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Tag: Antipsychotics

Wisconsin Mother Struggles to Meet the New Year

Patricia Weathers
President
www.ablechild.org
(845) 677-8115

Sheila Matthews
National Vice President
www.ablechild.org
(203) 966-8419

Lisa Payne
Parent
(920) 592-9558

AbleChild Rings in the New Year by Giving a Voice to those Clearly Forsaken by State Mental Health Vendors.

Lisa Payne of Green Bay , Wisconsin found little to be joyful about during the Christmas and Holiday season. Her daughter is still locked away in an Illinois State psychiatric “treatment” center, having been placed on a variety of mind-altering drugs by State appointed legal guardians.

Previously featured on Montel Williams, Lisa Payne was a survivor of domestic violence. A victim at the hands of her abusive husband, she was left for dead and her mother was murdered. Her daughter saved her life, called 911, and stayed by her side as help arrived. “I know my daughter needs my help now, I just don’t know how I can ensure that she gets it,” she said.

When Lisa awoke from a coma induced by the beatings, she discovered the Department of Children and Family Services had taken custody of her daughter. An agency originally designed to help children “at risk” or in traumatic situations; they had resorted to simply placing her daughter on psychiatric drugs and refused any input whatsoever from her as the biological mother. Making matters even worse, Lisa has now been court ordered to take antidepressants, undergo urine tests to ensure that she is complying with their drug regiment, and mandated to counseling. The Supreme Court ruling on the right to “treatment” never intended to result in the forced drug “treatment” of individuals.

Lisa Payne is up against a legal system that has been unchallenged regarding forced drugging of children in State care. Her chances of ensuring the safety for her child, looks grim. Her daughter is in another State and she cannot afford to travel to visit her. The court in Illinois has also refused to allow her daughter to transfer to a different psychiatric center closer to home. Her next court date is not scheduled until May of 2006.

She thinks about her possible visit sometime in January to bring her daughter gifts for the Holiday. “Maybe a pair of jeans” she tells Ablechild . “She doesn’t fit in her jeans anymore; her clothing size has been reduced from a size 9 to a size 3 due to the drugs effects. I am watching from an unbelievable distance as my daughter suffers in pain, and I have no say in her “treatment”. Now she is hearing voices. They tell me that it is from all her “trauma”, I know it’s from the drugs,” she adds.

Lisa Payne can be reached at 920-592-9558.

Mother Mary, Christmas Brings Tears for Some Mothers

Patricia Weathers
President
www.ablechild.org
(845) 677-8115

Sheila Matthews
National Vice President
www.ablechild.org
(203) 966-8419

Lisa Payne
Parent
(920) 592-9558

Lisa Payne of Green Bay , Wisconsin finds little to be joyful about during these most holy days of Christmas. Her daughter is locked away in a psychiatric “treatment” center having been placed on a variety of mind-altering drugs by the State of Illinois . She thinks about her possible visit sometime in January to bring her daughter gifts for the holiday. “Maybe a pair of jeans” she tells Ablechild . “She doesn’t fit in her jeans anymore; her clothing size has been reduced from a size 9 to a size 3 due to the drugs effects. I am watching from an unbelievable distance as my daughter suffers in pain, and I have no say in her “treatment”. Now she is hearing voices. They tell me that it is from all her “trauma”, I know it’s from the drugs,” she adds.

Previously featured on Montel Williams, Lisa Payne was a survivor of domestic violence. A victim at the hands of her abusive husband, she was left for dead and her mother was murdered. Her daughter saved her life, called 911, and stayed by her side as help arrived. “I know my daughter needs my help now, I just don’t know how I can ensure that she gets it,” she said.

When Lisa awoke from a coma induced by the beatings, she discovered the Department of Children and Family Services had taken custody of her daughter. An agency originally designed to help children “at risk” or in traumatic situations; they had resorted to simply placing her daughter on psychiatric drugs and refused any input whatsoever from her as the biological mother. Making matters even worse, Lisa has now been court ordered to take antidepressants, undergo urine tests to ensure that she is complying with their drug regiment, and mandated to counseling. The Supreme Court ruling on the right to “treatment” never intended to result in the forced drug “treatment” of individuals.

Lisa Payne is up against a legal system that has been unchallenged regarding forced drugging of children in State care. Her chances of ensuring the safety for her child, looks grim. Her daughter is in another State and she cannot afford to travel to visit her. The court in Illinois has also refused to allow her daughter to transfer to a different psychiatric center closer to home. Her next court date is not scheduled until May of 2006. Lisa Payne can be reached at 920-592-9558.

Deceptive Interview Demands Response from AbleChild

Patricia Weathers
President
www.ablechild.org
(845) 677-8115

Sheila Matthews
National Vice President
www.ablechild.org
(203) 966-8419

 Pharmaceuticals Chief Focuses His Attention on Drug Deficit and Away from Drug Abuse Reality, in an Interview with Matt Emmens, CEO of Shire Pharmaceuticals by Stephen Foley.

AbleChild could simply not ignore the recent U.K. interview with Mat Emmens, CEO of Shire pharmaceutical, when discussing attention deficit disorder and it’s “validity”… Mr. Emmens tells the many of us who don’t buy into the ADHD label, “That the people who say ADHD is not real don’t use data and the people who say it is real use data.” If we didn’t know any better this statement would be taken at face value, except for its “minor” glitch; that being, Shire Pharmaceutical, and its financial stake, aka financial conflict of interest, in promoting a biased marketing campaign to push its products, aka drugs.

The simple reality is that scientific data doesn’t support ADHD as a disease warranting these conveniently marketed drugs. “Scientific double talk” by all those profiting off of subjective labels and coined drugs is a marketing tool and nothing more. Buyer beware is the term we often hear when we sense something amiss, but can’t quite put our finger on it.

We only have to look a little deeper at Shire’s motivating factors for its recent promotion of ADHD and its “validity”. Shire’s profitable ADHD drug Adderall is coming off patent soon and the company is obviously and eagerly looking to expand its interests in ADHD drugs. It has already initiated an agreement with New Rivers Pharmaceuticals to launch a drug for ADHD specifically made to reduce the potential for amphetamine addiction in children.

Mr. Emmens failed to mention that drugs like Shire’s Adderall are central nervous stimulants listed by the Drug Enforcement Administration as Class II category drugs, which are in essence equivalent to cocaine, with the same abuse potential. Could this be why America has an epidemic of high school and college kids abusing these drugs, using them as enhancement agents, study aids, and even grinding pills down to snort for a greater high? As reported by United Press International, a study that came out this July revealed that the number of teens who have abused prescription drugs has tripled in the past 10 years. Drugs that were reported abused were stimulants such as Adderall. “Today more people are abusing controlled prescription drugs than the combined number who use cocaine, hallucinogens, amphetamines and heroine,” Joseph A. Califano, president of the National Center on Addiction and Drug Abuse at Columbia University. On top of this The News Tribune reported on September 13th that the Drug Effectiveness Review Project, based at Oregon State University published a 731-page report on the safety and efficacy of ADHD drugs. This report was based on the group analyzing 2, 287 extensive studies of drugs to include Adderall. Their conclusion was that there was no scientific proof to say that these ADHD drugs were either safe or helpful.

We can certainly understand that Mr. Emmens would say just about anything to protect his rapidly growing pharmaceutical company, of which has made a not so insignificant profit of $550m on Adderall alone this year. Emmens is certainly paying for the drug data, evaluating it, concealing it, modifying it, and selling it without losing a night’s sleep. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that he would push and defend the same data that results in drug promotion, and increased sales and revenues. Protect his interests, so to speak.

With the billion dollar pharmaceutical industry and its choke hold on an American public who has fallen into what resembles a kind of stupor, an alarming, overly relaxed state of acceptance of drug company advice, Matt Emmens comments don’t seem all in all out of the ordinary. The U.K. has every reason to be wary of this pharmaceutical giant’s game plan and its stealthy attempt to mask its motivations and leave another country in the dark.

As an American non-profit organization representing parents that have been victimized by those with conflicts of interests in both medical, mental health, and pharmaceutical establishments, we applaud the U.K. for being rightly skeptical. America ’s embrace of junk science is rather sickening. Our children and families have been harmed by drugs in the guise of “treatment” long enough. The U.K. should not follow in our folly.

For more information on psychiatric labels and drugs, please visit us at www.ablechild.org .

Prozac Backlash: Trouble in Prozac

Fortune Magazine, by David Stipp

Can Prozac make you want to die? The idea seems strange, given that the drug and similar antidepressants are supposed to do just the opposite. Yet that is what Kimberly Witczak believes happened to her husband. Two years ago Tim “Woody” Witczak killed himself at age 37, soon after going on Pfizer’s Zoloft–the top-selling member of Prozac’s class of drugs, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Her husband was an upbeat, happy man, says Kim Witczak. Shortly before his death he had been named vice president of sales at a startup that sold energy-efficient lighting. When anxiety about the new job caused insomnia, he was prescribed Zoloft. He began suffering from nightmares, profound agitation, and eerie sensory experiences after a couple of weeks on the medicine–at one point, she says, he said he felt as if his head were detached from his body. Then he seemed to calm down. But about five weeks after his first dose, he hanged himself from the rafters in their garage when Kim was out of town. He left no suicide note.

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Third Grader Is Handcuffed, Medicated At School

School officials in Phoenix are in trouble and parents are seething after a third-grade girl was reportedly brought to school by police in handcuffs, and then forced to take pills.

“This never should have happened. This child never should have been brought into a classroom full of kids,” said one parent at a PTA meeting.

Parents at the meeting were asking some tough questions after a third grade girl arrives at school Tuesday in handcuffs.

Teachers watched in horror.

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Television Adverts for Antidepressants Cause Anxiety

From New Scientist Print Edition

ADVERTS that claim depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, and that antidepressants correct it, are false and should be banned, say two mental health specialists.

Popular antidepressants such as Prozac and Celexa block the uptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin and have been shown to be slightly better than placebo in treating depression. But low serotonin levels are no more the cause of depression than low aspirin levels are the cause of headaches, argue Jonathan Leo at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton, Florida, and Jeffrey Lacasse at Florida State University in Tallahassee (Public Library of Science Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020392).

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Drug Industry Human Testing Masks Death, Injury, Compliant FDA

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) — Oscar Cabanerio has been waiting in an experimental drug testing center in Miami since 7:30 a.m. The 41- year-old undocumented immigrant says he’s desperate for cash to send his wife and four children in Venezuela.

More than 70 people have crowded into reception rooms furnished with rows of attached blue plastic seats. Cabanerio is one of many regulars who gather at SFBC International Inc.’s test center, which, with 675 beds, is the largest for-profit drug trial site in North America.

Across the U.S., 3.7 million people have enrolled in drug tests sponsored by the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. The companies have outsourced 75 percent of experimental drug trials to centers like SFBC, a leader in a $14 billion industry.

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A Pragmatic Approach for Troubled Kids

By Leila Abboud,  The Wall Street Journal

With persistent concerns about using powerful psychiatric drugs on children, there is growing interest in counseling techniques for troubled kids that aim to change destructive behavior.

These therapies are getting a push because they have been shown in numerous clinical trials over the past decade to be effective on kids with severe behavioral problems, where other approaches have often failed. The techniques take a pragmatic approach, often using a set curriculum to teach new behaviors, rather than ferreting out the underlying emotional problem as with traditional psychotherapy. In another departure from traditional talk therapies, much of the counseling is often directed at parents.

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Report: Teen Left Suicidal Messages on Website Before Rampage

’19-year-old vowed ‘to hurt those that have hurt me’

CNN.com

ALISO VIEJO, California (AP) — A 19-year-old man who authorities say killed two neighbors then himself posted suicidal messages on a Web site before the rampage, according to a report published Tuesday.

William Freund posted an Internet message October 16 that threatened a “Terror Campaign to hurt those that have hurt me,” the Los Angeles Times reported. In the same message, he said, “My future ended some time ago.”

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Ablechild’s Statement on Teen Screen

Sheila Matthews
National Vice President
www.ablechild.org
(203) 966-8419

 “ AbleChild strongly opposes Teen Screen. Giving teenagers subjective questionnaires and surveys on suicidal behavior simply does not prevent or stop suicide. This is risky research that lacks scientific merit. Teen Screen is nothing more than the bio-behavioral health industry’s attempt to garner big government funding for useless programs that profitably promote a course of recommended psychotropic drug “treatment” which has been clearly linked to suicide and violent behavior.”