009 caused by drugs and alcohol, 74 percent involved prescription medications.
Brintellix is being marketed with implications that it’s the best antidepressent yet and that it’s exceptionally safe. What is this based on? Close examination shows the usual smoke and mirrors, and an even closer look points out disturbing indications of potentially devastating and deadly effects—with no indication that it’s better than existing SSRIs, which are known killers.
The toxic psychiatrists are already here, but under Obamacare their mission will expand. A recent Washington Post article parroted the usual unscientific statistic on numbers of people in America with mental disorders: 20% of all adults have “experienced a mental-health issue.” Propaganda focuses heavily on children, with claims that “half of all mental-health disorders first show up before a person turns 14.” “Three-quarters of mental-health disorders begin before 24. But less than 20% of children and adolescents with mental disorders receive the treatment they need.” Obamacare has an “essential list” of services, and “mental-health treatment” is one of them. You can be sure the targeting of children will expand. More and more children will be brought into the system and receive diagnoses of mental disorders and the toxic drugs psychiatrists routinely prescribe. More kids will be screened for depression and undergo “behavioral assessments.” The influence of psychiatry in young children’s lives is going to expand beyond anything we’ve yet seen. America is going to experience another sea change: the medicalization of children’s behavior will blanket the country. In the US alone, there are at least 300,000 cases of motor brain damage incurred by people who have been prescribed so-called anti-psychotic drugs (aka “major tranquilizers”). Source: Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin, St. Martin’s Press, 1991 This psychiatric drug plague is accelerating across the land. Under Obamacare, with psychiatry firmly placed on a par with other branches of medical practice, the plague is going to spread further, as previously uninsured people enter the system. Under Obamacare, mental-health professionals are looking forward to a much larger piece of the “treatment pie.” Huge numbers of previously uninsured people, including vulnerable children, will now move under the psychiatric umbrella, and their futures are at extreme risk. Psychiatry has deeply troubling similarities to the Surveillance State. It profiles people and labels them. However, it then treats them with highly toxic and dangerous drugs. In the wake of recent mass killings, Obama has shown his preference for psychiatric treatment in a number of statements. He’s also launched the so-called “brain mapping project,” which aims to detect more “mental problems” that need fixing by drugs and other invasive methods, and he’s promised to establish new community mental-health centers across the nation. This, taken together with Obamacare, signals a catastrophe, and spells out the need for public resistance.
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.
Despite 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation, and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence. How many mass shootings have to occur by shooters with a psychiatric drug history before those who have the power to make a difference finally take the necessary action to protect the American people? The list of shooters receiving psychiatric care and psychiatric drug use is long. In just a little over a year there have been three such mass shootings, including Aurora, Co., Newtown, Ct., and now the Washington Navy Yard, totaling 52 dead and 69 injured. In each case, as in dozens of other mass shootings, the common denominator is that the shooters were either receiving psychiatric care, taking mind altering psychiatric drugs or both.
The number of children on Medicaid taking antipsychotic drugs has tripled in just ten years—and shockingly, many of them are under the age of three. Note that these are not just antidepressants, which are bad enough. We are talking about strong antipsychotic drugs. These are so strong that many adults stop taking them because of severe side effects. How can a three-year-old protect himself or herself from the toxic effects of these drugs on their undeveloped brains and bodies?
In a new push forward to the dark ages, modern medicine is again claiming to fix mental problems with surgery. There’s little difference between newer surgeries and lobotomies. The destruction of brain tissue is the goal of this surgery. So, by definition, they destroy part of the brain, thus destroying part of who you are, and playing at God they call it “Good”.
Of the more than 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system, it’s estimated that more than 50 percent are on some sort of psychiatric drug. Money is part of the reason. Foster parents are paid more to take care of a child with mental health issues. On average, a foster family earns about $17 a day for taking in a child who needs a basic level of care. But a child who is taking drugs such as antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, anxiety medications or anticonvulsant medications is worth around $1,000 a day. Many child and human rights advocates are concerned about the dramatic number of children who are classified as 'special needs' after entering the foster care system. One reason doctors, psychiatrists and therapists may not be speaking out against the unnecessary drugging of these children is because those who prescribe the drugs often benefit financially, receiving big payouts from pharmaceutical companies.
The FDA has approved the first non-hormonal treatment for hot flashes associated with menopause. The drug is paroxetine mesylate (marketed as Brisdelle). Paroxetine, an SSRI, is the active ingredient in two drugs for depression and other psychiatric disorders, Paxil and Pexeva. What is not mentioned is that the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee voted 10 to 4 that the overall risk-benefit profile of the drug did not support approval—that the benefits over placebo were “minimal,” and that all of the severe side effects associated with SSRIs, such as suicidal thoughts and osteoporosis, outweigh the minor benefits.
The Drugging of Our Children documentary details the devastating consequences of the excessive medicating of US children, with a focus on children who have been given the diagnosis of ADHD. Drugs prescribed for ADHD are "class 2" narcotics, regulated by the Drug Enforcement Agency as a controlled substance because they can lead to dependence, heart attack, stroke, seizures and stunted growth; other mind-altering drugs commonly prescribed to kids can cause aggressive and violent behavior, suicide and more. The long-term effects of medicating children with mind-altering drugs during their key formative years are largely unknown, but likely devastating.
Given the enormous potential for great harm, one has to wonder how the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, gets away with giving its stamp of approval on a new “brain wave test,” that allegedly will “help confirm an ADHD diagnosis,” when there is no scientific or medical proof that any physical abnormality exists. What part of approving a “brain waive test” for a psychiatric diagnosis that doesn’t exist is “assuring the safety and effectiveness?” More to the point, since there is no proof that the alleged psychiatric diagnosis exists, how can the FDA possibly claim that any test, least of all one that consists of interpreting squiggly lines on a piece of paper, is safe or effective?
Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist, author and medical expert describes ECT this way: “Shock treatment is simply closed-head injury caused by an overwhelming current of electricity sufficient to cause a grand mal seizure. When the patient becomes apathetic, the doctor writes in the hospital chart, ‘No longer complaining.’ When the patient displays the euphoria commonly associated with brain damage, the doctor writes ‘mood improved.’ Meanwhile, the individual’s brain and mind are so drastically injured that he or she is rendered unable to protest.”
For decades, ADHD drugs, like Ritalin and Adderall, have been called “kiddie cocaine” because the drugs produce similar effects as cocaine. Now, finally, research proves that just like cocaine doesn’t make a genius, the prescription psychiatric drugs prescribed to “treat” ADHD don’t make children smart.
The U.S. military is ignoring documented evidence that links a violence-inducing prescription drug with the worst American war crime in decades -- the massacre last year of 16 Afghan civilians by Army Sgt. Robert Bales.
Nearly one in five American high school students has been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, and most are subsequently put on medication to treat this "disorder". What are the long-term effects of these drugs, not only on their health, but on the world's future? It is quite likely that in our effort to "normalize" our children, we are in fact destroying the next generation of American leaders and innovators.
For the last 33 years, David Healy, an Irish psychiatrist and professor at Cardiff University School of Medicine in Wales, has written heavily researched university press books and academic journal articles on various aspects of psychopharmaceuticals. His output includes 20 books, 150 peer-reviewed papers and 200 other published works. He is not only well-pedigreed, with degrees and fellowships from Dublin, Galway and Cambridge medical schools, he is a widely recognized expert in both the history and the science of neurochemistry and psychopharmacology. Yet Healy says his output and reputation have had little to no effect—both on the pharmaceutical industry he argues buries relevant information about prescription drug harms, and on the psychiatric and medical professions he claims are being “eclipsed” by drug companies. Americans consume 80 percent of opiate painkillers produced in the world. A January 2011 report from Stanford University Medical School warned that antispychotics are now regularly being prescribed to treat conditions for which they have not been approved, including anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, sleep difficulties, behavioral problems in toddlers and dementia. According to a Feb. 7, 2013 report from Drugs.com, the No. 1 best-selling U.S. drug (in dollar volume) is an atypical antipsychotic for schizophrenia treatment called Abilify. Sales for the last quarter of 2012 soared to $1.5 billion, because Abilify is widely prescribed off-label—i.e., not for schizophrenia in adults, but, for example, for irritability in children. Although Bristol-Myers Squibb, the maker of Abilify, was fined $515 million in September 2007 for recommending off-label uses of Abilify, doctors are still doling out the drug. Why?
The White House’s sweeping mental health initiatives—which rely on psychiatry’s diagnostic procedures—do not take into account the major controversy currently raging over the lack of science behind psychiatry’s methods of diagnosing mental disorders. Should the conversation suggested by the President be restricted to supporting mental health informational initiatives based on a flawed, unsafe diagnosing manual, things may progress as Dr. Allen Frances predicts: "soon most of us will have a fake mental disorder (or a few) and we will live in a Brave New World where nearly everyone uses medicine.”
Are psychiatrists just giving excuses for irresponsible behavior? Psychiatry lacks scientific footing, and instead evolves according to cultural norms.
Maryanne Godboldo and Allison Folmar are extraordinary women. Their names may not elicit immediate recognition by the masses but it is because of their belief in the right of parents—not the state—to decide whether to medicate a child, that their struggle will protect thousands of children who otherwise would have become victims of deeply flawed State Child Protective Services policies.
