Tag: psychiatric drug side effects

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Military in Colorado/Wyoming News for Colorado

Psychiatry’s Role in Military Suicides Exposed

Today, with the military around the world awash in psychiatric drugs, 23 soldiers and veterans are committing suicide every day.  More soldiers are dying from psychiatric “treatment” than on the battlefield.

CCHR’s powerful new documentary, “Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda,” is the first to fully expose the decades-long history of psychiatry’s use of military personnel as guinea pigs for experimentation.  The documentary also details the link between the now-widespread use of mind-altering psychiatric drugs in the military and the growing epidemic of military deaths – especially suicides.

“We have never drugged our troops to this extent and the current increase in suicides is not a coincidence.  Why hasn’t psychiatry in the military been relieved of command of Mental Health Services?  In any other command position in the military, there would have been a change in leadership.”
— Lt. Col. Bart Billings, Clinical Psychologist U.S. Army Reserve, Ret.

Featuring over 80 interviews with soldiers and experts in a number of related fields, this penetrating documentary reveals how psychiatry is destroying our world’s militaries from within.

Here are some of the chilling facts contained in this documentary:

  • Officially, one in six American service members is taking at least one psychiatric drug.
  • Since 2002, the suicide rate in the U.S. military has almost doubled.  From 2009 to 2012, more U.S. soldiers died by suicide than from traffic accidents, heart disease, cancer and homicide.
  • Combat stress has been a fact in the military since ancient times.  But in 1980, psychiatrists created a new label for it: “post-traumatic stress disorder,” or “PTSD,” and later claimed, without any evidence, that it was a brain disorder.  Today, 37% of recent war veterans have been labeled “PTSD,” and 80% of them have been given a psychiatric drug for it.

 

Your help is needed to save lives. 

  • First, view the documentary yourself.  You can view the DVD online at no charge at the CCHR International website by clicking here.
  • If you are an active-duty member of the military, veteran, member of a military or veteran support group, or family member or associate of an active-duty member of the military or veteran, you can order a free copy of this DVD from CCHR International by clicking here.
  • Sign CCHR’s Petition for a Congressional Investigation into the Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Military Suicides and Sudden Deaths by clicking here.
  • Please help us get this powerful documentary into the hands of military personnel, veterans, and those who are responsible for their care.  Contribute what you can by clicking here. Donations to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights® of Colorado are tax-deductible charitable contributions for U.S. income tax purposes.
  • See for yourself what the harmful side effects are, for the drugs being prescribed to the military personnel and veterans you know.  Warnings from international regulatory authorities and research studies on the harmful side effects of psychiatric drugs can be accessed through CCHR International’s psychiatric drug side effects search engine.

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 know an active-duty member of the military or a veteran who has been harmed by psychiatric drugs or other mental-health treatment or experimentation, 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

Pueblo City Schools To Correct Non-Compliance With State Law Safeguarding Children

Two months after the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Colorado (CCHR) first contacted the office of the Superintendent of Pueblo City Schools, the school district will begin to take action on adopting policy to safeguard schoolchildren that has been required by state law since 2003.

(See “Pueblo School District Fails To Explicitly Prohibit Teachers From Pushing Psychiatric Drugs.”)

C.R.S. 22-32-109(1)(ee) requires school district Boards of Education to adopt policy that explicitly “prohibit[s] school personnel from recommending or requiring the use of a psychotropic drug for any student.”  The law further mandates that behavioral testing of students requires prior written permission from the parents and prior written disclosure to the parent of what will be done with the test results.

The response from the office of Superintendent Maggie Lopez to CCHR’s initial public records request was slow and vague.  CCHR then sent a complaint to the president of the district’s Board of Education, in keeping with guidelines set by the Colorado Department of Education.  A complete response was received from the school district today.

The first reading of policy revisions containing the required statutory language will occur at the August 4 Board meeting, according to Greg Sinn in the district’s public relations office.  The third and final reading necessary for adoption is expected in September.

Psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs carry dangerous, even life-threatening side effects, especially for children.  (Adverse reactions to psychiatric drugs, as detailed in research studies, warnings from international regulatory authorities and reports to the FDA, can be accessed through CCHR International’s psychiatric drug side effect search engine.)

Psychiatric drugs also do not address the real, underlying problem(s) the child is experiencing, which may be a lack of additional instructional help, poor nutrition, or an undiagnosed physical condition.

Due to CCHR’s efforts, Pueblo City Schools becomes the twenty-first Colorado school district to date taking steps to remedy a long-standing non-compliance with this state law.

If you or someone you know has been pressured by school personnel to put a 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 in the strictest confidence. We welcome your comments on this article below.

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News for Colorado Schools

Pueblo School District Fails To Explicitly Prohibit Teachers From Pushing Psychiatric Drugs

Policy Protecting Schoolchildren Has Been Required By State Law Since 2003

Pueblo City Schools is apparently in no hurry to adopt policy safeguarding children that has been required by state law since 2003.

An examination of Pueblo City Schools Board policy by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Colorado (CCHR) found that the School Board is in violation of state law by not having adopted policy explicitly prohibiting school personnel from recommending or requiring psychiatric drugs for any student.

CCHR first brought the noncompliance to the attention of the office of Superintendent Maggie Lopez on June 6, following guidelines set by the Colorado Department of Education.  Since that time, agendas for the school district’s Board of Education meetings – including the meeting scheduled for this evening – have not included any mention of action on adoption of this policy.

Several readings of a policy are required at Board of Education meetings before it can be adopted for Pueblo City Schools.  Thus, it appears that some 23,000 schoolchildren in the district will be starting yet another school year without this statutory protection in place.

C.R.S. 22-32-109(1)(ee) requires school district Boards of Education to adopt policy “to prohibit school personnel from recommending or requiring the use of a psychotropic drug for any student.”

The law further requires policy that “School personnel shall not test or require a test for a child’s behavior without prior written permission from the parents or guardians or the child and prior written disclosure as to the disposition of the results or the testing therefrom.”

The law was passed by the Colorado State Legislature eight years ago to protect against teachers, principals and other school personnel pressuring parents to put their children on psychiatric drugs.  These mind-altering drugs carry dangerous, even life-threatening side effects.  (Adverse reactions to psychiatric drugs, as detailed in research studies, warnings from international regulatory authorities and reports to the FDA, can be accessed through CCHR International’s psychiatric drug side effect search engine.)

Psychiatric drugs also do not address the real, underlying problem(s) the child is experiencing, which may be a lack of additional instructional help, poor nutrition, or an undiagnosed physical condition.

CCHR has sent Colorado Open Records Act requests to school districts throughout the state, requesting copies of the policy or policies that comply with this state law.

To date, CCHR has identified 21 school districts that did not have Board policy with the clear language of C.R.S. 22-32-109(1)(ee).  Twenty of the 21 districts indicated to CCHR that steps were immediately being taken to remedy the long-standing non-compliance with state law.

Only Pueblo City Schools has been vague about when it will adopt the required statutory language.

Pueblo is home to the psychiatric drugging center known as the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo.

Because a response from the superintendent was unclear as to when Pueblo Schools will act to bring its policy into compliance with the 2003 law, CCHR forwarded a complaint directly to the president of the Pueblo City Schools Board of Education, again following guidelines set by the Colorado Department of Education.

If you or someone you know has been pressured by school personnel to put a 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 in the strictest confidence. We welcome your comments on this article below.

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Colorado Mental Health Institute News for Colorado

Pueblo DA Skeptical of Changes At Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo

Says Whole Scrapping Of The Culture Is Needed.

Pueblo County District Attorney Bill Thiebaut publicly expressed his skepticism of claims by the Colorado Department of Human Services that improvements have occurred at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo (CMHIP) in the wake of a patient death there last August.

According to the Pueblo Chieftain, Thiebaut said “I don’t have a lot of confidence that there’s been a change out there.”  He went on to say that change would require a whole scrapping of the culture at CMHIP.

“We have a culture that has permeated the institution for years,” Thiebaut said.

That culture was the focus of a report issued by a Pueblo County grand jury that investigated the August 2010 death of patient Troy Geske.  The 41-year-old, who was obese and suffering from a respiratory infection, suffocated while being restrained face down and left unattended in a seclusion room at the facility for refusing to take psychiatric drug(s) prescribed to him.  See a summary of that report in our article “You Be The Judge: Pueblo Grand Jury Returns Findings In Death of State Hospital Patient.”

“The grand jury said things need to change from the top down,” Thiebaut continued.

Geske had been readmitted to CMHIP in July 2010 because he was experiencing mental symptoms that included auditory hallucination, depression, worsening confusion and aggressive behavior.

All of these behaviors are side effects of psychiatric drugs.  Geske’s ultimate death while under the control of CMHIP staff may well have been the direct result of the psychiatric drugs he was prescribed by psychiatrists at CMHIP – drugs that he was struggling to refuse at the time of his death, drugs he may well have known were destroying him.

Adverse reactions to psychiatric drugs, as detailed in research studies, warnings from international regulatory authorities and reports to the FDA, can be accessed through CCHR International’s psychiatric drug side effect search engine.

   If you have experience with “the culture” at CMHIP, 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.

Categories
Military in Colorado/Wyoming

Brain-Injured Colorado War Vet Turns To Music As Alternative To Medications

Estimates of the number of traumatic brain injuries sustained by soldiers since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan range as high as 400,000 troops.

All too often the mental symptoms of these brain injuries are misdiagnosed as mental disorders and treated with psychiatric drugs, which are known to induce suicide and violence among long lists of other negative side effects.  (See Psychiatry’s All-Out Assault on the U.S. Military: The Unprecedented Rate Of Military Suicides Parallels Troops’ Use of Psychiatric Drugs).  But alternative treatments exist for those living with brain injuries.

After serving eight years in the U.S. Army, including deployments to Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, William Rist returned to Colorado with a traumatic brain injury.  According to a report by Colorado’s 9News, Rist took prescription medications for years to treat the symptoms caused by his injuries.  But the drugs caused additional problems for him and his family.  “It actually affected every aspect of my life,” said Rist.

To reclaim his life and his family, Rist set out to find a workable alternative to the drugs and found it in learning to play the guitar.  He is now asking the Colorado VA hospital to make music therapy available at the facility.  Click here for the entire 9News report.

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News for Colorado Schools

11-Year-Old Caught In The Crosshairs Between His Psychiatrist And Arvada Public Schools

Child Was Kept Four Days In A Psychiatric Hospital Because Of His Stick Drawings In School

An 11-year-old was arrested at his home on criminal charges for stick figures depicting violence that he had drawn in an Arvada public school, reportedly at the urging of his psychiatrist.  He was taken away in handcuffs to a psychiatric hospital 100 miles away in Colorado Springs and kept there for four days, according to his mother in an interview with Fox News.

The boy was being treated for so-called ADD (attention deficit disorder) and was told by his therapist to draw pictures in school to express his feelings instead of disrupting the class.  The boy reportedly had done so and was in the process of throwing the picture away when a teacher saw what she considered disturbing content and reported it.  According to a report by KDVR Denver Channel 31, school officials initially determined that the child was not a threat, but later changed their mind and called police.

Beyond the question of whether the school district’s zero-tolerance policy of dealing with violent imagery in the schools is too broad and does not take into account the circumstances of individual situations, how does a child go from being inattentive (having an “attention deficit”) to drawing a stick figure of himself pointing a gun at four other stick figures with the words “teachers they must die?”  The answer could lie in the fact that, instead of applying educational, medical, nutritional, and parental solutions to children’s restlessness and disruptive behavior, all too often teachers and school psychologists push parents to take their kids to psychiatrists, who label them with ADD and ADHD and put them on drugs.  (See “Colorado law prohibits school personnel from recommending psychiatric drugs.”)  The rambunctious behavior of boys makes them particularly susceptible to being labeled with ADD and ADHD.

ADD/ADHD drugs are powerful, addictive, psycho-stimulant drugs, some of which lab rats can’t distinguish from cocaine.  These mind-altering drugs are known to cause unwanted and disturbed behavioral changes that include mania, psychosis, hallucinations, delusional thinking, and suicidal thoughts.  (To read more about the side effects and international warnings on ADD/ADHD drugs, go to CCHR International’s psychiatric drugs search engine.)

ADD/ADHDHD drugs are also linked to violent behavior. School officials could well have remembered recent school shootings when they changed their mind and decided to follow school district policy and get the police involved.  At least nine of 13 recent school shooters were on, or in withdrawal from, psychiatric drugs at the time of their shootings, including one of the Columbine shooters.  (The other four have closed medical records.)

The truth is there are no blood tests, x-rays, brain scans or any other objective, physical test to confirm any “diagnosis” of ADD or ADHD.  Even the U.S. National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference on ADHD in the late 1990s concluded:  “…researchers have vigorously attempted to find proof that ADHD is caused by a chemical imbalance, but have come up with nothing.”

While ADD/ADHD drugs may make children quieter and more compliant in school, so would other chemical restraints like street drugs or alcohol.  None of these are workable, long-term solutions for the behavior problems of a growing and developing child.  The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recently condemned the over-prescription of psychiatric drugs for ADHD, stating that parents need to be able to easily access alternative, educational, and social measures for helping their children with their problems.

At least one teacher decided to publicly criticize the psychiatric drugging of children – and she lost her job over it.  According to KPHO Channel 5 in Phoenix, Arizona, an English teacher refused to remove a bumper sticker on her car that cynically asked, “Have you drugged your kid today?”  As she explained, “It’s kind of a criticism of us tending to over-medicate hyperactive kids who might not need those medications.”  She is fighting to get her job back, claiming that her First Amendment rights were violated.

If you have been told that a chemical imbalance, brain scan, or anything else “confirms” that you or your child has ADD or ADHD, we want to talk to you.  Please report it here or call us at 303-789-5225.

Categories
News for Colorado Schools

Protecting Your Children: Colorado Law Prohibits School Personnel From Recommending Psychiatric Drugs

CCHR Colorado continues to receive complaints from parents who are being pressured by teachers to put their children on “ADHD” or other psychiatric drugs because of the children’s behavior problems in the classroom.  This is a violation of Colorado state law.

Colorado Revised Statute 22-32-109 (1)(ee), passed by the Colorado 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.

Students also 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).  The law also requires that parents should receive written disclosure of what will be done with the results of the testing: “School personnel shall not test or require a test for a child’s behavior without prior written permission from the parents or guardians or the child and prior written disclosure as to the disposition of the results or the testing therefrom.”

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, which carry long lists of dangerous side effects for children.  (CCHR’s newest DVD, “Dead Wrong: How Psychiatric Drugs Can Kill Your Child,” can be viewed online here: www.cchr.org.)

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.

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.

According to Julian Whitaker, M.D.:

“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.

“Write a note to your child’s teacher clearly stating that you refuse permission for the child to participate in any type of mental health screening. Include in the note the admonition that if the child undergoes screening without your knowledge, you will sue.”

If school personnel have recommended that you put your child on psychiatric drugs, we want to hear from you.  Report your experience here, or call us at 303-789-5225.

Categories
News for Colorado

Colorado Medicaid Doctor Prescribes a Whopping $1.1 Million of Antipsychotic Drugs in Just 2008 and 2009 Alone

Colorado’s top Medicaid prescriber of drugs at the center of a U.S. senator’s probe into fraud, waste and abuse in the Medicaid system billed nearly $1.1 million in 2008 and 2009 for 1,304 prescriptions written on four expensive antipsychotic drugs, according to data obtained by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Colorado.

The high-prescribing doctor was identified only by the prescriber identifier number 1093800559 in data compiled by the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing (CDHCPF) in response to a request from U.S. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Medicaid and Medicare.

In April the senator requested 2008 and 2009 data from all 50 state Medicaid agencies on the top 10 Medicaid prescribers for each of six antipsychotic and two narcotic drugs, citing his concern they are being overprescribed at great cost to the publicly-funded Medicaid and Medicare programs.  Following his review of the data, Grassley called for a federal investigation.

Collectively Colorado’s top 10 Medicaid prescribers of the six antipsychotic drugs in question billed Medicaid a total of $8,172,649 over the two-year period, billing $3,045,015 in 2008 and $5,127,634 in 2009 for a 68 percent increase.

Colorado taxpayers have good reason to be concerned not only about the mushrooming cost of expensive antipsychotic drugs prescribed by Medicaid psychiatrists, but also the medical costs of the physical damage these drugs can cause to the Medicaid patients taking them.

The ages of the patients for whom the prescriptions were written were not part of the released data, so it is not known whether the huge jump in prescriptions in Colorado reflects the growing nationwide trend of putting children on antipsychotics, especially poor children.  A Rutgers University study last year found that children from low-income families, like those on Medicaid, were four times as likely as the privately insured to be put on antipsychotic drugs.

Drug studies of newer antipsychotics have found they can cause serious side effects in children, including diabetes, obesity, elevated cholesterol, seizures and strokes.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, “a marketing juggernaut…has made antipsychotics the nation’s top-selling class of drugs by revenue, $14.6 billion last year, with prominent promotions aimed at children.”

Because none of Colorado’s top Medicaid antipsychotic prescribers is identified by name in the CDHCPF data, it is not possible to track any financial ties they might have with the pharmaceutical companies that make these drugs, which could lead to a higher use of the drugs and a higher cost to the Medicaid program without benefiting patients.

Recently enacted national health care reform will require pharmaceutical companies to disclose payments to doctors beginning in 2013.  In the meantime Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer, makers of two of the antipsychotic drugs targeted by Sen. Grassley, must already disclose their payments to doctors as part of agreements reached with the U.S. Department of Justice.

With Colorado already facing what the governor’s office estimates as  a $262 million general-fund shortfall for the current 2010-11 budget and facing another $1 billion shortfall in the 2011-12 budget year, details of the number and cost of prescriptions for antipsychotic and other psychiatric in the publicly-funded Medicaid program over the past 10 years should be made public, with a special focus on the increase in the number and cost of prescriptions written on antipsychotics for children.

If you or someone you know has been harmed by taking antipsychotic drugs and you want to talk about it, we want to talk to you.  Email us or call 303-789-5225. All inquiries and communication will be handled in strictest confidence. We will take action.

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