Celebrities involved in mental illness activism toe the meds line

Bringchange2mind, an American mental illness/anti stigma charity, appears to offer no real information about the causes of mental disorders. The group's celebrity figureheads are Glenn Close and Ron Howard.
From its site:

"LEARN THE FACTS

One of the best ways you can help someone with mental illness is by understanding what it is – and what it isn’t. After all, myths about mental illnesses contribute to stigma, which often prevents those who are living with it from seeking help.

The fact is, a mental illness is a disorder of the brain – your body’s most important organ – And 1 in 6 adults suffers from brain-related illness including depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD and schizophrenia.

Like most diseases of the body, it has many causes – from genetics to other biological, environmental and social/cultural factors. And just as with most diseases, mental illnesses are no one’s fault. The unusual behaviors associated with some illnesses are symptoms of the disease – not the cause.

But most importantly, mental illnesses are treatable through medication and psychosocial therapies – allowing those who suffer from them the opportunity to lead full and productive lives."

Mr. Howard's dishonesty about mental illness we have dealt with here. John Nash, the subject of Howard's film A BEAUTIFUL MIND, recovered from schizophrenia without drugs.

When Miss Close LEARNS THE FACTS - that medications can disable and kill and that many of the people she is trying to help may in fact have acquired Bipolar Disorder and other disabilities like Tardive Dyskinesia as a result of taking antidepressants or other psychoactive medications - she is sure to be furious.

Bringchange2mind links to pro-meds government and charity sites. It doesn't raise any questions about the real causes of mental disorders and how to do physical tests to screen for schizophrenia or other disorders, and does not oppose the promotion of psychotropic meds for young children.

We wish Bringchange2mind would promote healing that does no harm. For example, this link has a collection of articles on fish oil and mental health.

Finally, Bringchange2mind states that "1 in 6 adults suffers from brain-related illness including depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD and schizophrenia."

Where did this figure come from?

The UN's WHO puts the frequency of schizophrenia at about 1 in 100. And WHO studies have indicated that Third World country patients can recover better and faster from schizophrenia without treatment than with Western-style intervention.

Bringchange2mind seems to be a screen for promotion of the Pharma status quo.

UPDATE: The UK has a similar initiative,
Time To Change.

Psych meds or exercise will not cure thyroid conditions, a copper overload, a Niacin deficiency. Real change will come when people can get proper diagnoses and the treatments they need - and get well.

Follow the money...

Vitamin D Theory of Autism

"In addition to the current epidemic of vitamin D deficiency, say another epidemic—an epidemic of autism—was upon our children? What if the autism epidemic began at the same time the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency began? What if both epidemics had worsened in unison? What if one theory explained all the unexplained facts about autism? What if both epidemics had the same root cause: sun avoidance? What if both were iatrogenic, that is, medical advice to avoid the sun had caused both epidemics?Be warned, what follows is not light reading—autism is not a light disease.
DOES THE VITAMIN D THEORY BEST EXPLAIN AUTISM?
The theory that vitamin D deficiency, during pregnancy or childhood, causes autism is just a theory. However, the theory has a plausible mechanism of action, explains all the unexplained facts about autism, subsumes several other theories, implies simple prevention, and is easily disprovable—all components of a useful theory.A genetic lesion (abnormality) in some component of the vitamin D system—a lesion vitamin D's unique pharmacology could overcome—would explain why monozygotic (identical) twins are highly affected while fraternal twins are not. Varying brain levels of activated vitamin D during later life would explain why some identical twins get severe disease while others are barely affected.Falling vitamin D levels over the last 20 years due to sun-avoidance explain autism's rapid increase in incidence during that same time. The very different effects estrogen and testosterone have on vitamin D metabolism may explain why boys are much more likely to get it than girls are. Lower vitamin D levels in blacks may explain their higher rates of autism. The vitamin D theory has tenable explanations for all the epidemiological features of autism."
Read more at Link

Scientist Offers Compelling Images of Gulf War Illness

Since the early 1990s, some 175,000 U.S. troops have returned from service in the first Gulf War reporting a host of vague complaints, notes Richard Briggs, a physical chemist at UT Southwestern involved in the new imaging. Their symptoms ranged from mental confusion, difficulty concentrating, attacks of sudden vertigo and intense uncontrollable mood swings to extreme fatigue and sometimes numbness – or the opposite, constant body pain.

With funding from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, Haley has assembled a team of roughly 140 researchers. Many work with patients. Others are developing new animal, biochemical and genetic studies to identify the biological perturbations underlying Gulf War Illness. But the vast majority – some two-thirds of these scientists – are now involved in brain imaging.

As a result of these studies, Briggs says, “In the last two years we have learned more about Gulf War Illness than we did in the previous 15.”

What’s emerged is evidence to suggest “that there are three major syndromes responsible for Gulf War Illness,” he says. They appear loosely linked to at least three different types of agents to which many troops were exposed: sarin nerve gas, a nerve gas antidote (pyridostigmine bromide) that presented its own risks and military-grade pesticides to prevent illness from sand flies and other noxious pests. But Briggs acknowledges that no one knows for sure which combination of agents or environmental conditions might have conspired to trigger Gulf War illness.

Link to article and images

Army Pesticides in the Military

Pharmalot: FDA May Prosecute More Pharmaceutical Execs

By Ed Silverman // March 4th, 2010 //
The FDA plans to increase misdemeanor prosecutions of industry execs as it looks to refocus its Office of Criminal Investigations (see this letter to the Senate Finance committee). The move comes in response to a new report from the General Accountability Office that the OCI suffers from lax oversight, despite increased in funding and staffing over the past decade. In fact, the FDA hasn’t reviewed most OCI offices in more than three years. The OCI investigates counterfeit drugs and other bad stuff, as well as misconduct by FDA employees.
The GAO concluded the FDA “has relied largely on the OCI director to determine which aspects of OCI’s operations and investigations are made known to FDA’s top management.” The GAO found assessments of six OCI field offices aren’t being done on a timely basis. Of 24 total office assessments that should have been completed by August 2009, only 7, or about 30 percent, were completed and one office hadn’t been assessed in over 10 years.

Continues at Link
Thanks, Ed!

Ah, but... who is watching the watchers?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Mental Illness

David Granirer's comedy training for individuals with mental illness is proving to be a hit - a report from Canada's THE TYEE
Link

USA: HHS Report - One in nine senior citizens goes hungry

So many physical and mental ills are made worse by poor nutrition...

Senior Citizen Politics
One in 9 Senior Citizens Going Hungry Says Report to Senate Aging Committee
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) says 35 million Americans going hungry, senior citizens are ‘disproportionately affected’

March 10, 2008 – One out of every nine senior citizens in America is going hungry, according to testimony last week at a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which was called by the ranking member, Senator Gordon H. Smith (R-OR). Smith said 35 million Americans are going hungry and senior citizens are “disproportionately affected.”

A major reason for the hearing was to showcase the release of findings by the Meals on Wheels Association of America (MOWAA) Foundation, which quantifies the problems and causes of hunger that seniors face and how these trends will continue into the future as our society ages.

“Hunger is a disease that is affecting our country, but unlike other diseases we have a cure for hunger today. Because of Senator Smith's leadership on this issue, we now have a national forum to present these findings,” said Enid Borden, President and CEO of MOWAA.

Key findings included:

● In 2005, over five million seniors, 11.4% of all seniors, experienced some form of food insecurity (i.e., are marginally food insecure).
>> Of these, about 2.5 million are at-risk of hunger (i.e. are food insecure), and about 750,000 actually experienced hunger (i.e., very low food security) due to financial constraints.

● Seniors are more likely to be at-risk of hunger if they are ages 60 to 65, poor, African-American or Hispanic, divorced or separated, living with a grandchild and/or renters.

● In 2025, an estimated 9.3 million senior Americans will experience some form of food insecurity, almost double the number in 2005.

Link
Link to HHS Report - PDF

NYT: Do Toxins Cause Autism?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 24, 2010
Autism was first identified in 1943 in an obscure medical journal. Since then it has become a frighteningly common affliction, with the Centers for Disease Control reporting recently that autism disorders now affect almost 1 percent of children.

Over recent decades, other development disorders also appear to have proliferated, along with certain cancers in children and adults. Why? No one knows for certain. And despite their financial and human cost, they presumably won’t be discussed much at Thursday’s White House summit on health care.

Yet they constitute a huge national health burden, and suspicions are growing that one culprit may be chemicals in the environment. An article in a forthcoming issue of a peer-reviewed medical journal, Current Opinion in Pediatrics, just posted online, makes this explicit.

The article cites “historically important, proof-of-concept studies that specifically link autism to environmental exposures experienced prenatally.” It adds that the “likelihood is high” that many chemicals “have potential to cause injury to the developing brain and to produce neurodevelopmental disorders.”

...Continues at Link