NYT: Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System

Image of Pinocchio turning into a Donkey Boy after falling under bad influences. He is imprisoned and made into a slave. - Image adapted from Walt Disney.

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.

Link

Study after study after study after study has proved that nutrition is the key to mental health. Good nutrition helps the brain form and function correctly and can assist young persons in avoiding impulsive decisions that lead to unhappy outcomes. Why don't we act on that information and help these people?
Food and vitamins are inexpensive; drugs and incarceration are not.


Image: Modern "Panopticon"- style prison

Prisons are big business.

“Incarceration, Inc.,” by Sasha Abramsky, The Nation, July 19, 2004, 16 p.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/19156
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040719/abramsky
Prisons thrive on cheap labor and the hunger of job-starved towns.

“The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?” by Vicky Pelaez, El Diario-La Prensa, New York, October 13, 2005, 7 p.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289
http://prisonmovement.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/us-prison-industry-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/
http://cannabisnews.com/news/21/thread21654.shtml
The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up.

What don't we know about the pharmaceutical industry?

A NYT Freakonomics quorum.
Link

From the page:

Dr. Harlan Krumholz, professor of medicine, epidemiology, and public health at Yale:

"Science and the public good in a capitalist society depend on the free flow of unbiased information, but it doesn’t always work that way. Events are revealing that many pharmaceutical companies, along with their consulting academic physicians, have engaged in practices that obscure or misrepresent information about their products. Does the public realize the depth of these practices, and their implications for patient care?

Most physicians continue their education and keep up to date with new science by attending lectures given by experts, with the assumption that the information they hear is unbiased. But pharmaceutical companies regularly pay high-profile scientists and physicians, either directly or indirectly, to speak on topics relevant to their products. At a scientific meeting in Europe, I watched an American colleague — a famous cardiologist who was being well compensated for his participation — practice his upcoming speech in front of drug company marketers. After his practice talk, they replaced some slides with ones that presented their drug in a more favorable light. The speaker initially resisted the change, but finally acceded, and his talk the next day was a strong endorsement of his sponsor’s drug."

Did caffeine in cola lead to schizophrenia and murder?

GEORGIA MENTAL HEALTH
Unstable mental patients freed by flawed system
By Alan Judd
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Chris Pak pleaded with doctors and nurses at the state psychiatric hospital. His sister, Na Yong Pak, was still psychotic, he said. If they let her go home, he was afraid she would kill herself or someone else – their mother, most likely, the frequent target of her schizophrenia-fueled rage.

Two weeks earlier, Georgia officials had pledged to use caution in discharging patients from its psychiatric facilities. Federal investigators had sharply criticized the state for releasing patients to homeless shelters and bus stops, street corners and abandoned buildings, with little hope for continuing treatment or, in some cases, survival.

Now, on a Friday evening in January at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta, Na Yong angrily refused to sign her discharge papers. She cursed the nurse and swore she would not take her antipsychotic medication.

The doctor and nurse sent Na Yong home, anyway.

“That,” her brother would say later, “is when I knew hell was going to break loose again.”

Twelve days later, after she left Georgia Regional, authorities say, Na Yong doused her mother with gasoline, struck a match, and watched her burn. Myong Hui Pak, 58, died 10 hours later.

Na Yong, 32, is in the Gwinnett County Jail, charged with murder. Her case illustrates the deficiencies that plague Georgia’s mental health system and challenges the state faces in making corrections mandated after a federal civil-rights investigation of hospital conditions.
-snip-
"Her depression gradually turned darker. She yelled at people no one else could see. She would drink only Coca-Cola, but often threw nearly full cans on the floor and against the walls. She accused her mother of poisoning her food."
Link

Since 1953, we have known that adrenochrome malfunction - sometimes related to caffeine - can trigger schizophrenia. See research by Abram Hoffer here and here, as well as an in-depth investigation of caffeine and mental health in our previous post here.
Many young people have a break with reality under the stresses of establishing themselves as adults - while consuming empty calories or toxic foods. But with proper nutrition, vulnerable people's stories do not have to end in tragedy. Link

We would like to see an investigation into caffeine/cola as factors in this murder, though we wonder if the city that is the center of cola manufacturing would permit it.

LA Times on Stopping Antidepressants

Hopelessly simplified; totally inadequate. People are going to get hurt. FAIL.
For links to the facts about antidepressant dangers please go here to Dr. Heather Ashton's site and check out other withdrawal resources listed in our FRIENDS links - David Healey's is of special note: Halting SSRI's PDF

Creative Aging With the Raging Grannies

The Raging Grannies "bared all" at the Creative Aging Symposium held in San Francisco, June 15, 2009.
Posing as the scheduled entertainment for the symposium, they took the stage and made the case for Single Payer Health Care Reform.

The Symposium was sponsored, in part, by an insurance company, and also gets funds from AARP which acts very much like a corporate insurance company and is against any health care reform that would eliminate insurance companies.

IN THE VIDEO: Some members of the crowd look suspicious, others sing along with the Grannies who croon, "We won't feed CEO's anymore!" to the tune of This Little Light of Mine.
Eight-minute QuickTime movie. 36MB at Link


Do you have the right stuff to be a Raging Granny?
Raging Grannies Net - with Song Lyrics
Some Raging Granny Songs
Raging Grannies Official Site
Raging Grannies Film Launch
Link to buy Raging Grannies CD
Link to buy Raging Grannies book

NYT: Democrats say no to cost cap for drug manufacturers

Botox in the deal
for Nancy?









"Ms. Pelosi, many House and Senate Democrats and most of the administration’s liberal allies had assumed that the $80 billion was more of a starting point than a firm commitment.

“We know we can squeeze more from the system,” Ms. Pelosi told a Washington Post blogger a few weeks ago. “The minute the drug companies settled for $80 billion, we knew it was $160 billion.”

“The president made the agreements he made,” she added. “And maybe we’ll be limited by that. But maybe not!”

After Mr. Waxman’s committee approved a House bill last Friday allowing government negotiation of drug prices and requiring additional price rebates, the drug lobbyists began demanding public reassurances from the White House — until Jim Messina, the deputy chief of staff, confirmed the lobbyists’ understanding of the deal in a Wednesday night e-mail message. (A White House spokesman said Thursday that the confirmation was unrelated to the lobbyists’ pressure.)"

LINK

UPDATES: William Greider in The Nation says this deal stinks.
Huffington Post reveals an internal memo about deals the White House cut with Pharma.

NIDA: Coming Up Empty

Looks like the US government does not think that prescription drug addiction is much of a problem - there's hardly anything on it at their site.
As long as pharma profit margins are high, no problem....? Perhaps the government has a drug problem, too.



Image from http://www.investmentu.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/20051103b.GIF