Source: Article by Dan Childs and Todd Neale, ABC News
For Ann Hohmann, Oct. 21, 2004, began just about like any other day.
On that morning, the 54-year-old mother of two living in McAllen, Texas, was preparing to take her eldest son to school. She had an early appointment, so her husband, Rick Hohmann, would be dropping off younger son, 14-year-old Matthew, at his school that day.
By Nicole Gaouette
April 6, 2009
U.S. Senator Charles Grassley expanded his investigation into drug company influence on the practice of medicine by asking a nonprofit mental-health-advocacy group about its funding.
In a letter sent today to the National Alliance for Mental Illness, based in Arlington, Virginia, Grassley asked the nonprofit group to disclose any financial backing from drug companies or from foundations created by the industry. The Iowa Republican, in a series of hearings and investigations, has focused on financial ties between the drug industry, doctors and academic institutions. His efforts have led New York-based Pfizer Inc. to begin disclosing consulting payments to U.S. doctors, and Harvard Medical School in Boston to reexamine its conflict-of-interest policies. Now Grassley is expanding his inquiries to nonprofit groups.
“I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry shapes the practices of nonprofit organizations which purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions,” Grassley wrote in his letter. Officials at the National Alliance for Mental Illness didn’t return calls for comment. The group identifies itself as the largest grassroots organization in the U.S. for people with mental illness and their families. The group came under scrutiny in 1999, when the magazine Mother Jones reported that 18 drug companies gave the group $11.7 million from 1996 to mid-1999. The article reported that at one point an executive of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co. worked out of the nonprofit group’s headquarters.
A 2007 annual report showed that the group’s corporate partners at that time included Madison, New Jersey-based Wyeth; London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc; Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac; and the Washington-based trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
A separate financial report shows the National Alliance for Mental Illness brought in $10.5 million in contributions in the year that ended June 30, 2007. The donors aren’t broken out.
Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York-based nonprofit that promotes ethical research, said the National Alliance for Mental Illness may have drawn Grassley’s attention because it lobbies Congress for mental-health funding.
“Academics and physicians give an appearance of authority,” Sharav said by telephone. “Industry gives them the money. Grassley has been going after each group systematically, and the dots are being connected.”
In January, Grassley and Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, reintroduced the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, which would require manufacturers to report on payments to doctors and any physician-owned facility.
Grassley’s investigations have led to changes in industry and academia. Pfizer made its announcement about disclosing physician payments in February. In March, the American Psychiatric Association said it would no longer accept industry support for symposiums and meals at its annual meetings.
On April 1, Stanford University School of Medicine, near Palo Alto, California, said it would post on a Web site all income faculty earned from royalty payments and outside consulting.
In the March 31 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a group of researchers and physicians called for professional medical associations to transform their operations to avoid conflicts of interest posed by “extensive funding from pharmaceutical and device companies.” The group included Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist.
Sunday, January 18, 2009 9:09 PM EST
By SLOAN BREWSTER, Press staff
MIDDLETOWN
Ritalin, Adderall, Thorazine, Zoloft, Prozac… The list of psychotropic drugs goes on and on, along with a host of disorders for which the medications are prescribed, but few people are aware of the process that brings a disorder into existence.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which was founded by the Church of Scientology, wants people to hear their take on the matter – a take they couple not with conjecture, but with countless indications of proof, including statistics, documentation, videotaped conferences on mental health, interviews with psychologists and psychiatrists and decades of historical data.
The commission’s touring exhibit, “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death,” opened last Tuesday and will run through Jan. 30 in the first floor of Main Street Market, in the space formerly occupied by It’s Only Natural. Hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The exhibit includes screenings of interviews with patients and conversations with mental health professionals, who admit brain scans do not offer evidence to prove the existence of mental health disorders and say drugs are often prescribed without any verification they will solve the problems.
“There are no tests to confirm,” said one psychologist during one such taped conversation. “I just speak with people and I make a decision as to the diagnosis.”
In one short film, a patient with a hidden camera visited several different mental health clinics. In each visit, the patient complained of the same symptoms. Each psychiatrist, psychologist or therapist offered a different diagnosis and some prescribed a number of drugs. Then there are the interviews with parents or family members of many patients who have taken their own lives while on psychotropic drugs or in the care of mental health professionals.
Visitors of the exhibit are led on a tour of the room and given the opportunity to read statistics, historical data and to see sometimes graphic depictions of restrained patients and other disturbing imagery.
“It was wrong what we were doing,” one psychologist said during an interview shown in the exhibit. “We were looking at five minutes of their life and diagnosing.”
“More than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions around the world,” reads one statistic the commission lists. “An estimated 15,000 American children have died as a consequence of taking psychiatric drugs.” Visitors sit at stations set up throughout the exhibit and watch short films that offer evidence to prove the claims the commission makes. “It is an educational exhibit; CCHR is the premiere psychiatric watchdog in the world,” said Noelle Talevi, executive director of the commission’s Connecticut chapter. “We’re the only ones telling this side of the story – Their side of the story is that there is mental illness. Every behavior from the cradle to the grave is labeled as mental illness – the only answer is drugs.”
At the end of the exhibit, visitors return to a table near the entrance to the room, where they can get reading material to bring home, a DVD compilation of screenings shown in the exhibit or a documentary film called “Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging.” Some people who have been to the exhibit said they feel vindicated by what they have seen as they already suspected a lot of what the exhibit portrays, Talevi said. Some have indicated they were “blown away,” she said. “They now know they weren’t crazy.”
Others are surprised when they see things such as films of psychiatrists voting on disorders. “They are shocked to learn that ADHD was literally voted into existence,” Talevi said.
Samantha Kovath and Melissa Grover went on the tour last Wednesday. “It seems like the government is using medication as a way to brainwash people,” Grover said. “They want money. What better way to get money than to brainwash the people that work?” One of the last stations, “Masterminds of Destruction,” shows a disturbing quote suggesting the purpose of decades of prescribing adults and children with psychotropic drugs has been done with the intent of social control: “To achieve world government it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas.” The quote was made by psychiatrist G. Brock Chisholm, co-founder of the World Federation for Mental Health.
“[Chisholm] was saying it as part of a plan,” Talevi explained. “It was part of a speech to the World Federation for Mental Health.”
Mayor Sebastian N. Giuliano also took the tour Wednesday. “Some of the stuff I knew, especially the stuff about kids,” the mayor said. “Where was all this when I was growing up?”
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Zyprexa is one of the newer, more expensive “atypical antipsychotics”. Others include Abilify, Geodon, Risperdal and Seroquel. These powerful drugs with horrific side effects are costing State Medicaid programs millions yet they have been found to be no more effective than the “older” much less expensive antipsychotics.
Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel, among the 10 most commonly prescribed medications, are just as likely as older antipsychotic drugs to cause a fatal heart attack, a study finds.
Los Angeles Times
By Thomas H. Maugh II
January 15, 2009
A widely used class of antipsychotic drugs that includes bestsellers Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel is just as likely — perhaps even more likely — to cause a fatal heart attack as older antipsychotic drugs like haloperidol, researchers reported today.
The findings, which run contrary to a long-standing belief, add to a growing drumbeat of criticism about this class of drugs, known as atypical antipsychotics. Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel are among the 10 most commonly prescribed medications in the world, with annual sales estimated at $14.5 billion.
Researchers are especially concerned about the rising use of atypical antipsychotics in the elderly and the young — both groups that are fragile and more susceptible to adverse effects of powerful medications.
Last week British researchers reported in the journal Lancet Neurology that Alzheimer’s patients given the drugs to control aggression were nearly twice as likely to die from any cause as patients who did not receive them.
Some studies have shown that as many as 40% of Alzheimer’s patients in nursing homes receive the drugs for unapproved use.
The number of prescriptions for the drugs written for children and adolescents doubled to 4.4 million from 2003 to 2006, in part because of increases in diagnoses of bipolar disorder. Their efficacy in children and Alzheimer’s patients has never been demonstrated, experts said.
More here: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/15/science/sci-schizodrugs15
LA Times Opinion Page
By Stuart A. Kirk, STUART A. KIRK is a professor of social welfare at UCLA. He is the coauthor of “The Selling of DSM” and “Making Us Crazy.” His most recent book is “Mental Disorders in the Social Environment”.
PSYCHIATRIC researchers recently estimated that half of the American population has had or will have a mental disorder at some time in their life. A generation ago, by contrast, only a small percentage of the American population was considered mentally ill. Are we all going mad?
By Richard DeGrandpre, Ph.D.
On May 18, 1999, the New York Times reported that “social phobia ranks today as the third most prevalent psychiatric disorder in the United States……….affecting an estimated 19 million Americans, according to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America. Many are to bashful even to talk to therapists.” In the same week, the Boston Globe reported that “Epidemiological studies have found that acute social anxiety is the third most common psychiatric disorder in the United States………. affecting up to 13 percent of Americans. Jerilyn Ross, president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America……she hopes a publicity blitz planned by………..SmithKline Beecham will raise awareness of social anxiety disorder and lead more people to seek help, which could include psychotherapy instead of drugs.” Why were the Boston Globe and the New York Times both writing about “social phobia disorder” in the same week, and why would a drug company spend its money to “raise awareness” of a mental-health disorder? The answer: the FDA had just approved a drug for the treatment of social phobia. As the Boston Globe put it, SmithKline Beecham makes the drug Paxil, which was “the first drug approved by the FDA specifically for treating social anxiety disorder.”
By Debbie Thurman, Christian Communication Network
MONROE, Va., July 18 /Christian Wire Service/– “Shut up and pass the Prozac.” That is the consensus of the media in the most volatile round of psycho trash talk in recent memory. Since Tom Cruise kicked it up a notch on the “Today” show with Matt Lauer, all manner of “experts” have weighed in on both sides of the debate.
One of the most articulate and credentialed critics of current psychiatric practices was notably absent, however. Dr. Peter Breggin of The International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, was essentially shut out of the debate by the media, at one point being forced to watch a 90-minute-long exchange between Jane Pauley and CNBC’s Donny Deutche, which he was invited to join by link-up, but to which he was never asked to contribute a comment.
By Kelly Preston
Kirstie Alley and I recently supported 20 doctors from various health care fields, including family physicians, pediatricians, psychiatrists, researchers, nutritionists and surgeons in a letter to the FDA calling on it to strengthen its warnings on stimulants and antidepressants, especially when prescribed to children.
This was in response to the FDA’s recent warning that not only do antidepressants cause hostility and suicidal behavior in children, but also stimulant drugs [June 28 FDA advisory]. The doctors’ letter states: “We can no longer sit back and let the clock tick, waiting for more deaths, suicides or people driven to violent acts by psychotropic drugs. The FDA must continue to be vigilant, to root out other substances that have — one way or the other — slipped under the radar screen, and are now wreaking havoc with the nation’s youth.”
Bloomberg News
By Sophia Pearson and Doris Bloodsworth
Jan. 16, 2008
AstraZeneca Plc’s antipsychotic drug Seroquel raised by almost 400 percent the risk of developing diabetes when compared with first-generation medications in its class, a doctor testified in a court case against the drugmaker.
A 2004 article published in Psychiatric Services, a journal of the American Psychiatric Association, reported the increased risk in males who were exposed to Seroquel for at least 60 days. The study, which involved 1,629 patients, compared the exposure of a newer class of antipsychotics including clozapine and Seroquel with an older class of drugs, Jennifer Marks, a Miami- based endocrinologist, said during a pre-trial hearing yesterday in federal court in Orlando, Florida.
“Seroquel is a substantial factor in diabetes and weight gain,” Marks said, noting the 389 percent rise.
AstraZeneca, the U.K.’s second-largest drugmaker, faces about 9,000 lawsuits in the U.S. over claims Seroquel causes diabetes and other health problems. Seroquel, which generated sales of $4.03 billion in 2007, is the London-based company’s second-biggest seller after the ulcer treatment Nexium. Marks testified on behalf of former Seroquel user Linda Guinn, the first case to come to trial over the drug.
More here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=av_Gg66oOeWA&refer=healthcare
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