Incarcerated kids drugged with antipsychotics

Evelyn Pringle reports on chemical child abuse being pushed by psychiatry in juvenile detention centers.
LINK
Archive of Evelyn Pringle's articles

Novartis Paid Doctor Who Urged Use of Seizure Meds on Bipolar Kids

http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/novartis-paid-doc-who-urged-use-of-seizure-meds-on-bipolar-kids/6050

Novartis (NVS) gave research funds to a doctor who advocated using the anti-seizure drug Trileptal as an anti-bipolar depression treatment in children — an unapproved use of that drug — the company confirmed to BNET. The doctor, Michael Jay Reinstein, once told a newsletter for parents with bipolar children that “high enough” doses of Trileptal were useful in quelling aggression in bipolar children. Novartis spokesperson Anna Fradle said:

He has done clinical studies on Trileptal on our behalf.

She declined to detail how much money Novartis had paid Reinstein over the years. The use of antidepressants and other pyschiatric drugs in children is controversial. It is not well-established that conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder or mania exist in children, or that if they do the appropriate treatment is a seizure medicine like Trileptal. Yet Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Shire(SHPGY) and AstraZeneca (AZN) have all funded research by doctors who advocate antidepressants for kids, and so did Forest Labs (FRX).

The admission illustrates how a small group of doctors can end up on the payroll of multiple drug companies, triggering illegal “off-label” sales.

Novartis agreed to pay $422 million to end Department of Justice allegations that the company promoted Trileptal for unapproved uses and paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe the drug. In the whistleblower complaint that led to the settlement, former Novartis pharmaceutical sales rep Steve McKee alleged that he and other reps would encourage doctors to ask about off-label uses of Trileptal...

Continues at link

Photo of the doctor

The Hidden Tragedy of the CIA's Experiments on Children

Mary is only five years old. She sits on a small, straight-backed chair, moving her legs back and forth, humming the same four notes over and over and over. Her head, framed in a tangled mass of golden curls, moves up and down with each note. For the first three years of her life, Mary was thought to be a mostly normal child. Then, after she began behaving oddly, she had been handed off to a foster family. Her father and mother didn't want her any longer. She had become too strange for her father, whose alcoholism clouded any awareness of his young daughter. Mary's mother had never wanted her anyway and was happy to have her placed in another home. When the LSD Mary has been given begins to have its effects, she stops moving her head and legs and sits staring at the wall. She doesn't move at all. After about ten minutes, she looks at the nearby physician observing her, and says, "God isn't coming back today. He's too busy. He won't be back here for weeks."

From early 1940 to 1953, Dr. Lauretta Bender, a highly respected child neuropsychiatrist practicing at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, experimented extensively with electroshock therapy on children who had been diagnosed with "autistic schizophrenia." In all, it has been reported that Bender administered electroconvulsive therapy to at least 100 children ranging in age from three years old to 12 years, with some reports indicating the total may be twice that number. One source reports that, inclusive of Bender's work, electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children's Service from 1956 to 1969. Bender was a confident and dogmatic woman, who bristled at criticism, oftentimes refused to acknowledge reality even when it stood starkly before her.

Despite publicly claiming good results with electroshock treatment, privately Bender said she was seriously disappointed in the aftereffects and results shown by the subject children. Indeed, the condition of some of the children appeared to have only worsened. One six-year-old boy, after being shocked several times, went from being a shy, withdrawn child to acting increasingly aggressive and violent. Another child, a seven-year-old girl, following five electroshock sessions had become nearly catatonic.

Years later, another of Bender's young patients who became overly aggressive after about 20 treatments, now grown, was convicted in court as a "multiple murderer." Others, in adulthood, reportedly were in and of trouble and prison for a battery of petty and violent crimes. A 1954 scientific study of about 50 of Bender's young electroshock patients, conducted by two psychologists, found that nearly all were worse off after the "therapy" and that some had become suicidal after treatment. One of the children studied in 1954 was the son of well-known writer Jacqueline Susann, author of the bestselling novel "Valley of the Dolls." Susann's son, Guy, was diagnosed with autism shortly after birth and, when he was three years old, Dr. Bender convinced Susann and her husband that Guy could be successfully treated with electroshock therapy. Guy returned home from Bender's care a nearly lifeless child. Susann later told people that Bender had "destroyed" her son. Guy has been confined to institutions since his treatment.

To their credit, some of Dr. Bender's colleagues considered her use of electroshock on children "scandalous," but few colleagues spoke out against her, a situation still today common among those in the medical profession. Said Dr. Leon Eisenberg, a widely respected physician and true pioneer in the study of autistic children, "[Lauretta Bender] claimed that some of these children recovered [because of her use of shock treatment]. I once wrote a paper in which I referred to several studies by [Dr. E. R.] Clardy. He was at Rockwin State Hospital - the back up to Bellevue - and he described the arrival of these children. He considered them psychotic and perhaps worse off then before the treatment."

Continues here

Video: Generation RX

The deliberate chemical lobotomizing of an entire
generation for profits & societal degeneration

Generation RX

EX G.I. Joe † Ghetto Church † | MySpace Video

Medicating Children: A “Whistleblower’s” Lawsuit Raises a Novel Legal Question

From Robert Whitaker's Blog, MAD IN AMERICA, at Psychology Today

"In the past few years, a number of pharmaceutical companies have admitted to federal charges that they illegally
marketed psychiatric medications for non-approved uses, with the companies paying large sums to settle the cases.
Now, a legal complaint filed by the Law Project for Psychiatric Rightsin an Alaskan federal court is raising a
related question. When healthcare providers bill Medicaid for prescriptions of psychiatric drugs to children for non-
approved uses, are they committing Medicaid fraud?
The case, United States ex-rel Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v. Matsutani, was unsealed earlier this year, and
legal papers were recently filed that have brought this novel question -- which obviously has profound implications
for the prescribing of psychiatric medications to poor children and adolescents -- into sharp focus.
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) , which is headed by Alaskan attorney James Gottstein, filed its
whistleblower complaint in April 2009. Known as a qui tam lawsuit, PsychRights sued on behalf of the federal
government under the False Claims Act, which allows private individuals to pursue legal complaints against
individuals or companies that are allegedly defrauding the government. In December, the federal government
declined to join PsychRights in the case.
PsychRights named Alaskan state officials, hospitals, mental health agencies, psychiatrists, and pharmacies as
defendants. In its complaint, PsychRights argues that the federal government has agreed to provide Medicaid
reimbursement only for those outpatient drugs that are prescribed for an FDA-approved use or for a use supported
by a medical compendium (such as the DRUGDEX Information System.) PsychRights maintains that the defendants
defrauded the federal government when they billed Medicaid (or the federal Children's Health Insurance Program)
for outpatient drugs that didn't meet this standard.
As part of its complaint, PsychRights identified 16 commonly prescribed psychiatric medications that have no
"medically accepted indication" for youth under 18 years old, and it also identified the limited number of "medically
accepted indications" that exist for 32 other psychiatric drugs. PsychRights compiled this list of "approved" uses by
methodically going through the drug compendiums, and it serves as the evidential heart of the complaint, for it
reveals that psychiatric medications are regularly prescribed to poor children for non-approved uses. PsychRights is asking the federal court to stop this practice (which it argues is harmful), and to pay hefty financial penalties for the fraudulent claims made to date."

Riveting! Thank you, Robert Whitaker.

Read the rest at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/

Some of our previous posts on Robert Whitaker's views and anti-psych meds articles -

http://www.thestreetspirit.org.
This site is owned by The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),
a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice and peace.

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/mad.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/madinterview.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/leonards.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/zyprexa.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20071119112008/http://www.namiscc.org/newsletters/February02/JohnNashDrugFreeRecovery.htm

http://pharmaceuticalsanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/12/us-kids-represent-psychiatric-goldmine.html

http://pharmaceuticalsanonymous.blogspot.com/2008/05/royal-recovery-from-schizophrenia.html

Institutional Child Abuse - Apologising for Serious Wrongdoing

From the Government of Canada

Institutional Child Abuse

This paper was prepared for the Law Commission of Canada under the title Apologising for Serious Wrongdoing: Social, Psychological and Legal Considerations. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission. The accuracy of the information contained in the paper is the sole responsibility of the author.
Ce document est également disponible en français sous le titre La présentation d'excuses relatives à une faute grave: considérations sociales, psychologiques et juridiques.

Apologising for Serious Wrongdoing: Social, Psychological and Legal Considerations


Susan Alter
Researcher, Law Commission of Canada

Final Report for the
Law Commission of Canada

May 1999



TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Outlining the Issues
II. Why Apologies are Necessary
III. Two Kinds of Apologies Requested in Cases of Abuse
IV. What Goes Into Making a Meaningful Apology?

Link

US Kids Represent a Psychiatric Goldmine

WHY are we drugging our children?


From the article:

Saturday 12 December 2009
by: Evelyn Pringle, t r u t h o u t | Report

Prescriptions for psychiatric drugs increased 50 percent with children in the US, and 73 percent among adults, from 1996 to 2006, according to a study in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Health Affairs. Another study in the same issue of Health Affairs found spending for mental health care grew more than 30 percent over the same ten-year period, with almost all of the increase due to psychiatric drug costs.

On April 22, 2009, the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported that in 2006 more money was spent on treating mental disorders in children aged 0 to 17 than for any other medical condition, with a total of $8.9 billion. By comparison, the cost of treating trauma-related disorders, including fractures, sprains, burns, and other physical injuries, was only $6.1 billion.

In 2008, psychiatric drug makers had overall sales in the US of $14.6 billion from antipsychotics, $9.6 billion off antidepressants, $11.3 billion from antiseizure drugs and $4.8 billion in sales of ADHD drugs, for a grand total of $40.3 billion.

The path to child drugging in the US started with providing adolescents with stimulants for ADHD in the early 80s. That was followed by Prozac in the late 80s, and in the mid-90s drug companies started claiming that ADHD kids really had bipolar disorder, coinciding with the marketing of epilepsy drugs as "mood stablizers" and the arrival of the new atypical antipsychotics.

Parents can now have their kids declared disabled due to mental illness and receive Social Security disability payments and free medical care, and schools can get more money for disabled kids. The bounty for the prescribing doctors and pharmacies is enormous and the CEOs of the drug companies are laughing all the way into early retirement.

Psychiatric Drugs Explained

During an interview with Street Spirit in August 2005, investigative journalist and author of "Mad in America," Robert Whitaker, described the dangers of psychiatric drugs. "When you look at the research literature, you find a clear pattern of outcomes with all these drugs," he said, "you see it with the antipsychotics, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety drugs and the stimulants like Ritalin used to treat ADHD."

"All these drugs may curb a target symptom slightly more effectively than a placebo does for a short period of time, say six weeks," Whitaker said. However, what "you find with every class of these psychiatric drugs is a worsening of the target symptom of depression or psychosis or anxiety, over the long term, compared to placebo-treated patients."

"So even on the target symptoms, there's greater chronicity and greater severity of symptoms," he reports, "And you see a fairly significant percentage of patients where new and more severe psychiatric symptoms are triggered by the drug itself."

Whitaker told Street Spirit that the rate of Americans disabled by mental illness has skyrocketed since Prozac came on the market in 1987, and reports: (1) the number of mentally disabled people in the US has been increasing at a rate of 150,000 people per year since 1987, (2) that represents an increase of 410 new people per day and (3) the disability rate has continued to increase and one in every 50 Americans is disabled by mental illness.

The statistics above beg the question of how could this happen when the so-called new generation of "wonder drugs" arrived on the market during the exact same time period. The truth is, the "wonder drugs" cause most of the bizarre behaviors listed by doctors to warrant a mental illness disability.

Link


To read more about the astonishing rise in mental illness in America since the introduction of psychiatric drugs, go to this PDF by Robert Whitaker: Anatomy of an Epidemic,


Another valuable in-depth resource on these matters is Vera Hassner Sharav's AHRP - Alliance for Human Research Protection - here.

To see our previous posts and links about the drugging of children, search for "children drugs" in our SEARCH box in the upper right hand corner of the blog.

NYT: Poor Children More Likely to Be Given Antipsychotics

"Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?"

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/health/12medicaid.html?_r=1&hp

Rough Aunties take Sundance by Storm

Warning: contains materials related to sexual abuse of minors, and may trigger for some.

"Sisters in Law director Kim Longinotto brings viewers an intimate portrait of change in Africa with this documentary following the efforts of five women in ensuring that the abused and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa still have a fighting chance despite getting a rough start in life. Thuli, Mildred, Sudula, Jackie, and Eureka are a multiracial cadre of women who have dedicated their lives to the common cause of helping the most vulnerable and disenfranchised components of their communities - the children. Together, these five women form a united force powerful enough to overcome social and racial divisions while doing battle against the destructive forces of corruption, greed, and apathy. In post-apartheid South Africa, it's the hope and energy of groups like the Rough Aunties that help to transform a nation while inspiring positive change." ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A movie has been made about the "Rough Aunties" - and it has taken the Sundance Film Festival by storm.
Link

The film is reviewed here.

"Operation Bobbi Bear exists to:
Rescue and uphold the rights of sexually abused children.
Minimise their risk of HIV infection.
Help them towards wholeness."




Looks like one Rough Auntie is better for peace of mind than any number of tranquilizers. Make a donation and become a Rough Auntie: http://roughaunties.com/

USA: Pennsylvania Prisons Allegedly Bribed Judges to Sentence Kids

"Spread over two years of court cases, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are accused of taking more than $2.6 million in payoffs to sentence minors to detention centers.

Dealing exclusively with private institutions, as Conahan had helped shutter the county-run center in 2002, the judges are alleged to have received bribes from detention facilities that were paid by the county on a daily basis.

Though they had agreed to contracts with the county, the centers would ultimately receive payment according to the number of offenders they housed.

The high number of incarcerations, the fact that many underage offenders were presented without an attorney and the excessive punishments doled out for small, often first-time offenses raised suspicions among the local legal community.

Both judges have been removed from the bench and are expected to plead guilty.

Although the Wilkes-Barre case is exceptional for the high number and value of the bribes paid, it is hardly an isolated case on the international stage.

According to a 2007 study conducted by Transparency International, of 62 nations surveyed, 25 found that 1 in 10 households reported having paid a bride to access their court system."

We ask: How many of these kids were put on psychotropic drugs?

To read the rest of the article and to access important documents regarding the case, please go to this link.

To read our previous entries on the prison industry, go here.

Seven-year old on antidepressants hangs himself

'Weeks before his death, Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old Broward boy who hanged himself in the shower of his foster home, had been prescribed a powerful mind-altering drug linked by federal regulators to an increased risk of suicide in children.'
Link
Please, let's stop these tragedies.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
- W.B. Yeats.

Finding Normal: A checklist makes a child appear mentally ill

From Pdf at orthomed.org
Dr. Marty McKay is a Clinical
Psychologist who has been practicing in
Toronto since 1976. She has worked as a
consultant to governmental agencies, no-
tably Children’s Aid societies, and social
and rehabilitation services. Dr. McKay
began by describing her involvement in
a CBC film “Finding Normal” which
documented the incredible odyssey of
“Jay,” through the child welfare and
psychiatric bureaucracy where he was
subjected to abuse, multiple non-existent
psychiatric diagnoses, and powerful drug
treatments which almost cost him his
life. In the end, he was rescued by Dr.
McKay and brought back to health.
She made many friends and a few
enemies after the airing of the exposé
and said that the case of Jay is not an
anomaly. Through various flaws and
a collective lack of responsibility in
the medical, legal and child welfare
vested interest in child compliance, such
as group home workers who can simply
fill out a checklist that makes a child ap-
pear mentally ill. The child is then referred
for psychological assessment to “confirm”
the checklist, followed by a prescription
from a staff psychiatrist. Legally bound
to take a powerful drug regime, the child
soon develops new psychiatric side effects.
Thus begins an endless cycle of iatrogenic
mental illness from which it is almost
impossible for the child to escape.
Dr. McKay invoked Occam’s Ra-
zor, the principle which states “when
you have two competing theories which
make the same predictions, the one most
logical and simple is probably correct.” In
this case, children who are abused and
neglected, taken from their homes and
put in foster care are likely to be upset,
rather than suffering from a mysterious
simultaneous onset of Tourettes, OCD,
ADHD, schizophrenia or bipolar disease
requiring half a dozen medications.

Dr. McKay closed with an impas-
sioned plea for us to get second opinions,
question and refuse to “go along to get
along” with the medical profession. We
should embrace orthomolecular medicine
because it aims to cure, and shun psychia-
try whose goal is “management”–a state
where the goal is to become obedient con-
sumers of pharmaceutical product lines.

Generation Rx - the Film

"They're depriving children of their souls..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7900bL60Xbc

www.GenerationRXFilm.com
"GENERATION RX examines a culture of medicine and corruption, documenting how more and more children have been drugged with psychiatric medications earlier, and more often, than ever before.
The film uncovers a pattern of collusion between drug manufacturers and their regulatory watchdogs at the FDA - of evidence hidden from the general public, despite the risks being well-known long before antidepressant drugs were approved for the marketplace.
Ultimately, Generation RX may help parents decide whether the perceived benefits of these medications outweigh the serious risks to children."

Drugging Children to Keep Them Quiet

Here is a blast from Merzenich on drugs for the "bipolar child".

Dr. Peter Breggin: Children Poisoning Themselves with Psychiatric Drugs

Led by psychiatry and the drug companies, society is discouraging children from becoming masters of their own lives and encouraging them to become lifelong consumers of psychiatric drugs. Spellbound by these drugs -- that is, rendered unable to perceive their drug-induced mental dysfunction -- the grown adults will accept functioning on a lower level without realizing what they are missing in the way of a drug-free, fully alert mind. This is great news for unscrupulous members of the medical and psychiatric professions, and even greater news for the pharmaceutical industry. But it's terrible news for our children and youth, and the bad news may extent into adulthood. Because their brains have been thrown into biochemical imbalance by years of exposure to psychiatric drugs, many adults find it difficult to go on living without taking more psychiatric drugs. They cannot stop taking stimulants, tranquilizers, antidepressants, neuroleptics or mood stabilizers because the withdrawal reactions have become too long severe and lasting or even permanent. It's time to stop the process in childhood. It's time to stop prescribing psychiatric medications to our children and instead to provide them needed improvements in the home, school and community.

Read the whole article at the Huffington Post


Dr. Breggin's site

Drugging of Foster Children: Follow the Money

CBC. Finding Normal - Dr. Marty McKay

CANADA: Finding Normal
From The National, May 15, 2006

Children rely on the adults in their lives for care and support.
When that support sometimes breaks down, other grownups are entrusted with special responsibilities —organizations like the Children's Aid Society and people like doctors, are brought in to make things better.
This is a story about a boy who was heavily medicated over a period of time. He'd been diagnosed with several psychiatric conditions, and his medications were steadily increased after reports of more and more difficult behaviour.
That's when the boy's grandparents step in, concerned about their grandson and the effects the medications were having on him.
Now out of the group home, the boy is off all of the drugs he was prescribed there.
The boy in this story is referred to as "J" throughout in order to protect his identity.
"How would you describe yourself to someone who doesn't know you?" J is asked.
"Nice. Not very calm at times. Very good at biking. Not too good at skate boarding but still like to sit on it and zip down hills!"
As long as he's moving, the boy we call J is free, free from his memories.
"I didn't really think about much. I was always tired — my arms and stuff. I couldn't get out of bed often," he says.
Two years on, J is transformed. A relief to his grandparents.
"He just loves to laugh … he's just a completely different kid from, from those times before," his grandfather says.
The 15 months he spent as a ward of the Durham Children's Aid Society on sometimes, crippling doses of medication …
"I couldn't stand up I hardly could climb the stairs I pretty much had to crawl the stairs," J says.
"It was like the life in his body was being drained out of him," J's grandmother says.

In fact, the medications stunted his growth.











CBC, Canada

USA - Hearing: Drugging of Foster Children

A hearing held by The House Ways and Means Committee, May 8, focused on the use of psychotropic drugs for children in foster care.

A riveting testimony was delivered by Misty Stenslie, Deputy Director, Foster Care Alumni of America (below). She represents one of 12 million adults in this country who grew up in foster care, the government served as my parents. She spent 12 years in approximately 30 placements.

"My time in care resulted in a long list of diagnoses, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Depression, and a sleep disorder. Because of the instability in my living situation, it seemed that the only option the professionals in my life were able to take for treating all of the diagnosed conditions was prescribing medication. Over the years I was on more medications than I can count--usually without my knowing what the meds were for, how I should expect to feel, side effects to watch out for, or any plan for follow up."

AHRP, USA

The Roots of Authoritarianism in Psychiatry and Psychology

This is the image that Freud, a cocaine addict, hung above the famous couch where he dispensed "advice".



"In recounting the story of the Rat Man (“A Case of Obsessional Neurosis”, 1909), Freud digresses into that of another patient, a civil servant, who had many eccentricities. One was an obsession with cleanliness: he paid Freud in banknotes which had been ironed in order to get rid of bacteria. Another was his treatment of young girls. Among his friends he would play the role of a jolly uncle. In this role he would invite his friends’ daughters out for a day in the country and would contrive to miss the train so that he and the girl would have to spend the night in a hotel. Although he always arranged a separate room for the girl, he would come to her bed during the night and masturbate her with his fingers. Freud suggested that this was not a good idea on grounds of hygiene: “But aren’t you afraid of doing her some harm, fiddling about in her genitals with your dirty hand?”. To this remarkably mild objection – would such conduct have been acceptable with clean hands? – the civil servant responded by flying into a rage and declaring that his attentions had never done the girls any harm. He stormed out of Freud’s consulting room and never came back. The pattern that emerges, I suggest, is of extreme and excessive indulgence towards patriarchal authority and its abuse, and a lack of sympathy with the women and children who were, and evidently still are, its victims."
The rest of the article is here


Ritalin (an Amphetamine) and Cocaine are chemically almost identical. So Freud was a speed freak....something to think about next time you or your child are offered medication.