Tag: antidepressants

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News for Colorado

InfoWars—Dr. Lynne Fenton, the Batman killer, drugs and drug money

Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
July 31, 2012

“This is a high stakes game. WHAT DRUGS WAS HOLMES TAKING?”

People don’t get it. The media don’t get it and they don’t want to get it. Billions of dollars are riding on the drugs Dr. Lynne Fenton may have prescribed to her patient, James Holmes, the accused Batman shooter.

And when billions of dollars in potentially lost revenue are hanging in the balance, the interested parties take action. They’re serious about their money. They don’t screw around.

You see, if James Holmes was, for example, taking Prozac, all of a sudden no one wants to take it. If doctors prescribe it to patients, the patients say, “Hey, wasn’t this the drug that nutcase took before he killed all those people in the theater?”

So right now, in Aurora, there are pharmaceutical people on the scene

And that’s not all. Congress holds hearings, not because they want to, but because they want to look like they’re doing the right thing. And at those hearings, all sorts of nasty stuff comes out about Prozac. It’s big news. The studies that showed the drug was dangerous, that it could and would cause people to commit suicide and homicide. Boom. More bad press for the manufacturer. More investigations. More lost revenue. So right now, in Aurora, there are pharmaceutical people on the scene. Not just low-level goofballs, but competent investigators. They want to know what drugs James Holmes was prescribed. They need to know. And behind the scenes, people with clout are making phone calls. These pharma types are talking to government agents and it’s crazy time and damage-control time, and nobody is laughing. This is a high-stakes game. WHAT DRUGS WAS HOLMES TAKING?

There is pressure on both attorneys in the case, too. And the cops. With an insanity plea lurking in the wings, Holmes’ medical records could very well see the light of day. That would let everybody know what the drugs were. So somebody is calling the governor of Colorado, and other state officials, and they’re trying to maneuver and manipulate the legal process, to make the medical records vanish.

Come on. This isn’t just a murder case. Now it’s about money. Big pharma lawyers are reading up on Colorado law to find loopholes, ways to get around revealing Holmes’ medical history.

Holmes is now a pawn. He’s the nowhere kid who is going to be shuttled around on the game board to save the drug money for the people who own it.

Holmes’ psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, was reprimanded by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners, in 2005, for prescribing drugs to several patients, including herself, without entering the information in patient records

The money is dirty. It always was. It’s filthy. It’s been made on the backs of people who have died at the rate of 100,000 a year in the US alone. That’s a million people per decade—pharmaceutically caused deaths. The heads of these drug companies and their allied banks are Mafiosa. They inflict more human damage in a day than all the goombahs who have ever shot up pizza joints on Mulberry Street or dealt narcotics to addicts across the world, since Sicily puts itself on the map as the center of the Cosa Nostra.

Holmes’ psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, was reprimanded by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners, in 2005, for prescribing drugs to several patients, including herself, without entering the information in patient records. She could now find a target painted on her back, as the drug companies try to make her a patsy, an “irresponsible and incompetent doctor who didn’t give Mr. Holmes what he truly needed.” They would do this to take the drugs off the hook. “In the hands of a good psychiatrist, the proper medications would have worked well.” Who knows? Maybe they’ll claim she didn’t even treat Holmes directly, but supervised interns or grad students, who actually worked with Holmes.

I wrote the following as part of a 1999 white paper for The Truth Seeker Foundation, in the wake of the Columbine massacre. So the information is from that period. The white paper was titled: WHY DID THEY DO IT? THE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ACROSS AMERICA.

It’s quite long; I’ve only printed an excerpt here. You can go to my blog and read the whole thing. It’s very relevant to the issues at hand.

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com

The bulk of American media is afraid to go after psychiatric drugs as a cause of violence. This fear stems, in part, from the sure knowledge that expert attack dogs are waiting in the wings, funded by big-time pharmaceutical companies.

There are doctors and researchers as well who have seen a dark truth about these drugs in the journals, but are afraid to stand up and speak out. After all, the medical culture punishes no one as severely as its own defectors.

If the mothers of the young killers and young victims began to see a terrible knowledge about the psychiatric drugs swim into view, a knowledge they hadn’t imagined, and if THEY joined forces, the earth would shake.

And what of the federal government itself? The FDA licenses every drug released for public use and certifies that it is safe and effective. If a real tornado started at the public level, if the mothers of the young killers and young victims began to see a terrible knowledge about the psychiatric drugs swim into view, a knowledge they hadn’t imagined, and if THEY joined forces, the earth would shake.

After commenting on some of the adverse effects of the antidepressant drug Prozac, psychiatrist Peter Breggin notes, “From the initial studies, it was also apparent that a small percentage of Prozac patients became psychotic.”

Prozac, in fact, endured a rocky road in the press for a time. Stories on it rarely appear now. The major media have backed off. But on February 7th, 1991, Amy Marcus’ Wall Street Journal article on the drug carried the headline, “Murder Trials Introduce Prozac Defense.” She wrote, “A spate of murder trials in which defendants claim they became violent when they took the antidepressant Prozac are imposing new problems for the drug’s maker, Eli Lilly and Co.”

Also on February 7, 1991, the New York Times ran a Prozac piece headlined, “Suicidal Behavior Tied Again to Drug: Does Antidepressant Prompt Violence?”

In his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Breggin mentions that the Donahue show (Feb. 28, 1991) “put together a group of individuals who had become compulsively self-destructive and murderous after taking Prozac and the clamorous telephone and audience response confirmed the problem.”

Breggin also cites a troubling study from the February 1990 American Journal of Psychiatry (Teicher et al, v.147:207-210) which reports on “six depressed patients, previously free of recent suicidal ideation, who developed intense, violent suicidal preoccupations after 2-7 weeks of fluoxetine [Prozac] treatment.’ The suicidal preoccupations lasted from three days to three months after termination of the treatment. The report estimates that 3.5 percent of Prozac users were at risk. While denying the validity of the study, Dista Products, a division of Eli Lilly, put out a brochure for doctors dated August 31, 1990, stating that it was adding ‘suicidal ideation’ to the adverse events section of its Prozac product information.”

An earlier study, from the September 1989 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, by Joseph Lipiniski, Jr., indicates that, in five examined cases, people on Prozac developed what is called akathisia. Symptoms include intense anxiety, inability to sleep, the “jerking of extremities,” and “bicycling in bed or just turning around and around.” Breggin comments that akathisia “may also contribute to the drug’s tendency to cause self-destructive or violent tendencies … Akathisia can become the equivalent of biochemical torture and could possibly tip someone over the edge into self-destructive or violent behavior … The June 1990 Health Newsletter, produced by the Public Citizen Research Group, reports, ‘Akathisia, or symptoms of restlessness, constant pacing, and purposeless movements of the feet and legs, may occur in 10-25 percent of patients on Prozac.’”

The well-known publication, California Lawyer, in a December 1998 article called “Protecting Prozac,” mentions other highly qualified critics of the drug: “David Healy, MD, an internationally renowned psychopharmacologist, has stated in sworn deposition that ‘contrary to Lilly’s view, there is a plausible cause-and-effect relationship between Prozac’ and suicidal-homicidal events. An epidemiological study published in 1995 by the British Medical Journal also links Prozac to increased suicide risk.”

When pressed, proponents of these SSRI drugs sometimes say, “Well, the benefits for the general population far outweigh the risk,” or, “Maybe in one or two tragic cases the dosage prescribed was too high.” But the problem will not go away on that basis. A shocking review-study published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases (1996, v.184, no.2), written by Rhoda L. Fisher and Seymour Fisher, called “Antidepressants for Children,” concludes: “Despite unanimous literature of double-blind studies indicating that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos in treating depression in children and adolescents, such medications continue to be in wide use.”

In wide use. This despite such contrary information and the negative, dangerous effects of these drugs.

There are other studies: “Emergence of self-destructive phenomena in children and adolescents during fluoxetine treatment,” published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (1991, vol.30), written by RA King, RA Riddle, et al. It reports self-destructive phenomena in 14% (6/42) of children and adolescents (10-17 years old) who had treatment with fluoxetine (Prozac) for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

July, 1991. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Hisako Koizumi, MD, describes a thirteen-year-old boy who was on Prozac: “full of energy,” “hyperactive,” “clown-like.” All this devolved into sudden violent actions which were “totally unlike him.” [Sound like James Holmes?]

September, 1991. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Author Laurence Jerome reports the case of a ten-year old who moves with his family to a new location. Becoming depressed, the boy is put on Prozac by a doctor. The boy is then “hyperactive, agitated … irritable.” He makes a “somewhat grandiose assessment of his own abilities.” Then he calls a stranger on the phone and says he is going to kill him. The Prozac is stopped, and the symptoms disappear.

[What is true about Prozac is true about Paxil or Zoloft or any of the other SSRI antidepressants. And be warned: suddenly withdrawing from any psychiatric drug can be extremely dangerous to the patient. See www.breggin.com on this subject and how to handle it.]

Ritalin, manufactured by Novartis, is the close cousin to speed which is given to millions of American schoolchildren for a condition called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). ADD and ADHD, for which no organic causes have ever been found, are touted as disease-conditions that afflict the young, causing hyperactivity, unmanageability, and learning problems. Of course, when you name a disorder or a syndrome and yet can find no single provable organic cause for it, you have nothing more than a loose collection of behaviors with an arbitrary title.

Correction: you also have a pharmaceutical bonanza.

Read the rest of the article here

To see a list of international drug advisory warnings and studies on psychiatric drugs and violence click here

To see a partial list of school shooters documented to be under the influence of psychiatric drugs, click here

To visit the psychiatric drug side effects search engine – click here 

 

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News for Colorado

The Aurora, Colorado Tragedy—Another Senseless Shooting, Another Psychotropic Drug?

As the world’s leading mental health watchdog, CCHR has for decades investigated hundreds of acts of senseless violence in coordination with the press and law enforcement as well as in legislative hearings, such as those held following the 1999 Columbine massacre (ringleader Eric Harris was found to be under the influence of the antidepressant Luvox, Dylan Klebold’s autopsy reports were never unsealed). And while there is never one simple explanation for what drives a human being to commit such unspeakable acts, all too often one common denominator has surfaced in hundreds of cases—prescribed psychotropic drugs which are documented to cause mania, psychosis, violence, suicide and in some cases, homicidal ideation.

 Between 2004 and 2011, there have been over 11,000 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system of psychiatric drug side effects related to violence. These include 300 cases of homicide, nearly 3,000 cases of mania and over 7,000 cases of aggression. (Note: By the FDA’s own admission, only 1-10% of side effects are ever reported to the FDA, so the actual number of side effects occurring are most certainly higher.)

There have been 22 international drug regulatory warnings issued on psychiatric drugs causing violence, mania, hostility, aggression, psychosis, and other violent type reactions. These warnings have been issued in the United States, European Union, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

In determining what would prompt James Holmes, identified as the 24-year-old gunman in the Aurora, Colorado shooting, to commit such a brutal and senseless crime, the press must ask the right questions, including: What, if any, prescribed psychotropic drugs Holmes may have been on (or in withdrawal from).

Click here for more.

 

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News for Colorado

COLORADO HEAT WAVE SPIKES RISK OF DANGEROUS OVERHEATING FOR THOSE TAKING PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS

 

By Petr Kratochvil
Image by Petr Kratochvil

Colorado’s current heat wave increases the risk of heat-related illness and death for those taking psychiatric drugs, most especially antipsychotic and “ADHD” drugs.

Psychiatric drugs cause people taking them to be less sensitive to signals from their body.  Many of the drugs also directly interfere with the body’s ability to respond to heat.  As a result, individuals taking psychiatric drugs can overheat when temperatures soar and not realize it, running a greater risk of heat exhaustion or life-threatening heat stroke.

According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, psychiatric drugs that interfere with the body’s ability to cool itself down include antipsychotics, tranquilizers, and tricyclic antidepressants.   These drugs make individuals more susceptible to dangerous overheating.

Antipsychotic drugs, in particular, are known to increase the risk of heat stroke, as evidenced by a medical alert issued in April by the New York Office of Mental Health.  Children and the elderly – the most physically vulnerable – who are taking antipsychotic drugs face a still higher risk.

The risk of heat-related illness and death is also increased by stimulants, including the stimulant drugs prescribed for so-called ADHD.

Stimulant drugs raise body temperature, as well as interfere with the body’s ability to cool itself down, so that high summer temperatures cause body temperatures already elevated by these drugs to go higher still.

Those taking psychiatric drugs should limit their exposure to summer heat and strenuous activity and drink plenty of water.  Seek medical attention for someone who becomes disoriented, whose skin is dry and hot, or who has difficulty waking up, with particular attention paid to children and the elderly.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue a psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a competent medical doctor because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

If you or someone you know has experienced adverse effects from psychiatric drugs, we want to talk to you.  You can contact us privately by clicking here or by calling 303-789-5225. All information will be kept in the strictest confidence. We welcome your comments on this article below.

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General News

A Question of Medical Ethics: Researchers Conclude Antidepressants Do More Harm Than Good

Image by George Hodan
Image by George Hodan

A team of researchers reviewing previous studies into the effects of antidepressants have concluded that the drugs are doing patients more harm than good, according to a research paper published yesterday in the online journal Frontiers in Psychology.

“The thing that’s been missing in the debates about antidepressants is an overall assessment of all these negative effects relative to their potential beneficial effects,” says professor Paul Andrews, an evolutionary biologist at McMaster University in Canada and lead author of the study. “Most of this evidence has been out there for years and nobody has been looking at this basic issue.”

Most antidepressants alter the level of serotonin naturally produced by the human body in an attempt to alter mood.  But serotonin also regulates other important functions in the body, including digestion, reproduction, and the blood clotting to seal a wound.

“Serotonin is an ancient chemical,” said Andrews.  “It’s intimately regulating many different processes, and when you interfere with these things you can expect,  from an evolutionary perspective, that it’s going to cause some harm.”

Quoting from his research team’s paper:

“Because serotonin regulates many adaptive processes, antidepressants could have many adverse health effects….  Antidepressants can…cause developmental problems, they have adverse effects on sexual and romantic life, and they increase the risk of hyponatremia (low sodium in the blood plasma), bleeding, stroke, and death in the elderly.  Our review supports the conclusion that antidepressants generally do more harm than good by disrupting a number of adaptive processes regulated by serotonin.”

The full paper can be read here.

 

Proven risks outweigh questionable benefit

Following on the heels of other research on both the ineffectiveness and the risks of adverse effects of antidepressants, this latest research raises serious questions about whether physicians can ethically prescribe antidepressants for their patients.  After all, a cornerstone of medical ethics is that it may be better to do nothing than to risk causing more harm than good.  Antidepressants now have been shown in a growing number of research studies to cause proven harm, while providing questionable benefit.

For example, in an explosive report that aired recently on CBS’s 60 Minutes, an expert on placebos said that the difference between the effects of antidepressants and sugar pills is clinically insignificant for most people. (see “Expert Finds Antidepressants No More Effective Than Sugar Pills”).  Another recent study shows antidepressants can considerably worsen depression (see “Antidepressants can cause chronic and worsening depression”).  An earlier study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006 linked antidepressants to an increased risk of major birth defects.

(For international studies and warnings on the side effects of antidepressants, go to CCHR International’s psychiatric drug search engine.)

Professor Andrews believes his research shows the critical necessity of reevaluating the use of antidepressants.

“It could change the way we think about such major pharmaceutical drugs,” he says. “You’ve got a minimal benefit, a laundry list of negative effects – some small, some rare and some not so rare. The issue is: does the list of negative effects outweigh the minimal benefit?”

 

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a competent medical doctor because of potentially dangerous, even life-threatening withdrawal symptoms.

If you or someone you know has experienced harmful side effects from an antidepressant, we want to talk to you. You can contact us privately by clicking here or by calling 303-789-5225. All information will be kept in the strictest confidence. We welcome your comments on this article below.

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News for Colorado

Expert Finds Antidepressants No Better Than Sugar Pills

In an explosive report just aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes, an expert who has studied the effects of placebos (dummy pills) for 36 years stated that antidepressants are no more effective than sugar pills for the vast

Image by George Hodan
Image by George Hodan

majority of depressed individuals.

Irving Kirsch, Associate Director of the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School, says his research shows that the difference between the effects of antidepressants and sugar pills is clinically insignificant for most people.

He reports that it is not the chemical ingredients of antidepressants that make people feel better, but rather their expectation that taking a pill will make them feel better, such that taking a dummy pill with no drugs in it alleviates their symptoms.  This is known as the placebo effect.

In addition to its reported effectiveness in handling depression, a placebo has none of the dangerous side effects of antidepressants.  (Information on the harmful side effects of antidepressants and other psych drugs can be accessed through CCHR International’s psychiatric drug side effects search engine.)

View a video clip about the 60 Minutes report.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a competent medical doctor because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

If you or someone you know has experienced harmful side effects from an antidepressant, we want to talk to you. You can contact us privately by clicking here or by calling 303-789-5225. All information will be kept in the strictest confidence. We welcome your comments on this article below.

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Military in Colorado/Wyoming News for Colorado

Why Was Death Of Ft. Carson Soldier On Psych Drugs Changed From Sudden Cardiac Death To Suicide?

By Gary Daniel (United States Army) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
By Gary Daniel (United States Army) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Pfc. Ryan Alderman was on a cocktail of psych drugs when found unresponsive, then dying in his barracks at Ft. Carson in 2008.  An ECG done by emergency medical technicians at the scene confirmed sudden cardiac arrest.  Inexplicably, military officials changed the cause of death to suicide.

Neurologist Fred A. Baughman Jr., M.D., wants to know why.  He challenges the military to produce the evidence to support the change.

In the bigger picture, Baughman continues to hammer away at the military to compile a database of medication use and reactions by soldiers and veterans, which would allow investigations into injuries and deaths due to the psychiatric drugs they were on.

Baughman’s own investigation into the “unexplained” deaths in 2008 of four West Virginia vets, all in their 20s, who died in their sleep, found that all were on the same drug cocktail for PTSD: Seroquel (antipsychotic), Paxil (antidepressant) and Klonopin (benzodiazepine).  All appeared normal when they went to sleep.  There were no signs of suicide.

Baughman concluded the vets did not commit suicide or overdose leading to coma, as claimed by the military, but were sudden cardiac deaths due to the prescription antipsychotics and antidepressants they were on.

 “I call on the DoD, VA, House and Senate Armed Services, and House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees to tell concerned Americans and the families of fallen heroes what psychiatric drugs each of the deceased, both combat and non-combat, soldiers and veterans were on,” said Baughman. “It is time for the military and government to come clean.”

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue psychiatric drugs is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a competent medical doctor because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

If you or someone you know has been harmed by psychiatric drugs prescribed by military doctors, you can contact us privately by clicking here  or by calling 303-789-5225.  All information will be kept in the strictest confidence.  We welcome your comments on this article below.

 

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News for Colorado Schools

Killer in 2006 Bailey School Shooting Probably On Psych Drug

The five-year anniversary of the school shooting in Bailey, Colorado, that resulted in the tragic death of a student is a good time to reflect on the role psychiatric drugging may have played in that terrifying ordeal.  It’s also a good time to call again for routine testing for different types of psychiatric drugs in the systems of perpetrators of “unexplained” violent crimes.

An armed Duane Morrison went into Platte Canyon High School on September 27, 2006, to commit violence and then to commit suicide.  He took six schoolgirls hostage, ultimately killing 16-year-old Emily Keyes before taking his own life.

An antidepressant was found in Morrison’s parked Jeep following the lethal incident, according to a report in the Rocky Mountain News.

A spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation reported that the autopsy done on Morrison found no drugs in his system.  However, while a toxicology test was done to look for benzodiazepines and older class, tricyclic antidepressants, there were apparently no tests done to check for the more commonly prescribed, newer class antidepressants, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRIs).

Studies Link Antidepressants To Violence

A growing number of studies show a link between newer class antidepressants and mania, psychosis, violence, and even homicide.  (Research studies, warnings from international regulatory authorities, and reports to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the harmful side effects of antidepressants and other psych drugs can be accessed through CCHR International’s psychiatric drug side effects search engine.)

The Bailey shooting occurred less than an hour’s drive from Columbine High School, where seven years earlier, shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire and killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 26 others before taking their own lives.  Harris was taking the antidepressant Luvox at the time, and at least one public report exists that a friend of Klebold saw him taking the antidepressants Paxil and Zoloft and urged him to come off them.  Officially, Klebold’s medical records remain sealed.

With psych drugs linked to so many school shootings and other acts of violence, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights has long urged toxicology testing for different types of psychiatric drugs in the systems of perpetrators of these “inexplicable” violent crimes.  The public deserves the truth about why “unexplained” violence so often occurs.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a competent medical doctor.

If you or someone you know has experienced violent impulses or other harmful side effects from taking an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug, we want to talk to you.  You can contact us privately by clicking here or by calling 303-789-5225.  All information will be kept in the strictest confidence.  We welcome your comments on this article below.

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News for Colorado Schools

Protecting Your Children: Colorado Law Protects Children From Teachers Pushing Psychiatric Drugs

As a new school year starts, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights reminds the parents of Colorado’s 843,000 schoolchildren that teachers and other school personnel are prohibited by state law from recommending “ADHD” or other psychiatric drugs to control children’s behavior in the classroom.

Colorado Revised Statute 22-32-109(1)(ee), passed by the state legislature in 2003, requires the board of education of every school district in the state to have a policy “to prohibit school personnel from recommending or requiring the use of a psychotropic drug for any student.” “Psychotropic” describes drugs capable of affecting the mind.

The law also states that students cannot be subjected to any psychological or psychiatric screening, questionnaire, test, or evaluation without the prior, written consent of the parents (or the student, if of age) and that parents must receive advance, written disclosure of what will be done with the results of the testing.

Julian Whitaker, M.D., warns parents against ever allowing their children to be screened in school:

“You should under no circumstances allow your children to participate in school-based mental health screenings. Do not be misled by doublespeak from school boards, psychiatrists, counselors, or teachers. Despite their veneer of identifying and helping those at risk, mental health screenings are little more than fishing expeditions, casting a broad net and reeling in millions of new psychiatric drug users.”

There is no valid test for diagnosing “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),” “bipolar disorder,” or any other “mental disorder.”  Yet parents of millions of schoolchildren worldwide have been told that their children have a mental disorder that requires them to be chemically restrained by powerful mind-altering psychiatric drugs.

These drugs carry long lists of dangerous side effects, especially for children.  Common drugs for “ADHD,” for example, are amphetamines that can cause heart attack, stroke and sudden death in children.  They are highly addictive and 10 times more likely than other prescription drugs to be linked to violence.  And there are no long-term studies on the safety and effectiveness of these drugs.  (CCHR’s newest DVD, “Dead Wrong: How Psychiatric Drugs Can Kill Your Child,” can be viewed online here: www.cchr.org.)

Children Can Be Successful In School Without Dangerous Chemical Restraints

Often these children are simply smart and are bored in the classroom. Many need additional instructional attention – educational solutions to educational problems. Others are just exhibiting normal variations in the range of childhood and teen behavior. Or they may have undiagnosed, underlying physical causes of their behavior, such as illness, infections, injuries, allergies, nutritional deficiencies, environmental toxins, etc., which a complete physical exam and a nutritional evaluation can discover.

As Dr. Mary Ann Block, author of No More ADHD, says:

“By taking a thorough history and giving these children a complete physical exam as well as doing lab tests and allergy testing, I have consistently found that these children do not have ADHD, but instead have allergies, dietary problems, nutritional deficiencies, thyroid problems and learning difficulties that are causing their symptoms.  All of these medical and educational problems can be treated, allowing the child to be successful, without being drugged.”  (Emphasis added.)

Children are human beings who have every right to expect our protection, care, guidance, and the chance to reach their full potential. They will be denied this if they are trapped in the verbal and chemical strait-jackets of psychiatry’s invented labels and mind-altering drugs.

If school personnel have recommended that you put your child on psychiatric drugs, we want to talk to you.  You can contact us privately by clicking here or by calling 303-789-5225.  All information will be kept strictly confidential.  We welcome your comments on this article below.

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General News

Review of Studies Finds Antidepressants Not Reliably Better Than Sugar Pills

Are Antidepressants Just Placebos With Side Effects?

Reviews of large numbers of studies on antidepressants – including studies the drug companies never published because they did not have positive outcomes – continue to show that improvement in patients given antidepressants is due largely, if not entirely, to the placebo effect and not the drugs.

In 2010, Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Hull in England and author of “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth,” published an article on the conclusions he and his colleagues reached after reviewing data the drug companies had sent to the FDA.  The data, obtained by using the Freedom of Information Act, included results that had never been published because the results were not favorable to the drugs the companies were testing.

Kirsch termed the results of the review “shocking.” His group’s meta-analysis (the analysis of many clinical trials on the same subject – in this case, antidepressants) found that placebos – sugar pills – are 82% as effective as antidepressants.  However, they further found that even this “relatively small difference between drugs and placebos might not be a real drug effect at all.  Instead, it might be [nothing more than] an enhanced placebo effect.”

The placebo effect refers to perceived or actual improvement in health that does not come from the treatment the patient is receiving, which may be a dummy pill, but from the patient’s belief that the treatment will help.

The FDA only requires two clinical trials that show any statistical difference between drug and placebo in order to approve a drug – even if a much larger number of studies failed to show positive results.  And the positive result can be so small that it makes no real difference in people’s lives.  The FDA does not require results to be clinically significant, just statistically significant.

Kirsch’s results are supported by another group of researchers who reviewed four meta-analyses of clinical trials on antidepressants that were submitted to the FDA.

Their conclusion, published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics last year, stated that “antidepressants are only marginally efficacious [effective] compared to placebos,” and even this modest benefit might be inflated by “profound publication bias.”  Publication bias means the tendency of researchers and publications to publish results that are favorable for the drugs being tested and to hide or reject results that are unfavorable, thereby shaping both professional and public opinion by unscientific means.

These same researchers also analyzed the data from STAR*D (Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression), the largest antidepressant effectiveness trial ever conducted.  They found that “the effectiveness of antidepressant therapies was probably even lower than the modest one reported by [that study’s] authors, with an apparent progressively increasing dropout rate across each study phase.”  The progressively increasing dropout rate, as more and more participants dropped out of the study because of adverse effects they experienced, means the study became more and more biased towards a favorable outcome.

The researchers found results on the antidepressant studies to be so inflated that they call for a complete reconsideration of the use of antidepressants: “The reviewed findings argue for a reappraisal of the current recommended standard of care of depression.”

Their concern is shared by Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and now a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School.  In the first part of her recent, two-part essay in The New York Review of Books,  she writes about the disturbing extent to which the pharmaceutical companies that sell psychoactive drugs – through both legal and illegal marketing and “what many people would describe as bribery” – have come to determine the “diagnosis” and treatment of mental illness.

In the second part of her essay, she calls for more research into alternatives to antidepressants:  “More research is needed to study alternatives to psychoactive drugs, and the results should be included in medical education.”

Indeed.  If antidepressants are no more effective than placebos, but come at a great cost and expose individuals to a lengthy and growing list of devastating and even life-threatening side effects, including deepening and chronic depression and suicide, it only makes sense that diet, nutritional supplements, exercise, and meaningful activities be explored as alternatives.

Just as important, depression is very often a mental symptom of an undiagnosed, untreated physical condition.  A complete physical examination by a non-psychiatric physician should always be done to look for underlying physical conditions before antidepressants or other psychotropic drugs are prescribed.

Individuals currently taking antidepressants are cautioned against suddenly discontinuing them.  No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and supervision of a competent medical doctor.

If you or someone you know has been harmed by antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs, you can contact us privately by clicking here or by calling 303-789-5225.  All information will be kept in the strictest confidence.  We also welcome your comments below.

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Killers On Psych Drugs News for Colorado

Suspect In Gruesome Murder Reportedly Has History Of Psychiatric Treatment

Add another grisly killing to the long list of sudden, violent crimes committed by individuals with a history of taking psychiatric drugs.

Edward Romero, 27, is charged with killing a 16-year-old girl as she walked home from a party, after which he cut up her body and packed it away in a container in his garage.  He recently pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a charge of first-degree murder in Denver District Court.  According to the Denver Post, a judge had earlier ordered Romero to keep taking psychiatric medication.

While we don’t know the details of those psychiatric drugs, we do know that the current, rising wave of violence that is rocking our homes, schools, and communities parallels the soaring use of psychiatric drugs in American society.

Research studies, international regulatory authority warnings, and reports to the FDA, have linked the use of, and/or the too-rapid withdrawal from, numerous psychiatric drugs to violent behavior, including homicide.

High-profile Colorado killings with links to psychiatric drugs include Stephanie Rochester smothering her 6-month-old son in Superior in 2010.  She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.  She reportedly was taking the antidepressant Zoloft at the time, and had intended to take her own life.

Rebekah Amaya, of Lamar, was also reportedly on antidepressants when she drowned her 4-year-old daughter and 6-month-old son in 2003.  She was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2004.

Of course, the granddaddy of Colorado psychiatric drug-related violence is the deadly assault on Columbine High School in 1999.  Shooter Eric Harris was taking the antidepressant Luvox at the time he and Dylan Klebold opened fire at Columbine High School, killing 12 students and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves.  Harris reportedly became obsessed with homicidal and suicidal thoughts within weeks of starting to take antidepressants.  (See “The Real Lesson of Columbine: Psychiatric Drugs Induce Violence.”)

At least one public report exists from a friend of Klebold, who says she witnessed him taking the antidepressants Paxil and Zoloft and urged him to come off the drugs.  Officially, Klebold’s medical records remain sealed.

Both the U.S. FDA and Health Canada have issued warnings that many antidepressants are linked to a greater risk of suicide, aggression and violence.

CCHR International’s documentary DVD, “Psychiatry’s Prescription for Violence,” containing interviews with experts, parents, victims, and a killer himself, can be viewed online by clicking here.

If you or someone you know has had suicidal or homicidal thoughts or committed sudden violent acts while taking or in withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, you can contact us privately by clicking here or by calling 303-789-5225.  All information will be kept in the strictest confidence.   We welcome your comments on this article below.

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